Concrete Lunch

Tomorrow I’m going out to Fort Worth, Texas, to skate a very cool ditch I’ve skated once before, last summer.

It’s an hour away.

There are numerous skateparks much closer. I will have more fun in this drainage ditch, not intended at all for skateboarding, than I ever have at any skatepark.

For the most part this is how my life in skateboarding has been. Skating places not intended for skateboarding. Reimagining the physical landscape – the built environment – in the way that skateboarders do. It’s been said more articulately by others many times.

Last weekend my friend Dale and I went to the 71st birthday skate session of my friend Jeff. It was at the new skatepark at Bachman Lake, in Dallas. It’s a super nice park. Really good. But still, for me, not even 10% as fun as a ditch.

Now, Bachman Lake is in a pretty shitty area of Dallas. The skatepark is at the west end of the lake, on the north side. The south side of the lake is Love Field Airport. Bachman Lake is where the legendary Blue/Clown vert ramp was during the 1980s. Dallas pros like Jeff Phillips, Dan Wilkes, Craig Johnson, and many others practiced there weekly, alongside everyone else.

Anyway, the west end of the lake, where the skatepark is, well, it’s a shitty area. Light industrial on streets like Denton Drive that head north along side the light rail line. Warehouses, shitty bars and clubs, low-rent apartments.

So when we left, I was like “fuck it, let’s go up Webbs Chappel Rd.”. Down that far south Webbs Chappel is sketchy and shitty. Dale needed some water so we stopped at a gas station/convenience store. Now, the store wasn’t horrible looking. But it is in a horrible area. But it was the middle of the day, not 3am. So we stopped and went in and got some water. As we left the store and were getting in the car we heard some loud unintelligible babbling from over by the light rail tracks. There was a security guard (armed) who’d been running off someone of unknown problems but clearly — troubled. We got in the car. I picked the exit furthest from the insane person, who was already heading for us to ask for money. Dale indicated that the person was female. Ugh. Anyway, we split.

Encounter averted.

Note to self. Don’t go that way again.

So we continued north, heading toward LBJ freeway and escape from shittyville.

As we drove, as skateboarders tend to do, we were still scanning for good skate spots. Dale spotted what we think was a good bank spot, but we’ll not be returning to Mordor to skate it.

I went to one of my old spots to skate yesterday. The little ditch I’ve been skating since I was 14.

​As I started to skate, the dog behind the fence on the south side of the ditch started going apeshit. It was annoying. I figured if it annoyed me that much, and the dog was that annoyed, then the neighbors of the dog owner would probably be annoyed as well.

I feel bad for dogs that just live in the backyard. When we lived in Lockhart, Texas, that was common. Dogs are emotional creatures and I think just sticking one in the backyard is abuse. At any rate, I don’t like being the cause of an innocent dog’s distress, even if it’s a dog that would love to kill and eat me.

I took a couple of runs and then left.

It left me feeling kind of uninspired, so I just went home and made plans to go skate a really good ditch in Fort Worth on Sunday (2 days from now) with my friends Dale and Carter. Feeling very inspired for that!