When someone asks you to do something you can do it, or not do it. A girl asked me to go on a trip with her to see some of the most talented amazing electronic musicians in the world at the moment a few months back. I said yes and bought my ticket. She ended up not going. However maybe that’s how it was supposed to work out. Or who the fuck knows.
We drove all night to Chicago with thoughts of Crystal Castles running through our brains.
When I wasn’t driving I woke up and looked out the window and saw a freight train yard just as the sun lit up the skies.
Everytime I see a skyline the only thing that runs through my mind is how much shit there is to skate that I have yet to skate or see, or touch.
The ghost bike, when someone dies on the 2 wheels, these go up. Memorials and reminders of how quickly you can go.
Modern day jungle gyms hold no limits for wandering minds with colorful applicants in their backpacks.
We rode the train through the city during the rain. We were staying with the newly formed Beerics crew. Justin took us to an amazing photo show by this Japanese dude at Columbia. The japanese dude would take photos of the city of all angles, then reconstruct them into a 3d realistic view of it all.
It was Bentons idea to go on this trip. I am guessing he got pretty psychadelic at the show. A few hours after this photo was taken we would find ourselves in Congress Theatre with 5000 or so other human beings, dancing from 7pm to 3am to the tunes of Roan, Crystal Castles, Chromeo and Boys Noise. Dance is an interesting feeling, honestly quite a freeing experience when you just let loose and don’t hold back. All types of styles were experienced and felt at this theatre, crowd surfing, moshing, battling, bumping, grinding, girls making out with girls, girls ripping off their clothes, girls asking you for acid, security roaming the crowd looking for smokers while dancing, people losing their shit, and just all out pandemonium. It sort of felt tribal, like when you see movies of tribes dancing insanely to a few people going nuts on bongos. I think we need more experiences like this in life for if the body just sits still all the time, it seems like it just rots. Shake it up.
I woke up the next morning with my ears still ringing of sounds of beats and chaos and noise. I was on a natural high and 48 hours later or so I still am. My body is kinda tingling and I find myself looking for the next adventure or time of excitement. Durham Dave was the contact in Chicago and he and I went skating for a few hours in the somewhat wintry temperature. There was a cow skating at this park along with a cop. It was halloween and everything seemed quite surreal. Like… whoa, this city is fucken rad. This park was great, this big bowl had so much flow.
We skated this spot for a little while and it was sketchy as fuck. First there is a huge crack at the bottom but the biggest sketch factor is the fact that there is high traffic street inches from where you are skating. I wondered what would happen if our boards were to shoot out and smash a windshield for we were not prepared to rip and dip. Our boards did shoot into the traffic a few times and cars never noticed. You can’t mimic this feeling in any skatepark.
I climbed the bridge we were skating to get this shot. It was fun, had a low death factor if you weren’t a retard. Dave said he saw a guy go by on a bicycle he knew with a huge smile. The guy on the bike was in some punk band Dave had seen the night before. Supposedly he and the bassist got in a huge fight and the guy on the bike was super bummed the rest of the night. I’m glad I could remind him to smile every now and then.
This just might top my favorite tags of all time. The other one I really like is seen around San Francisco a lot… F-Word.
Dave skated this thing pretty damn well. One of his friends did a frontside blunt on this thing which is nuts as fuck. There is a photo on flickrs somewhere. I was gonna go into a ramble about how so many people told me so many names of peoples shit I needed to check out along this trip, photographer, musicians, artists. I forgot all of it. Some Russian girls told me they wanted to dance and mentioned some musician to me. These Russian girls didn’t know about Justice which I thought was interesting. The Russian girls said they missed Russia because it was harder to get drunk in America with all of the age limits. Drunk hot russian girls, kinda sounds like the description to a porno site. Let’s get back to skating.
Climbing this bridge was quite gnarly as hundreds of cars went by and I was in high visibility mode. I snapped this photo and knew I had fucked it up with the exposure, turns out I had fucked it up with the focusing too. However after I snapped it my camera died and we were left with just our boards to go explore the city. Supposedly somebody yelled at me while I was up on the bridge… I can’t remember what but its definitely an adjective to “fucken retard”. Lately I’ve had a lot of people talk shit to me. A cop lady told me she could give me a ticket for being stupid for skating this spot on the side of I-85, some dude called me a faggot fuck for peeing on the side of the road while he kept staring at me out of the window of a car going by fast enough for him to not see me give him the middle finger. People like to talk shit when in reality the jokes on them.
I don’t fall in love that easily, but I’m pretty much in love with this girl. Alrite, I fall in love easily.
She was a voodoo doll but she had never made a real one. I once made a voodoo doll of a kid I didn’t like. I drew spots on his legs, the next day at school he broke out in a rash on his body.
Much like NYC, Chicago rooftops are awesome for views. The train would go by here and you could see the citys efforts to brownify everything. For some reason they just love the color brown in Chicago, well the graffiti buff squad does, painting everything brown that isn’t up to par including abandoned buses that homeless sleep in. Quite funny, paint it brown, then its not a problem.
Daves girlfriend won the award.
For quickest most fucken awesomemest costume of the year.
She put this getup together in seriously… 45 minutes. Minus the trip to the thrift store… err junk store. I came up on a mini baby that eventually got an upside cross tattoo on its forehead, someone else a bouncing souls cd.
Michigans finest… Nerd urkle and that girl from the olympics who fucked her ankle up but still won some shit, or did some shit.
In closing there is never a closing just a next chapter to whatever the fuck is next. It’s kinda hard to leave a big city that you have yet to fully explore. Wait, what the fuck. All I’m saying is if life were a level bar, like one of those things they check your heart rate monitor with, mine would have spiked as high as possible on this trip, even higher than when I lost my virginity. Seriously listening to some very talented musicans destroy shit and inspire thousands of people to lose their minds and just go insane dancing was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. Skating new cities is always fucking awesome too. So if the opportunity arises to go on a trip with some friends and just live it up with little to no plan, do it. Bring your board.