Skateboard Park

Lisa buys me a new camera bag called the Lowepro Slingshot 100 AW (All Weather). Very cool bag; very cool wife. It is perfect (the bag) for carrying my camera and three lenses. I figure that I need to test out it's ability to allow me to quickly change lenses without taking it off.
So I head for San Ramon's Central Park, a rip-off of the NY named park, but it is pretty much in the center of the city.

The park is the ideal place to test out camera gear since it offers good pics everywhere. Always something to shoot if I keep my eyes open.

Walking along, I find this cool grove of trees.
OK, back to the point: Me needing to find something with some action to test how easy it may be to switch lenses. So I wander over to the skateboard park.
Get this: The city of San Ramon decides to built a liability-ridden, bone-breaking, ruffian-encouraging, land-wasting, skateboard park. I wish we had this when I was riding skateboards 100 years ago. We'd have to stick a board over a couple of bricks to make a ramp to kill ourselves. Today, these kids get to kill themselves with these magnificent curves, rises, and drops.

The kids love it, but I am surprised that the city would build such a thing. Watch them for 10 minutes and you get two sensations: envy, and regret that you are not in the bone repair business.

I would love to have heard the city council review board discussion on this one. "So Bob, having a big, dangerous, concrete structure where our kids can kill themselves with absolutely no benefit to us (or them, really) sounds great! Going in, we know they'll get hurt and sue the city. Fantastic idea!"

The surprising part is that it is completely unsupervised and helmets, pads, or any protective gear are not required! It's the wild west where anything goes and no rules.
So, I am there, as mentioned, to test changing lenses with the new bag, and also to try slowing down the shutter speed for "motion blur." What better way to test both than to watch teenagers go screaming down a near-vertical, concrete slope at breakneck speeds?

I used to love skateboarding a age 15 and my friend Dan Story and I would screw in a small strip of sheet metal onto the backs of our boards. When we'd lean back to do a wheelie, the sheet metal would contact the cement sidewalks and create a rooster-tail of sparks you wouldn't believe. The best part, we thought, was that it would leave a burn mark into the sidewalk that would last for 300 years.

The other fun thing we used to do is to go screaming down the steepest hill we could find, and then just go flying into some hedges or any soft lawn. (We never did this on our own lawns for two good reasons: 1) not enough slope to build speed, and 2) our Dad's would have friggin" killed us for the 15 foot long groove into the lawn.)

So, I sat at the skateboard park (with envy) trying to get the "motion blur." The kids would shout, "Hey, take a picture of me on the death drop!" "Get me on suicide run!"

Then, this little guy showed up with his mother. She made him bundle up with safety gear and hung pretty close to his side. He kept looking at the older kids doing rockandrolls, Ollies, and slamming 180's, 360's, and 5-0's. As you can imagine, it's hard to get off a fat fakie, k-grind, or lipslide with your Mom watching. Also, he's kinda going the wrong way on the board.

Just after I took this photo, his Mom lets him go down a small hill and he falls off and totally wipes out! He goes sliding down the rest of the hill face-first. I didn't have the heart to run up and start snapping. The cool thing was, he was NOT about to cry in front of the older kids whom he so obviously admired.

I guess I don't understand the kids of today. What looks more fun to you? Walking slowly through this meadow-like area reflecting on how you might do better in school ...perhaps while singing old folk songs with your friends.....

..or impressing your buds with incredible skill and hanging out with super hot, admiring chicks...

Kumbaya

http://www.adrenalinepages.com/sportindex/sportpages/Terms/terms_skate.asp