skate journal: Cold late night street skating with Nate (Feb 19)
Had a late night skate date with Nate for almost a week and we made it happen even though it was cold outside. We decided on going to the Ideal Market area as neither of us have skated there much and we felt like exploring. It took us about 30 seconds to find a sick plastic bench that I wasn’t warmed up enough to skate. But we kept at it. It’s a tall ledge in a narrow walkway with a handrail behind it so it’s not the easiest thing to skate at all. I did a couple weak backside noseslides and boardslides before trying a crooks and somehow locking in perfect and grinding really far with a pop out. Wow. I ended up getting a few more crooks that weren’t as good and some front 50s. Neither of us could get 5-0s at all. Doh. Sometimes those plastic benches stick a bit too much. Nate got some really good back 50s though.Then we skated this angled sidewalk that could be insanely good for grinding/sliding with a little bondo over a crack and some wax at the top. But we still had fun and ended up hitting it in a line. I was getting frustrated as hell, but ended up linking a bunch of bad tricks: kickflip on flat, barely ollie a tiny gap over a curb, front slash on the angled sidewalk, ollie up the tiny gap, 180 another one like it then a fakie flip. I should be fakie flipping over the gap. I suck at gaps! Nate and I then played a game of SKATE that started very slow, but toward the end got pretty good. I landed a decent b/s flip, 360 flip, heelflip, fakie bigflip near the end of the game. Unfortunately the lights shut off and we had to move the game when it was T to T. I think I won it with a varial flip at that point. Lame.We headed up into a parking garage and cruised down it, checked some stuff out. Found a nice ledge you can cali grind down a six stair. I tried it a few times in the dark, but it was too sketchy. At the end we skated a ledge that should be skated more and Nate did some really good front board slides on it. I was wanting to quit for the night, but ended up giving a few a try and landed some horrible ones. We ended the night after I slammed trying to kickflip a crack on the downhill approach to the ledge. Fun night. Skating new spots is the best.