skate journal: Downtown Boston and sunshine! (june 25, 2011)
We started out at this spot. It looked fun like you could skate the lower one as a bank and do slides. Not so easy. It was gnarly. I don’t know the last time I was that humbled by a spot. Dave Bachinsky is seriously good. He did switch front 180 to manual to back 180 into the lower bank. That isn’t possible. It’s an 8 foot drop from the top of the ledge down to the bank and the bricks are rough! It’s insane. Pat rolled in easy. i worked up to it and did it. Matt dropped in. Joe did some f/s ollies then nearly died on the run out of the drop in. Almost worst case scenario. he lied in the grass in pain for a good 5 minutes. ouch. Then we left for downtown.
We parked right next to the infamous PJ Ladd flatground spot and then skated around the city for awhile. We didn’t really hit much until we ended up at Eggs again which is just fine because that place rules. I had thought about how I wanted to do a run that involved ollieing the 3 stair then crooksing around the corner ledge so i went to work on back 50s to start it. Took forever, but once I started getting them a few tries later I did back 50, ollie the 3 (which was surprisingly fun) then crooks for a couple feet in the corner. Rob nailed some front tails. Joe threw down some great lines. Matt slayed everything. Pat played SKATE with the locals. Charlie showed up after awhile. At the end Rob, Matt and I played a game of SKATE (Matt won) then ollied an egg which wasn’t easy for me. Oh yeah, I forgot I tried about one hundred front 5-0 kickflip outs and never got close. maybe two of them you could tell what I was trying. I also did a few 360 flips and cracked my board on one. Not too bad though (hey, it’s a Null! ha). Then we cruised back toward the car and did some sight seeing.
Then we ended up at the PJ flatground spot. This was the spot I wanted to skate more than any place in Boston. The window sills are knobbed now unfortunately, but still, this is the spot where the best line in skateboarding history went down. It felt cool to skate it. Joe and I started by trying fakie ollies up the curb then trying to do halfcab flips after. Took us a minute, but we got it. Not quite a fullcab 540 flip, but whatever. Next up Matt and I tried to 360 flip the manhole that is at the end of the PJ line. It’s way closer to the wall then the video shows. Matt was trying to one up PJ with a switch tre, but never got it. I never go the regular tre either. We ended up all trying lines down the hill which was amazing. My best was fakie bigflip, pop shove, kickflip the manhole. Pat did some crazy lines obviously. Matt and Rob tried manuals and nose manuals respectively. I tried forever to get front 180 up the curb, fakie bigflip, pop shove, 3 flip the manhole. But I never got the 3 flip. I as really close. Super fun session.
Next up we went to this ledge that smells like chocolate/mint because it’s behind a chocolate factory. Brian would never survive here. After falling pushing switch and accidently shooting my board into a huge puddle of water I thought I would sit this one out. But Matt, Joe and Charlie were ripping so I had to join in. I ended up getting a run of halfcab flip, noseslide, crooks and I was hyped. Matt did crazy stuff. Nollie crooks, smith grind, etc. Joe landed everything. Front 50 bigspin, front 50 front board pop out. Those dudes killed it. We were all so beat and the rain started so Black Ice wasn’t an option later on. We rested.