A Late Night Street Reunion

     There's nothing quite like an Old Man Skate Jam. Friday (July 1st, 2011), I met up with my bros Doug and Josh and we threw down a nice jam at the Griffin skatepark. After downing the most incredible pizza I've had in a long time (thanks Doug),Doug and I headed to the park. Unfortunately the Griffin skatepark becomes Michigan ("the land of ten thousand lakes") after a good rain. Being dedicated as we are though, I purchased a squeegee/broom combo (truly the ultimate skate tool) and squeegeed the mini ramp and street sections of the park. After the place dried up, it was on. Soon thereafter we met up with family man Josh and cranked out a nice skate jam. Twigs (see Handrail Hitlist!) was assassinated on the first try while Josh tore up the mini ramp with a 270 feeble stall. Meanwhile Doug was putting his boardslides back on lockdown and popping massive ollies up the four stair. The park was awesome because it turned out to be only the three of us with the exception of one local kid (who is really awesome).
     We literally shut the park down, sticking it out until the lights went off at 11pm. After shutting the place down, Josh had to head back home. Doug and I were heading home when I realized that street was still open. Why not? Years of skating street taught me an important lesson. Skating street after 10pm is striking the hammer while the iron is hot. Temperatures are optimal (in the summer of course) and police are scarce and easy to spot. So Doug and I detoured and skated some street. We first headed over to the best warm up spot, a manual pad at the BB&C bank. Always a favorite, this place is excellent for simply trying to manual the entire pad. Doug landed it several times. I was unable to land a clean one, but did quite a few with tail scrapes. 

The BB&C manual pad. It's perfect because it slopes
slightly downward allowing you to keep you speed.

     Afterwards, we headed over to the DMV stairs only to find clean stairs (they were black with wax when we used to skate them) which desperately needed some wax. Then we walked up on a tree that Doug used to ollie over, but there is no way he could do it now. It's grown a lot!

It's probably impossible to believe now, but Doug used
to ollie over this tree with ease. Of course it was a
little smaller back then.

 From there we skated over to the Post office to check out the five stair with handrails. I really wanted to try the rails, but had forgotten that they had a kink in them. From the PO we headed over to the First Baptist Church. There are a few nice stair sets there. Then we headed to the other First, the First National Bank. This place has long been dedicated to keeping skateboarders out. They still have plenty of signs reminding you just in case you forget. We revisited the two ledges and handrail there.

The FNB handrail. This bush is in desperate need of a trim so that
the rail can be managed (unless you grind it of course).

This handrail was my second ever and the only one that I ever did a frontside boardslide on. Unfortunately, the bushes have grown up quite a bit on it. Apparantly kids today don't use hedge clippers (skateboards work too) anymore.We used to come at night and scalp the bush every now and then.

The Taylor Street 7 complete with the sign. The sign was added
after a year or two of kicking us out every weekend. It did nothing
to slow us down.

     I was starting to lose hope in the street scene in Griffin. This all changed very quickly after heading over to Taylor Street Middle School however. Aside from the Griffin Park always being the meeting place for us when I grew up, TSMS was a mecca for Griffin skaters. It was here that there was always something to skate. Eventually, they built a new auditorium with a seven stair and ten stair on each side. This of course attracted the most attention. As Doug and I approached the stairs my discontent with the state of street skating immediately changed.

The end of the Taylor 10 hand rail. They did an excellent job
hacking it off actually, you almost can't tell. Power tools?

     While the kids in Griffin might not have been dedicated enough to clip the bushes by the FNB rails, they certainly weren't afraid to brandish a hack saw. No joke, apparantly someone cut the kink right off of the 10 stair rail. They began to work on the seven stair, but who knows what happened. They only got half the job done apparantly (which is a shame becuase it would be a nice step up from the rails I've been doing lately). So cudos to the kid with the hack saw! Well done! After a nice day at the park, skating some street was quite refreshing. And I felt a special sense of gratitude to the kids who hacked off the rails at Taylor Street for buoying my hope in the future of street skating.

(My apologies for the low quality of these pictures.

They were taken after midnight

so light was not on my side)

Here you can see where the 7 stair was hacked off as well. They didn't
hack the bottom however.

 

The Taylor 10. A shoutout to my boy Doug for landing this back in 2003.



Here is a smaller gap across from the Taylor 7 that we used to ollie down.
Except for Doug, he would ollie up it. Always the exception.

Here is the First Baptist Church 5 stair. Always a nice warmup set. This
place was fun to skate except for when zealots would try to steal your
board for skating here (it happened).



The First Baptist Church 7 stair. After a warmup on the 5, these were the next step.
Unfortunately, I never cleared these.



The KFC handrail. Doug almost finished this thing off, but never quite
put it in the bag. Maybe it's not too late?