Alien Workshop

You watch enough skate videos and read enough skate magazines over 20 years and walking the streets of Los Angeles is like traversing your subconscious in a way.  I was standing on an extremely random street corner when I realized that HeathKirchart, a personal favorite since forever, had once patched this crack here and that one all the way over there and then he walked up that hill over there and rode down here and kickflipped from here all the hell the way over this fire hydrant and then he kept on rolling into his “retirement” not terribly long ago.  I seriously missed my crosswalk like twice or three times, or who knows I was someplace else because I was zoning out on this, standing there staring at the sidewalk and this fire hydrant, and as I turn to continue on my way, finally full, I guess to wander aimlessly more, when I come face to face a big group of people who had been in my training class all day, in a way the group I’m supposed to be a member of, in the middle of the crosswalk, people I didn't make dinner plans with, and here I am staring at the weirdest wall in LA for no reason anyone could ever fathom, and I turned on my heel and walked away as quickly as possible, my face on fire and now I’m like cursing under my breath at how connected I feel to the ground and the cracks in the sidewalk and the pitch of a wheelchair accessible corner of a street in a city I’ve been to 3 times in my life but have spent thousands and thousands of hours studying and how disconnected that makes me from this peer group I’m supposed to be in.  Life of a nerd I guess.  Skate for life.