skate or die!

in the early days of this blog i'd joke about founding my own gang of middle-aged/elderly skateboarders  dubbed SKEAZERS, a portmanteau for skaters & geezers.  anna came up with the name.  i think it's brilliant.  i love skateboarding & skating culture.  i was a punk rocker who came of age with skatepunk.  i had my own stick, a santa cruz red dot with independent trucks & the wheels i can't remember, perhaps powell-peralta bones?  

i sucked at skating.  a couple of our punk acquaintances turned pro.  i remember seeing the great pro skater steve caballero one night on the k st mall break dancing among all the assembled punks.  but despite my own suckiness, for i've always been an uncoordinated goof, i loved hanging with my friends at the half-pipe, empty swimming pools & other myriad designated street skate places.  

& i never did found SKEAZERS for i know if i got on a board at my age i'd kill myself.  & not in a fast painless way.  no, my death would be slow & humiliating & a kneeslapper of physical comedy.  my tombstone would be LOPEZ - WHAT...?  with a pair of rolled back eyes & the shoulders scrunched up in the i-told-ya-so posture in bas relief.  

still, i love watching skaters.  & i delighted in this photo-essay published in the guardian about young indigenous women skateboarders in bolivia.  they skate in the traditional bolivian polleras, the bulky skirts worn by the indigenous women, cholitas, & bowler hats.  polleras were an object of discrimination.  these young skaters take back their heritage & wear polleras & bowler hats as a form of resistance when they skate.  these young women call their group, ImillaSkate.  

long may these women shred

skate or die!