Good Afternoon, Citizens of the World!

What did you do for the month of December? I ate meals and also traveled, plus pet my cats and occasionally showered. Perhaps most notably, I went to Baja for Christmas. Baja! Well it conjures images of brosephs in bro-dozers looking for a bro-down! Is that all it is when you are American in that part of Baja? Just automatic transformation into a dick at the border? Certainly not! A dick is a dick anywhere and wonderful skateboarders are wonderful everywhere. So I hope I have disabused you of your stereotypes and let you in on a great way to think.

Bob, Jen and I packed up the magical grey ghost (Bob and Jen’s VW camper van no-Beethoven) on Monday, December 19th. It took quite a bit of time to get out of town so we hit the Bay Bridge at 1:30 in the afternoon, headed for Manteca where Victor and his son Taj were waiting to meet up with us. What do you do in Manteca? You have a generic experience of bouncing between fast food chains and car parts chains. You feel like there is no you because it is so damn hard to know what is inside you anyway and then the external cues are so ubiquitous it’s no help. There you are. A person.

We rolled through a series of cul-de-sacs in Manteca with beige houses and offensively boring landscaping. We were nowhere and somewhere. The streets were all named after Swiss things like Alps. There was no aesthetic tie-in. If the whole area had been Swiss chalets, A-frames with mountain goats and  a chocolate river, I would have totally approved. But it seems like every time I seek out a chocolate river, the world gives me a big NO in the face. How rude.

We met up with Victor and Taj. We transferred their surfboards to the top of the van. We stowed their boon of Cup-o-Noodles in a cabinet. We took on more beer. We pointed the van toward Long Beach and hit the road, knowing we wouldn’t get to town with enough sun to skate. We bought coffee at a popular chain with a woman on the cup. The woman is half fish and has luxurious hair.

That night we stayed with an old skater friend of Bob’s from Virginia Beach, and his girlfriend. The girlfriend could have been in an Irish Spring commercial as she strongly looked to be of that ethnic background. Lots of freckles and blondish reddish hair and thin lips. I am stereotyping. People come in all sorts of surprising packages/cakes. They were both extremely lovely and best of all they had a black cat who looked exactly like my black cat. I was immediately filled with passion upon seeing this animal. I had already started to miss my cats about two minutes after leaving the house. Do you know what it is to love? I do.

The next morning we had leisurely coffee and oatmeal. We made our way to Channel Street to skate before we met up with Ray and Patty and hit a backyarder. I LOVED Channel Street. We rolled up into the parking lot under the highway where the usual panoply of broken glass, homeless people and skaters were hanging out. There were several bowls in a row built by the hands of skateboarders. The greater area has railroad tracks, the highway, and a shipping port not too far off. It is a working class neighborhood. What I hear is that the skaters started building the place, the city wanted to tear it down, but a bunch of parents got involved and now the city works with the proletariat to keep the park viable. There were a bunch of kids skating. Everyone was very nice. There was a lot of flow to the handmade transition. I felt a rumbling interior joy.

Dropping in at Channel Street

After Channel Street we headed south to a backyarder owned by a friend of our friend Ray. We decided to drive along the coast to see all the beautiful Starbucks along the way. We stopped for Mexican food. Perhaps an interesting choice showing great enthusiasm for the form, considering we were heading for Mexico where ostensibly we would have an embarrassment of Mexican food. Nothing like laying a meat base to welcome the coming storm.

To be continued!