Creston Park, Holladay Center, The Underground, The Waterfront, Lincoln High and Blue Garage

For the past three or four weeks I've been reading  a treasure trove of 90's skateboarding lore and 'where are they now?' type of things called the 'chrome ball incident.' Over the years I've perused this blog once in awhile over the years but I got caught up in it and have been working my way backwards. I'm reading interviews from 2011 right now. I've become fascinated by these interviews of people who were heavily involved in skateboarding during the same time periods I was. 

Bryce Kanights at the China Banks in 1986. Photo: Grant Brittain

In 1986 I had a passing fancy in skateboarding. Some kids at school were skateboarding, and they wore Vision Street Wear shoes, which I must admit I coveted with the desperation of a fourth grader who wanted to be cool, and liked. 

I wanted these shoes for so long, well, 2 years seems like a really long time in grade school. 

The kid also wore this Def Leppard shirt that I thought was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. 

Def Leppard had graphics and logos that simply enthralled me. The album cover for Hysteria seemed so cool; I remember the smell of the cassette tape inner leaflet, whatever that thing is called. Remember, the drummer from Def Leppard only has one arm and Hysteria was the first album for which this was true

Interestingly enough, this same kid would be one of the most talented dudes on a skateboard I would know. He never seemed to really like skateboarding. He was throwing 360 flips when I was a Freshman and struggling to learn to control my ollies. But I'm getting way ahead of myself here. 

Kobe Bryant had his jerseys retired last week and he, like many others before him, wrote a love letter to basketball. That, plus my recent obsession with Chrome Ball Incident have led me to think about labels, self-identity and appreciating the forces that have shaped me over the years. 

My ideal dream of skateboarding in the 80's

No surprise that I point to skateboarding to providing me with many of the ethos and general philosophies of life and problem solving that I still use today. I've spoken to this point in various manners with different perspectives. Here is yet another way that the love of skateboarding still bubbles up within me. 

I wanted to be a doctor because I thought it would impress the ladies. 

Vision skateboards. Yup. 

That was the first spark that allowed illumination of the path I'm still on. Of course that reason has been retired for many years and I've been able to find many better reasons to keep going. 

Powell Peralta trying to be cool like World Industries here. This is not the Powell Peralta that I grew up with; no skulls or even skateboards or skaters in this ad. 

Similarly I started skateboarding because the cool kids were doing it -- first, in the 80's when Vision and Powell Peralta and the Bones Brigade ruled the day and then later, with a very different style, the early 90 street skaters, with a bizarre look of huge pants and tiny wheels struck a chord with me.

Uniform circa 1991

 My first and main exposure to such styles actually came from friends and family from Edmonton, Alberta. The irony was lost on me at the time, that a kid in Portland Oregon, a place that had and has continued to have an exceptionally strong skateboarding culture and community was turned on to such a fascinating world by kids from the suburbs of Edmonton. Not actually a cousin of mine, but cousins with dozens of other cousins of mine was a kid who was a year or two older who was riding an Andrew Morrison New Deal board. 

Prolly the best skate video of all time, prolly

It was an everslick and the first board that I road that had the double kick -- a staple even now. I had no idea who Andrew Morrison was, nor the history of New Deal, or even what had happened in the industry which had left Powell powerless and Vision Street Wear nowhere to be found. 

I didn't even put together the fact that Blind Skateboards was started by skaters from Vision and that it meant something, but I did know what Video Days the video meant as far as where and how skateboarding would progress; and that is what I cared about. Not many images available of that vaunted New Deal board exist, the best one I can find is from a collectible website. 

My first real skateboard

I had spent the summer in Edmonton and when I came back home to Portland I was determined to become a skaterdude. Initially I bought an old Alva board from a friend and I learned to ollie in my garage and driveway. My birthday is in October and I made my desire to get a New Deal Andrew Morrison Everslick board with Venture 5.0 trucks for my birthday. Cal Skate, perhaps Portland's oldest skateshop was housed on the Eastside at that time in a small warehouse that had a wooden skatepark inside. For about month before my birthday, I would come home from school and call Cal Skate and ask them if they had this board in stock. I mean, they were making fun of me on the phone by the second week and thoroughly disgusted by the 3rd week. By the time my dad took my friends and I down there on a Friday afternoon, it was all they could do not to wring my neck. I was oblivious and was focused, with a singular mind that had this goal that must be achieved. 

Me. Baby blue airwalks. Tiny wheels. New Deal shirt. Alien Workshop hat. And, I'm pretty sure these are thrift store cut-off jeans. 

I remember trying to hatch money making schemes and brainstorm for odd-jobs in case I didn't get this skateboard for my birthday in 1992. They did have the board, I got my Venture trucks with the green bushings and was talked into a set of grey Channel One Sidewalk Surfers for my wheels. 

1992 saw TWS advertising articles that discuss how much skateboarders hate snowboarders (I remember when that was a thing) and of course, street style vs freestyle. Oh to be caught up in those things and care so much what I should think is cool, and what is not

Clearly I picked up a skateboard because I thought it looked fun and the people doing it were intriguing. That remains true, but turned into a real joy of riding the board and evolved into a alternative way of viewing the world. 

The holy mecca of skateboarding. RIP concrete formations. Right now there is the annual ice skating rink, not that it matters to skateboarding anymore

The cold and brutalist architecture that comprises many of our urban centers are turned into playlands with ledges to slide across, stairs to jump down and handrails to grind down. Objects serving a purpose completely unbeknownst and inconceivable to the architects and corporate needs that shaped the plazas and courtyards around the world. 

There is something about that, this concept of repurposing objects and procedures for alternative means -- Hip Hop took cuts from the jazz, funk and R&B from the generation prior and gave it now life in a way the composers, musicians and singers did not imagine, parallels exist in street skating. 

Two of my friends and me. I can tell you that I'm riding a New Deal Ron Knigge Everslick board. My friend to the right of me has a well worn Rob Dyrdek Alien Workshop board with Independent trucks and a New Deal shirt. The friend in the back had a Firm board at the time. This stuff meant so much at the time. 

Whether we are rich or poor in America we are surrounded by excess -- the difference being our direct access to those bounties. In this environment it seems like a healthy thing to take an artificial world built of concrete, bricks, marble and glass and use it as a canvas for the art and science of skateboarding.

The magazine scene had Transworld's monthly offerings reduced to thin stapled affairs. Thrasher wasn't much better. I still poured over every page, picking through the ads, feasting on the art and iconic logos that have and continue to function as a rootbed for popular culture at large, to varying cyclical degrees. 

Lean and mean alright. I used to be, too. 

Now I live in a world with much less "EMB" and more "EBM" -- Evidence Based Medicine, that is. we do things for reasons, reasons that are based in research. But this drive to see things in a way that is often perpendicular to the way it was "meant" to be viewed still exists. And yes, I do look at the parking lot's curbs, curb cuts, ledges, ground and gaps -- but that isn't what I'm getting at here. I fully embrace the EBM way of conducting the science of medicine, but the art of medicine is much less science, or evidence based, for that matter. I know I keep writing about this, and well, I think I'm still trying to wrap my own head around how to get best outcomes for patients. And for me. For the most part, my best outcome, so to speak is tied directly to the patient's outcome, allowing that there is just some processes doctors and modern medicine cannot affect, or change -- I get that, it doesn't take long for a physician to see this. But a doctor's best outcome is more than just tied to the patient's clinical course, of course. That is what I'm still fleshing out and perhaps writing about it helps. Maybe I'll figure this out and have something more exciting to write about. Maybe these next three months, which truly will be the doldrums of intern year will allow for a clarity hitherto unknown. 

Here is what I do know: self identity is important and I'm actively fighting against what seems like is the common idea of what doctors like to identify as. In general, I'm thinking of older doctors but not always. I've spent my life being labelled a great many different things by outside entities. I've spent a good portion of my life identifying as a "wannabe doctor" and now that I've been here for awhile I see clearly that in order to be satisfied with the "doctor" label I will have to forge my own idea of what this means. Also a work in progress but through these posts, this is something that I am working on. 

On another note, I'm really enamored with trying to find a destination for a week vacation in early April. Just enough time to go someplace exciting and exotic, but short enough that New Zealand seems too far -- even Europe seems like a stretch. Anyone have any ideas for a week long getaway for early April? Taking a chance on having a ski resort to still have snow seems reckless, albeit something I may be willing to chance. Living in Southern California makes tropical destinations a little less intriguing. My life is not short on palm trees and beaches, it is short on snow and real forests.