People Change

I'm going to learn to skate.

You should read this:

It's about the art and science of skating, it's well cool.

Anyway. Skating is something that has always managed to elude me. I come from a town called Gravesend, you won't of heard of it. Basically, it's the Chernobyl of the United Kingdom, but without the character of the Pripyat ferris wheel and all that. Just the birth defects. This means that it's full of what we now commonly conceive as 'chavs,' as well as, erm, oh wait, no nothing else really.

Youth culture in Gravesend is therefore centered around football, pub fights, drinking and velour tracksuits. This meant that anyone who was brave enough to pick up a board was instantly labelled as a 'grunger' and were made aware of their existence outside of the norms of local culture by having the imprint of the sole of an Adidas Climacool trainer embossed on their forehead.

Since being at Uni I've met some people who are well into it, and I really want to get involved. My mate Jon is going to teach me. He's from Wales. There's nothing to do there either but I think everyone is a little more chilled out. I really like skateparks. Even though they are really ugly there's something I really like about the architecture. I want to go here:

It's the Kona skatepark in Jacksonville, US. It is one of the most famous parks in the world.

When the rain fucks off me and Jon are gonna take the train from Brighton to Ore. We don't even know where that is. We think there's a chance there could be a skatepark at a few of the places along the train track. We are going to skate them, or try to. And perhaps get drunk. I will take photos. A bit like train hopping in the States, but well not as cool.

**I am going to blog the progress of my descent into the deep-end of the skateboarding world in photos and writing. This will probably include lots of minor injuries and abusive language, because quite frankly I have an extremely high centre of gravity and I'm fairly uncoordinated.

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