memories...
As I get ready to leave for so. Cal for the weekend I hoped on this piece of shyt laptop (someone buy me a macbook stat!) to check out "the latest and the greatest" in our minuscule world. One of my usual stops is The Hundreds where in Bobby’s latest entry he reminisces on this culture, and how much it's changed which caused me to think how I got started in this whole thing.
It probably started in 6th grade when I moved to tinez aka Martinez (home of the martini and Joe DiMaggio. I moved in Halloween night, so not knowing anyone I sat in my window watching all the kids do their trick or treat thing wishing to join them. When out of no were these two skaters came to my window, and asked why I wasn't out like everyone else. I explained I was new to the neighborhood, and didn't know anyone, plus I didn't have a costume. They said that's no big deal you can hang with us, and we have an extra skateboard, so you can be a Jamaican skater (I had a we be jammin' n Jamaica tee on at the time). From that moment on I didn't go anywhere without my skateboard. I even brought it to school even during the time when we weren't allowed to bring our skateboards to school I still brought it, and carried it around until I got sent to the principles office to drop it off for the day. Now I should remind you I grew up in Martinez, ca population at the time...40,000 give or take, and the black population was about a 1/4 of that. You can only imagine growing up in a predominately all white town being the only (no joke) black skater in town. I wasn't "black enough" for the black kids, and obviously wasn't "white enough" for the whites, so I experienced a lot of things my mum had only told me stories about while she was growing up never thinking people could still be so ignorant(thanks again tinez for the rude awaking!). Luckily there were my skateboard friends. Now don't get me wrong even with in the skateboard culture it was clicky. There were the kids that were "actual skaters", and of course the "posers" who just bought the shyt tryin' to fit in where ever the next trend was, but didn't even ride their boards because they didn't want to mess up the graphic! anyway, back to my point at hand...skating day and night you tend to umm how do I put this neglect your school work thus causing troubles in the class room which caused me to be grounded for the majority of my junior high/ high school carrier. Not being able to skate forced me to spend a lot of time on the internet at this time AOL was still some what new as well as my only contact with the outside world. I made my way into chat rooms talking with people from all over the country about the most random things when I thought if there are all these different chat rooms there's gotta be one for skateboarding, and sure enough their was. At the time there were probably only 10 to 15 kids, but that was still 10 to 15 more skater friend I had to talk to about the latest 411, or thrasher magazine. As the years went on the chat grew, and if you didn't get in by a certain time you were likely to get the "I’m sorry this chat room is full" message. even in the chat it was clicky (I guess theirs just no escaping it)...there were "the regs" and the new comers, and if you weren’t quick at the tongue you were likely made fun of to the point of never returning, or changing your screen name. As time passed I straightened up in the class room thus allowing me to do what I love skate which kept me from the chat as much. The chat eventually died off, but I developed some pretty good friendships, and still talk with some of the peeps from the chat today (what up Tal, Kilo, John, and Derke). not being grounded as much allowed me to skate more, but at this point I started to drift from the skate culture thus loosing contact with what was going on with my friends around the country, but thank god for myspace ha! seriously though no matter how much people try to hate on it it's a really easy way to stay in contact, or find someone you haven't talked to in a long while...whateve, there will still be the haters out there, so hate on haters...thanks to derke I was able to find a couple other peeps such as the homie tal...now just as like everyone else on myspace you scroll down and look at the comments other people have left, and I ran across one from Bobby Hundreds. I clicked on his page which then had a link to his website THE HUNDREDS. Here I had found another side of the skateboard culture that I didn't even know existed. Some of the same peeps I used to watch in skate vids had these clothing lines that weren't directly focused on skateboarding, but still had a lot to do with the culture. Finally I found that same outlet I once had in the skate chat to stay in touch with culture I had grown to love.
Through THE HUNDREDS website as well as a few others I’ve been able to put the pieces together between skateboarding and streetwear culture which has then lead me to meet a lot of really cool people, and have had a lot of different job opportunities. However, does this mean I’m just jumping on the bandwagon? Am I too late? Did I find out about this whole culture at the end of its thread? Does it really matter? I don't know, but what I do know is that I’m glad I found that same outlet I once had as a kid being grounded sitting on my computer in that skate chat and I’m not gonna let it go.
Here’s a pic of Jason Lee's skate shoe by airwalk my first skate shoe, and still to this day THE BEST PAIR OF SKATE SHOES I EVER HAD! I swear these things lasted longer than any other pair of skate shoes I’ve ever had...damn do I miss them
It probably started in 6th grade when I moved to tinez aka Martinez (home of the martini and Joe DiMaggio. I moved in Halloween night, so not knowing anyone I sat in my window watching all the kids do their trick or treat thing wishing to join them. When out of no were these two skaters came to my window, and asked why I wasn't out like everyone else. I explained I was new to the neighborhood, and didn't know anyone, plus I didn't have a costume. They said that's no big deal you can hang with us, and we have an extra skateboard, so you can be a Jamaican skater (I had a we be jammin' n Jamaica tee on at the time). From that moment on I didn't go anywhere without my skateboard. I even brought it to school even during the time when we weren't allowed to bring our skateboards to school I still brought it, and carried it around until I got sent to the principles office to drop it off for the day. Now I should remind you I grew up in Martinez, ca population at the time...40,000 give or take, and the black population was about a 1/4 of that. You can only imagine growing up in a predominately all white town being the only (no joke) black skater in town. I wasn't "black enough" for the black kids, and obviously wasn't "white enough" for the whites, so I experienced a lot of things my mum had only told me stories about while she was growing up never thinking people could still be so ignorant(thanks again tinez for the rude awaking!). Luckily there were my skateboard friends. Now don't get me wrong even with in the skateboard culture it was clicky. There were the kids that were "actual skaters", and of course the "posers" who just bought the shyt tryin' to fit in where ever the next trend was, but didn't even ride their boards because they didn't want to mess up the graphic! anyway, back to my point at hand...skating day and night you tend to umm how do I put this neglect your school work thus causing troubles in the class room which caused me to be grounded for the majority of my junior high/ high school carrier. Not being able to skate forced me to spend a lot of time on the internet at this time AOL was still some what new as well as my only contact with the outside world. I made my way into chat rooms talking with people from all over the country about the most random things when I thought if there are all these different chat rooms there's gotta be one for skateboarding, and sure enough their was. At the time there were probably only 10 to 15 kids, but that was still 10 to 15 more skater friend I had to talk to about the latest 411, or thrasher magazine. As the years went on the chat grew, and if you didn't get in by a certain time you were likely to get the "I’m sorry this chat room is full" message. even in the chat it was clicky (I guess theirs just no escaping it)...there were "the regs" and the new comers, and if you weren’t quick at the tongue you were likely made fun of to the point of never returning, or changing your screen name. As time passed I straightened up in the class room thus allowing me to do what I love skate which kept me from the chat as much. The chat eventually died off, but I developed some pretty good friendships, and still talk with some of the peeps from the chat today (what up Tal, Kilo, John, and Derke). not being grounded as much allowed me to skate more, but at this point I started to drift from the skate culture thus loosing contact with what was going on with my friends around the country, but thank god for myspace ha! seriously though no matter how much people try to hate on it it's a really easy way to stay in contact, or find someone you haven't talked to in a long while...whateve, there will still be the haters out there, so hate on haters...thanks to derke I was able to find a couple other peeps such as the homie tal...now just as like everyone else on myspace you scroll down and look at the comments other people have left, and I ran across one from Bobby Hundreds. I clicked on his page which then had a link to his website THE HUNDREDS. Here I had found another side of the skateboard culture that I didn't even know existed. Some of the same peeps I used to watch in skate vids had these clothing lines that weren't directly focused on skateboarding, but still had a lot to do with the culture. Finally I found that same outlet I once had in the skate chat to stay in touch with culture I had grown to love.
Through THE HUNDREDS website as well as a few others I’ve been able to put the pieces together between skateboarding and streetwear culture which has then lead me to meet a lot of really cool people, and have had a lot of different job opportunities. However, does this mean I’m just jumping on the bandwagon? Am I too late? Did I find out about this whole culture at the end of its thread? Does it really matter? I don't know, but what I do know is that I’m glad I found that same outlet I once had as a kid being grounded sitting on my computer in that skate chat and I’m not gonna let it go.
Here’s a pic of Jason Lee's skate shoe by airwalk my first skate shoe, and still to this day THE BEST PAIR OF SKATE SHOES I EVER HAD! I swear these things lasted longer than any other pair of skate shoes I’ve ever had...damn do I miss them
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