In an attempt to find a gimmick for a more steady flow of updates, since clips aren’t really the most reliable thing when you skate with nineteen-year-olds who insist they are too old to try anything, and there isn’t a Ghetto Fights video every month worth reviewing, I found a somewhat practical solution. Under the “Words” section, every once in a while, I’m going to throw up a few bits of nostalgia from magazines, newspapers, etc. relating to New York and New Jersey’s glory days. I started skating in 1998, so it’s doubtful you’re going to see anything earlier than that, not to mention the fact that half of my magazines disappeared when I moved two years ago.
Honoring the two-year anniversary of the city of Hoboken skatestopping Jersey Dave’s, Dunny Munny’s, Suga Slim’s, Big Shetu the King of Lenox Avenue’s, Dave the Womanizer’s, Kurt “The Hitman” Levins’, Hacuna Mata Mark’s and my favorite ledge spot, it seems appropriate to post something honoring this legendary four-sided border of rounded-off and crusty granite. This is an article that was on the front page of The Hoboken Reporter (must’ve been a slow news week, but then again, this is coming from the same newspaper that dedicates eight lines of text, on the fifteenth page to an eighteen-year-old getting shot over nothing) on Sunday, May 20th, 2001, when the ledge was in its glory days, before the bikers started taking massive chunks out of it, giant holes in the ground started appearing, and the security guards at the completely unrelated next-door building began to call the cops every time a skateboarder would leave a bottle near their property. The article is really, really stupid, but it was still pretty cool in 7th grade.
Noteworthy Stupid Things to Look For:
1. ”…hardcore warriors, challenging the elements with just their bodies and a long piece of wood…” This guy obviously wasn’t familiar with the important literary rule of including a “no homo” after such a statement of questionable sexual orientation.
2. He chose to use a picture of a fall, even though he took plenty of pictures of landed tricks. I even ollied the six stair for his stupid photo camera, and that’s damn sure never happening again.
3. “…Smith is currently working on pivot grind 180-outs, Ollie down drops, and front side 180-over gaps…” I’m not even going to bother on commenting on this.
4. “…started talking to Smith, who was having problems landing the same jump…” Yes, because there are so many jumps within the park.
5. “…the skaters say they spend an average of 25 to 30 hours a week in Hoboken…” Yet somehow, the idiot next door who seems to be suffering so much that he drives a 5-Series BMW [who was one of the central reason why the ledge is skatestopped now, because he would constantly go out of his way to call the police and insist we were harassing him and also the one who suggested that the city installs a fence on top of the ledge] and the stupid mayor decide it would be best to continue bitching about it and replace it with a skatepark. Which not a single person that used to skate here goes to.
So I say, fuck the Hoboken skatepark, which is wholeheartedly responsible for this spot’s demise. We never bothered anyone here, and the mayor’s ten-year-old son, who would come here every once in a while and roll around is the central reason for why the city was provoked to make that stupid park (anything for the kids!), not to mention the reason for why this spot is skatestopped now. Lackawanna Park R.I.P.
