Keenan Milton Rest in Peace

(As always, thank you to The Chrome Ball Incident for the scans. Enlarge Page 1, Enlarge Page 2)

In most cases, we as the skateboard media consuming majority, only know professional skaters through photos and video parts. We derive great meaning from the images they deliver to us, by allowing them to influence which boards we buy, what tricks we learn, and even how we may dress in our formative years. But our conception of a person is inherently limited to an interview in a magazine, our favorite line in a video, or what we may widely consider one of the finest switch flips ever done.

Though we have this superficial yet significant view, our recollections of popping The Chocolate Tour into our VCRs for first time and hearing “New York Ya Out There” at the start of Keenan’s part will never compare to the memories of those who actually knew him. The above article appeared in Big Brother (of all places), and was not written by a skateboarder. It has no accounts of sessions at Lockwood or growing up in New York. But it is an amazing, highly personal read that is satisfying to an outsider — not because it’s about a skateboarder and his video parts, but an individual and his friends. And that might count for a bit more than some trivia about a picnic bench line.

Love your family and love your friends. It’s way too easy to take them for granted sometimes.