More Skate Adventures

Last Friday I went to this town Geelong, which was about an hour train ride outside of Melbourne. I managed to make the 12 noon train at Southern Cross station in downtown Melbourne with only a few minutes to spare, sat back in the comfy chair. After leaving downtown we passed through western Melbourne, through the industrial area, and then got out into the country, passing the occasional factory. Geelong is a little over 100,000 people, which I think takes into account the surrounding suburbs but I'm not sure. Theres a Ford factory here (Ford is considered an Australian car in this country), a wool museum, a cool small downtown area, a foggy pier, and a skate plaza next to the pier. I skated the plaza for a few hours, talked to a few of the locals, but didn't take any photos. One of the locals told me which bus to take to get to the old sketchy bowl from the 80's which was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Geelong (other than the wool museum which I ended up skipping).


Geelong Bowl. This thing is steep and deep, about ten feet high. I couldn't do any lip tricks but it was fun to carve.


Another angle, the photos can't translate its size and shape perfectly.


There was this drainage hole in the center of the bottom that had to be avoided.


Here was one of the other parts of the park, a "paint tray" thing. Steep, rough trannies. A kid on a scooter was trying to drop in on the corner. I'm always surprised I don't see kids on scooters eat shit more often, I mean, it was actually pretty gnarly. He was there with his friend, both aged somewhere around 10-14, although I'm not great at judging ages. They both had "wog" accents, which is a type of Australian accent kids whose parents are from Italy, Greece, Lebanon, or sometimes Asia talk with. Heres a journalist/linguists translation I got from The Age, a Melbourne newspaper:

"Ah fugen kehller maht."

"Whahr? Woihr?"

"Uhh, whahmah farghen sposadouh?"

The translation, as best as I can manage, is:

"I'll f---in' kill you, mate."

"What? Why?"

"Well, what am I f---in' supposed to do?"

I'm not really sure what the context of that specific statement was, other than it being some school kids getting off the bus. After a few exchanges of conversations, they detected my accent and correctly identified me as American. They lived nearby and hung out at the park often, riding there bikes and scooters. After a bit they went over to talk to some nearby school girls who looked quite a bit older than them but who knows.

A little after they left, the sun started to go down, and I was getting ready to leave, taking my final runs, when another guy on a scooter came up the path. He was coming slowly, stopping every once in awhile, and talking or singing to himself. At one point he stopped about fifteen feet from me, so I called out 'whats up' or something like that. He had a strong accent as well, but also something about the way he talked didn't seem quite right. I don't know if he had just been down by the creek huffing glue or if he wasn't quite right in the head, but this guy was strange. At first I had judged him to be about 18, maybe a bit of a short guy, although it was dark, and think maybe he was more around 14 or 16, at least a bit older than the previous kids. The kids from before were one of our main topics of conversations, although he'd occasionally interject with something slightly random. He kept wanting to know what the kids were talking to me about, but he didn't ask me repeatedly in any sort of hostile way, but it was more as if he needed reminding of what I had said a minute earlier, or thought there was more I could divulge. He even asked me if they had been "picking" on me (my response was "naw, there just kids!"), although I then realized he was a kid himself, and judging by his character and the questions he was asking me, I'd guess this kids probably made fun of him quite a bit. I told him they said it was their hangout spot, and his response made it seem like he thought they had some sort of gang (maybe this kid watches too much tv, or those kids just give him a hard time, which wouldn't be surprising).

I can't remember his name, but he later told me I could call him 'Scoot' or M&M/Eminem (I don't know which he was referring too). I told him I lived in Melbourne and was about to head back there, but he'd ask me 'so do you skate here a lot?' or something similar every few minutes as if I lived in town. We both happened to leave at the same time so he scooted along next to me as I walked to the bus stop. He seemed worried about getting in trouble for being late because he had told his mom he was going to Safeway, and she said he had to be home by six. He had just wanted to get out of the house and ride around on his scooter. I guess I'm glad to have met him, since he was interesting to say the least, but I was relieved that he didn't hang around while I waited at the bus stop.


The Friday previous to my Geelong excursion, I went to check out a backyard pool in western Melbourne, amid suburban homes and industrial buildings. A guy from New Jersey who skates Fitzy a lot gave me directions to this one on a Thursday evening and Friday morning I dragged Simon along and managed to find it. The guy told me it was a low bust factor (you could skate there all day drinking beer without the cops or neighbors complaining). It was supposedly an abandoned house, missing the back section, but it seems they have recently started rebuilding. Luckily, the construction crew wasn't there and the pool hadn't been touched by the them yet, so we deemed it still cool to skate, until we saw the water in the deepend.


At least I got to skate the shallow end sort of. Barely any run up and a steep tranny is my excuse for only getting halfway up the wall.


Simon, lurkin'.