Fulfilling The Dream

Where did the Shorty’s team get the horses? What are they doing in the mountains? To any teenage skateboarder of the late ’90s, watching Shorty’s ‘Fulfill the Dream’ for the first time had an impact. Books could be written about Muska’s influence on skateboarding to this day. 

But what about those horses and the wilderness excursion? Thirty years later, looking back on it, the out-of-place middle montage of a team adventure influenced me more than I realized. Introducing me to two very important things: skateboarding as exploration, and Cat Stevens. 

After the hundredth basement viewing, my middle school friends and I strapped our boards to the handlebars of our bikes and went looking for an imaginary ditch in the woods. 

Where do the children play? On the side of a Chicagoland highway in a one-and-a-half-foot ditch. Shitty by all accounts, but the spot was hardly the point. 

Plus, that ‘Tea For The Tillerman’ album came in handy a few years later for my first real heartbreak in high school.

I don’t know what made me think of all this or want to share. I guess it’s always the minutiae that matter.