Skating In Traffic

‘All We Got Is Us’ is a great name for a skate video, and the first local one I saw. It opens with a long montage of crews skating through downtown Chicago, weaving in and out of streets and pedestrians, closing with a filmer-skater combo pushing head-on into traffic’s headlights at night. 

The closeness in location made it real. New to skating, I’d seen ‘Welcome to Hell’, ‘Fulfill The Dream’, and a few others that planted the seed, but ‘All We Got Is Us’ was the first time the skating was a mere thirty-minute train ride from the kitchen TV I sat watching. My best friend’s older brother popped it in, and from then on, skating in city traffic was the coolest thing I could imagine. 

Gonz boxing city buses, Ricky’s street cleaner, Tyshawn’s front board the loader’s bucket, Chris’s mid hill-bomb bus ride.

Us vs. the world. Forcing the rolling metal boxes to yield to us for something unnecessary, dangerous, and completely pointless.

Tuck and grab the back wheel well for a ride and pray the driver isn’t the vindictive type who’ll floor it. Scrape your tail at some brake lights for no reason. Time the light right so the hill never ends. Roll deep enough that our traffic controls theirs. 

Remember the spark that video gave. Swerve through lanes designed for everything but you.