30% FICTION
WADDA-BOW
DEM-NINERS?
SHALLOWNESS RUNS DEEP
One of my back wheels was coning, so I decided that a rotation was in order. The sun was shining, flowers grew, rocks didn't,
I reached into my back pocket. The phone number was on an old napkin from a hamburger devoured three weeks back
in history. Her name, Angeline, the ink had blotted out almost illegibly from butt-sweat. I burped, then began to feel refreshed, but still in
need of some other release.
A block away there was a market. I skated there, bought a coke. "Where ya gonna watch the big game at?", Al, the dude behind the
counter, whose only exercise was scratching his arm-pit, said. "We're gonna kick Miami's ass," he said in a confident tone.
"You, and who? How are you gonna kick anyone's butt, from behind that there counter, you yippy-yappy old codger?" He couldn't hear
me. He was high on something. Something called hype, high on something he believes in, kinda like all those rosy-cheeked-types who
out on church every Sunday, or worse maybe, like the ones who do church every night and day.
Took a good pull on the Coke, burped and left. "Hey Joe Montana, dude." Once outside, I passed a half dozen beer bellied arm-chair
heroes, babbling at each other. "Joe, Joe, Joel" they'd mumble. I picked up a Chronicle, skated down Columbus street to a warm spot
beneath a tree, took a slagmouthful of coke, and set my eyes onto the print:
FIRST MIAMI FANS ARRIVE TODAY.
I looked up as a rental car pulls into one of the rare parking spots of this vicinity, Miami Dolphin's pennants were taped to the insides of
the rear windows. Jesus Christ, what a bunch of freaks. They got out with their cowboy hats all adorned with pins, buttons, flags, on their
shirts were more of the same. The shirts were blue and orange. Everything about them is blue and orange. Their shoes, their jackets, their
wallets, their brains. Hardcore tourist. Freaks, get outta my town. They toiled around pointing in different directions, until they found it.
"Oooh look, it's Coit Tower! Isn't it magnificent?" a fat-female-fan grunted. One week left till the Super Bowl, that game of games, the day
when the world stops rotating for way too many people. Get outta town.
Most of the newspaper was, Niners-this, Niners-that. Oh, what's this? A slight mention down here on the bottom about the U.S.-Soviet
arms talks. I read, and learn nothing, but I do know that President Reagan is being considered for tossing the coin'at the beginning of the
game, like I could give a shit. It's only fitting, he'll be inaugurated on the same day of the game, he can flip a coin over our countries' future.
Yeah dude, tie yourself in with the Super Bowl, get involved, wrap yourself up with all the hype, one nation under football, "honor" through
the pigskin. I pulled my pen out of my shirt and wrote a song called "Reagan's Head." Skating the little banks at the end of the Broadway
tunnel seemed like the next thing to do, so I did.
2
At night I'd seen them at gigs, looking the look, thrashing to thrash, slogans of, "Anarchy." The capitalists are destroying our world,"
"Down with the phony elitism." Then I see 'em in "Niner-gear," all fixed up about the game, like the next guy, Joe Shmoe jock from down
the street. It made me delirious, was everything we supposedly believed in, a fake? Football is O.K., but nothing to get worked up about.
It seems like, everywhere I went, the sounds from the tongues was about the Super Bowl. At least I knew there was nothing shallow about
when I was skating, although the shallowness often runs deep for some skaters, the ones who determined coolness through "boneless-
ones" and "hops."Hell, those types have yet to learn to grind and carve. Some will never carve. The heartless, gutless mimickers. Skating
because it seems to be cool, the thing to do because it's "soooo-radical" man. Hell, some of them never even learned how to session.
"Yeah, I skate man." Uh-huh, I bet you do.
3
Merc McPherson, an O.K. dude who'd just moved out of the Tenderloin to a more dubious locale out in the Sunset, said that he'd flow
me his hardly use street wheels because his girlfriend had bought him some new ones for his birthday. He turned twenty-seven. We'd
sessioned many years together. Forever and a day. It was he that'd taught me frontside thruster grinds in pools, after he'd seen it done
on a trip he'd made to one of those skate parks that they had down south in seventy-eight. He said that he'd studied one of those Dogtown
Boys doin' 'em, some Japanese guy, Hugo Magoo, or somethin'.
"You been to that new ramp over in the Marina those rich kiddies built with their milk money?" he said, kicking back on some of the
boxes that have yet to be unpacked in his living room
"No. You got those road wheels unpacked yet?" The clock struck two.
"Yeah...uh...Uh...no. I think they're over in one of these boxes over by the windows. I'll check." He lumbered over to some boxes and
dug in.
I was sitting on his practice amp and noticed some Crass albums, Subhumans albums, some D.O.A. albums along with some Dylan
albums, and a Prince album. I became confused on the last one. Some must be chic, for we all can't. "Hey Merc, you heard about that
racial shit that's happenin' in South Africa because of Kennedy's trip there? Things are getting pretty touchy down there. I hear that the
government down there is thinking of turning down Rev. Jackson's application for a visit visa or something. That's heavy shit map. Lain't
no political buff, but it sounds like the same rap-type level of international incidents that splattered the years just prior to the world wars."
"Yeah that's heavy, but, Oh! here's those wheels. But, what about them Niners, huh?" He tossed the wheels to me wrapped in
a plastic bag.
"Couldn't tell ya." I headed to the door. "See ya. Thanks." For the life of me, I can't run with a herd of people who turn into raving crazies
during football season. Altering lives around game times. Reflexing on any sight, mention or hint of the football season's proceedings.
Innocently flipping through the channels on a T.V. set briefly catching a glimpse of a gridiron shuffle and a roomful or couch-apes scream,
"Wait! Hey, back-up, back-up. What was that? Did you see what that was? Hey! Back it up man or I'll break your arm. Did anyone see who
was playing?" only to find out it's an advertisement. I cruised to Hilltop dish and sessioned till sundown, went home and put on the new
wheels, then took 'em for a two hour acquaintance run out to the business district. The place was crawling with tour buses. Hundreds of
people milling around, half of them taking forever, trying to take a picture of the other half posing in front of a cable car or a BART station,
or a street urchin.
5
I'd bought myself a plant a while back. I remember six years ago, Mr. Gross, my biology teacher at Mt. Pleasant High School had taught
me that plants craved the carbon monoxide/dioxide(?) us humans spewed, and that in return, they spewed oxygen, which us humans
craved. Well, this plant was called a philodendren something or other, and it's supposed to survive with virtually little care. I woke up this
moming and it was dead. My breath killed it. I shoo-gooed my blue Converse and made breakfast. Two pancakes, two eggs and four
pieces of bacon. Dead animals, yeah, you bet! The fat's the best part. I guess we all have our contradictions, from time to time. Even me.
It had rained, a little, last night and the pavement was clean. It and the sidewalks were grippy. I went out to a spot called "My Bank." I
named it because I saw it about a half second before Matt, this drummer guy. We saw it on our way to lunch one day with this guy named
Brian, who hated English bands that came to town because all the local chicks just creamed over them and he just would get overly
disgusted with the whole god-damned thing and start drinking and screaming and threatening all the Hells Angels out in front of the Stone
and end up running down Broadway in his ugly shoes, mumbling something about, "Hey babes..." It wasn't skateable at the time, there
was a truck in the way. It was situated behind a new building, a loading dock bank. One hit. I, infrequently, had cruised by there until one
day, it was rideable. As far as I knew, I was the first to ride it. Oh, the feeling of de-virginizing a new skate spot. Nothing like it in the world,
SUPER
XIX
BOWL
Lance and Steadham in a real football town.
BURDAY, JANUARY 20, 19
CHORY 2:00PM GATED AT 1 PA
SUPER
XIX
DOWL