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"My name's Shaft, Fm out to bust Skaters)
BOSTOH
'MONEY FOR NOTHIN', SKATE FOR FREE
Twista's version of a Dire Straits lyric.
The asphalt was still warm. I could tell
from the squelch of the pursuit radials as
they grabbed for traction down the freeway
on-ramp. My '78 Dodge Polara wheezed a
bit before grabbing low gear. No sooner
had I powered into the flow than I was
mired in thick rush-hour traffic heading for
the Logan airport.
The name's Shaft, Jack Shaft: Skate
Detective.
It was 5:15 p.m., Friday August 24. I was
on assignment. The word from Central had
skateboarders terrorizing the greater
Boston metropolitan area, particularly the
downtown plazas and for some reason
public parking garages. Especially hard hit
were the outlying areas of Cambridge.
Braintree and Dighton, Why these skate
mobs were infecting otherwise sedate
urban burbias was anybody's guess. All I
know is that it was my job to put a stop to
their shinanigans.
I was headed for my first visual with the
core of the problem. A particular group, the
Loud Ones, had been attracting a lot of
attention lately. After pressuring a local
skate shop proprieter, one Miss Joanne
Atwood at the Charles River Skate Co., I'd
learned the skaters were anticipating a big
weekend of uncontrolled mayhem, a
streetstyle contest, part of Tomas Stahle's
N.I.C.L.S. series to be held in Harvard
square. The nerve of these punks, unsettl-
ing this otherwise predominately preppie
and yuppie community with their four-
wheeled antics. Frat house beer busts and
home game football craziness I could
handle, but these skate vermin types were
a threat to the American way.
As I circled the airport parking lot they
came skating out of the automatic doors
leading to the main terminal. The gall of
these guys. In the maze of parked vehicles
I lost track of them, not before witnessing a
couple of boosting streetplants off a
parked car. These guys were ruthless,
they didn't care. One suspect was loaded
down with gear but no skate. I figured him
to be the journalist from that radical West
Coast rag... Trasher, or something. Crazy
Californians, I wasn't about to let him
glorify the antics of these skate punks.
The next time I ran across them it was
almost head on. The word from HQ was
stay close and observe but not arouse any
suspicion. I was close, so close I could
smell 'em, and it smelled illegal. Unfortu-
nately they were headed in the opposite
direction. From file photos I recognized
the Driva Sean Mclean, at the wheel of a
Buick Regal that looked like it had been
through the wringer a few times. Having
snaked through a traffic diversion
roadblock, the vehicle was now wedged
across two lanes of traffic at a dead stop.
The shotgun passenger, identified as Jeff
Thompson, was out of the car making
small talk with a carload of surf chicks, right
out there on the roadway. I lowered the
brim of my Stetson, slumping in my seat
and took a good look at the rest of the
crew. There was Fred Smith 'skater from
Hell, Tom 'Twista' Putnam from Paxton,
Mass, and the reporter KJT who I recog-
nized from an old Upland Pipeline
skatepark membership card photo sent out
from the L.A. Bureau. We had nothing on
him except a couple of minor tresspassing
charges (for hanging out at empty swim-
ming pools in California). I knew I couldn't
confront them without blowing my cover.
As the traffic flow forced me out of position
I radioed in an APB, "Carload of skaters
heading south from the airport into the
downtown area." I looked for an off ramp
and waited for a response.
6:42 p.m., Friday August 24th
It didn't take long. Two Boston city cops
had made verbal contact with the suspects
just as they were leaving the freeway.
"People with broken tail lights shouldn't cut
off other cars...especially police cars."
They let them go with a warning.
7:14 p.m., Friday, August 24
I caught up with the suspects downtown
at the metal banks, an art installation next
to a multi-storied parking garage. I wheeled
right by them as they were getting ready to
skate, took a ticket and drove up a couple
of floors to a good vantage point. Looking
down I witnessed total unabashed skate
destruction. Skaters repeatedly assaulting
the double steel-walled configuration,
lapping grinds and flying off the corners of
the triangular structure. Sometimes they
launched side by side without regard for
pedestrian traffic. I overheard one startled
preppie ped exclaim to his date as they
strolled, "You couldn't get me to do that to
save my life.", just as Sean Mclean
powered a frontside grind into a 5 foot acid
drop. That was it. I jammed the pedal to the
metal and skidded up to the toll booth in
hot pursuit. I'd had enough. A fat lady in the
cage demanded two fifty before I realized I
had no coin. All I could do was watch as the
skaters threw their sticks in the trunk of the
Regal and idled away. Damn!
7:52 p.m.
A call came in. Our boys were sessioning
the Black Hole, a long, smooth, side to side
asphalt ditch on the bad side of town. It's
been there for years, smooth and fast but
like ground glass if you fall. "Girls think they
got it bad, we bleed every day.", I over-
heard 'Twista' say as he displayed a
scraped and bleeding 'swelbo'. Crouched
in the bushes behind a cyclone fence I had
just witnessed a no-holds-barred ditch
session at a local secret spot. and
Photos by Kevin Thatcher
Slappin' a flappa. Fred Smith, Middletown
Rhode Island