NOSSONDE
SMD
SMOKING
Your attitude had better change by the time
I get back, the guy next to me said as he rose
from his seat during intermission. His expensive
shark-skin coat was wrinkled from the first two
movements
I'd never been to the San Francisco Sym-
phony before. The first night of the "Mostly
Mozart Festival," I was fate and had to be seated
after the first movement, which was by this guy
named Franz Joseph Haydn, who croaked
in Vienna on May 31, 1809 because he was
already seventy-seven years old. Anyway, I was
forced to check it out on this black and white
monitor underneath the stairs in the lobby
It wasn't the same as real life, so I bought
a Beck's at the bar (which cost less than it does
at punk clubs. That's hideously odd.) and
noticed that Franz's tune-Symphony No 22
in E-flat The Philosopher-or score, or what
have you, called for two English horns and two
French horns, bassoon, strings and a harpsi
chord. On the monitor I could see that the
harpsichord player-dude-guy had a long blond
ponytail that went all the way to his butt.
It only took eighteen minutes for these
classical musicians to crank their way through
Fran-Jo-Hays licks and the bouncers opened
the doors so the Jonée Cum-Latelys could rush
in and scam up the last remaining butt-resters
My ticket was for this seat in the middle of a row
that was ninety seals wide
"Uh, scuse me, bcuse me
Ow!
"Sorry lady 'Scuse me, scuse me. Hey
what seat number is that?"
32
"Sixteen."
"Oh Sorry about the foot lady Damn, thirty
more to go Scuse nie, scuse me, hey, what
number is that?
"Sixty-one"
Oh shit! I passed it Oh, uh, sorry. Scuse
me. s'cuse me what? I know this is the
second time I stepped on your foot, just count
your stars that I didn't trip and tall on your head.
It's dark in here and because of people like you
I bypassed my seat big time."
3
By the time I got to my suat. Mozart's Horn
Concerto in E-flat, K 495 was just gonna start.
This guy named Barry Tuckwall walks out with
his French horn and stands next to the
conductor, Richard Hickox. The first piece of the
arrangement goes on for awhile before the guy
with the horn ever plays anything I thought
he and Rich weren't hittin' it off and so he didn'
fool like blowin
Then, when he did start jammin' I could
hardly hear him. Only this little subtle sound
came out because he had his fist in the
business end of the horn.
"Hey, take your hand out of there so we can
hear you jommin'!"
SSSH-HHH...!!!
They all told me to sshhh and I did it back
to them. They musta got really tweaked-out
by that because when the first movement,
Allegro Moderato, was completed. I was the
only one who clapped. To top it off they all
sshhh'd me again. I told them to come here and
say that
I musta snoozed somewhere between
Romanze Andante and Ronda Allegro
Vivace it was soothing and at times rambune-
fious My eyelids and body rested. My mind
took over, rewinding to events of the semi-recent
past. It sizzled and flaked then wretched in
itself, trying to get a picture of what the music
did tell The pulsations recalled from the ole
memory banks a commotion that went down
in Mobie, Alabama. The brain cells lashed
upon my built-in, indoor eye-screen, a Kaleido
scope of images shot at two thousand frames
per second and played at about speed. In
my dreams, slow-motion people spoke in
hideous bass vibrato tones somewhat like old
Beatles records played backwards in an
attempt to find hidden satanic messages
Since, in reality. I've already lived and experi
enced these moments, the voices, talking
through ninety-weight oil, made perfect sense
to me
My mind begins to tag on vanous moments,
like getting out of a car at what used to be some
sort of an old Air Force base and walking into
an immense hangar constructed in a fashion
that would normally house airplanes. With
it's floor configurations, it was improbable that
it was utilized for conventional aircraft. What
would I know? I'm only an ex-Navy brat.
Inside, this place was immense. The ceiling
was so high, you couldn't throw a rock and hit
it. It probably wouldn't even make it halfway
Legend has it that it was used for filming part
of "Close Encounters
At one end were the large bay doors, at the
other end a large wall of mostly unclear, filthy
windows. Closer to the windows was a big ass
ramp. Real big and real wide.
How big is this ramp?" I asked a kid wearing
a Faith No More 1-shirt
It's about 4:30," he said.
Ramp contests. They're all the same
someone's idea of a joke Readily available.
Predictable in the vein of ping-pong champion.
ships. Maybe closer to a tennis match. Maybe
an elevated tennis match. It makes the neck
of the spectator strong from going back and
forth, up and down. The ramp has nurtured
a whole crop of skateboarders, most of who
don I even know how to carve but know a hun-
dred ways to hold their boards onto their leat
with their hands This large crop yielded the
ranks witnessed this weekend.
Almost seventy-five amateurs are signed
up for that division of the Pro-Am The feasibility
was frightening. Hours and hours of qualifying
to look forward to. On the other hand, the pro
ranks grow more and more. The I think I wanna
be a pro now so I can get my own model
syndrome has hit hard amongst many
amateurs, swelling the pro line-up to a degree
Some people think it cheapens the events
Some people just don't care, obviously
You just can't beat high caliber skateboarding
By the way some of the pros were riding, the
day of the actual contest promised to yeild.
some vicious elements. And then again, other
pro's couldn't even finish a run, unable to get
through three or four tricks during their practice
There was a time when skateboarding held
a certain charm
7
Next to the ramp, as the practice sessions
were taking place, sat T.K., monitoring the order
of the practice sessions. Through an improvised
PA system blared the sounds of Johnny Winter,
the albino of rhythm and blues. Scattered about
in various locations within the hangar were
propped little one-hit kickturn ramps made
of scraps from the halfpipe. Many skate rats
flew off of these, fell from these, and continu-
ously reconstructed these. More attention
seemed to be paid to these than to the big
halfpipe. What the hell could that mean?
Motels. What good are they? It used to
be that you could check in, close the door, kick
back on the bed and relax. Not anymore. Now
you can expect roving packs of crazed skaters
from all over the continent, running and
screaming up and down the corridors, slugging
down cheap beer and falling over backwards.
Dozens of empty twelve packs covered the
lawns below the balconies of skater's rooms.
Sometimes ten or fifteen guys occupied a room.
Sometimes there were even girls.
There were actually two motels occupied
by skaters during the weekend of the event.
Well, for awhile anyway. By Saturday night,
all skaters, even Brad Dorfman and entourage
had to check out (kicked out) of one of the
motels after the birthday party for the owner's
sixteen year-old daughter was destroyed by
over-zealous skate rats. The birthday cake into
the wall was probably the clincher.
"And they looked like such nice boys," one
motel parent said.
The guy in the shark skin suit startled me
awake with his comment.
"Don't be rude." I told him, then got up and
went into the lobby to see what these people
did when they went out to have a good time.
They slithered around and hung out in the line
for drinks. Can't blame 'em at these prices. The
curtain call went off and while fancy-dressed
people bustled back inside I went upstairs and
scammed some balcony seating. More leg room
and a good view of the tops of the heads of the
symphony. This last deal was to be Handel's
Water Music, and was the first complete
performance by the S.F. symphony. At least
that's what Rick Hickox with the baton said.
Wonder if it was so radical that they could never
finish it in San Francisco cause maybe people.
kept climbing on the stage and the performance
had to be stopped.
Funny thing about Water Music, George
Handel composed it for King George I of England,
to be played while his majesty cruised down the
Thames by barge. The king had earlier been
offended by Handel, but forgave him after the
killer gig on the barge. So, actually Handel was
some sort of a kiss-ass. Anyway, the first suite
started off in F major with a bunch of oboes.
bassoon and horns. This sucker's a whole ten
movements and is the longest of the three
suites. Overture: Largo-Allegro Adagio
e staccotto was ok, but the second movement,
Allegro-Andante Allegro Presto, slowed down
with the oboe solo. My eyes slammed shut and
I was back in a hangar in Mobile, Alabama.
10
Am day had seen six heats of roughly twelve
riders each. Suprisingly enough, the competi-
tion was somewhat more than formidably stiff.
Al Losi (opposite) glides through a lein air Tony Magnusson
(this page) bisats an eye-level mute air