XVXVXVXVM
SWEATIN' HEDROUGHT
L
or
Skating the Parched Remains of a Dying Civilization
his section of a book
called "The Water Hustlers,"
T.H. Watkins (no, I've never
heard of him till now either)
writes about Californía. He
calls us "the new Romans." In
other words, like the ancient
Romans, our over-abundant
lifestyles and careless use of
resources (like water) are
bringing about society's
downfall. We drive too much,
we ignore too much, we
grow rice in the desert. For
the last century we have
spread dams, factories, irri-
gated farms, waste dumps
and houses around without
much of a plan. Traffic sucks,
but lawns look good and avo-
cados are cheap, so it's easy
to ignore that we're teeter-
ing on collapse. For the past
five years, southern and
northern California have
accumulated enough mois-
ture to just about fill a Dixie
cup. The water that remains
is packed with enough chem-
icals to give it a longer shelf
life than Twinkies. A few
more years without rain and
the Golden State will be a
desert again. Sure, it's tragic,
but it's inevitable. So you
might as well make the best
of it.
Fear not, brave rollers. Just
because people will soon be
more willing to slit throats
over a bucket of warm ice
than a truckful of gold bars
doesn't mean all this can't
have its advantages. Skaters
are a pretty tough species.
We're possessed by a willing-
ness to adapt to rough situa-
tions for the sake of our art
form. Any skater who knows
himself also knows it's going
to take something a little big-
ger than a petty natural dis-
aster to stop those wheels
from spinning. A good old-
fashioned act of God or even
an act of the local law-makers
who think they're God brings
out the best in skaters. Flood
our cities and we'll build
ramps on stilts. Burn our
homes and we'll skate the
empty pools. Hit us with a
hurricane and we'll hit right
back, catching updrafts so
big we'll ollie buildings.
Throw an obstacle in our way
and we'll ride it. Give us a
drought and we'll skate the
structures that caused the
damn thing in the first place.
Skaters are one group of
people who sure as hell don't
promote excess water use.
The drier the better is the
prevailing attitude among
the skate set.
California's central coast is
known to some as the armpit
of the drought. Down here in
Santa Barbara, our local
water supply is lower than an
average security guard's IQ
and dropping a half-a-foot
daily. Water storage tanks are
drier than the scab I just
picked. We have no water to
drink and northern Californi-
ans hates us for stealing
Opposite Page: Doug De Montmorency sur
veys construction at a concrete pipe forest
somewhere in anonymous land. Photo: Starr
This Page: Power grinding eleven feet of
empty concrete, Eddie Reategul tastes the
edge of some baby-blue tile before plunging
back down to droin level, Photo: Needham
59