Generations Bridged

Instead of posting a column last week about South by Southwest, I thought I'd take the week off, wait for the dust to settle, and then sneak back in and blow everybody away with my mind-blowing all inclusive coverage of the craziest week in Austin ever! Party!

My SXSW coverage started off last Thursday at my friend's bar, The Yellow Jacket Social Club. I had an iced tea and took a photo of these stickers. It was wild. People couldn't believe how crazy I was getting.

Then I went a few blocks away to the Thrasher Magazine party at The Scoot Inn. There was a freaking red halfpipe there. I'm not shitting you. And dudes were jumping way up in the air on their skateboard toys and doing hella scrape slides and axle smashers. It was super intense. I totally would have gotten up there and gotten all skateboard crazy with them, if it weren't for the fact that I'm terrible at playing skateboards. I love skateboarding to death, I just wish it wasn't so damn hard. There were also bands playing, but they didn't sound anything like Willie Nelson so I just tried to tune them out.

I saw a famous person while I was there. His name is Shortbus and he's probably the most famous person in Austin (since Leslie passed away).

In the land of skate shoes, this is how you do something cool.

This is the chair that I sat in for the hour that I was at the Thrasher party. Those beers next to the chair aren't mine though. I just drank water and acted socially awkward the whole time I was there, as I'm apt to do. That pretty much concludes my SXSW coverage. I think I pretty much hit it all. There might have been a few thousand more parties and shows that occurred, but I'll let the children tell you about those. Are kids still wearing tank tops and shoestrings around their heads? I'm lost.

So that brings us up to today. Or technically yesterday. Have you heard about the collaboration that my skateboard company (Roger Skateboards) is doing with my buddy Taj's company (Fairdale Bikes)? You haven't? That's not surprising since we haven't told anybody about it yet.

Yesterday we shot a video that will explain what the whole thing is about, and somehow we convinced Tim Kerr that he needed to be involved with this video project.

Freakin' love this dude. I've used this joke in this column before, but if you don't know who Tim Kerr is, that's cool. Not everybody can know about cool shit.

Taj brought along a weird little fox with tiny legs.

He provided the adorable relief for the day.

You know that part in Stand By Me when Vern asks if his buddies wanna go see a dead body? We had an experience just like that except instead of a dead body we were asked if we wanted to go see a secret ditch.

Looks promising.

Except for the ten-foot-wide creek running through the middle of it.

Lots of potential though.

No ditch is complete without some expert graffiti.

The corporations have won.

You know, I've been trying to get this point across for years. Finally somebody concurs.

Time to go to work. And just so you know, I'm not one of those people who thinks secret spots should be kept secret. I think everybody should be able to enjoy any spot that's rideable, so I'm going to give you directions to the ditch right here: Take Cesar Chavez East. Take a left. Take a right. And you're pretty much there. You're welcome.

After the ditch spot we headed into town.

Where some serious shredding went down.

And new friends were made. Generations bridged.

And I realized that me writing my column about something that happened yesterday is actually an antiquated notion since images of the video shoot were literally online as we were shooting the thing. I guess the only place for this technology to go is posting stuff before it happens. Is that available on the new iPhones? Because I'd love to see how my muscles look next year. I bet they're fantastic.

Movie Review: Trading Places

These guys used to be in funny movies.

Previously - Good Job, Earth

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