Skater Rodney Mullen in 2016

Rodney Mullen in 2016.  Man... doesn't he EVER learn anything new?  Heh, heh, heh.  Vogue.  This artsy fartsy (and pretty cool) video was published by Vogue.  WTF?

One night in 1986, I finished riding at The Spot, a brick area just north of the Redondo Beach Pier.  Rodney was practicing on the smooth concrete nearby, like he did every night while in SoCal.  I rode up to the pier to grab a Coke at one of the food stands.  Cruising back down the bike path, I heard a skateboarder coming through the parking garage on my right.   Then came the familiar snap of an ollie.  A dark haried street skater popped a frontside 180 ollie over the four foot wide concrete
island... at speed.  I'd never seen anything like it then.  "That must be that Gonz kid," I thought to myself.  Mark Gonzales skated straight over to Rodney Mullen, and they started talking.

I sat down on on one of the concrete benches and sipped my Coke.  For the next half hour or so, I watched Rodney and Mark compare tricks, try different things, and joke and laugh.  Even at the time, I sensed that was a pretty cool moment.  Looking back now, it was epic.  Rodney's basic flat ground tricks laid a foundation that Mark took into the paved world.  He helped everyone realize that cities were one big park waiting to be skated.  Yeah, there was that C.R. Stecyk quote in the Bones 2 video that said that.  But Mark Gonzales lived it.  And he'll probably make fun of me for making such a big deal out of that one night now.

But that's the point of this whole blog.  To the "normal" people walking by that night in 1986, there was a BMX guy sitting on a bench and a couple of those crazy skateboard kids goofing around nearby.  Yet what those guys did just for personal progression went on to spread around the world.  That's the point of this blog.  Doing what you're passionate about can lead places you could never imagine.  Everything in our world started out as an idea in a single mind.  Even the ollie impossible that Rodney got Mark to try on his street board that night long ago.