I'm at Revolution, I am trying to do things on the Mini-Ramp. And then I am confronted, nay, attacked by the horror that is a 5'3" 'sk8r' in baggy flame jeans, Osiris D3's, a slipnot hoody and spiky gelled hair. I pull my board up from the coping having just failed something embarassingly easy and stand on the deck whilst someone else skates. And this monstrosity questions me in a nasal voice almost Soprano in pitch.



"Can you jump?" he questions me. I look at him and raise my eyebrows. So I hop up and down on the spot and question him back "Like this?" and he shakes his head and goes, "No! I mean on your board!". And I comprehend this and nod "Ollie, yeah, I can ollie."



And he stays there on the mini-ramp with me for a solid 10 minutes questioning me. He can drop in, I'll give him that, but I'm wondering that any minute he'll ask if I can 1080 Christ Air like in the Tony Hawk games.



Any moment I'm expecting the flashbacks of when I was like that. So I'm skating the mini-ramp and listening to this kid rant on about Tony Hawk and Danny "Bray" and anticipating the memory of me wearing baggy jeans, skating a pirahna deck, spiking my hair, liking Nu Punk Rock and spending more money on skate clothes like "Hawk" jeans than I do on my board.



...



This moment dun come, there's a reason why this moment doesn't come - I never spiked my hair, spent more money on skate clothing than my board, 'thrashed' to Slipknot and questioned people bigger than me. I did suck at one point, probably still do, but this isn't the point of the article.



The point is, do these kids have a future of skateboarding? Skating is what you make it, as Cooke put it. But no-one I know that skates really well used to be like this kid that approached me. I appreciate the fact that they're trying to skate and if you dedicate to that, it's cool. But why waste hours and pints of sweat, blood and tears if you're just doing it to pose in baggy stuff and fit in. It's no use making a statement if you're not having fun about it... and why give the rest of us a bad name at the same time.



But I looked at the pikey for the solid 10 minutes he was with me and I didn't say "F--k off, sort it out" Oh, no...I asked, in fact, TOLD him to get new stuff to wear. LOL, why not impose my views? I'm bigger... but anyway, I told him that it'd be better if he got new stuff to wear, I helped him with his ollie and I was back in the street room feeling good about myself in no time.



The moral is: Be nice to them, because when they grow up big and strong and start bombing 20 sets and they get asked who helped them kick it all off. They'll say "This guy I had fun skating with back in this dump called Thanet". T'is worth it...er...I think.