Another Day at the Park

When I landed this 10-stair/three-block kick flip in 2014, I was one of only a handful of people in the world over 40 years old who could do this trick from that height — and I could have been the first person over 40 who actually did it. With 7.7 billion people in the world, I still stop to think about what that means. I had done a kickflip in each of the last four decades, and probably since grade school had almost always had some kind of skateboard. It started with the toy plastic skateboards, then around 1986 when I was in middle school, I got my first skateboard made of wood, with urethane wheels that were made to perform well in the streets. It opened up the endless world of street skating to me. I remember trying to learn how to do a kickflip. I put my board in the grass, so it wouldn’t roll out from under my feet. Then over and over again, I stood on the board, snapped the tail of the board down with my back foot, and flicked at the edge of the board with my front foot trying to make the board rotate. That’s how a kickflip is done: a quick snap of pressure down on the tail. Flick at the front of the board to make it turn over 360 degrees. After months of practice, I finally learned how to do a kickflip. That was in the 1980s. As life takes you in different directions, I ended up going to college on a full football scholarship, playing inside linebacker. Our team won a conference championship. Later, I would ride for Element Skateboards, skate and perform music at Vans events, and was a part of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts first Finding a Line Skateboard, Music, and Media program. See the stop motion video on YouTube >>>

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10 stair/3-block kickflip. May 22, 2014.