GEARWasHere

Skateboards and Nostalgia

Push to Start

I went for a quick skate around my neighborhood for the first time since moving in about a year ago. It's cool seeing all the other families out and active. I figured I'd step out just to get a few extra calories burned after some fast food.

Something kinda funny happened: I turned on my DAP and played an album that I'd only heard a couple times, and it had been a while. The first two tracks seemed to skip and repeat themselves so much but because I listen to vaporwave often I was just like "yeah cool, we'll roll with it."

The screen was facing my leg and I forgot to lock it which caused it to skip lol.

From Necessity to Recreation

There's a few references I've made to needing to skateboard everywhere I went about a decade ago and beyond. On Trigger, Baby! I mentioned how I "had that real push-to-start before all my rich friends," and on Hypnotize I had been skating all the way from work to some friends' house. I really used to have to do this all the time regardless of whether or not I had the energy, which is wild considering the complete 180 my life has taken since then.

I had a few albums on repeat at that time. Just to name a few:

The list goes on and on really, but these stuck with me for a long while. I think back then I was so intrigued by picking every single detail of every album apart and it helped that all I had to do was wheel up the album to do it all over again. With 45-minute to 1+ hour skate sessions, it wasn't like I had anything else to do besides listen and enjoy.

I'm tempted to listen to those same albums today and see if the feeling happens to be the same -- most especially the creativity that comes with it. I think listening to music didn't feel the same after I didn't need to skate everywhere anymore. Granted nothing really stops you from putting on an album when you're driving, but it doesn't require the exact same type of coordination as remembering that there's a massive crack in the sidewalk about 3 blocks up, bracing yourself to either roll over it as fast as you can or bail.

I've been working on a project silently and I'm hoping this is the perfect start to some major paths forward on it.