austin skate notes

The other day while I was cleaning out some old files, I came across some letters Kevin Mouton had forwarded to my skate zine back in the early nineties. Kevin and Adam Young had been skating in their high school parking lot when two men attacked them with brass knuckles. The two teenaged skateboarders were beaten unconscious without any provocation whatsoever. That was pretty commonplace in the Lake Charles, LA area back then. During the time I spent there, one of the most frequently-asked questions in public seemed to be, “You want some shit?!?” From my experience, there just didn’t seem to be a right answer to that one.

The letters were from a district attorney informing Kevin and Adam of the punishment received by their attackers. It seems oddly coincidental that these two letters would pop up in the midst of the Jena 6 and Hot Springs 6 protests. Though it hasn’t captured as much attention, skateboarders are gathering today in Hot Springs, AR, to protest the
YouTube-publicized police choking of a 13-year-old skateboarder on Go Skateboarding Day.

As this age of quarrel continues, James Juneau just won’t quit inventing new abuses for the coping in Round Rock. Now he’s got low-to-high ollies to smith grinds into birdbath. Round Rock night sessions are wow.

The Deathstar ramp on Prather Lane survived many attacks from would-be heroic jedis including Chaz Pineda and Darren Navarette. Not even the Millenium State Farm could fire a torpedo up it’s exhaust port. Finally, rot and decay reached the core of the structure and Cary Jackson had to initiate the destruct sequence. What used to be mistaken for a small moon at a distance is no longer there. Even so, Lee Brooks continues to publish Prather Ramp Locals zine. New issue online now!

The ramp’s demise comes just as news that backyard super-destroyer, Clint Formby, is moving back to Austin… 

The other day I was driving through rural Oklahoma with my truck bed filled with moderately-valuable personal possessions. As I checked my rear-view mirror to identify the source of a noise, I saw a box of mischellany bouncing down the highway spilling its contents. Another vehicle hit the box and papers went everywhere.

I jumped out of the truck and ran back to recover what I could. As I neared the mess, cars veered around the debris into the shoulder and almost hit me, which created an even bigger challenge to collecting my stuff. Most of it turned out to be non-essentials like power cords and blank printer paper. But one thing that was worth a sprint into the road and back to the shoulder was a staple-bound collection of photocopied pages bearing the title “Shark Bait Magazine.”

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