Skatopia is quiet most of the time, and Saturday afternoon was particularly so. I decided it was a good time to trek up the big hill on the farm and see if I could find a view that I had heard about where the entire property was visible. I never did find the spot, but I did find a chair that had been converted into an outdoor toilet. I was photographing it when I heard gunshots…then lots of gunshots. I have to say that a lot of what I do at Skatopia is just hang out and wait for something to happen. When I’ve put myself in the right place things eventually seem to develop around me. The sound of the gun was close enough that I felt like I was in the middle of what was happening. What scared me was that I wasn’t quite sure if anyone else knew that I was in the middle of what was happening. This was one time that I did not want to be a fly on the wall. I wanted to be a big elephant in the room waiving a white flag.
I quickly emerged from the woods to make sure that whoever was firing knew there was a human in there. I immediately saw Brewce heading toward me on his four-wheeler and he told me that they were shooting some guns down the hill and I should get down there. Whew…I was safe. My feet then started moving toward the deadly sound without consulting my brain. I walked straight up to Brandon as he peered through the sights of a rifle at the target they had set up, and I quickly learned my first lesson on gun safety…WEAR EARPLUGS! CAN YOU HEAR ME? IT FEELS LIKE I’M YELLING, BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE I’M WHISPERING. Holy crap, guns are loud. I stepped away and threw in some earplugs, but at that point they only isolated the ringing inside of my head.
As I continued nervously photographing the all-too experienced gunmen around me I developed a theory about the place I was standing in. I don’t think that Skatopia revolves around skating necessarily; it revolves around adrenaline. Skating provides the rush of knowing that you could be seriously hurt at any moment, but so does everything else that they do there (whether it’s firing a gun or driving 35mph down a bumpy dirt road while hanging on to the roof of a car). If skateboarding didn’t exist, Skatopia would still be there in some other form.
2 Comments
May 22, 2007 at 7:27 am
what a tease.
you can’t describe a scene as wonderful as this and not show us a picture.
May 22, 2007 at 8:51 am
wait a minute, there’s someone reading this? well, you get what you ask for i guess.