Skateboarding Covid Nostalgia
I've written so much about this little video I made in the Fall of 2020 during the early days of the pandemic. It's the video that keeps on giving, as every few months I watch it and experience some new feelings or memories associated with it.
February 2020. Very few people were out. It was like a neutron bomb had hit. It was quiet outside. The air was crisp. If the virus hadn't been around things would have been perfect (my wife's cancer had not yet been diagnosed).
This was not, at the time, my regular skate spot. My normal spot was on the other side of the buildings, and was frequented by more potential virus carriers, so I skated here in this parking lot of city hall. I set up a new street board, started just riding in this parking lot, and began to develop what I call "parking lot style". A little freestyle, a little street skating. All mixed up into one big mess.
It really says a lot about our society (or maybe just me) that I have some level of nostalgia for those days. I hated the stress and fear of the virus, but I was working from home (and getting a lot done), could work with my cat Lefty in my lap, have a relaxed lunch with my wife, go outside and hear a quieter environment. For my entire married life I had never gotten to spend so much time with my wife. It was great. Again, a lot of people died from the virus - not good - but fuck man - why can't we all just live like that, without the virus, all the time? Sure there were the actual heroes who went to work at the grocery stores and delivered stuff to stores and our houses, but so many of us were able to reconnect with our loved ones in a deep way.
Why did it have to take a bad and novel virus to bring us to that point?
Anyway, I would go skate this parking lot almost every day, usually about 5pm, but earlier on the weekends. I'd roll around like in this video. I'd set up my camera. Sometimes I stream the session to Facebook or Twitch so my friends could check in. It was really fun. During my wife's chemo months this place was my getaway. The rolling became therapy even more than usual.
The utter simplicity of riding a skateboard in an empty (for the most part) parking lot is just a thing of beauty. The possibilities for discovery are infinite, as are ways of self-expression.