overheard in providence nyc

Building on a theme, my pal Dave convinced me to help relive his skateboarding youth for a journalism assignment. Since my youth did not include skateboarding, I joined him on rollerblades. We made two stops, the first was the Hudson River Skate Park. To minimize the embarrassment of being bad at skating, we got there early. As an added bonus, the temperature was only about 90 at that point.

As expected, NYC’s top skaters weren’t out at 11:30 on a Sunday (they were probably all getting brunch in Chelsea before heading over). Only four young kids were rolling around along with a few aspiring skaters our age. Taking age into account, I was definitively the worst person there. I did manage to go up and down various curved surfaces before succumbing to the heat. (Skating tip: when trying to convince your friend to leave a skate park, simply wait until they’ve just injured themselves rolling into the halfpipe)

Our second stop was also along the west side highway, some steps we used to skate near back in the day. We both remembered the area being a dingy all hours hang out for gay partiers. It’s since been overrun by some park littered with women sunbathing in bikinis. The ambiance just wasn’t the same, so we sat on the grass for a bit and only got in about two minutes of skating. After leaving we experienced the most jarring departure from our past: we got in a taxi and met our girlfriends for lunch.