Showing posts with label Shredding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shredding. Show all posts

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Wet Willy's

Some things in life can not be duplicated. They are created as if through magic and plopped into reality. Still dripping with inspiration.  

High atop a limestone bluff in Valley Park was conjured a workable alter of joy.

Blue painted concrete, scrappy green summertime, and suburban interstate highway as far as the eye can see.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Jimmy's New Car

For four school years I lived in our Nation's Capital. Its the only other place I've ever lived. I needed to prove that St. Louis was it for me.

While I was living in DC I hung out with two Brothers from Ireland. They live in the historic and leafy suburbs of Northern Virginia. We used to BMX together.

These brothers like going fast, By any means necessary. In automobiles, on bicycles or otherwise. Racing. Race cars. Their passion is active.

Each night, all around the District of Columbia, residents practice aggressive-driving during DC's 5-hour long evening rush hour. It's one of the National Capital's most universal pass-times. The point is to preserve sanity by spending as little time in horrendous traffic as possible. You beat the monster with superior knowledge of the area and masterful operation of the finest cars you can afford.

For the brothers, funds are limited. But their cars are getting better. Imagine my delight upon encountering this beauty.


Jimmy's New Car

Why yes, that is a Fucking Porsche with a Fucking Turbo!


This car cost $500

A turbo charged 1986 German sports car is the kind of thing misguided youth with speed issues are tempted to buy the world over. But when you truthfully address the Himalayan cost of maintenance, buying the car is often little more than folly.

Unless you happen to be a trained Porsche mechanic.

The kind of person that is building a legitimate race car in their bedroom. Yes, that is the motor on the other side of the bed. Right next to the carbon-fiber roof and hood. Here is the turbo. The rear suspension pieces are out of a 911 Turbo, he keeps them at work. Most everything else is from the 1980's Audi twin turbo Super Car that Jimmy bought a few years ago. As we speak it is waiting, in two pieces, in his sisters garage.

All that's left is to crunch some numbers. And make a tube chassis with the help of a friend who works at NASA. Then put everything together. Just a matter of time.

Jimmy is that kind of person. A genuine speed freak. He was behind the wheel when I set my own personal land speed record. One hundred and forty miles an hour in the passenger seat of a VR6 Volkswagen Corrado, while eating an Italian sub from WAWA. It would have been slightly faster, but we were on our way home from the skate park and had the extra weight of two BMX bikes in the back.



That was years ago, when I was still living in DC. Then the last time I visited, Jimmy had a Honda S2000. He showed me how it could break the tires loose at 40 miles an hour.

Now he was a Porsche. And a training regiment.

The fastest lap ever recorded on the 12.9 mile long Nurburgring race track in Germany is 6 minutes 11 seconds. If everything goes according to plan, Jimmy's race car should break 8 minutes on a well executed lap.

Its going to take practice.

My friends in DC like to play the game where you take every highway ramp at at least twice its posted speed limit. In a good car, on a good ramp, you can triple the speed limit. Shredding the interstate highway system.

I know, it all sounds great. But before you take the piggy bank to the work bench, let me warn you. Five hundred dollar, Stuttgart made, turbo sports cars are not perfect. For such a low price you have to expect some imperfections. The interior might not be totally sorted out. You will probably be smelling some fumes. Modifications may have to be made.

Make them with gusto.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

The Upper MUNY Parking Lot

I try to live my life in a way that when someone comes up to me and says, "I've got this go-kart, do you know anyplace we can use it?" The answer is yes.

For basic go-karting, donut spinning, motorcycle learning, stick shift practice and general parking lot sessioning I recommend the Upper MUNY Parking lot. It's close, huge and rarely used as a place to park cars. A perfect place to ride and drive things of questionable legality.

The thing that makes a parking lot good for motorsporting practice is size. The Upper MUNY is a big parking lot. The surface is not perfect. But it offers plenty of room to dabble with chaos.

By car, the approach is winding. Adult trees conceal the lots' true size until the next to last moment. At the moment of reveal, she is stunning. Long enough to blur the edges on a sweltering August afternoon. Long enough to use as a quarter mile drag strip for slow vehicles with small wheels.

At the Upper MUNY you feel atop a plateau, vistas to various styles reveal themselves at the cardinal directions. A moat of mature oaks and turf grass immediately below. It was surreptitiously designed by some unknown genius of the drug-soaked 1970's civil engineering underground as a playing field for things with wheels and motors. Two of the best three things.


The Upper MUNY Parking Lot


Reverse Angle


People Know

I'm not letting you in on some great secret. Ask around. People know the upper MUNY is a dialed spot. Those beer bottles didn't empty and break themselves. That Spiro-graph of cauterized rubber isn't from parked cars. This lot has seen the business end of fat meats. J's were done, and the fuzz knows it.

Relax man, the cops have other stuff to worry about. Not gonna waste their time on five beer-spitting low lifes racing a go-cart in an empty parking lot. They're gonna be happy we're not giving each other blow jobs in the woods, or shooting rich white ladies.

Since this whole thing was conceived as a guide to St. Louis, let me fill you in on some the details. The Upper MUNY is one of two parking lots for the Municipal Theater in Forrest park. For those of you not familiar with St. Louis, the Municipal Theater, or MUNY, is where old people go on summer nights to sit. Their Cadillacs and Buicks wait patiently in the lot. Anticipating the return trip west.


The MUNY

Once a year, after 40 days of penance, the Upper Muny Parking Lot gets its moment to shine.

The Easter Car Show is a St. Louis tradition. Held Easter Sunday on the Upper MUNY parking lot it's the place to see interesting cars and St. Louis' car people. Originally organized by the old rich guys with British roadsters and shiny Model A sedans, The Easter Car Show now belongs to St. Louis. We took it over by driving hose clamped together Donks and Hyundai Tiburons with $5000 stereos and $50 airbrush murals, and parking them proudly next to whatever trailer queen the banker in the Hawaiian shirt brought.

Do yourself a favor and go to the Easter Car Show this year. Don't sweat seeing the Concourse D'Elegance, the real show is what the spectators bring. Two years ago Cole and I watched a fire breathing pro-street Camaro get loose right into the lower MUNY's stone retaining wall.


The Lower MUNY Parking Lot

The man with the Camaro made one critical mistake. He chose the wrong parking lot. The Upper MUNY is the lot for getting loose in $50,000 street legalish race cars. The Lower MUNY is for getting romantic with some guy you just met behind Steinburg Ice Rink.

Monday, February 22, 2010

My Friend's Cheap Car


I don't know how much my friend, The Driver, paid for the Party Van. No amount would be too much. *


How Much Does Perfect Cost?

I'm starting to think the two most powerful words in the English language are white van.

The Human Crumple Zone is one of the areas inside the Party Van. Take off your hat and come in. It is in front of the rear bench seat, just behind the cockpit, from the sliding door to the wall. If you want, you can use the un-lined Spanish Conquistador's helmet. No one will think less of you. There might be fireworks. There will be shouting.

The Human Crumple Zone is the perfect classroom, laboratory, dance floor, arena and abattoir. Feel free to leave something behind.

Deep In the Crumple Zone

In the party van you can do anything, but it must be done with vitality.

The first step is letting go. The Driver has done this many times before. He does it well. I would say he is in control, but he knows there is no such thing.


The Driver**


What should you know going in?

It's going to be fun.
Relax.
Trust Me.

OK?

"Driver, begin!"

The music is making you punch the ceiling with ecstatic metronomic gusto. The dance floor is moving at 70 miles an hour, maybe sideways. You aren't alone. Gravity is there. And The Driver. And whoever you brought. It's raining. The rain is punching the ceiling from above.

Don't bother inviting the rain to your party. It's already there.

The ceiling is made of metal. But It feels good to punch because of the head liner. Ice in a Styrofoam cup.

This is the beginning. Explore.

GO TO THE SOURCE!!

* This picture, and the detail shot, are not of The Driver's actual Party Van. This is someone else's Party Van that I found. An "older" slightly Hoosier Party Van.

** This is actually the driver.***

*** REALLY.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Ramp Riders. Part 1 of at least 60.

I'm a pacifist.

That's something my mom taught me to say when I was a kid. I still say it. It was part of her lesson on Ghandi, and Jesus, and The Way Of the Peaceful Warrior, and counting coup. I believed her. It was tougher to take a punch and not give one back.

Then I got older and I wanted to learn to fight. I wrestled anyone who would wrestle back, Cole, Dad, Karl, whoever. Jeff Gaskin beat me everytime. I love wrestling, but it's friendly. Wrestling is play fighting.

I learned to fight at Ramp Riders Skatepark. 3001-3 Locust street in mid-town St. Louis. On the Northwest corner of Locust and Garrison. Just behind the Harbor Light.


Ramp Riders sometime between 2000 and 2003

The first thing Ramp Riders taught me was the importance of having a clubhouse. A clubhouse is a place to go that your mom has no idea about. A Tattoo shop would make a good clubhouse. Garages are the best kind of clubhouse.

When Ramp Riders was our clubhouse, we called it The Park. It was in a hot zone of perfect clubhouses. The Harbor Light, the building immediately to the North was the ultimate club house for people who spent their entire lives boozing and driving everyone else away. The only people left to abuse were a group of people so devoted to the idea that everyone is worth saving that they formed an army.



For the Salvation Army no one is beyond saving. Anyone can stay at the Harbor Light so long as they can scrounge up $2 per night. Two dollars was easy to find in the ashtrays and cup holders of the cars outside Ramp Riders, and the winos figured out surprisingly quick how big a rock has to be in order to go through a car's window on the first try.


Blood And Fire

Our clubhouse was an old, two and a half story brick building. It was built to be a coach builders building. Factory and showroom in one. My bike brought me to The Park. The one that Tom and Wayne, Squints, Andy and JJ were building with wood, sweat and drywall screws in between legendary games of gay chicken.*


We should start making plaques


Tom and the guys were building the park as fast as they could get wood. Save some money, buy some wood. See if you can get your buddy at the lumber yard to cut us a deal, or at least forget to scan something.

Then when the wood showed up they brought it in and attached it to the first thing they built, the box jump with the grind-ledge down the middle. Actually, the first thing they built was the mini ramp. But they built that in Tom's backyard when he was spending a lot of time at home in South County.

That all happened before I was there. Before The Park opened. Cole found Ramp Riders first. He heard the streets whispering that someone was opening a skatepark in St. Louis. So he rode down there and looked in the mail-slot. It looked dark and dirty.

Then he went back to look in again and Tom was there. Tom was stoked that a 15 year old kid would ride his BMX bike from Ladue to Mid-Town to look in the mail slot of his unopened skatepark... for a second time. He told Cole to come back on Opening Day and bring some friends. When Tom extended that invitation, the clubhouse opened for me.







These photos are definitely not from opening day. They are meant to set the scene.

Cole and I were there on opening day. Our parents helped us buy Emperor's passes numbered 1 and 2. Unlimited access to the park for one year. Cole was number one.

Cole and I weren't new to bike riding when we found Ramp Riders, we had both been riding bikes everyday since we were 3 years old. But Ramp Riders taught us the language, culture, and history of Freestyle BMX.

And just like that we weren't two brothers riding alone in Mid-County.

At The Park we met the dudes that were doing the same things at the same time in Bridgeton, South County and Belleville. Now we were part of a tribe. A group people that got off on fighting with gravity and using our bikes to show the world what we thought of it.

I learned to fight with the Ding-A-Lings and the Sprockets and The Mud Butts. And with Tom and The Waterlilies and the skateboarders. We were all fighting together against fear, and gravity, and expectations.

Those days were a frenzy of physical pain and ecstatic joy. The pain came from finding out for yourself that gravity is never going to concede. The joy came from successfully cheating a physical force. The uninitiated think that gravity is a law. I know plenty of people that can bend that law unrecognizable with a BMX bike.

This is only Part 1 on Ramp Riders.

I have to wait for the internet to get bigger before I can tell you about everything the clubhouse that Tom built meant to me. All the friends I made there. How I learned to be myself. Learning to understand fear.

Ramp Riders became my second home. My second family. My home where it was OK to hang my old shoes from the power lines out front. My home caddy-corner from the car wash that the Ghost Dogg Riders Motorcycle Club used as their clubhouse (The third awesome Clubhouse in the hot zone). My home where I got to have raw hamburger fights, and blow the lids off of old washing machines with quarter sticks of dynamite, and prove that a bucket brigade can put out a fire in an overgrown vacant lot. It was also where I learned to be a teacher, and where I learned for myself the importance of letting yourself be a student.



Ghost Doggs


When this lot was overgrown, litter-strewn and on fire. We put it out with buckets.

Ramp Riders was also my second job. Where I got interviewed by a newspaper reporter on my very first day.* Where I sold giant pickles to kids so filthy that their sweat left visible tracks down their cheeks. They would hand me a sweaty and crumpled dollar bill and I would put a fat pickle in their dirt black hand.

It's where I taught myself how to program a cash register. The top of every receipt read "Ramp Riders: You Are Not Special."

Where I had to explain to parents on Beginner Night that the Ghost Doggs always held drag races on Monday nights and it was nothing to be alarmed about. Where I learned the importance of giving your all to something you love.

Ramp Riders is where I learned that I didn't have to learn to fight another person. There are bigger things to fight against, things that you will probably never beat. But you will learn a lot if you try.

To this day I've never punched somebody as hard as I can.

Maybe I should start with whoever turned our clubhouse into a high end women's boutique that sells organic beauty products instead of leaving it as a filthy, sweat-drenched museum.



3001-3 Locust now. Stealing change from car ashtrays has never been more satisfying.



*Gay Chicken is a game straight dudes play. The idea is to do something so gay that your opponent can't let himself top it. The best game I ever witnessed ended with JJ's hand down Wayne's pants. JJ was squeezing Wayne's naked dick and Wayne EVENTUALLY had to quit when he started getting hard!

*