Radfest Rules!

First night of the Radfest and I'm blogging the shit out of it. Spits and Stalins of Sound killed it, Julian was playing some killer tunes, missed the others because Meg's car took a shit and we had to rent one to come out from Phoenix. Good to see some heads. "Hey Al! What's up!?" and this is what I got. Apparently he was a little edgy as he lost his phone. Lighten up buddy!

Seattle Part III: Skate Spots

Ballard Bowl.

Duvall. Kids on Razor scooters and one on a tricycle?

Matt, f-side at Duvall.

Duvall's exposed aggregate coping.

Andre, b-side air, Lower Woodland.

Mo, f-side grrr, Lower Woodland.

Chicken Banks, Bellevue, WA.

Behind a (now-closed) KFC, spent years of afternoons and evenigns skating here with the posse of guys I started skating with. Used to be smooth. I hid a coper here in between buildings to do long f-side grinds. Skated it with Zach and Sarah, and got yelled at by the vagrant watching the shop next door.

Barney, f-side thruster at Kent III.

Andre rocks the hip, Kent III.

Street Mo, fully padded gap ollie.

Billie, same deal, no pads.

Muckleshoot park at sunset.

Saw this little girl razor scooting around Muckleshoot, asked her when she was gonna get a skateboard, then asked her name. "Brian," he said. Ouch.

Evidence V: The legendary Love Bowls

Hoss' buddy had the gate lock combination due to some small world action. We were in.

 They rotate 360 degrees to face the sun; they were used for photo shoots for car commercials.

Dual haboobs made for dusty envrions, but two haboobs are better than one.

 Hoss got up there.

 Andrew kickflipped way up there.

 Controls.

Love Bowls were exposed in the late '80s in a Santa Cruz video, with Roskopp and Kendall skating them. Couldn't find footage. Livingston packed trying to drop in, Jaws made it, and Rune grinded it.

Kevin Daly's Chicken and Waffles ruled it.

 Reactions run the gamut of expression.

More Seattle

Seattle Brewing and Malting Co, which toasted malt for Rainier Beer. The Rainier brewery was just down the road.

Seattle from Alki Beach.

Giant salmon on street eating unsuspecting bystander.

Modern headwear.

Whoa dude, "Iron Chink?"

What the Iron Chink looks like.

Beach near Bellingham.

for now

More Seattle later, but some from the files now:

based on:

and totally unrelated to:

That's right, a Devo demolition derby car.

Seattle, my hometown (Part I)

Legendary Seattle band the Fastbacks played for free in West Seattle at the street fair. They hadn't played in 10 years, although members have been in other bands (Visqueen, Thee Sargeant Major). They formed in 1979 and were a local mainstay, always on the verge of making it big (although they did pretty well, touring Europe, etc.). I remember hearing them on KCMU as a kid, their song "In America" was an early underground hit (look it up on los youtubes). They were way more pop than punk, guitarist Curt Bloch was (and still is) amazing -- Tom Price once compared his playing to the Sweet's Andy Scott, a comparison that holds up, Lulu held her own on second git, and Kim Warnick was always the coolest with her Joan Jett hair, and killer bass and vocals. They had a rotating cast of drummers, some famous (Duff McKagan), some not so much. Their shows were always fun, and they were one of my favorite Seattle bands of all time. Seeing them again ruled.





I missed the Tom Price Desert Classic playing at the Cretin's clubhouse because I was too busy skating. Tom Price is a great friend and legend, so's Don Blackstone, well, fuck it, everyone in the band is. I got there right when they were done. Killer timing.

I did get to see the Beat (the Paul Collins Beat -- the band that forced the Beat from England to change their name to the English Beat). Most of the band Head was in attendance, except for Giggles, as was Dave Holmes. They're in the photo of the Space Needle below:

The Beat was great, played their hits and played their guts out to a mid-sized crowd.

This record has some great songs, and I play this one out sometimes...

Three photos from the trip

So, uh, yeah, too busy having fun, skating, seeing bands, drinking beer, etc. to up my web presence while in Seattle (although rumor has it a lot of people were fascinated with the Routine Motorcycle Maintenance post). So, before I have time to recount what a killer time I had, let me just hep you to three recent photos...
Yesterday Morris, Billy, Russ, Andre and I went to skate the Kent III park (and then Mukelshoot, where we ran into Mike Lynch). We putted around the outer area of the course for a while, then got down to pad up to session the bowl and full pipe. We look over, and there are two older guys walking toward us. This super cheesy guy in a bright Hawaiian shirt said, "This is Eddie Elguera, former world champion. He skated in..." I cut him off and said, "You don't need to tell us who Eddie Elguera is!" We had seen some fliers around the park advertising Eddie's sermon at some local evangelical church -- well known fact Eddie is on the god squad and hypes it a lot. I hate proselytizing, and I'm not that thrilled about organized religion in general, but we all sat and talked to Eddie for a few minutes. I grabbed my camera to get a shot, and we all posed for a few photos. That got the kids all excited, especially since they probably had no idea who he was. Eddie then signed some autographs (one kid came up to me and asked me for my autograph, but his mother grabbed and and said, "Not him, Him!" and pointed to Eddie. They wanted to know if we wanted to go to church the next day, and laid a little of the spread-the-good-word shtick on us. Morris kept asking Eddie if he wantd to take a run, meet up tomorrow to go skate, he had a board Eddie could borrow, and shoes, too, etc. They were trying to spread the gospel, but Morris countered with an attempt to spread the Gospel of Skate. The Gospel of Skate is the only one worth spreading. Here's el Gato with us:

At the park, I want to get a photo of Russ planking, the hot new sensation that is sweeping the world. Russ was so excited he popped a boner. Upon closer inspection, you can see the tiny little people who climb on Russ' boner and inhabit his balls. Weird, Russ!

Finally, here's the new one. Notice something missing (it's taken after 2 days so it's in the healing-but-looking-a-little-crusty phase).

Seattle Motorcycle Maintenance

So I made it back from PDX and my bike was clicking a little for the last 45 miles or so, but luckily the exhaust had just come a little loose. Still, I needed to adjust the valves – it’s been a while, although I only ride this thing for a couple weeks a year. But one of the tappet adjustment covers was stripped.

I tried different wrenches and vice grips, and finally decided to get a chisel and try to work a notch into it so I could get it to turn. The cover is really soft metal, however, and every time I would work a small notch into it and try to then get something into the notch to get it to turn, the notch would just get bigger. Then a small chunk came off. I thought I was in deep shit, until I looked at it and realized that the rubber o-ring would keep any chunks of metal out of the valves if I was careful. So I took the chisel and worked away the part of the cover around the o-ring, and the thing came right off.

 A quick adjustment to the valves – only 2 were off much – and I was done.

Now for that pesky oil leak… My bike has been dripping oil onto the shift lever for the past 7-8 years. When you ride it for a few weeks out of the year, that shit is easy to ignore, but it had gotten worse recently (especially since I overfilled the oil), and I Decided to do something about it. It’s not the shaft seal for the shifter (at least that’s not the main problem, if it is, indeed, leaking there). Rather, the sturdy o-ring chain that I installed about 15 years ago had slowly worn away a small divot on the inside of the case, under the chain cover. The only way to stop the leak would be some kind of epoxy, like JB Weld, and then replacing the chain. I decided that I would try the most low-budget solution, since even though the chain is 15 years old, it’s still working just fine. I opened up the chain cover, took the rear wheel off so the chain would have some slack, and undid the primary sprocket. Since I don’t have a chain splitter up here, I just pushed it back and out of the way. This is what the small leak looks like:

I dabbed on the JB weld, and then to try to put some distance between the chain and where it rubbed, I threw on a small washer. Then I let it sit overnight.

Postcript: Looked clean the next morning, made a ride into Georgetown and there were no drips, but came back to the bike and noticed a small spot. Damn. Maybe chain replacement is in my future – or I’ll just keep ignoring it? Or... it might just be that I had two leaks and the shifter shaft seal is bad too. This warrants investigation... or I might ignore it for another 10 years.

Portlandia part II

First off, I forgot to post this epicly sweet photo of Jaime brawling with the scooter guy. My bad!

On Sunday we got up slowly, and decided to hit Windell’s again. Another amazing session, although this time it was much busier. Insane shredding ensued.

Back in PDX, I met Robin and Jenny and her beau at the Montage for  a meal, then some stoner rock: Red Fang played outdoors near the East End. We had a couple after show beers sitting outside, while inside a bunch of people were celebrating a 10k run or something by having the girls make out with other girls. Was hot girl-on-girl action part of the dream of the ‘90s? Sorry, no photos of that though. But here's one of the Red Fang crowd. Can you spot the shitwig(s)?

Monday, the Fourth of July, our nation’s birthday and the best day to blow shit up and into the air! We shredded some parks in the AM, Holly Farms and Gabriel, and of course I forgot my camera because I am not an experienced blogger. We also skated Burnside, and had the place to ourselves (just like two years ago) for a lot of the time.

Sweet torso at Burnside.

Zach had to pay rent on his practice space, so we went down there. As we were pulling up, some cheesy guy was filming a music video, first singing, and then when we started gawking, lip synching to the song.

Zach suggested we watch the city fireworks from the roof of his practice space. The response was something akin to “I’ve already told Josh Faulk and his family that they could, so drinking and smoking up there wouldn’t be cool, and the neighbors wouldn’t be psyched on you guys lighting up a bunch of fireworks.” How did he read our minds as to what our plans were?

Wixon came through with the spot in full knowledge of the high explosives we were packing. Meg and I hopped on my bike and made some rounds, stopping by Molly Quan’s and then heading to Wixon’s. There was a ton of food, and Zach and I started the pyrotechnics early. The neighbor across the street had some huge mortars, so they kind of took us out size-wise, but we had variety. Especially thrilling were the 2-year-old fireworks that proved entirely unpredictable. One bottle rocket shot up 6 feet and traveled about 20 feet, just enough to hop the fence and blow up in the neighbor’s yard. We used a cinder block to light stuff off, and we could put a firecracker in the hole and blow a beer can up in the air, which led to catching and drinking and then hacky sacking the can. Since the old bottle rockets were unpredictable, we decided the best thing to do would be to light a bunch of them off at one time. Zach stuff three packs into the hole in the cinder block, then used a sparkler. The results were, as predicted, completely unpredictable. This night, nobody lost an eye (although I did lose a flash drive).

Happy Birthday America! FREEDOM!

Tuesday morning Matt and Gin and Meg and I met up with Donna for breakfast. Meg and I peeled off and checked out Bryce and Donna’s crib, then got Meg ready to hit the train back to Seattle. We stopped at a food court, and got Meg to the train station 3 minutes before her train left. The ticket guy was apparently pissed, but Meg made it.

I went back to the house, gathered my shit, said my goodbyes, and hit the road. It took me an hour to get the 10 or so miles from Portland to the bridge into Washington, stop and go traffic, and I got out of first gear maybe 3 times. Way to heat up the bike at the start of the trip. Since I had finally concluded that my bike had too much oil, I decided on only two stops. Around Olympia, 60 miles from Seattle, the bike started to make a little noise. Since I hadn’t adjusted the valves, I thought it might be them acting up after a long and fast ride, although I thought it might be an exhaust leak too. When the noise got worse, I pulled over 30 minutes away from Seattle, let the bike cool for a few minutes, and looked at the exhaust. It looked OK, so I checked the oil (fine), and took it easy back to Seattle.

Postscript: It was the exhaust after all – the nuts that mount it had shaken loose, although I couldn’t see it when I first pulled over. But by the time I checked it the next day, I discovered that one of the nuts had actually shaken off completely. I got new ones and no more noise. I also adjusted the valves, although one cover is stripped and I can’t get to it. Gotta get that thing off tomorrow…

Portlandia, Pt I

Flew up to Seattle Thursday afternoon, got my bike running, and headed to Portland the next day.

My bike in Seattle is a 1975 CB550 that I bought 20 years ago for $250. I keep it covered at my dad’s place, and start it up when I am in Seattle. It never fails to start. The exhaust is a 1970s Kerker, and since the baffle broke, I took it and all of the stuffing out, and just replaced the end of the baffle. It makes car alarms go off. It is also a bit rusty, and the engine paint has what the kids these days are calling “patina.” Someone stole the left hand side cover some time in the ‘90s, so I replaced it with one and gave it the badge off of one of my Dodge Darts, so the bike is now the “Swinger” (my brother, who is apparently illiterate, continues to this day to refer to it as the “Stinger”).

Had to gas up, get air in the tires, and buy bungee cords before I left. The tires had 10 psi in them, no wonder they felt slow. Once I was all packed, I headed off. Not more than a half mile away from my dad’s house a bird shit on my face (my visor was up). Some people consider it good luck, and I was willing to rethink my whole shit-is-dirty-and-disease-carrying-and-that’s-why-humans-avoid-it philosophy if the bike were to make it back from Portlandia in one piece.

First stop Tacoma, to buy the good fireworks. Does anyone else think it is ironic that you can only buy the good fireworks in Washington from Indian reservations? The Mountain was out.

After the shitty traffic through Olympia, the miles flew by. I stopped four times on my way to check the oil – it’s been leaking – and let it cool off. I have sad news to report: the drive in burger joint in Vader Ryderwood that used to sell licorice flavored ice cream that turned your poo green has now been replaced by a used car dealership. Sad state of affairs. It took me 6 hours with shitty traffic and stops to reach PDX, but I finally did.

After stopping in at Zach and Sarah’s, first spot was the Brooklyn Project with Zach and Pod, another (much smaller) DIY project. Super fun spot, right next to the train tracks. The graffiti ruled.

That night we kept it close to home and had a couple beers by Zach and Sarah’s. Zach picked up some cool custom tribal ear wear on the way home. Only in Oregon.

Zach and Sarah's dogs Otto and Ava rule it

Someone yakked Friday night...

and that's what slugs eat!

On Saturday everyone was pretty much tired of me saying “The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland,” including myself. But I couldn’t stop. We assembled a crew, including Matt and Gin from Seattle, and headed up to Windell’s. This place is amazing, Jaime Weller and his crew carved a wonderland out of cement. It’s not hard to skate, it’s just kind of baffling as there are so many options. You need some time here (if you can get an invite…). From there we skated the Hood River park. Chet blazed a hurricane over the tunnel/shrine to a fallen brother. Boat grinded up and down and up and down and up and down this obstacle, and Z-Burgular lauched over the hip. We headed to the river for a quick dip.

Boat stands one up at Windell's

The road to Mt Hood

The crew at Hood River park

Dean strips to some questionable undies and goes for a dip

Chet hurricanes over the memorial hole

Chet films Boat's ups and downs.

We headed back to Portland to check in at Burnside. There was a party there that day, and we caught the tail end of it. Hubbard made an appearance, Shag, Choppy, G-Man, a bunch of heads. There was a brief fireworks war, and Jaime got into a tussle with a shirtless scooter rider. Most of the crew was pooped, so I headed out solo to see our friend Dulcinea Gonzalez’s newish band, Midnight Snaxx, at the East End. Robin and Jenny came out too, and we got caught up in getting caught up, and time flew by. I rushed downstairs and caught most of the band’s set, they ruled it (and have two killer singles out). After the show we ate pizza, had a few more beers, ate more pizza, and I got in around 3:00. Nice one!

Midnight Snaxx!