I find myself a little extra sore today, it could be from the gym? Or it could just be. Looking back over the week I seem to recall my neck and shoulders tightening during my morning devotional practice to our overlord, the smartest of phones. Blessed be thy name. News, Instagram, coffee and a slightly slumped over position on our extra large couch. Waiting until the last possible minute before fleeing off to work.
I’m reminded of days before the smartphone, sat at the round kitchen table in a typical duplex north of Dupont and just east, across the tracks from the Lansdowne subway station in Toronto. My brother would have played a show the night before as he did every night through those years and would be sleeping, I’d be up early drinking coffee and reading whatever paperback I had come across, caffeinating myself to slog out a day of digging trenches or swinging hammers. Blissfully oblivious to current events and trends, outside of repeating lines from a Dane Cook movie to each other. I’d take the subway during the abominable winter months and possibly pick up a discarded paper as someone would vacate a seat at Bay st. Otherwise, I’d mash through the city on a rickety bike in workboots, a missing pedal and no brakes; not in a slick hipster kind of way just that I didn’t have the forethought to get them fixed and I could jam my boot up against the tire and frame with some semblance of success in stopping.
When I got to work I’d work, when I was off it was straight to Dunbat, with a stop along the way for some James Ready, Laker or Lakport. At a buck a beer you were practically losing money by not imbibing.
Dunbat was a wild place when I was there. A haphazard seasonal skatepark in the midst of downtown Toronto. There would be Joe Buffalo, Mortal, The Russian, Pigeon and The Beast, as well as an assortment of some of Canada's best skateboarders, refining their craft, talking shit or otherwise getting loose, as was the parlance of the time. Fights with lengths of chain and golf clubs would pop off from time to time in the adjoining park, the odd raid on the massage parlour across the street would provide an hour's entertainment if the skating slowed down in the oppressive Toronto heat.
Long weekends would see Stinner and I buy a tower of beer to sell at twice the markup from coolers or the back of a plumbing van. The beers would be given away or drank between us before any money was made, but fuck me, we thought we’d come up on it for sure.
Touring teams would come through town and sleep on floors. We’d sit on the Agusta Stoops in front of Adrift when it was owned by Lyndsey drinking 40s and blowing blunts without a thought of skating or showing the travelling pros any spots. Skating in the middle of the street and making that section of Kensington particularly unwelcoming for anyone outside of the downtown skate scene. Come five o’clock we’d be drinking sangria at La Paella across the street or sucking back Molsen dry at Ronnies Local. Simpler times of youthful abandonment.
Throughout all this mild anarchy I don’t remember my neck being sore once. Sleeping in alleys, on floors; bone rattling slams while skating (before becoming friends with my homie Mansa she knew me as “The Guy With Blood On Him” as I was endlessly bleeding from some new scrape or puncture). It could be that I’m simply getting old, but I prefer to blame it on the overlords.
Such an interesting city!