a full day of street skating with friends

I am finally going street skateboarding with a friend, actually a group of friends. I haven't done this in so long, but I have a friend named Eric who used to make a bunch of YouTube videos here in Dallas, Texas, but as soon as I moved here. He moved to Austin. So then I didn't have like the one super relatable friend to hang out with in Dallas. And the truth is, I don't have many people to skate with at all. I'm 35, I skate for a living. So most people are in school or working jobs and this is my job. So I like it's, and I have a kid. So finding time to skate with friends is very difficult. So this like, I'm 35, they're 39, the two homies I was skating with. It was a true old man all day street session and it was so cathartic and beautiful and awesome and made me feel so happy. The first spot we skated, we thought it was going to rain, so we went to this curb and as you can see, there's a woman on the left who wasn't super happy about the session. I think she was trying to figure out how to call the cops, but it never really happened and I understand that it can be kind of rude, so we purposely didn't try tricks that were too risky to where our boards would be flying towards her car, but she doesn't know that so I think she was uncomfortable the entire time. Now, this ledge was really round, so it was cool to see Eric actually do a lot of grind tricks. It was hard for me, and I was trying slide tricks as well, but then my front wheels were sliding on the ground, so I just started skating like a ledge. I didn't want to try slappies because I'm not super comfortable with those, and I figured my board would just fly and hit the Tesla, so I just started doing... Tail slide, slide type tricks, and I was pretty stoked. Eric wanted to play skate dice. There are these dice that basically tell you what tricks to do. So we did that for his channel, but he was like, hey, do you want to go ahead and film this? And I was like, give me a little bit to do these four tricks. I want to do a back blunt slide. I also want to do it to fakie. I want to do a back tail, and I want to do a back tail shove. I would say like the strength and why I can progress fast is because for me, I am mostly focused on having to do the tricks before moving on to the next thing, and I will do those no matter what. It was so cool to film like a YouTube YouTube video with Eric. It's been so long since I've had like friends to film these kind of videos with and I wish I could do it more but I really don't have a crew here in Texas. I don't have a street crew and like I don't know it it sucks. Like I'm trying to figure out how to navigate that part of my life because I enjoyed it so much having them in Cincinnati. I enjoyed it a bit in LA as well. That's a sort of different type of culture Maybe not as excited about, but like the small town, homey, older crew thing, it was so nice. Unfortunately, and fortunately, there is Eric, but that's going to require like me going to Austin or him coming to Dallas. So, you know, four hour drives. I should have told Eric not to stand here, but I did film some of the game and Eric's body was just like in the way of most of the tricks, but I did win the first round, not to brag, but you should watch the game on his channel because it was actually really cool. Like I did a lot of tricks I was super proud of, And I kind of forget how much I... enjoy it when someone in person is like whoa you're good and I'm like oh thanks and I'm like man that really feeds my ego and I kind of wish I had that more in real life. The rest of the day was pretty rough. We ended up finding a really good spot but you know this spot here super solid ledge you know not super waxed and I went hard waxing this and we got a little bit of session before something happened. Security came and actually before this, Eric went to a different spot before I did because I was getting lunch and they got kicked out of that spot as well. So there were two spots already that we got kicked out of. The first spot we left on our own volition because we just wanted to explore the city. And Eric likes bad spots, which like I do too. So I was like, just take me to the worst spots, which I don't think was his intention. But a lot of the spots he had growing up have been completely renovated and torn away, which sucks. The next thing we went to is my first street rail that I've skated in years. I don't remember the last rail I've skated. I've been kind of enjoying handrails at skate parks, but like this kind of showed me that I have developed a big fear of handrails in which I plan on trying to diminish a bit in the next couple of weeks when I go to skate parks and I'm like getting ready to ever skate street again. Unfortunately, Third spot, it's a bust, but it's a weekday, so this makes total sense. The last spot we went to, I thought this was so funny, but Eric was like, hey, I found the spot, and I'm like, whoa, this spot's really good. It's this rising rail. Let me do a couple grinds, and I look over, and Eric is skating like the worst gap ever, and he's like, hey, maybe we could do another skate dice game skate over this wall off this drop. I'm like, this is the worst spot. The ground was terrible. There were rocks everywhere. It goes uphill when you pop. It lands downhill. It's like, it's like kind of hard to ollie. And I'm like, how are we going to do a bunch of different tricks on this thing? But we actually ended up like kind of getting into it. And it really reminded me of like sessions I had growing up where you just skated the thing you had. Didn't matter how bad it was. And honestly, I had a ton of fun, even though it was So difficult to land anything like it took me like four tries just to kickflip this thing Which is like I could probably kickflip like a nine or a ten stair, you know first or second try And this little wall took me, like, four or five tries to kickflip. That's how bad the ground was. That's how, like, hard it was to skate. That's how windy it was as well. But we had a good session, except, like, Eric got broke off so many times. So, this clip of me doing a frontside flip, like, this is 30 minutes into my camera recording. Like, that's how slow it took us to land. That's how long it took us to land tricks. Like, it was that hard. I stuck maybe, I don't know, 20 of these before actually rolling away. And then I had basically landed a lot of tricks kind of sketchy. And I, the way that I get better at skateboarding is I will be like, I have to do, I've mentioned this earlier. I have to do these like six or seven tricks, no matter what, like you can go to Austin. I love you, brother. Fun skating today. But I am sitting here until these tricks happen. And luckily Eric was a good sport and he skated it most of the time with me and he was able to do some tricks as well. But I just stayed here until I landed, I think like five tricks that I had in mind clean. So a little life skate update is I've been talking to Revive Skateboards and maybe there's more of this conversation that'll come down the line because Andy Schrock, the guy who owns Revive Skateboards, has been making videos about like what's been going on with the company. But I'm still skating with Revive. I'm still skating for Revive. It's a whole different thing now though because I live in Austin. They live in Cincinnati and I wish I could skate with them The more, again, like... It's so weird because I'm at the stage in my life now where after Eric skated in Dallas, I started reaching around and I was reaching around. I started asking around and being like, is there a crew in Dallas doing this? And there are like little pockets or a little, you know, like crews here and there, typically a bit younger, but skating is just different now. I feel like I actually used to, my nose itches, hold on, it doesn't look like I'm picking my nose. I used to know of Dallas's skate scene before ever moving here. There were these old skate videos I used to watch and then I moved to Long Beach. And a lot of those homies moved to Long Beach as well. So I skated with so many Dallas people in Long Beach, ironically. And now I live here. Some of them still live there. But a lot of them, like, don't skate anymore. There's, like, maybe one or two who are even here. And, like, I don't even know if they go out and skate consistently. So, like, it's just a strange world. And also, like, as a YouTuber, again, things are different. Like, the way my skate sessions look are so much different than, like, how they looked back in the day. Like, even with me and my old crews, it was very, like... cool and relaxed, but I want to make videos. I want to do fun stuff. And yeah, I've been talking to my wife about this as well, because it's like, How do I navigate this? Because to me, I I've built what is essentially my dream job. I know I have struggled in the last two years or so, but that's like a lot of, you know, life hits you sometimes and it takes a little bit to get past it. We're past it. So now I'm like, okay, I already made this my job. How do I keep doing my job and keep having fun and keep making it exciting, not for just me, but also. People watching who see the videos. So I'm still trying to navigate that. But for now, I will keep skating and keep uploading because it's what I've always done. It's what I love. I'm also, of course, working on other things. I think people have kind of seen that I've been spending a lot of time with my SquadBots brand and working on art and posters and merch or whatever. Like that's been really fun. And then I'm also working out all the time. Like I go to the gym every single day. I probably spend more time doing that than skating now. So there are things in my life and also fatherhood. Not gonna lie, I'm kind of crushing it. Like I'm kind of a sick dad, whatever, you know, that's neither here nor there. So these are the four pillars of my life and it's been so nice. Like I've been stoked, like it's been so good. But I do want to figure out how to make the skateboarding story more interesting. So I'll let you know when I do. Thanks for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, stay tuned for more videos to come. I'm also going to launch some tutorial videos coming up soon as well because a lot of people are getting into skateboarding now And I want to create like a, A base, like here are 20 videos that you watch when you're starting to skate and these will take you through your first year or whatever. So that's the goal. Thanks so much for being here. I appreciate your face. Take care, progress daily and keep killing it.