RSS
Home
Los Angeles counterculture: Old school (jogging) and 21st-century (skateboarding)
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Skateboarding much more thrilling than jogging
Before I moved to Los Angeles during a week-long visit back in the 1970s, I was up bright and early to enjoy the warm winter day. So were a big bunch of half-dressed people who seemed to be running on the curb of a busy street without any particular destination in mind.
Fresh from Manhattan, I found this new (at the time) phenomenon curious, so I asked a friend what they were doing.
"Oh, they're jogging," he said.
"But where are they going?" I innocently asked.
"Nowhere," was his simple reply.
"Nowhere?" I questioned.
"Right, nowhere," he reiterated.
Not wanting to let this less-than-satisfactory answer go, I pursued it further.
"But why would they go to so much trouble and waste so much energy if they aren't even going to get anywhere in the end?" I persisted.
"For exercise," was his pointed response.
At that time, I thought this was ridiculous. For me, the only early morning city street running I had ever seen was when Big Apple workers donned sneakers to help get them to their jobs on time.
Still, not wanting to pooh-pooh this unheard of trend out of hand (and knowing full well that many people run in the park, so why not the street?), I woke up the next morning, put on my trainers and some modest shorts, and headed for a grassy knoll in the middle of San Vicente Boulevard to test their training methods. My attempts lasted about three minutes, the exact amount of time it took me to realize that with no goal in mind, jogging to nowhere was very difficult and extremely fruitless, bringing no satisfaction whatsoever.
Later, when jogging on urban thoroughfares (or road running, as they called it in Britain in 1977) exploded into a worldwide trend, I was truly surprised -- while still steadfastly refusing to participate.
The roles were recently reversed when one of my kids asked why our friend Matt was lying out in the sun in his swimsuit, working on his laptop. Our Los Feliz house has a great deck for such activity where, to Tyler at least, this just isn't something you need to do.
To my boy, Los Angeles born and bred, tanning just happens, especially when you ride through town every day on a skateboard.
To Matt, who hails from Rochester, N.Y., it does not.
In fact, for him and so many others who come from a snow-ridden state to visit our semi-tropical outpost in the middle of winter, lying out in the sun is imperative if only to pursue even a slight tan.
Their motivation?
To prove to friends back East that they did, indeed, take a trip to Tinseltown in the middle of winter.
So, what was absurd to my son was perfectly natural to my friend, who was as pale as a person can be until after his little ritual in our backyard.
Upon complimenting my temporary tenant's new look, I made a mental note that, after all these years, cultural differences between East coast and West remain evident, even in my own little world. To wit, when taking a tally at the end of a very sunny Los Angeles day three plus decades after I settled here, Matt was happy, Tyler was confused, and -- even after watching others steadfastly do so for 30 odd years -- I wasn't about to jog along the streets of my beautiful home town. Not now, not ever.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
