Two Days After That Supra Demo

We were right there, it all happened right in front of us. Chad Muska deserves it all, running through the sand and chugging a 40, the indulgence of self-produced electronica, the decade of shrugs and whatever is going on now, because the self-awareness displayed, ailing ankle and all, just to noseslide the rail and do a frontside flip. He pushes like a swimmer* and for five minutes probably tried harder than the others. It looked fun, it looked like what I'd loved at the end of junior high, except we were both older now, and aging in skateboarding, for a good part, sucks. Oh well.

Also sitting up there, discussing things with a local rookie pro, we came to the conclusion that doing demos isn't fun. "Is that what we look like?" he asked, seemingly honestly surprised at the shuffling, the semi-slouch, the struggle to get warmed up while Chaz Ortiz lands everything. The answer, the actual with a little bit more back and forth, is, "Yeah, that's exactly what you look like," unless you're doing what Rick McCrank managed for Plan B on Lake Street in 1998, or have the cache of a Girl and Chocolate demo of the mid-aughts, or what Muska would do later, engage, read and deliver.

Doing a demo at Familia HQ must be rough (said it before, say it again). It's not exactly a truly hostile environment, but it's a place where dudes get ripped on for ripping too hard, where the crowd seems blasé and sits on perfectly good obstacles and mostly doesn't react. It shouldn't be blamed on demo fatigue because there haven't been enough demos, and there isn't enough data to pin the blame squarely on Millennials, and you can't blame the skaters because they really were out there trying. It was still weird, though. Other impressions:

-If there's a Switch God, then what type of god is it? Is it a part of a trinity, a pantheon, is he or it inherently male? On this Earth is Switch God a man, half-man-half-divine, or all divine?

-Chaz Ortiz gets a raw deal, and still came close to backside 180 nosegrinds to switchflip in a demo situation.

-Lizard King smells the part and did slip-foot frontside noseslides on the rail.

-More reptile nicknames, please. I thought I heard Muska call Spencer Hamilton "Snake" while on the mic, which would be a really great sobriquet for that dude, who rips.

-The rock and roll parking lot scene outside following the demo was something to behold. Some semi-Gummo-looking dude, parked a long way away, asked me as I biked home, if the demo was over. I'd seen him skating inside before it started, and he exited the building once they cleared the course. He was disappointed that the demo was, indeed, over.

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Pro-skater birthdays usually go unmentioned here, but Lance Mountain at 50-years-old, today, is too rad not to.
*I always likened dudes with styles like Muska or Ghetto Fred to breakdancing, but having actually thought about it, finally, I've realized it's way more like swimming.