Bronx Graffiti, Skateboarding, and the Gas Tax Vacation and how they have nothing to do with each other

I am blogging with my Crackberry while ridding Metro-North up passed Westchester.

I can't believe it works! it's such a crazy device for a guy who grew up before cell phones and the internet. this little portal tells me where i am at any given point and where i need to go. it tells me whether or not people are getting their facts straight and allows me to prove my wild declarations when i am "schooling" somebody in a drunken argument. People tend to look at me during these wild factoid moments and right off the bat assume that i am either making up my random trivia facts or that i am out and out lying. like the old saying that 38% of all statistics are made up on the spot. or was it 48%?

but, in fact, despite being high for half of my school years, i managed to soak up a large amount of data. maybe it was that i went to good schools that figured out how i absorbed things, via osmosis, or maybe it was that getting stoned made me interested in what i would otherwise ignore out of boredom. either way, i am surprisingly good at kicking YOUR ass at trivial pursuit. but now, i have at my hands the entire sum of mankind's knowledge a' la the internet combined with a gps that can pinpoint me even if i am hopelessly lost. with my blackberry in hand, i could have skipped school in it's entirety and still had as much access to info as the professor writing his third doctorate in inertial trajectory physics. Scotty, beam me up. Bleep.

So, moving on, as the Bronx slips by me, and i spy a large TRACY168 tag on the side of a building. I suddenly realized the limitations of my Crackberry. it doesn't take pics, and i really wanted one of this most famous of tags. just seeing it made my heart warm up. Here's a guy who knows to ask for a slice rather then a cheese pizza. An Uptown original. He was the first widely known new york graffiti writer in the city in the 70's. He might have been, technically, several millennia too late to be the first graffiti writer. Clearly, writing on the wall is as ancient as the ability to draw, but he was the first to bomb all 5 boroughs with his name, and his area, and helped to ignite the whole neo-graff phenomenon that is now a global movement. Or scurge depending on your perspective.



Its SO nice to know that he's still doing his thing. He started years before me and he's still going, years after me. My hats off to Mr Tracy168. I wonder if he still lives on 168th street? With his mom? I will give him the benefit of the doubt. It has been like 30 some odd years. If he can pull off all the work he did, then he is clearly a very capable individual. big ups.

Now passing Fordham, the spot of one the first skateboard parks in the city. coincidentally, in line with the nostalgia of spring, I got a Ray Barbie Powell/Peralta re-issued skateboard on Indy trucks like it was 1988. The kid at the place looked at me and knew instantly why i was buying a retro board, he figured out that it was the latest model when i was a full blown skater. nuff respect, son. while he got all the parts together, i gave him a mini history lesson about the neighborhood and about skating in the 80's. he legitimately seemed interested. it was either that, or the fact that i hadn't paid him yet.


15 minutes later and a new board in hand, i was off. happy with nothing but newly paved upper west side streets ahead of me. Of course, the first thing i did was a girly plant in traffic on broadway not even a block away. A "girly plant" is when the back foot slips off the board and the stops, while the front foot flies away on the board. This results in a forced man-split. Very unhappy circumstance for the male groin. Well i am okay. It wasn't a devastating ripper split. Just a mild protraction. But my dustiness on the board was noted and i scaled down my maneuvers a bit. Must regain my skills i guess. it has been over 15 years since the last time i had a board.

The commute has shifted tone now. i am out of the bronx and in bronxville the woods have gotten very lush and green. Which makes me consider the gas tax vacation. How horrible are we that we think its ok for our gov't to blow all our tax money on wars over currency and oil. We mostly don't seem to care about how addicted we are to the stuff. Then, to add insult to injury, we agree when they want to stop taxing the stuff, like a drug dealer offering free hits to kids, allowing the gas companies to sell more overly pricey juice and not letting the market ween itself through high prices. So now we create an even bigger Debt and we side step the natural force of supply and demand to maintain the shitty fucked up status quo. These high prices are not only our own faults but they are a much needed effect of the cause of oil addiction. Gas needs to get pricey so capitalist forces get pushed into using alternatives. The gas tax vacation is the WORST possible solution to this problem. And anybody with any thought past this work week can see that plainly. Who is driving this fucking bus!? The Democrats ought to be ashamed of themselves for pandering like this. Don't they have children?!

Ack. it's my stop. see ya.