VAX was the king of the acid drop. A stunt performed by rolling your skateboard off a high ledge, keeping the board parallel with the street, and landing with ankle crushing glory on unforgiving concrete.
Does anyone acid drop anymore?
Seems so 1989 somehow.
The South Bank and Waterloo, where we smashed our trucks and wheels and chipped our decks as the homeless screamed and cursed and shouted at us through their mid-morning super-strength cardboard city deliriums.
Cold winds across the Thames, a sandwich at the Greek place where the owner challenged a gang of hoods who were robbing us of what we cherished most; our boards.
The Southbank where the city installed metal barriers blocking our terrain and in response we built a ramp from plywood liberated from a nearby building site thus defiantly grinded their metal barriers. Yes. The Southbank: The mecca of theatre, music, dance, the home of performance art.
That was our place: Southbank.
VAX earned his moniker through sponsorship with the vacuum cleaner manufacturers who mass-produced the almighty VAX cleaning machine. Some of us had sponsors from local skate shops, some were skating for Deathbox, the British board makers, but most of us were doing it because we needed the discipline of learning an art and our homes and schools were for the most part unwelcoming.
We never questioned why a domestic cleaning firm would sponsor a thirty-odd year old skateboarder. Why should we?
Rule number one?
Never question the street.
Watch VAX go.
The ledge, the height of a man’s head, above a flight of fifteen or so stairs at the Shell Centre Waterloo, VAX wearing his battered T-shirt bearing the logo of his sponsor, rolls, teeth gritted, reaches the edge, drops... Time stands motionless as he falls, knees bent slightly, eyes perfectly focussed, the sound of victory as his slime ball wheels hit the concrete and that beautiful whoosh of poetry in motion as he propels forward. Us unruly teenagers stop grinding our respective lips to clap and cheer “Go VAX! Yeah!”
The truth, as every unruly schoolboy knows, is that the acid drop is the first trick any skate kid learns, it is as easy as falling off a log, or rolling off a kerb. Any fool can do it. A brutishly simple trick, moreover a waste of a good ledge potentially decorated with the skill of an ollie impossible, the verve of a flip, or indeed the arrogance of a melancholy mute grab; the tricks we were mastering were complex.
So why cheer VAX?
Perhaps VAX didn’t pose a threat to us? Maybe VAX would never be in the pages of R.A.D or Skateboarding, were we humouring an older man living out some deluded dream? Were we taunting him?
No it wasn’t that.
The trick that we were applauding was not the acid drop it was VAX’s life choice. VAX, the same age as many of our fathers, had made a decision not to conform, not to be one of suit wearing dudes who looked down on us as they lost their hair in upmarket bistros choking down watercress salad and studying the Financial Times.
VAX was never going to be one of those guys, he was cut from different cloth. VAX knew that the City would one day fall. VAX was living the life he wanted to live.
VAX took chances, snaked around the streets, made his own agenda.
Years later I'd got the suit and tie job and the house in the suburbs, slumped on the sofa watching some brain numbing crap there's a knock at the door. Some old fool selling cleaning equipment door to door.
After closing the door a thought occurred.
No it couldn't be.
Could it?
I opened the front door a crack and took another look...
A traveling salesman skated away...
The Beat Goes On
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