Another Spot Down

Since Thursday was my birthday (33, bitches) I took Friday off, giving me the kickass 3-day weekend and a day to recover from some birthday fun.

With a day off and the weather holding steady, Chris and I headed for an old favorite spot in NW DC known as Crackhead Park. It's a tiny city park that never got used for anything except smoking crack and activities related to smoking crack, some of which may or may not involve a plastic swingset. Hence the name of Crackhead Park.

Eventually skaters found it realized it was a decent spot, and the skating pretty much ran the crackheads out. It has what was supposed to be a fountain in the middle of the park, but there was no water in the fountain, so it was a good, smooth skating surface. It has a little step manual pad, a couple of ledges, and lots of sketchy-looking puddles, smears and smells. Not a great place to fall, but a decent spot. Best thing was that since it was mainly used by crackheads and other park people, nobody cared if we skated there.

Then somebody built condos next door. Expensive condos. And yuppies moved in. And then the yuppies had to ruin some good things, because that's usually what yuppies do. There had been a few times that somebody came out on the balcony and asked us to quit skating, but now word was they were just calling the cops. Pansies.

I really couldn't believe that Crackhead was a bust now. Even though we haven't skated there as often as we did, the times I've been there recently have been pretty chill and nobody tried to run us out.

Until today. After skating for about an hour, we saw some cops drive by, but I didn't think anything of it. Then when they circled around and parked right in front of the condo, I realized we should have left earlier. Sorry, Chris.

After getting patted down and our IDs checked, we were released by the 3 cops (seriously, 3? as insult to injury, one was this fatass on a bike that was probably stopping for a breather or a bean burrito). The main cop (who had the worst chinstrap beard ever) was just itching to charge us with Unlawful Entry because we climbed the fence to get in. Our reasoning that 'the fence was unlocked sometimes' didn't seem to sway him. Once he fully groped both of our asses during the pat down, he seemed to be satisfied with letting us off with warnings. Asshat.

We rallied on, picked up Ryan and Jason, and moved to friendlier spots for a great birthday session. Chris got some sweet photos (the one below of Ryan blasting ollies on the super-skinny quarterpipe), and it more than made up for the early drama.




















But a special birthday Eat Me for Officer Chinstrap. Nice work on protecting a spot where people crap on the ground and smoke rocks. Since I'm on your super-secret list and in line for a body cavity search if you catch me at Crackhead, I'm done. No more Crackhead for me.