Happiness is the deferred fulfillment of a prehistoric wish.

Things I have done lately:

* Visited London. Saw Caireen and interviewed at the Institute of Education.

* Attended an Alvar Alto study day and exhibit at the Barbican.

* Saw two different Surrealism exhibits.

* Saw Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others).

* Skated the South Bank.

* Saw Whites Grounds.

* Finished The Golden Bowl.

* Came home.

* Recieved the rejection letter.

Acid Washed Art

So I decided to head over to the Volcomics show at Fuse on Saturday with Camille.



There were some pretty sick illustrations by a couple of my favorite artists: Todd Bratrud and Michael Sieben.

Bratrud:




Sieben:








I almost bought this one by Mike Aho, but somebody beat me to it:


A couple of random others that I liked:




Rodney was there getting his sauce on with the open bar...and Camille is always ready for the impromptu photos:


So I mass texted like 18 people to go skate yesterday and only two people ended up coming through: Scottie Schwartz and Billy Rohan. Less people than I envisioned, but it was a dope sessions nonetheless, even with getting rained on. I will not divulge anything more about yesterday than saying that Billy is a monster and can pretty much skate ANYTHING! On a random note, we came across a few of these squirrel-fox things...



Speaking about wildlife, Camille and I were walking through Central Park a few days ago and hear this dude outside of one of the plant nursery things (where they keep all the plants they are going to put into Central Park) yelling, "Hey you! Get out of there!" We thought he was just being really crazy, but it turns out that he was just being sort of crazy. There was a raccoon munching on the plants right there in the middle of the afternoon...no shame.


(*Sorry about the horrible photo, but the zoom on my phone camera is not the best)



^^^Aren't those pants swass??? Acid washed jeans are making a comeback, I think. And this guy is leading the revolution:

Brotherly Love

So I made a trip out to Philly this past weekend with my friend Budi via the Chinatown Bus.

We stayed with Arif in his condo near downtown Philly. He was kind enough to let us crash AND drive us around from spot to spot AND take photos.


Arif

The first stop Saturday morning was FDR skatepark.



It was my fist time skating FDR, and it was definitely an easier skate than Burnside, but gnarly nonetheless. Too bad there were mad BMXers up in the spot...

Next stop was the Ghetto Banks in North Philly. The place is sick, but we almost got robbed by a 10 year old hoodrat. After he was getting mad that I wouldn't give him $5 and telling some kid on a bike to go get his cousin (or something) I decided it was time for us to jet before we got ourselves into a situation not worth being in.


Budi - Kickflip Fakie before the flee

We went to some spot at Temple and got kicked out before we even put our boards down, so we decided to head to Cecil B. Moore to skate a bit before leaving Temple. We got kicked out of there after about half an hour.


Tailslide Fakie over a gap in a line I was trying when we got kicked out.


Budi - Manny

After 3 failed skate sessions we decided to head back to a spot a block up the street from Arif's place that we found while getting breakfast.



Budi - 10 foot long frontside boardslides!



I got a dork line...typical.

Then we took a trip over to the Art Museum to skate the banks there.


I only got a hand full of attempts before getting rained on.



We had to huddle under this tent thing until the rained stopped. Totally killed the rest of the day for skating.

Overall it was super fun though and makes me anticipate the next one that much more. Props to Budi for motivating and Arif for hooking it up!