THE TIME WE SKATED REAL FAR FOR NO GOOD REASON
Words by Zach Baker
Photos by Zach Baker and Adam Abada
I lived in Boston for five years. Sometime in 2009 I was most likely skating home from work and was staring off and thinking about skating or about how New York is cool or something and then I thought of something stupid, which happens a lot, so I called Abada to see if it was still stupid. I told him about this stupid thing and he agreed that it was indeed still very, very stupid but he was down to do it with me.
I knew he would be. He’s definitely the only imaginable homie who would ever entertain such a half-baked, hare-brained scheme: skating from Boston to NYC.
Boston to Wrentham
Fast-forward two years and there we were: sitting in an abandoned bar seven miles outside of Boston, waiting for the rain to stop. With 20 miles of skating left for the day, we put on our ponchos, get some grocery bags for our feet, and started hoofin’ it back down Rt. 1A.
We each had a backpack, a shared tent, a dickload of camera gear, and two normal street setups with hard-ass wheels. We figured it would take two or so weeks.
After two hours we’d walked maybe four or fives miles. The rain stopped and the sun started to dry the ground out, then we eventually started skating again. We met up with a Patch reporter in Walpole, MA, who bought us blueberry beers and asparagus. The Olympics were on and the bar. At 9PM, we got back onto Rt. 1A for eight miles of skating down the most country, least lit, no shoulder-havin’, drunk-drivin ass two lane road we’d ever seen. We would push for a few seconds until we saw headlights then we’d jump over the guardrail into the tall-ass grass, rinse, then repeat. We got to Wrentham around 11PM, where we stayed with our friend Sam’s dad. David fed us chicken while we drank beers and listened to his friends playing the didgeridoo, then sat in a hot tub, then went to sleep.
Wrentham to Providence
On our way to Providence the next day, we skated a ledge in Plainville. We also skated Pawtucket Skatepark, which is shaped like a sock for the Pawtucket Red Sox. My backpack fell apart so I MacGuyvered it with string. The Pawtucket park locals were tight as fuck, as they were also in favor of burning broccoli in public spaces.
We stayed in Providence for three days. My mom’s friend put us up the first night. She treated us to all the hamburgers and cookies a man could ask for. We kicked it with our friend Jackie who lives in an artist space downtown called AS220. We then drank with and were fed by our friend Roz. My cousin Paul met us at a metal show/experimental two-act play. That play was freaky as fuck. We met a dude named Will who ripped. He helped build such parks as Fairfield and Pawtucket, had mad knowledge on the history of skating in the state, and showed us some chill slappy curbs and how well he can do frontside airs. We skated the RISD ledges and that big monument with a thick squad from New Hampshire. We got belligerent drunk with my cousin Paul and then we fell asleep. When we woke up, we went to Narragansett.
Providence to Gansett
That morning I thought I was going to throw up every drop of fun that I’d imbibed over the last few days. In East Greenwich we had lunch and checked out Civil Skateshop. Somewhere after EG the road became a full-blown highway and that was scary as fuck. We got off the highway eventually and both ate shit bombing the same hill. Our friend Becca met us. We purified ourselves in the waters of Narragansett then dressed our wounds with fisherman’s platters and reefer. Becca was bummed to find that her good friends had morphed into complete crust punks.
Gansett to Block Island to New London to Madison
We went on vacation to Block Island for a day. The ferry took us because hoverboards don’t work on water. We drank on varying beaches and skated the skatepark. The skatepark was a blistering slab of rusted metal, but somehow Adam mustered the moves to film a line, while the young beach bums on scooters blasted can-cans and tailwhips like you wouldn’t believe. We bought canned shit and brought it to these bluffs and ate it all with crackers and pot and whiskey then slept in our tent.
We took the ferry back to the most daunting part of our trip: Connecticut. We skated to Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison. It was 30 miles and those miles sucked dick. We got to the park at dusk and were treated well by the family whose campsite we accidentally camped on.
Madison to New Haven
The road to New Haven was smooth as shit and pretty flat. We blasted there pretty hard. We got there mid-afternoon, which was good, because its pretty much the worst place in America. Yale is baby thighs, while the New Haven hoods are trife and heinous. We stayed at the La Quinta hotel where we chilled poolside with an ex-con and a veteran/former baseball player getting high as fuck. The ex-con shared his Natural Ice cans with us, we shared our Jim Beam with him, and the toothless ex-ballplayer came along for the ride. I don’t remember falling asleep but I remember waking up and wanting to get the fuck out of New Haven.
New Haven to Bridgeport
People along the way told us that Bridgeport was the trifest place in Connecticut””worse than New Haven. But we had a blast! Bobby and Kerry at Day One Skateshop were the shit. We got there and they were waiting for us with beers and fresh tees. They took us to skate Rampage Skatepark and drink one million beers. Kerry put us up at his place and we thanked him by clogging the toilet. Bridgeport fucking ruled.
Bridgeport to Stamford
Got stopped by cops in Greenwich outside of a Maserati dealership for zig-zagging down the street.
Got stopped again in Harrison, NY for filming without a permit. They searched Abada because he was wearing socks with weed leaves on them. They didn’t find any because it was in my fannypack. Yeah, I had a fannypack.
2nd Nature in Mamaroneck is chill as fuck. That dude Shaq is tight. They hooked us up with t-shirts and we kicked it a minute then ate burgers.
We left and went to New Rochelle. Then we were in the Bronx. Then we were in Harlem.
In our eyes, the move was to make a killer movie about the freaky shit between two cities; to take a closer look at what and who the hell is out the window of that Fung Wah bus that we’d each taken thousands of times. Skateboarding is the best thing to do and the American Northeast is the best place to do it. That’s why we did it.
The short film Backstreet Atlas and updates about the film are available at www.backstreetatlas.com
