Head up the west side of Manhattan on a bike, and things quiet down a lot around Riverside Park. Josh rode along on a black e-bike with one of those big rectangular deliverista backpacks full of Thai food, and a skateboard strapped to the front with a fraying bungee cord. It was late July, the sun was slouching above the palisades, and the air was starting to cool down.
He was not thinking about the view, or the food he was delivering from 86th street to 105th. Earlier in the day he’d gotten a clip of a bluntslide transfer into the gnarly rock bank in Battery Park City. The only thing on his mind was what to do with the footage. His last board sponsor, Diesel, folded after the dude who ran it left Manhattan and went back to New Jersey. The local Cons rep had flowed Josh some shoes over the last year, but only responded with emojis when Josh sent the clips he got in them, and hadn’t sent a pair in months.
It’s not much of a detour to cruise past the skatepark mid-delivery, and you never know when you’re gonna see one of the homies. It was his home turf. “Yo, J Drip!” someone called from the deck of the mini. He looked and gave a wave without making out who yelled out. Maybe AJ?
By the time he’d delivered the food, been stiffed on a tip, and got back to his aunt’s apartment he’d decided: hard post the clip. Two years back, when she moved to Puerto Rico with his cousin, Josh moved into her old crib in Harlem and later switch varial heel’d the Bond Street Gap. It made it into an edit for the Thrasher website. He had his own tag on there.
The nickname came over a decade ago, when he and the L.E.S. park were both young. He’d started skating on a paved volleyball court close to where he grew up in Queens, but once he started venturing into Manhattan, he didn’t look back. Some of the older dudes at the park gave him props on his heelflips, and started calling him J Drip as he grew into his style. He was young and green enough to not know whether it was a compliment at first, but once he got it, he spent years crisscrossing over the corner of the hip. People cheered when he landed shit.
Josh’s sessions spiraled out from the park: to the Seaport and Tompkins and the Pyramid Ledges and Soho. The year instagram added videos, he flooded @jaydrip with clips from around the city. He was still prodigiously ripping and posting with just under 3,000 followers, but switched to @jay.drp.exe in 2021.
He posted his clip from a twin bed that used to be his cousins, and tapped around instagram for another hour. He circled back to his notifications every time a heart popped up until he dozed off.
The next morning he woke up, grabbed his phone, and opened instagram back up. He scrolled through a few posts on the feed before the notifications popped up. 23 likes, 18 mentions.
He tapped the notifications and there were reposts of his clip, but someone also tagged him in a video of people riding bikes in a park, filmed by pointing a camera at youtube on a laptop screen. He wondered what the hell was going on, then it came across the screen: Jaydrpexe. He held his thumb on the screen and accidentally swiped while he was turning the sound on. The next one, again, was a video of a TV screen showing the same two women in matching bike helmets riding along. The voiceover said to ask your doctor about Jay-der-pixie, a once-daily non-drowsy medication that helps alleviate anxiety for users of certain ADHD medications.
He was still tapping around and focused on his screen as he walked into the kitchen. His roommate, who was also his uncle but not a blood relative, was sitting at the table talking into his laptop and having occasional spoonfuls of cereal. The uncle shooed Josh out of the room with his left hand, trying to keep it out of frame of whatever call he was on.
It was a sunny Friday in the late morning, and since he was barbacking at Mansions that night, Josh could spend the day skating instead of having to break out of the sesh to DoorDash. He gave up on breakfast at the crib — he’d been eating his uncle’s Frosted Flakes anyway — and headed downstairs with his board. He got on his bike and sent the clip to the Cons rep before he started to pedal.
When he got to Tompkins, the homie Jose was the only one skating. He dapped Josh up and went back to doing switch flips without stopping to chat. Josh warmed up, was already standing on back tails, and had checked his phone a dozen times by the time the next crew showed up. He knew one of them — dude works at Labor, what’s his name? It’s @dohdohpapi on IG. Josh never remembered his name but said hi anyway, and introduced himself to a couple of the other dudes while putting their stuff down. They were all from Jacksonville.
“Yo, sorry, you said your name is Josh, right?” One of the other dudes said. He had a greasy mullet and was skating some crazy Sauconys. “You look familiar.”
“I’ve been in a couple of Greg’s rubble edits on Thrasher,” Josh said, doubling the number of videos he’d been in. ”I’m J Drip.exe on IG if you’ve seen me on there.” Jose yelled out from over by the backstop: “jay, jay, jaydrpexe” Josh’s heart dropped. The mullet dude’s name was Drew.
“Dude,” Drew said, “That commercial played every other video last night on YouTube at the Airbnb. That’s crazy.”
Josh laughed along and said he’d seen it even though he hadn’t seen the whole thing, and then walked over to the basket of his bike for some water. Instagram had another ton of notifications when he picked up his phone: Greg reposted his bluntslide transfer, and he didn’t even film it! Four other people did too. One of them just posts like 12 stories a day though. A lot more people had posted pictures of Jdrpexe YouTube commercials on different screens and tagged him though. The Cons rep hadn’t liked it or read the message of the post Josh sent. Maybe it should have been a reel?
He got back to skating eventually, and started to get into a groove. Bluntslides had been feeling good, and he kept doing them. Ledges and flatbars, in a line if he was lucky. Kinda hoping that someone would notice and ask him about them. Or bring the clip up.
Nobody did, but they had a good sesh anyway. One of the Florida heads broke the nose off her board on a front shove, and eventually started to pack up and all head to Labor. Drew and Josh traded follows so that they could DM and link at LES after lurking at the shop. Josh sat on the bench closest to the bathrooms and the rest of the park, picked up his phone, and thought he heard one of the Floridians say something about “unc with the bluntslides” as they walked away.
He was still getting Jdrpexe notifications. Messages. Tags. He searched to see what account names he could switch to: J.Drip, Jay.drip, and Jay.drip.pdf, all taken. For a while he was lost in all of it. Tapping through stories, trying to figure out if the laughing emojis were with him or at him. Wondering if he could message someone to try and get a role in the next Jdrpexe commercial and at least get paid. No such thing as bad press, right?
The Cons rep posted a story skating with the two Primitive ams from Jersey skating the Seaward Park benches. Josh responded and asked if he was skating downtown; the bluntslide clip he sent hadn’t been seen yet though. The story was only 25 minutes old, and it hit him quickly: he could pull up on their sesh and get some face time. He hopped on his bike and headed fifteen blocks south, only to see a summer basketball camp going on. He sat on one of the benches and pulled his phone out again. No update from the Cons rep. What about the two dudes he was skating with? Neither followed him, but he followed them and looked to see if he could track them down by following a trail of stories. Neither had posted.
It was 1 in the afternoon and the sun was beaming. Josh decided to hit L.E.S.. A little shade would go a long way, plus he had to barback at 7:00. He texted Drew and hopped on his bike. When he got to the park, he put his things down before a few quick laps. No sign of the Florida crew, but when he got back to his bag he had a message that they’d already skated the park and were heading to the Banks. He realized that he didn’t know a single person skating around him, did a couple of his go-to’s, and called it a sesh pretty quickly.
He dodged runners and pedestrians on his bike all up the west side. Fuck that commercial. He was going to message Greg when he got back to the crib to see if he wanted to film a part together.
Josh could probably 5-0 the Police Plaza 16 if there was a camera on him, and it’d be enough to get put on real flow for Cons. Fuck a board sponsor too. He could keep buying decks out of someone else’s boxes, or maybe start his own brand.
As always, he detoured through Riverside and past the park. He waved and made eye contact with Ivan, one of the locals, who waved back and then yelled “Yo, jay, jay, jdrpexe”. Josh hopped in the shower to rinse off when he got home, and while walking from the bathroom to his room, his uncle yelled out. “Hey! You been eating my Frosted Flakes?”
