Words and photos by Zach Baker.
Took a weird trip that went pretty fuckin good. It was me and Will and Elijah. This was Will’s idea. He was in town for a while flailing his immigrant work visa around and was like let’s go to Philly and maybe DC. It was a good idea. We have people in these places. Wouldn’t even need an Airbnb. He wanted to bring Jake Cormier. This too was a good idea. I’ve skated with Jake Cormier. He’s a perfect guy. The four of us left for Philly on a Friday. We didn’t leave very early. This, and so much more, was good for squad.
My dad lived in Philly but he got laid off and was in California interviewing for a different job, meaning we had his lil condo to ourselves. Good for team. The street he lived on was closed for construction that wasn’t actually happening. He lived right by where the Big Three used to be. We drank on his street and grilled every night. The grill ($15 USD) proved great for gang. Muni was good to us. Penny was good to us. The rail at Cecil was so fucking money for team that we had to grill shrimp there to celebrate and then drove straight to Atlantic City.
I just feel like I should say, because maybe some of you don’t know so much about Elijah Odom, that he’s a) one of the most amenable people I’ve ever met, and b) fucked on a skateboard. He’s like clean as hell but he’s also so fuckin hesh. Just remarkable. It’s weird, it makes me want to speak in Thrasher blurbs, “This guy’s a wrecking ball full of stoke for all the homies to take part in basking in the full send of what pure street skateboarding is all about.” Or something.
But so uh, the casino was pretty bad for team, I’ll be honest, but Margaritaville wasn’t half-bad. We went back to Philly. That over rail into bank way up north was gone when we got to it, so we went and found another over rail. This other over rail treated us just fine, so we went and watched a walk-off home run at a Phillies game. Then we drove to Jay Burles’.
Jay and his wife Annie put us up for days. Jay is the only other person in the world I’ll meet from Cornwall, Ontario aside from Will Marshall. Jay Burles also made the Top of the World video. Right now, Jay Burles is a photographer for the CBC, which is a pretty mental undertaking in a time when Halls of Congress get raided, people shoot people en masse on a more-than-weekly-basis, and no place on earth is immune from an onslaught of some kind of natty disaster or another. Lucky for us, the only natty disaster we had to deal with was that brief moment in the recent past when that invasive species of Chinese moth touched down and the government wanted us to kill them. Whatever happened with that? Anyway, DC, and the people in it, were flawless to us.
I’m sorry this story doesn’t have any crazy police chases or anecdotes about someone getting drunk and punching the guy in front of him in line at Wawa. But it’s true: nothing went wrong, which is remarkable. It was a perfect trip.
They’re not all perfect. One time guys tried to blow up the van. One time, in one day, Tyler jumped off a roof, blew out both his knees, then Tape slipped on barnacles and got a staph infection. Bad things happen all the time to sweet people everywhere. But not us, not then. And that’s awesome.
This was a trip for the next Alltimers video. It will be out probably at the end of the Summer. Or beginning of the Fall. It’s gonna be a full length even though I don’t know what that means anymore. My dad got the job and now lives where Corey Duffel is from. Maybe we’ll put the video on TikTok. The End.
