jackassworld

Every dog has its day and so it came to pass on Thursday in Santa Cruz that we somewhat had ours. Most everyone woke up feeling a little behind the eight ball and never really caught up with whatever half-ass idiom I can throw in here next. Luckily our day wasn’t that severe in nature with our first stop being the train trestle made famous in the movie Lost Boys. Being the joyful dicks that we are, Preston Lacy was ushered down to the bridge to see if he could conquer his acrophobia and make it across the tracks without stroking out, which, to his credit, he did (there and back again, in fact), but not without secreting a bucket of sweat in the process.

Following a run in with a quartet of drifters that were surprisingly well versed in the lore of the Lost Boys and jackass, we zigzagged our way over to the new Wormhoudt public skate park facility through a web of Santa Cruz streets that were surely mapped out by a city planning commission of tripped-out stoner hippies. It was here that most everyone realized they were a bit sore and beleaguered from the previous days combination of skateboarding and driving, and the further combination of frying pan-like conditions, a pinball-like street course, and massively huge bowls (and full-pipe) didn’t help matters. Still, we frittered away the minutes at the park until we made the mystery decision to go visit the Mystery Spot—the premier Santa Cruz tourist trap located up in the redwood outskirts of the city.  What exactly is the Mystery Spot? I don’t know. They couldn’t tell us. Supposedly no one can. But it’s nestled up on a hillside and it makes you dizzy and nauseous with its strange twist of physics. So we all basically paid five bucks to get carsick but not in a car. The only thing that wasn’t a mystery about this spot is that it is precisely the kind of place that Ehren will wind up as a tour guide later in his professional life.

The whole optically unsettling thing being demonstrated here at the Mystery Spot is that the board they’re all standing on is actually running uphill. So, in theory, Wee Man should look even smaller when he’s standing on the far right—not the far left.

The last mystery spot on our Santa Cruz itinerary was finding Derby Park, a classic ’80s skate creation featured in the second Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade video, Future Primitive. It’s strikingly different than most parks built nowadays, which makes it refreshingly fun. And the fact that it’s located in a genuine park with trees and shit makes it all the more better. The locals here have all the kinks and lines dialed in and can rip the place like no other, so most of us just sat back in the shade and watched. Perhaps the Mystery Spot had affected our crew in an even more mysterious manner, because our resident blue-eyed diehard skateboarder, Mike Kassak, took a break from his board to sit and snap some photos of the locals, while our resident jolly diehard filmer, Rick Kosick, took a break from his camera to sit on a bench and not shoot the locals. Mysterious indeed.