When I’m practising a bit of gratitude, one of the things I’m grateful for is ‘my’ skateboard run. From the intersection of Karangahape, Newton, Great North & Ponsonby Roads – down along Ponsonby and Jervois Road home. I do it whenever there’s a free ride to the top of the hill, which includes taking one of the family cars to the mechanics in Pollen Street, or anyone else driving a car past or close to the top. I’ve been known to catch a bus. On days like today, I’ll even walk. I’ve been doing it for over 20 years.
I’m on my third board.
The first one, the one that started it all was a ‘corporate gift’. ( I’d skated like everyone else on the North Shore in the 1970’s, but it never really stuck until this happened.)
We made an ad I wrote for Potato chips with a beautiful dude called Adam Strange. He was the director, I think it was when he was at Silverscreen. There was skateboarding in it and some special effects. It was the early days of Flame digital effects, and Adam was the man for the job, because as well as all the creative and technical talent, he was cool. And he surfed and skateboarded. Thinking now, Adam and his mates were probably at the very forefront of the kind of retro vibe in surfing that’s become really strong these days – riding old shapes from the seventies, old 60’s mals and the like. Cool as shit. And they had these long skateboards they were riding.
Gliding down roads like Symonds Street at night. Crafting these beautiful plywoood planks, hand cutting the grip tape into cool patterns, wearing fruity clothes and hats. Pre hipster. There were two boards on set of the ad, one had grip tape hibiscus flowers up it’s length, quite intricate, and the other was more racing striped in nature. That was the one Adam gave to me. I had it for years and when it finally gave up, I replaced it really quickly. I didn’t want to not have a skateboard in my life.
Adam was killed by a shark at Muriwai in 2013. We weren’t like super close friends or anything, but it warms me that I think of him every time I skateboard down Ponsonby Road. Just that you can brush up against someone in life and they can give you something that stays with you, I hope, forever.
Eta Ripples Television Commercial. 1999
You can get a bit of shit from the street skaters for riding a long skateboard. But it’s been a while since someone with baggy pants yelled out of the back of a stickered Toyota Surf: “Do a kickflip you loser !” I’m happy to take it on the chin. I’d so love to be able to do a kick flip. Or even just an Ollie.
But I’m happily stuck in my groove, just gliding down the footpath throwing turns on my long(ish) Sector 9. And at least I know what kick flips and ollies are.
My guess is that the altitude of Ponsonby Road drops at least ten metres along its length between Karangahape Road and 3 Lamps. The steepest drop is at the beginning of the run. I didn’t actually discover this until one year when they closed the road for the Hero Parade. Previously I had always started at the top of Richmond Road, because that was the loop when I used to do my walk / skate with Sheba The Wolf Princess at night when we first bought our house in Kelmarna Ave. She’d run behind me as I skated along.The ‘new’ bit is a highlight of the run, especially if it goes well because it sets up the vibe for the rest of the way down the hill.
As far as speed is concerned, for me, it’s all about ‘enough’. You want to be gliding at such a speed that you don’t have to push constantly, but you’ve got enough power to lean into some turns, generate more momentum and basically keep going. Speed management is the technical term I think. Cruising bro. I sure as hell don’t want to come off. A fracture an my age would be calamitous. Returning to the positive outcomes, when you get everything right, it feels really nice. Feet on the right place on the board, board on the right part of the footpath, using the natural gradient and the occasional push, at the right time, to basically, be just like the song…
Then she’ll know you’re an asphalt athlete
A downhill grade, man, will give you a kick
But if the sidewalk’s cracked, you better pull out quick
Why don’t you go sidewalk surfing with me.
There’s another thing that makes it even more like actual surfing: Pedestrians and cars. They kind of add the variable. Depending on the pedestrians, you might not get to take the line you really want. So there are consequences, changes to the speed management programme, you have to do these little recoveries. And of course when there are cars, it’s game over. I’m not crazy.
I like to start on the K Road side of Ponsonby Road. On the cross signal, you push hard across the crossing, hit the little ramp up onto the footpath, turn left gently then hard right, maybe with another push as you come out of that turn, you can glide down to Williamson Ave with maybe just one or two more pushes. It just needs a bit of luck with the lights and cars at the top of Crummer Road. There are places where you can ride a little higher on the footpath, little slopes out of dairies, dips into driveways. You can use these to generate a bit more energy. There are often bins to throw a turn around. Using obstacles to narrow down your options and make things a bit more critical is fun. It’s always different. Which is why, the whole time, you’re tuned into to every that’s going on around you, eyes are up. One is keenly aware of the surrounding area. Not only is it safer, you can see the sweet spots coming. Or going. This makes it very similar to actual surfing. The presence of people makes the sidewalk more liquid.
Top of Williamson, you can throw a hard, wide turn down the hill then there’s a cool little rampy bit outside a shop, you can come off that, throw big fat turn in the driveway by the Countdown, that sucks up all the speed and you roll to a stop back up by the pedestrian crossing. You’re breathing now. It’s a legitmate workout too by the way. It’s not an hour of Muay Thai, but it does get you going.
Wait for the crossing signal again. Time it so you’re infront of the pedestrians on your side of the road, but have given the ones on the other side enough time to leave room for you to go round them and get up the little slope, which you hit in the middle of quite a tight ‘S’ turn, push a couple of times, and you’re on the way past the Ponsonby Pool Hall and the Foodcourt as well as a couple of vanilla flavoured homewares shops.
Outside the foodcourt the footpath rises up a bit and then there’s pronounced dip as it caters for where Pollen Street hits Ponsonby Road, there’s even a fat bit of brand new footpath there that’s banked a little bit and you can throw a nice big turn, cross Pollen Street and blast off towards MacKelvie.
Right off MacKelvie, you can hit another little bank with room for a couple of nice turns before you glide to a stop at the lights at the top of Richmond Road. It’s more crowded here, but you really want some speed and a gap in the pedestrian traffic, because outside SPQR, there’s about 10 to 12 meters of footpath that’s new and smooth, and gently sloped, maybe 1:3 up towards the road. You can do about 3 or 4 legitimately carvey turns, come off the slope with a bit of speed and whizz past the restaurant, no doubt reflected, at one of the outside tables, if not in someones mirrored Aviators, perhaps their champagne bucket or the tin they keep their Cocaine in if it’s on the table. Which it probably would be. On bad days, a herd of Scooters waiting here for their next rider might get in the way, but if the day is up and moving, say after 10 AM, they’re generally not there. They’re under some goober in his stovepipes and no socks and leather shoes on his way somewhere.
The top of Brown Street as the same kind of deal as Pollen Street, there’s a good turn on offer there. Then it’s pretty mellow as it flattens out towards the old Fire Station, but there is a good little bank just before that outside the Trade Aid Shop and Westpac. So you do invest in a couple of good hard pushes.
From here there’s a bit more pushing, a little rise just about into the courtyard at Prego, the option of the car park at Flying Fish and the drive through at KFC before a slight bank outside some other, also vanilla, homewares shop. If you push on the outside of a turn, you can throw the the turn with a bit of power, then push again as you come out of that into the next one, side to side down the footpath. This feels really nice if you get into an even rythym. Then you can roll down the top bit of O’Neill street. One way, nothing coming up. That’s quite good, then down into Tole Street for some big wide turns into the setting sun. Walk back up to the footpath and just glide down the mellow section, breathing deeply as we head into 3 Lamps.
On the way through 3 Lamps, I’m always remembering, super fondly, my boy Joe and I skating together one day when he was about 11 and him saying “When I can Ollie, I’m going to Ollie those” about the rows of paving stones that break up the sidewalk there. A potent reminder that skateboarding is an extraordinary vehicle for kids to learn how to persevere with a problem or challenge until it is overcome. Again and again.
Through the shops there are a couple of places for big turns around the bins, before hitting Jervois Road with a big sort right to left S turn and down past the Police Station with a couple of turns before stopping at the Redmond Street crossing. Stopping is always a big forehand turn out of the slope here. There are a couple of good rises outside the dairy, and a good driveway by Shahi, and another little bank outside the Drycleaners. It flattens off and with a few pushes, we’re around the corner at the top of Curren Street and by the time we hit Stebbings, there shouldn’t be any more pushing required. It’s a little bit steeper here. And a few roads to cross. With good speed management I can get all the way to the bottom no pushing, no stopping. Just carving.
I learnt the other day that driving a big truck up and down the country, the idea is to see how long you can spend not doing anything other than turning. They monitor it. How much can we do with no braking, no accelerator ? – because over the million miles plus you’ll do in your truck – it will save a fortune. Surfing a few hundred tonnes down State Highway One must be awesome.
If there’s a pedestrian or a kid on a bike taking up footpath space, you pick up speed because you can’t burn off the energy in a turn. So you next turn is more critical – whenever that is – you can make it. Can’t turn. Go too fast. Speed is not relaxing.
The BP is there as safety if you’re going too quick, usually because of a human obstacle where you could have turned when the footpath got wider between the trees – you can carve one off into the garage, but you want to keep a bit of speed because once you’ve crossed John Street, which is quite fun if you’re moving quickly enough, it’s a really good section. You have to keep turning, and there’s obstacles. Like restaurant chairs and tables and people and their food and drink. But just before Ardmore Road there’s a couple of quite random bumps you can turn off, little backhand rise and fall kind of thing, and then outside the Ardmore Dairy, the footpath rises towards the road and there’s a rubbish bin to turn around. A big left, before outside the takeway on the other side of the footpath another little ramp up into a shop to turn off, going right. Then that’s about it. Another succesful run with nothing broken.
I just glide past the cafe I never go to since ‘The incident with the property developer’, my two local dairies and the pharmacy, maybe one last little turn to throw by the crossing at the top of Wallace Street and I’m pretty much home. It’s taken no more than 15 minutes. During lockdown we skated from the top of Kelmarna, but with live cars it’s just a bit silly. (Weirdly, doing all this on the actual roads during the lockdown just wasn’t as good. The wide roads giving you so much space you never have to adapt like you do on the footpath. Which was an interesting discovery.) So I just walk down to home from there. And every time I’m thinking the same thing: This just way to much fun for a dude in his fifites to be having.
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