The weekend before Thanksgiving I decided to go on a trip to New York. I I found a round-trip ticket for $70 so I spoke to my friend Andres who lives in New Jersey, he offered me a place to stay. Before I got on the plane, Spirit Airlines is always a pain in the ass and made me leave my board, unless I paid a fee (not worth it, I just took my trucks and wheels). Once I got there they received me with some Thanksgiving leftovers. I was starving, I didn’t have any food all day, since I was trying to figure out where to leave my car and how to get to the airport.
The next day I got up, got my camera and board setup and went to New York City. It took me about 40 minutes to get to Manhattan. Over there I just cruised around, went to the Empire State building, went to a photography shop, got a couple of things for myself, visited Times Square, had a New York City pizza slice (that thang was huge) then before I went back to my friends house I got some falafel at this Turkish place I found in Manhattan. My phone actually died on me and I was lucky to remember how to get back to his house since I don’t live there. New Jersey is actually a small town so there’s barely any light and all streets look a like. Once I got to Andres’ house we hung out for a bit, but I was dead tired so I just passed out on his couch.
The following day they took me to a local skate park where I met up their friends Kamil, Sean, Trent and Dylan. We skated there for a little bit just to warm up, it was really cold that day especially coming from an 80° weather (in Florida) to a 40° or 50°weather in New Jersey.
We went to Kamil‘s place for a little bit. It was interesting to see how much he was into photography, he had a bunch of old cameras and he even has a machine to develop film, he also had a 16 or 18 mm film camera and it was cool to see so many old school cameras in one place.
We had some pizza, couple of beers and then went to a spot in New Jersey called the amphitheater, where there’s a really sick ledge that has an angle so you can just slide and then turn on the angle. They had some steps where Kamil did the frontside 180 kickflip which was pretty tall. By the way after that we went to another spot, where there was a ledge with an angle, it was perfect.
For my last day there we got up early and went to Brooklyn to a couple spots. There is a small skate park but it was for the little kids, right next to it there’s a basketball court with a ledge. It was pretty awesome, across the bridge there was more ledge spots and then there was a huge skate spot under the two bridges there in Brooklyn. Once we finish getting there we went to LES Skate Park.
There was a lot of good skaters out there it was a fun time. That’s where I met Juan Hernandez who was killing that skate park. It was funny to me how down in Miami you tell any local skater if they’re down for pictures or to film and it’s kind of a big deal for them to agree or even want to go shooting anywhere, it’s pretty difficult most of the time. Now outside of Miami I’ve noticed anyone who sees a camera actually gets hyped instantly and they’re always down to either film or shoot photos so it’s pretty interesting to see how people react to a camera in different states.
I want to thank the guys from Mustard Skateboards for the fun time and showing me all the spots around and Andres for being such a good friend and always being there for me.
