Renegade Renege

About a year ago, me and a homie decided we would try to build a little ghetto bank-style tranny on a skateable wall at a temporarily abandoned office building. Despite recognizing that I, at least, am pretty much hopelessly inept with concrete--I have a track record of really bad work in this area--we figured we'd take a few short cuts anyway. So, we grabbed a 2x4, bought a couple sacks of Kwikcrete and headed over to the place. I'm guessing about an hour later (we did have to come back and add some grout) we had this relatively successful little wall ride spot that turned out to be super fun to ride.

We just slapped the 2x4 down for backfill and threw the Kwikcrete on top. Burnside, Cachagua land, FDR and Bordertown all rolled into one? Well, not quite. But we thought it was pretty funny in retrospect that we could walk out in broad daylight on a busy avenue, act like we knew what we were doing (as previously noted, we didn't), and get a little spot built. The thing only lasted about two weeks before the building was rented out again and the new tenants knocked the bank off the wall. Like everything else, it seems, I got to skate it twice. This may not have been a life-changing DIY, but, as the cliche goes, it was fun while it lasted. I definitely wish it was still around.

A few of my geographically distant friends who pride themselves in doing concrete (or at least knowing how to!) quickly pointed out what an "amateurish" job we did, to which the only honest response was: "no shit." In the end, the thing worked, so why sweat the aesthetics?  And at least we had something new to skate for a while. The experience didn't exactly lead to a barrage of renegade DIY crete being poured all over the east coast. In fact, far from it. My son was born, homie moved, and no one's seemed to have the time or ability to get anything new going since. Hindsight calls into question pretty much every decision, and there's no doubt that--had we known the building would be rented within a couple of weeks--we would have planned differently. On the other hand, you could argue that we took advantage of the exact opportune moment to build the thing and skate it. 

The underlying moral I took out of all this was simple: if you get a chance to build something (I realize the term "build" is a bit of an overstatement here), do it. You can't assume you're going to have such an opportunity again. And, in an age where everyone but me seems to have mastered the art of working with concrete, I'm glad we didn't stop to think about whether or not we were doing it right and just got something--however ephemeral--done. Not everything leads down some inevitable, linear historical path to bigger and better. But, to follow the inference here, there's no way of telling if you don't try.