We stayed in Williamsburg on the same street that Poppolardo had an Off The Grid in. It was pretty much full of hispanic gangs, 24 hour diners and for one week only, the whitest man in the world.
It's all dead arty and that, so has a lot of contemporary work on the walls.
Hit up a hotdog stand as soon as I arrived because I was pretty determined to get food poisoning as soon as possible. Sadly my bowel movements stayed solid and I knew I had to wait for my diarrhea dreams.
First night was Nick's birthday so we hooked up with his mates over here and got pretty loose. Turns out police aren't wild about people drinking on the streets and I got a ticket for having an open container and we're still unsure if I'll be able to get out of the country as I'm meant to appear at New York Court of Criminal Justice on the 9th of December.
On the second day we skated Chelsea Pier and the financial district but I forgot to bring my camera so try and imagine me doing lots of backside 180s and rock fakies and you've got the general idea of the shred.
On the second night all of the galleries and studios have an open house where you can go and see the work and drink free beers.
Turns out you're meant to dress pretty smart for the occasion and we ended up leaving after getting stared out by rich art collectors.
If you ever find yourself in New York go to the High Line. It's pretty much an abandoned trainline they turned into a park. It's really sick and free unlike 90% of other tourist things.
We went to a greasy diner where 90% of the other customers had gang tattoos on their hands. I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and paid $12.50 for a huge disapointment. Even more disapointing was that my bowel movements stayed fine afterwards.
So I ended another night getting too drunk and attempting to dance with a dog. This ended up with bite marks on my hand and the horrible feeling when you're rejected by an animal.
So the next night we chilled in the day because it was pissing it down then went over to the house of some of the local skaters. I ended up vomiting in their bathroom in the attempt to sober myself up but still managed to pass out on the Subway home.
I got really hyped on Zoo York mixtape before coming to New York and had my own Harold Hunter tribute and kept fried chicken in a napkin in my pocket. Due to the amount of whitey I had to give it away but Nick kept the dream alive.
We got up surprisingly early despite suffering from the worst hangover ever and very little sleep. We cruised across to LES skatepark which you might know from NY Manny Mania and the Harold Hunter Jams.
This years Slam 1 in a Million was there and they were dropping bombs down the double set, we watched for a bit but it they'd drawn a crowd of about 500 hundred kids hoping to get in the background of the footage.
After leaving LES we went on the hunt for food. Rusty is a connoisseur of eating for cheap and took us to a $1 dumpling shop in China Town.
As soon as I ordered the food I knew I'd found my match, a minute after eating the greasy dumplings my stomach started to gurgle and we had to have a time out from the shred while I destroyed a public restroom.
We headed to the Financial district via Brooklyn Banks so I could get a self indulgent photo. Pretty gutted it was blocked off but hopefully we'll return when it's finished.
We bombed through the streets on the way to Financial. The streets here are so smooth and cars don't mind you much so skating's a pretty quick way to get around, I did manage to nearly get ran over about 6 times but everyone else was paying enough attention that it wasn't a problem.
We wanted to skate Wallstreet but some hippies had decided to sit all over the plaza we were going to skate in an attempt to make the whole area smell of body odour. Some old woman got her boobs out and 90% of the protesters decided that maybe it was time to leave rather than being associated with someone who looked like they were made out of the same skin as a scrotum.
Rusty was psyched on her being topless so decided to dedicate the day to her and not wear a tshirt. I would have joined in but American women go wild for my lack of muscles and pale skin colour and I just wanted one day where I didn't have to fight off women.
So I filmed a very brief little montage because I was having too much fun skating street which is a fucking rarity for me.
Cheers to Ali and Leighton for letting me get drunk in their apartment and make a massive mess. Anders, Rusty, Kevin for taking us round and listening to my incessant questions about things I'd seen in videos. And everyone else who had to deal with my drunken craic.
Mellon