Nora Robertson

The Glenhaven skate park is very close to my house. Late last August, I was sitting on my back patio and I heard this loud creaking sound like a screen door.  I thought maybe someone was standing in the front pushing the broken doorbell, so I came out the front with my glass of red wine and found a couple guys skating over the top of the bench I sometimes see an old lady from across the courtyard rest on while walking her grey tabby cat on a little neon nylon leash.

I live in a ’40′s garden townhouse that’s part of a condominium association.  Like many condos, there’s a high concentration of the elderly, and they are concerned about safety. I once was asked to not leave my back door to my townhouse unlocked while I was gone because someone might crawl over the 12 foot wall between the buildings and break in.  I’m not sure how Lee, a nice old guy who was wearing a Hawaiian print shirt and a knee brace, knew it was unlocked.  I think he was walking around to other people’s back doors and checking.

The two skaters stopped when they saw me.  I stood there and sipped my wine on the front steps.  They went back to inexpertly riding the rails of the bench.

“That’s cool,” I said.

The blonde guy in the blue trucker’s hat nodded and smiled.  The other one was falling off the bench midway.  It felt a little awkward watching them, but I wanted to see what they could do.  Neither one of them were Tony Trujillo, that’s for sure.  But it was still sort of cool that they were doing this here, in the middle of the Binford.  I feel like a young kid around here most of the time. Though at the same time, I am a person with a mortgage and responsibilities.

Skateboarders Outside from Nora Robertson on Vimeo.

“Where are you coming from?” I asked.

“Glenhaven,” the blonde guy said. “We were walking back and saw the bench. It’s perfect because the rails are made out of metal.” Apparently this makes it just like a stair railing in terms of friction.

Glenhaven Skate Park was opened by the city council three years ago just over next to Madison High School. You can see the mayor above at the opening ceremony. Portland is a bit of an incubator for skate parks. Burnside skate park, which Tony Hawk set his skateboarding video game in, has been featured in Paranoid Park and was also the first project of Mark “Red” Scott of Dreamland Skateparks in collaboration with several other folks. Burnside was built without permission though it was later sanctioned by the city. Dreamland went on to design skate parks all over the world. You might say Portland is pro-skater. I used to live next to a guy who’d had three major concussions and might die if he suffered another one, but he still skated.

“Cool,” I said. “That’s really cool.”

“When you came out, we thought you were going to yell at us,” he said.

“Oh no,” I said. “I just wanted to see what you were doing.” I did want to see what they were doing, and also I didn’t want to be that person who tells the skate kids to go away. I suppose this is the same part of me that used to shoplift caviar when I was 15 and died my hair orange.

A few nights later, I came out dressed up to go to a reading and saw them at it again.

“You going on a date?” the blonde one asked.

“Something like that,” I said. “Looking good!”

The next week, I came home from work and saw the bench half off the sidewalk onto the street and the blonde guy spraying it down with wax. They were using it as a railing basically. I didn’t say anything but gave them a bit of a look. I wasn’t sure if the condo people were going to be happy about this, or whether they would know that I had encouraged this. The skaters saw me looking and pulled the concrete leg of the bench up onto the sidewalk and moved it into its normal position.

I never saw them again.