running from the law, the press, and the parents

is your name michael diamond?

nah, my name's clarence. 

call it content. call it a dump. either way, i have way too many photos on my computer's hardrive. so much so that photoshop struggles to open up so i might as well put it all to some use and commit the heinous act of #posting. I dont have any longform words to say other than this is going to be one of those round up posts. when im feeling sentimental in a totally non-cornball way - thats when you can get those long form sentimentality #posts. until then, skateboarding is what it is - wandering around with some weirdos.

joel - nocturnal pop shuv.

john john - mellow front blunts.

chillers.

its tough being epic in a world of fail - mikey

rashad - backside flip over the can. u street knights.

sinquan - when im hurling expletives at red lights, im always talkin to you...

...and everytime i light my cigarrette, i hope that your heart's burnin too.

tom with a fast one to strike out the side. this is fucked.

buy the ticket, take the ride, pay your dues.

wayne - backtail.

 

dylan - insanely fucked up 5050.

 

he said hold up real quick.

 

ok i think that's enough for now. don't ask me what im doing because chances are i'm on my bike with a skateboard and a camera bag strapped to my back. in a way, its a stagnant habit. habitual routines patterned sort of like baseball. 3 strikes, 3 outs, 3 tries - or you load the count and hit foul balls till you either land or roll an ankle and give up. 

on the first day of baseball season, I was sitting at pulaski wrapped in two sweatshirts. when the last day of baseball season comes, i'll be sitting at pulaski watching the sun dip below the trees lining fountain side. it breaks your heart, it's designed to break your heart. 

a dc minute

 What exactly are you trying to say?

Interestingly enough, I don't think I'm trying to say anything. Things just look cool. Takes a real poster mindset to admit that. Too many things are happening at once and its happening right in front of your face. Sensory overload to the point of withdrawal and the point of intent is lost. So what's the intent here? Well, sometimes I think its good idea to note what you think is cool. At the moment for me its slow shutter speeds at dusk, turkey and swiss on a bagel, and Marisa Tomei. 

One thing I always found to be cool were those "New York Minute" spreads that ran in Transworld during the late 90's.

I take the quick and easy way out. 
I'm trying to work on that.

Friends come and go. 
A good friend will change your life.

I rode the subway. wow.

I cleaned my place. big fun.

I hung out on my roof. loser.

I had pizza for christmas dinner. great.

I drank some bubbles. original.

I shot photos. yee-haw.
A girl and I decided to just be friends. yeah, christmas sucked.

The series was a product of Ted Newsome, then art director at TWS. He struck a cord when describing the relationship between skateboarding, space, and the emotional effect those sorts of things have. Any one second documentation of friends sitting on a curb rolling up a spliff or a group 7 deep pushing down u-street to go get greek food. It's also the heavy conversations that only a good friend will bring up during the lull of skating flat. It's because those friends care about you. Granted, it is a little corny and academics are able to put the physicality of skateboarding in better terms, but I'm a sucker for some sentimentality! It's relatable. 

In the emotional whirlwind of your early twenties, through deteriorating friendships and coming to terms with the notion that someday you will in fact get old, its kind of nice to look at a piece of media that appears on the surface to only depict the act skateboarding and then have that moment of - oh wait I understand where that's coming from. 
and when you're a shithead like me, that's some powerful stuff.

Obviously, those spreads inspired a lot of the photos I take and the layouts I make. I think that's my intent. To turn word vomit from esoteric gibberish into something that maybe means something. A photo that documents the feeling of a specific time and space. 

Anyway, kinda lost my train of thought here....word vomit culture collage. I guess that's what I'm into at the moment.

Is that what I'm trying to say?

a brief history of the world

 Most days at the plaza look like this. 

There's a rhythm to the place. A certain flow of things. Several heads skate the ledge, taking turns from one side and then the other. Its a seesaw of 5050's and noseslides. A backside tail slide will be met with a "yerrr" from folks sitting amongst water bottles and beer cans on the perpendicular ledges. kids who don't know any better will hurl themselves down the 3- stair interrupting the flow. This will have some of the older heads mumbling to themselves "fuck this shit, lets go to archives" - but they never make the move, they just wait for an opening and rush towards the ledge. 

Plazasonic - it's the sound of disintegrating tapeheads and blown-out halfcabs. It's about ollies, trashcans, and wind through the trees. To quote Kerouac: I look up at blue sky of perfect lost purity and feel the warp of wood of old America beneath me.
Happy hour here is an open container on the curb.

For a place that's been described as a "failure" and a "barren wasteland" by noted dc lifestyle bloggers, I spend a disproportionate amount of time here. In fact, I think I've taken more photographs of Freedom Plaza than any other place I've been. There's a reason for that. It has everything you'd ever need. Flat ground, marble ledges, a CVS across the street, a McDonald's up the block, Press liquors around the corner...the plaza is quite literally the center of the universe. When there's nothing to do and nowhere to go - you end up at the plaza. When you have places to be and obligations to fulfill - somehow you still end up at the plaza. 

The plaza is going to be featured a lot around here - figured it would be good place to start things off. set the tone for what my intentions for this thing is supposed to be. An archive, journal, documentation of some sort of something. Skateboarding (?) I suppose.
well here goes...

Three things I look forward to in this life: today's heathcliff, lunchtime, and chilling with friends (skateboarding).