I actually just received an email asking when I was going to update the site again. The writer was curious because they liked to see what we have been up to. I’m pretty sure that has never happened before. Well, perhaps in the old days when I’d put up new video clips all the time and kids hungered for them like nothing else, but not anytime in recent dog/cat picture Internet history. It was quite the revelation that someone actually wants to see pictures of Stemper in a bar or pictures of Fake Gary looking great on the porch. I hope that I and all the other purveyors of Internet filth that update this here website will take this all to heart. Someone cares guys, someone cares.
The weekend! It was semi uneventful to say the least. Friday was a whole bunch of nothing, Saturday was a little more exciting.
On the way to Chicago for some weirdness that I’ll touch on later, Pizzy, Stemp, and I stopped at 7 Mile Fair. A more wretched hive of scum and villainy you will not find. When I was a kid this place was kind of like a regular flea market with all kinds of useless but interesting crap, but over the years has warped more into a collection of bootleg Paco shants and “50 Cent” “Rolexes” that cost $9.00 ($6.00 if you talk them down). During the summer there’s a lot of outdoor vendors that take the 7 Mile back to its flea market roots. That is who we were there to see.
This is the first table we came upon that wasn’t selling chickens, bunnies, ducks, or any other type of live pseudo farm animal. Stemper was quite impressed with this guy’s line up of slightly used Levis and didn’t hesitate to spend all the cash he had. Quite a flea market faux pas, but his excitement can be understood. Pizzy on the other hand, was able to keep his excitement down to manageable levels and held off on pulling the trigger on the purchase of quite a tasty pair of shants. A wise decision.
We did make a short venture inside to check out how the market was looking for 4XL G’d up Pillsbury Doughboy bedazzled shirts and Jesus wall hangings with flashing LED lights. Obviously the selection was not to be matched on items of that caliber. Another 7 Mile indoor favorite of course has to be the puppies. Mutt puppies. That somehow cost $400. How a they can sell $400 mutts at a place where you can buy a five foot long broadsword for $25 or build a collection of various bedazzled Scarface shirts for under $20 I’ll never know. If they sell bedazzled Scarface shirts, don’t you think leather applique Cruising shirts are the next logical step?? I do.
When it was all said and done, we came away with some great finds. Here Danny displays his Milwaukee Bucks sweatband ($.50) and sweating muscleman holding up boobs tshirt that Pizzy picked up for him ($1.00). Pizzy thought the shirt was basically Danny in T-shirt form and bought it without a second thought. It wasn’t until Danny tried it on that we realized muscleman was sweating because he was holding up bosoms like Atlas might hold the planet Earth on his back. I know it’s not a shirt featuring a gangsterfied Lucky Charms leprechaun with plastic golden gems attached all over it, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and proclaim it the best tshirt ever. I went there.
Another week, another visit to Chicago suburban hell. Though this time we were on a mission. Somehow Carn, between holding up his really cool records, got us all involved in some sort of marketing research. What it basically consisted of was these people buying us ice cream and then sitting around and answering questions like “If you won the lottery…” or “What TV commercials annoy you…”. For this we were paid a relatively nice sum and then drove to Chicago city proper for some skateboard riding.
I just got a new flash that I have absolutely no idea how to use, so I made Danny do this ollie off the bench to frontside wallride like sixty times while I worked on trying to understand this slightly obsolete piece of photographic technology. I never did really figure it out, but compensating for my lack of flash knowledge by counteracting it with my knowledge of how a camera works seemed to work well enough. Danny Stemper – bench to frontside wallride.
A few years back, this spot was literally like rollerblade EMB. Every Saturday there was honestly 100 bladers with their pants basically around their knees snaking around and jumping on crap. So obviously the free for all was noticed, security was increased, and you can’t really skate here anymore. We got a break and got a few minutes of funtime. Gabe Chan took advantage of it with a switch crooked grind through the 12.
The next day was a Happy Birthday Milki day! Milki doesn’t skateboard, but she likes brunch. So we brunched. The end.