Thursday Night Skate: January 17th 2019 at Hermoso

Thursday Night Skate was held a Hermoso Skate park, located in the southern portion of Phoenix. The cross streets are 20^th street and Southern, I think. I left my house around 730pm and did not roll up until 8pm. I brought my ‘Rollerbalding’ fanny pack to stash the cameras I was going to utilize throughout the session.

Prior to stepping out of the car.  I was very enthusiastic to snap some pictures. The first few weeks of the new year, It has been a pleasure to be snapping pictures and recording video of my inline skate friends doing their thing.

I stepped out of the car and started taking pictures. The camera adjustments were not cutting it for clear pictures of the skaters grinding the quarter pipe so I decided to use some low light and zoom shots. I felt like some of the pictures came out pretty satisfactory. 

I focused mostly on Jonathan Reberts experimental foot placement and body positions.

 I was also pumped on Jason Liette cess slides from a bank into a curb. Other highlights were taking pictures of Zack, a newer inliner I met a few weeks earlier at KTR Mesa. I also tried to snap a few pics of Luke doing a tru top porn cess slide.

Another highlight was seeing Ben Poling at the Hermoso session. I have been out with been on a few good occasions’ street skating and what not and I find Ben’s skating to be talented and with some fucking technical foot and leg work.  He always does impressive spin to grinds, impressive grinds on rails and ledges.

Overall, the session was a memorable one. Inline skating is an extremely bizarre thing to practice but once you practice it around other enthusiasts. You feel the freedom of individualism manifest to a natural collective of peer cooperation and collaboration. With that said, It does take time and will power to step out but once you start growing that report and relationship with your skate buddies, the understanding of individuality comes in a form of ‘win, win mentality for each individual’.

I have always understood the imaginative urge to skate but sometimes it takes desperation to really make your inner fury turn into a euphoric sense of personal acceptance. Or something like that. After the session I met some of the inline buddies at a bar in phoenix. Coffee coffee coffee.

Sergio A. Ybarra 01/25/2018