Sometimes there’s no love lost between me and skateboarders.
Yeah, sure, already I hear the ludicrous freedom cry of “skateboarding is not a crime, yo”. But ya know what? I don’t hear the bicyclists, the tennis players and the golfers whining and moaning that they don’t get to practice their sports against the side of Civil War monuments, over the tops of memorial park benches and alongside my $20,000 SUV parked outside of the Starbucks. And you don’t hear them crying “Until you build me a mountain bike park, I’m just gonna keep riding up and down the flower beds of the City Arboretum, dude!”
“Skateboarding is not a crime”. You know what? Neither is taking a dump, you punk, but it’s a crime when I do it on the sidewalk in front of the boulangerie at the strip mall, okay?
But that’s not what’s bothering me today. This is not my problem with skateboarders.
It’s not that I don’t get the sport. Hell, I was in one of the first skateboard clubs in Skate City USA (Santa Cruz, Cali, baby) back in 1972, when boards were fiberglass and a handstand was the epitomy of trick. I can appreciate the complexities of their particular brand of athleticism, some of the subtleties between the various tricks they pull. I actually like watching those kids throw themselves into the half-pipe, to the screams of tattooed boys making devil horns with both hands, and the screams of dozens of scantily clad teenie-boppers with Britney Spears breasts.
In fact, I like watching that a lot.
I see the pride in their eyes when they’re cracking a double-ollie half-grind fakie 360 with a moonwalk nose manual. These kids work hard at learning these tricks, and I should have so much patience figuring out how to program my damn DVD player. Hell, I can barely drive and program my cell phone at the same time… God help me if I try to pop a backwards Casper half-and-half and a nose grab all at once.
So you know what pisses me off? I’ll tell you what pisses me off.
It’s those damn pants.
Now I’m not talking about the “loose fit” look here. I’m not talking about your “roomy cut husky boys” dungarees.
You know that crease under your butt cheek that would hold a pencil if you stuck it under there? I’m talking about the pants that hang somewhere South of there. I’m talking about the “hanging below the cheek crease, crotch between your knees, gotta walk bowlegged with one hand holding ’em up got pockets on my knees” baggies. I’m talking about the “put down your backpack and bend over at the waist just to reach the change at the bottom of your pocket for a Mountain Dew while you hold ’em up with the other hand” kind of baggies. I’m talking about the “how the hell are they staying up if you didn’t actually sew them to your underwear” kind of baggies.
You’ve seen these kids, walking down the street in front of you, effectively mooning you on the way to getting their lips pierced shut, looking like they got halfway through getting ready to take a crap when they realized they were out of Mountain Dew and had to get to the Seven Eleven.
Why do I have to stare at this kid’s bony butt hanging out of his Ben Davis Baggies? Why do I have to be privileged to see which pattern of boxers he decided to put on this morning? Why should I have to observe his skid mark skivvies hanging out over his waistband like some kind of freakish twilight-zone beer belly on the backside?
There is nothing as sexy as a guy who looks like he just took a huge dump in his diaper, walking like a penguin with his legs bowed to keep his pants above his knees. Are there really little girls who look at these boneheads and say “Ooh, check out the underwear on that one”?
Are there really little girls who say “I wanna get me a man who has to use BOTH hands to hold his pants up”?
Do they really say “I like a guy who can’t get his knees far enough apart to ride a bicycle”?
Yeah, yeah, I know, youthful rebellion. These pants are an extension of the “trashing private property is not a crime” mentality … this is the “taking my pants off in public is not a crime” mentality … the “screw you, the world owes me whatever I want so kiss my butt” mentality, borne of an utter and complete disregard for other people’s property and privacy, and my right not to have to look at your freakin’ Underoos.
Maybe my real fear is that this is going to catch on… that these poor misguided children will never grow out of it, and one day I’m going to find myself being represented by an Attorney who walks bowlegged up to the Bench in a three-piece suit, one hand on my People’s Exhibit 13, the other hand holding up his pants, his boxers billowing out like a flowing silken sign that says “I’m a complete ass, Your Honor, please send my client to the chair.”
Take it from a guy who spent years in super-bells, parachute pants and M.C. Hammer boxer pants with an elastic waistband. You look like a freakin’ moron, you’re gonna want to burn these pictures, when I was in high school kids with pants like that rode on the little bus and wore a helmet to recess. You’ve adopted a look once reserved for Homeless people, special kids and plumbers.
And grinding the finish off the new Art Nouveu railings in front of City Hall doesn’t make it cool.
Congratulations. Those pants are a crime.
That’s it. That’s all I got.