Rather than follow Peachtree Street on my way home, I walk down Tenth Street and, mostly because of the way the traffic signals work out, I bypass Juniper Street and take Piedmont instead.
As a result, I find myself walking up 12th Street, which requires me to pass in front of the newly opened Luxe Midtown — a towering stack of glass and concrete condos located just behind ours. The place is fronted by a wide sidewalk with several broad-lipped concrete planters and short flights of stairs. Today, these are infested with a flock of skateboarders sporting black knit toboggans, longish hair, stylishly ragged clothes. Not a one of 'em looks a day younger than 25.
The air is full of the clatter of their activity: the ripping whirr of wheels on concrete, the smack of a landing, the sandpaper hiss of an overturned board sliding across the pavement and grinding to a halt. The leader of the pack, barreling downhill at a good clip, angles his board toward me, just to see if I'll scramble out of the way. When I don't, he wiggles his smudge of a goatee at me and veers left at the last minute.
With their leader streaking toward the park, the others follow, casting sidelong glances at me, as though expecting me to shake my fist at them and say, "You kids!" Instead, I just keep walking.
An instant later, a woman steps out of the Luxe Midtown office. She is young, with an angry look on her face and her arms folded over her chest. "Y'all can't ride those skateboards here," she says to me. "You gonna have to move on."
I am the only person left on the street. I am a man in his forties. I am dressed for an office job. I have an Amazon Kindle in one hand and an umbrella in the other. I look at these. I look at her.
"We're gonna call the police," she says. "Last warning."
I give her a look. I keep walking.
Kind of old for skateboarders, aren’t they?
I personally thought they looked a bit long of tooth to be outlaw skateboarders. But here in Midtown, we’ve got bald-headed forty year old men who march down the street wearing bridal gowns and blowing whistles and an octogenarian who jogs in the park wearing nothing but a lemon-colored Speedo.
Result? I see skateboarders in their late twenties and say, “Ah. Hmm. Okay. Next?”
why dont you people like us skateboarders?…stupid