THE VENICE BEACH SKATEPARK

Today I talked to Scott.

I’m driving on Venice Boulevard. The white sky is blinding even with sunglasses. I walk to the beach to see skaters at the Venice Beach Skatepark. There, the atmosphere is extremely mellow. Almost no one is speaking. A soft smell of weed melts in the cool wind. I listen to the sound of the ocean in the distance, the chirping of the seagulls, and the skateboards striking against the concrete.

Scott stands besides me and we start to talk. His tanned face contrasts with his tiny blue eyes. I notice that he’s wearing skater pants, black sneakers and has colorful tattoos on his lower legs. “Do you skate here?” I ask. “I do. But I’m injured now,” he answers. He shows me his ribs and left shoulder. “I deserved it though. It was night, I had been drinking, and I’m fifty years old. I don’t belong to the skatepark anymore,” he says with a beaming smile that makes him look really young. “Concrete is very unforgiving. I’ve seen heads opened; it bleeds a lot.” While we speak, the dance continues on the skatepark. Each skater waits for the other to finish his round. Three kids – the youngest is about six and the oldest maybe ten – are skating smoothly, jumping and performing figures in the air. Their elegance is impressive.

This park opened only seven months ago but has already a life of its own. A man with a burnt face and a black cap walks around the place blowing the sand away with a machine. The skaters need the concrete to be as clean as possible in order to slide better. The task looks tremendous since the skatepark stands in the middle of the beach and the wind never stops blowing. Scott points to the man with the machine and speaks in an undertone: “This guy is Jesse Martinez from the original Venice Zephyr skateboard team. There was a movie about them called Z Boys. He cleans the sand for the kids but he’s the best skater here. He’s still the best one.” At this moment Jessie Martinez approaches. “I’m gonna quickly pass here,” he says softly and waves at his machine. I jump on a fence, put my legs in the air so he can clean the sand away. A group of cool skaters spontaneously strike a pose for me.

Scott was born and raised in Venice Beach. “When I was a kid, my dad – who’s a pilot- used to take me on his plane. We would fly from Santa Monica to Catalina Island and watch whales. It was incredibly beautiful,” he remembers. Scott is always at the beach when he doesn’t work. “Since 1979 I’ve been working on movies. I do all kind of jobs on the set. I used to be a location manager. I spent time in Yugoslavia and Italy to scout locations. My hotel was facing the Adriatic Sea but I never stayed there because people were so nice. They would invite me for dinner and ask me to stay at their home for the night,” he says. “I also worked in England for a while, on The Muppet Show. But I hardly remember anything because we used to party so much.” Scott laughs heartily. I notice a skater who wears a black t-shirt that says: “Skating is not a crime”. His movements are so smooth that he doesn’t produce a single sound. Total calmness emanates from him. The concrete shapes feel like water.

In ten days Scott will drive to Oregon to watch his daughter graduate from high school. “I’m very excited! Then I’ll drive her down here and she will spend time with her grandfather and with me,” he adds. I thank Scott for this peaceful moment and walk away to the sidewalk. A few feet from the beach, I pass by a black Jeep with tinted windows parked on the side. It looks packed with guys and loud music. A door opens and a head pops out. “Hey photographer girl, wanna smoke one?”