Writing & Stories

Rewriting Old Narratives (an excerpt)

One of the things I love about CryptoPunks is that the story is still being written. New things happen all the time, but also sometimes we learn things that change our understanding about what has led up to this point. 8 years later, there are still things to be uncovered and surprises to found if you happen to turn over the right rock. If you think you know the story of the claim and airdrop, sit down because it’s about to be rewritten. (The following is a slightly modified excerpt from my forthcoming book PUNKS: NOT DED which should be shipping next month, June 2025. Pre orders and a few limited edition hard covers are still available.)

On June 23, 2017, at 9:50 AM New York time (1:50:51 PM UTC), Larva Labs deployed the new “CryptoPunksMarket” contract, marking this a pivotal moment in crypto art history. The distribution process began immediately after deployment and would take almost six hours to complete. Until now the story was that Larva Labs reverted all transactions on the V1 contract, and claimant wallets received the airdrop. However, while discussing final edits on the book niftynaut and I discovered something curious. Punk #4638. This punk is sitting in a long inactive wallet, the V2 was airdropped to it and the V1 is there as well. OK, sounds right so far, clearly a claimer wallet right? Wrong. Wait what?

On June 13th, Tony Herrera claimed Punk #4638 with his primary wallet. 3 hours later he transferred it to a new wallet. 10 days later on June 23rd Larva Labs sent the V2 airdrop to this new wallet, not the wallet he claimed with.

How could this be possible if as we had previously understood claimer wallets, not holder wallets, received the airdrop? We started digging and found punk #4958, another punk claimed by Tony. Same thing here, he claimed it with one wallet, transferred to a new one, the airdrop went to the new one. Then we found another, and another. This wasn’t an exception or a mislabeled transaction on etherscan, this was clearly the intended action. Larva Labs never explicitly explained their process and it was notoriously hard to understand at the time, but since 2017 the general understanding was that all transactions were reverted, and claimer wallets were airdropped V2 punks. Looking at this now with better tools and insight, it seems that only sales were reverted, but all the transfers (which might have been trades, direct sales, or simply wallet moves) were honored. 

…

Of the approximately 300 transactions on the V1 contract before the V2 contract was deployed, less than 100 were sales. And 2 accounts (Hemba and LarvaLabs) were involved in almost 3/4ths of those. So the actual number of “impacted” wallets is considerably smaller than many of us thought. Keep this in mind – at the time there was no real way to see NFTs in your wallet, so the way you knew which punks you had was to look at the Cryptopunks website and look at your account page. Along with the airdrop, Larva Labs updated the website to look at the new contract. If you looked at your account page on June 22 you saw your punks, if you looked at your account page on June 24 you saw your punks, and unless you were on one end of the ~100 punks that were sold before the V2 contract was deployed, those looked like the same punks. If you’d sold some punks, you had them back again. If you bought some punks, you didn’t have them anymore. Some people who noticed asked about it, and most of those cases were resolved quickly and quietly, but many people didn’t even notice it.

This also creates a provenance issue, only the V1 contract has the correct claim history, who claimed what and when. The V2 contract shows all punks “claimed” on the same day as well as misattributing the claim wallet for the ~200 or so punks that were transferred (not sold) before the V2 contract was published. So to get the full and accurate details for any punk both contracts need to be looked at. If we revisit #4638, looking only at the V2 contract (and the current corresponding front end) we’re told 0x400946 claimed this punk on June 23rd, 2017. We know that June 23rd was the airdrop, not the claim, but until now the assumption has been that this info was still correct and 0x400946 was the claimer sometime between June 9th and June 23rd as well, though we’d have to check the V1 contract to get the exact date. But we now know #4638 was actually claimed by 0xfaf4a3, not 0x400946 so to get the accurate provenance for any punk, both contracts need to be considered.

The Precious and Arcane (an excerpt)

I was in 6th grade in the 1980’s when a classmate gave me what he called “a punk mixtape.” Side A was labeled SKATE ROCK and on Side B was scrawled SUICIDAL. We had basic cable and I’d already become a devout MTV watcher which had heavily influenced my musical tastes, but this cassette rewired my brain in irreparable ways. (I consider that a good thing by the way, anytime you have the opportunity to have your worldview turned upside down I highly recommend it.) I listened to it until it broke, and only later learned that the first side was tracks from Thrasher Magazine’s Skate Rock series, and Side B was part of Suicidal Tendencies first album. My parents refused to let me purchase a replacement for either.

The following year I traded a Bon Jovi cassette for a copy of ‘Wild In The Streets’ by The Circle Jerks. My homemade copy collection was growing and that summer I talked a friend into dubbing me a copy of ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.’ These songs and ideas were exciting in a way nothing ever had been for me, but it wasn’t until almost a year later when I had the opportunity to buy a Gorilla Biscuits 7” when my collector nerd gene activated. Purple logo, yellow vinyl. 2nd pressing, only 2000 existed in the world. There were only 1000 of the first pressing, and 102 of those had a special stamp on the label. How did I know this? That’s where things got really exciting.

By now we had dial up internet and BBSs where you could leave messages for people, but the World Wide Web was still a few years away. My lifeline at this point was fanzines and penpals. This was precious and arcane knowledge shared carefully in small circles. If you were into collecting punk records at that time you knew a guy (or knew a guy who knew a guy) who knew how many of what color of what record was pressed when, by who, and how to tell them apart. I started writing down details and specs when I learned them for later reference and before long people were calling me and asking for information on this record or that. I had a spiral notebook filled with discography notes, it was like my bible. Collecting was fun, but knowing what to collect was even better. I was surprised how few people knew the specifics, and was happy to share what I knew when I could. Beyond documenting the rarities, I was also starting to take note of design themes and ideas, and began learning what references bands were trying to make with cover art and how the visuals were another way to give a subtle nod to their influences, if you know you know kind of thing.

….

A decade later I was spending a lot of time on a website called Alen Yen’s Toybox DX. As a kid I’d lusted over the big metal Voltron toy that separated into lions and heard stories about the “real” Transformers from Japan with missiles that actually fired. I watched Godzilla movies for monsters, but also for the robots and dreamed about what cool toys Japanese kids must have had access to. With the (still early) growth of the internet, websites were popping up where a small handful of dorks who were obsessed with some weird obscure thing could find each other and talk about it. 30 years later things have progressed and now large handfuls of dorks obsessed with boring normcore mediocre shit can easily find each other as well. Anyway, Alen Yen threw up a flag and a bunch of us Japanese robot toy nerds rallied around him. Diecast, vinyl, plastic – all were welcome.

Sharing information became the cornerstone, if only because the audience was largely English speaking collectors from Europe and America drooling over near impossible to find 20-30 year old toys from Japan (and sometimes neighboring outposts in Asia). Someone would find an old ad and get it translated, or someone else would interview someone who had worked on a long forgotten project. We were learning things everyday and the site became a knowledge base for all things chogokin/sofubi/kaiju/sentai related. It was there I met Matt Alt who would become a longtime friend and collaborator across various cultural niches. We built a website called Jumboland trying to catalog and document an obscure line of robot toys called Jumbo Machinders made in the 1970’s which at that point were selling for hundreds of dollars and today sell for tens of thousands. Sadly the website is no longer online, but I still get messages from people who have screenshots or Internet Archive clippings asking me to fill in missing details to help their treasure hunting.

It was also around this time when I started paying attention to bootlegs. Music of course had bootlegs, but they were usually just crappy recordings from live shows or unauthorized re-releases. With toys, bootlegs were an entirely other world spawned from both licensing conflicts and poor translations. Toy manufacturers who couldn’t get a license (or never bothered trying) might release something similar but changing just enough details to skirt infringement issues to a market they didn’t expect anyone to ever know about. In doing so they (likely unintentionally) created new collections with their own fan bases and fanatics, who in many cases would eventually find their way back to the original inspiration. As a bonus, the bootlegs were often just as rare if not more so than the originals, but sold for a fraction of the price so if you decided to collect them it was all about the hunt. A motivated and industrious collector could build really cool collections for very little money that couldn’t be replicated by someone else with a lot of money simply because they didn’t even know where to look.

Some people ignored these as worthless knock offs, but others saw the value of a vibrant derivative culture, illustrating the inherent stickiness and virality of this “thing” which caused people to want to build on it and add to it. I realized a fanbase isn’t a circle, but a series of concentric and ever wider rings demonstrating more than one way to express admiration. Since then I’ve used this as a marker for the cultural importance of something – the more people trying to copy it the better.

….

It seemed like for a while anytime I heard about Ethereum it was in reference to some scammy ICO, but by 2020 I was hearing more and more about people using it for in game currencies, and more interestingly for art. I had an art background. I knew a lot of artists from my gallery days so I thought maybe I should finally get around to looking at this and see if any of it was interesting. Turns out it was, when I looked at how art was being bought and sold, and how onchain provenance helped distinguish originals from copies, and how royalties could be built into sale transactions, I immediately realized this was the solution to so many problems I and other artist friends had been wrestling with our entire careers. As a photographer, editions vs originals was an ever constant topic, and some friends who were video artists or digital illustrators had never been able to think of a file as an original, even if they knew it was their first saved version of something.

As I bounced around from marketplace to marketplace I started seeing a pattern and the more I looked at little pixelated characters I kept thinking this was something I’d seen before, but couldn’t place it. A lot of people were clearly making the same cultural reference, but it wasn’t just some random 8 bit video game graphics, it was something more specific… and then I remembered… CryptoPunks. 

I was already interested in Cultural Diffusion and Phenomenology and took note anytime I saw an idea spreading through a community. I’d seen it with records, toys, and art. One of my penpals from the 1990’s was Shepard Fairey, whose Obey Giant campaign specifically played with the idea of repetition and how things like his “Andre The Giant Has a Posse” stickers, when they become ubiquitous enough, take on a life of their own. By this time we’d collaborated on a number of different projects, exhibitions and an early version of his website obeygiant.com. One thing we did with that was make a page trying to document all the bootleg versions of his stickers and art that people were inspired to make on their own. (Eventually that grew too big to be comprehensive, but there’s still a fantastic collection of examples online today obeygiant.com/engineering/bootlegs/ )

Seeing people making derivatives of CryptoPunks clicked for me, and I immediately started taking notes. What had happened between my first interaction with these little pixel people and now, and where was this all heading? I had to catch up, and so I started doing what I always do.

[This is an excerpt from my introduction to the forthcoming book PUNKS:NOT DED, my unofficial companion to CRYPTOPUNKS: FREE TO CLAIM. NOT DED is available for preorder in limited hardcover and unlimited softcover, hopefully heading to the printer sometime this month.]

Dine Alone

One of my favorite bands played in Vancouver last night. I’ve had tickets for the show since the day they went on sale 6 months ago. I was so excited about it, but as the date grew closer that excitement gradually turned into fear. I didn’t go. 

Maybe I let the anxiety win. Maybe I’m feeling sorry for myself. Maybe both, but that’s where I am right now, in my head, one way or another. I was going to write about the band – Quicksand (for anyone who didn’t get the title reference, and naturally Gorilla Biscuits before them) and what they meant to me, the impact they had on my life and moments/memories they will forever be attached to. But as I thought about it, the band itself is kind of irrelevant in this whole story. Mostly. It’s more a me thing. 

This tour was the 30th anniversary of the release of the first album. I tried to remember the last time I saw them play, I’ve seen them so many times, all these years later the shows kind of blend together in my mind. The feeling anyway. Packed in a crowd, surrounded by friends, all of us singing along to every word. This is something about growing up in the hardcore/punk that there’s no way to explain to people who didn’t experience it. As kids we didn’t fit in. We were outcasts and rejected by most similar aged peer groups, but it didn’t matter because with punk we had each other. Friends became family and you knew, no matter what, that they were there for you. It was the Cheers thing – a place where everyone knew your name and was always glad you came. Oddly important is that a lot of these situations were incredibly violent, but that’s probably a story for another time. The point is that we all gladly opted into a dangerous situation because it felt like home, the only feeling of home some of us had ever really had. It was a scary place, but it was our scary place.

This was my whole life. The music, the message, the people. Almost 40 years later and I’m still in touch with many of those people today, the bonds run that deep. In Florida and in Chicago when I’d go to shows I knew everyone. Literally. Every single person in attendance and in the bands and working the venues. I knew them all. We had grown up together. I moved to Los Angeles at 26 and didn’t really know many people in town, didn’t know what bands were around or where they might be playing. I remember several times that first few years feeling an overwhelming sense of disappointment when I’d hear, usually a few days later, that a band who I knew had been playing in town and I’d missed it. I felt like this hugely important part of my life was slipping away. 

I eventually figured it out and started going to shows again but it was different. I didn’t know everyone anymore. I knew some people and that was great, but most of the people were strangers to me. It was weird because this thing, this place that had always been my briar patch didn’t quite fit anymore. It was like a favorite shirt that shrunk in the wash. So I’d go, and enjoy it, but also have this sinking sick feeling. And I went less often because of it.

That was multiplied by a million when I moved to Japan. The only way I could square it was when I knew the band or someone in the band and could go with them, so I felt a part of it somehow. I’d take pictures and hang out before or after the show with them and it was a wonderful way to feel like I still had some connection to this thing I loved. This thing that made me. But I’d also look at the audience, recognize what they were experiencing and at the same time know that I couldn’t experience it with them. If I was in the crowd rather than on stage, I’d feel surrounded by strangers rather than friends. I would always be an outsider. That was a hard one to reconcile let me tell you. 

(Terror, Tokyo, 2019)

Over the last many years there’s been a handful of shows that I’ve bought tickets for and gone to on my own, alone. The last Murder City Devils show in Los Angeles stands out in my head as an example. I went. I danced. I screamed my heart out. I even broke a rib when some dude hit me at just the wrong angle. I loved every second of it. I also left feeling depressed and lonely. I didn’t know anyone there. I wasn’t going out after the show for food with anyone. I remember thinking about it as I drove home, weirdly that hurt more than my ribs. 

So I’ve lived in Vancouver for over 3 years now and I’ve never been to a single show here. I barely know anyone in this whole city. 100% of my friend circle is online, in other places, far away. Friends I’ve known forever and love like family, and friends I’ve only just met through various shared interests. All impossibly distant. 

And also, a lot of them are still together. Not all, some have drifted away to other lives and others didn’t survive this long. And sure some of this can be chalked up to social media posturing but I see my friends, people I love, hanging out together and having a great time. I buy records from various bands and see that my friends are doing guest spots, singing or playing on songs. I hear their voices and it makes me smile. And simultaneously bums me out. To be clear I don’t regret my choices or the direction I’ve gone, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the routes I didn’t take. And given the chance I wouldn’t do anything differently, so this isn’t a wallowing “gosh I wish I had a do over” or some bullshit like that. It’s just an observation of melancholy. I’ll avoid the infinite sadness joke. 

So last night, as much as I love this band and these songs, I knew going would have been depressing. I would be a stranger. It would be a room full of people that I should have connections with, but don’t. The band on stage would be a friends of friends, but not friends. Know what I mean? In a different situation completely approachable with countless stories and friendships to share. But here, entirely out of reach. And a harsh reminder that I’m not a part of this thing I love anymore. That I’m now an outsider. 

Of course not going is depressing too. So it’s not like I avoided that by not going.

I talk about punk rock and how we made our own world all the time, it’s an important part of my origin story and I apply the lessons and learnings from that to almost everything I do to this day. And there’s no simple narrative here, that world still exists but is also different. We aren’t kids anymore, and a bunch of old guys sitting around talking about their glory days gets obnoxious real quick. Nostalgia has it’s place, but it can’t be everything. You (and I mean me) still need to look ahead, to what is next, not just what came before. I think about this often when I’m playing guitar alone in my bedroom because I’m an almost 50 year old who still does that. But I’m not playing old cover songs, partially because I don’t know how, I’m trying to do something new. And that helps.

I think of myself as a community person, and there are all these communities I used to spend time in, and for one reason or another I don’t anymore. Mostly because I’m no longer physically near them, and I wonder how the next generation of people who grew up with friends online rather than in person will view things kind of thing. I often think about how when asked about why he left the Bujinkan, an old martial arts instructor of mine Charles Daniel replied “Who says I left? Maybe I just graduated.” I don’t know that I agree someone could ever “graduate” but I also liked that way of thinking, he was still doing “stuff” it was just different “stuff” and he brought with him everything he learned up to that point, the old stuff forever informing the new stuff.

So in the end I didn’t do something that I knew I’d enjoy because I knew it would also make me feel bad, and the next day I find myself wishing I had but also knowing why I didn’t. Sometimes everything makes sense, more often it doesn’t.

Party Mode

Bradenton, Florida. A shit-hole ghetto town about an hour south of Tampa. I think it was the summer of 1990. I remember it being really, really hot. I was in high school and my friend Chris suggested starting a band. He played guitar already and told me I should get a bass. I took that week’s paycheck from the grocery store I worked at and went to a local used music equipment shop and asked what that could get me, I bought whatever it was they suggested. In my memory it was a sunburst Fender but I honestly can’t remember. I didn’t know I needed an amplifier for it to work, and had trouble figuring out how to play it at home. The following week we got together in another friends garage for “band practice” which was a serious lesson in humility. I showed up without an amp, but luckily (or unluckily) someone there had a guitar amp I could plug into. This was the first time I’d ever heard what the bass even sounded like.

Chris proposed that we start off playing “New Direction.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. Chris pointed out that I was wearing a Gorilla Biscuits t-shirt at the time, New Direction of course was the first song on their recently released album Start Today. I didn’t actually have the album yet, I had a dubbed cassette copy that my neighbor Max had made for me which I listened to all the time – so once Chris started playing it I knew what he was talking about, but Max hadn’t written the names of any of the songs so didn’t know what any of them were called. Max would later sell me his blue and white swirled vinyl copy of that album, which has remained one of my prized possessions even to this day. Anyway, I knew the song but I had no idea how to play it, given that I had no idea how to play bass. I stood there in the garage all afternoon while my friends jammed one song after another that I knew but I had no idea how to play. That was the only band practice I ever went to, and I wasn’t ever invited to be any of their bands ever again, rightly so.

I kept that bass and every once and a while I’d pick it up and hope I’d magically learned how to play something. I never did. When I’d fantasize about being in a band I always pictured myself singing, so just never got motivated enough to try and learn it. Besides, my favorite band in town at the time, Tired From Now On, already had a bass player and a singer and I wasn’t going to even try to start a Tired From Now On copycat band. I think I sold it to my friend from Canada Kyle for $50 when one of his bands was passing through Gainesville a few years later. At least I’d spray painted it black so it looked much cooler than that crappy sunburst. I wonder if he still has it?

A few years later when I was working at Victory Records my co-worker Chuck told me he wanted to start a band and asked if I’d be interested in singing. Of course I said yes, instantly. He said he was getting the rest of the band together and we’d have a proper rehearsal in a few weeks. At that time I was often the last person to leave the office, which was in a 3 story condo in an industrial part of Chicago. My office was on the 3rd floor, and when everyone else would leave I’d often turn up my stereo as loud as it would go and jump around screaming along like an idiot to the loudest, angriest thing I had. It was excellent therapy. I highly recommend everyone try it sometime. My private karaoke included many bands, but vocalist Tim Singer’s bands – No Escape, Deadguy and the recently released (at the time) Kiss It Goodbye were in heavy rotation. I guess I always kind of related to his “I tried, but everything is fucked anyway” lyrical narrative. In my mind, that’s how I’d sing in a band.

Eventually Chuck would rope in the rest of a band and we’d all get together one evening after work in the basement of Bulldog Records, Victory’s record store in Wicker Park where bands like Blood For Blood and Murphy’s Law had recently played some already legendary shows. Drums set up, amps plugged in and blasting. I knew enough lyrics to enough songs that I figured there wouldn’t be a repeat of the New Direction situation and I was ready to go with whatever song they pulled out of the hardcore repertoire. Except the songs they’d written themselves and had already been practicing that I’d never heard before. Chuck handed me the mic and said “let’s go!” and I just stood there. I didn’t know what to sing, or what to say. I’d never written lyrics before, and certainly hadn’t anticipated doing it on the spot. I’d been daydreaming about doing this for years, and now when given the chance I froze. I convinced myself that anything I’d come up with would be so stupid the band would stop playing and I’d be laughed out of the basement. Of course, just standing there like an idiot had a similar effect. 

Decades later I of course recognize how letting my insecurity keep me from doing the thing I was dreaming of doing, when I directly had the opportunity to do it, was just about the stupidest thing I could have ever done. I’m not really big on regret, we all do things that if given another chance we might do differently or applying hindsight realize our errors, but pushing past that fear and doing actually band with my friends sometime in the 90’s when I had countless opportunities is something that I’d totally should have done. If life had do overs, that’s where I’d use mine.

I mention this because totally out of the blue this week there’s a new EP out by Tim’s new band Bitter Branches and it’s incredible. It’s the last thing I was expecting in 2020, and after listening to it on repeat essentially since buying it I can attest it’s exactly what I needed. If anything I’ve mentioned in this sounds familiar to you, maybe it’s what you need as well. If nothing else, it’s a good reminder to take the chances we have, when we have them. They won’t always be there and even trying and failing is way better than not trying at all.

Dispatch from COVID-19 occupied Tokyo, Feb 28, 2020

[The following is an excerpt of something I sent out to my newsletter. Subscribe to have future updates mailed directly to you.]

I went for a walk yesterday afternoon and with the exception of face masks and hand sanitizer being sold out everywhere which has been the case for a few weeks now, nothing else seemed any different. A few more masks being worn on the street but not enough that you’d notice unless you were looking. This is a stark contrast to the scene about 20 minutes away from here at Shibuya crossing where easily 80% of people are wearing masks, though most of those people are wearing them incorrectly.

And then late last night it was announced that all elementary and high schools will be closed for the several 4 weeks.

This morning people were joking that there was going to be a rush on toilet paper. This afternoon Tara walked over to the neighborhood pharmacy and they were completely sold out, she went to 2 other stores including the one at the train station near our house – all empty. At the train station everyone was wearing masks, and people were staring at her enough that she felt uncomfortable and put on a mask just to blend in.

I remembered I’d put a pack of toilet paper in my shopping cart on Amazon Japan and went to look but it had been removed as it was no longer available from the seller. Searching for toilet paper shows everything is out of stock. Literally everything. There are some 3rd party sellers who will let you pre-order a 4 or 6 pack for the equivalent of about $150 but with the caveat that they don’t expect to ship it until mid April. I bought a 24 pack on Amazon Dot Com for $25 and then paid $50 to have it shipped from the US to Japan. It’ll be here next week, so that’s fun.

Rumors are whispering that China has closed shipping borders and that paper products are coming from there, so this could be the tip of the iceberg – but I haven’t seen any real confirmation of that. Lots of rumors.

We actually have a really well planned emergency kit with fully stocked bug out bags and several weeks worth of supplies. But those are in Los Angeles. In storage. While some other staples like cereal and milk are also selling out, the vegan options seem fully stocked. I was able to order a few cases of vegan ramen delivered next day without any problem, but not sure how long that will last before the regular people get hip to the tasty vegan options.

Moments ago the major of Hokkaido declared a state of emergency and asked everyone to stay in their homes all weekend. Here in Tokyo, Disneyland has closed until mid-March and events are being cancelled left and right but we’re still not in panic mode, at least not outwardly. This evening I walked over to the grocery store and the shelves of perishables are empty. The shelves of disinfectants and cleaners are empty. Everything else is mostly well stocked. It feels weird, like simultaneously on the brink of something but desperately clinging to some semblance of normalcy. A slow motion explosion happening right in front of your eyes. We’re planning to go to a park tomorrow afternoon to see plum blossoms.

We still have power and internet, but if this was a zombie/apocalypse movie they’d cut out soon with no warning.

Feeling parallels to the days back in 2011 just after the Tohoku earthquake. But that was more of an aftermath with a hopeful eye towards the future with thoughts of rebuilding and this is an ominous hesitation about what is coming, but at the same time refusing to acknowledge the inevitable as if that will somehow prevent it.

Once Upon A Time In Bradenton

While walking home from the office the other day and talking to myself along the way I remembered a story from my childhood that I’d mostly forgotten. This was also when I was in 7th and 8th grade, I started hanging out with this kid named Erik-with-a-k who was as crappy of a skateboarder as I was so I didn’t feel too self conscious around him. We’d skate at a nearby school parking lot and sometimes visit a neighborhood ramp, he’d bring a little portable tape deck and blast Sex Pistols and Circle Jerks tapes. He’d tell me about a good friend of his who was a stupidly famous pro skater and I’d tell him he was full of shit. Then he’d tell me about him in front of his parents and they’d nod agreeingly so I figured maybe it was legit. One day he announced that he’d talked to his friend and this dude was going to be sending a care package of 25 complete boards for free, and Erik-with-a-k said he was going to give me 5 of them. This was huge because I was poor and had a really old really beat up deck, and the expected build was legit. Indy trucks, Slimeballs, Powell Swiss bearings and flypaper griptape. I’m embarrassed that I still remember this. 

Anyway, separately there was a legendarily good skater in our small Florida town named Caleb who could ollie into the back of a pickup truck, you can ask anyone. And this new windfall of skateboard booty had given me an idea. I knew a girl who knew a guy who people said sometimes skated with Caleb and I asked her if she could ask him if he could pass on a letter for me. He said yes, and she said yes. So, 13 or 14 year old me wrote a letter to Caleb. I told him he probably didn’t know who I was but I knew all about him and his pick up truck oillie-ing. I asked him if he’d teach me how to skate, because I sucked and everyone I knew sucked and I just wanted some tips from someone who knew what they were doing. Keep in mind this was 1988 or so and there was no YouTube. Anyway I told him about the skateboards I was about to get, and offered him one of the complete builds in return for his skate tutoring. I gave the letter to the girl, she said she gave it to the guy, but Caleb never replied. 

A year later I’d go to high school and it would be the same high school that Caleb went to, though he was a few years older. Being a punk or skateboarding wasn’t really a cool thing to do in those days, especially not in the middle of Florida. [As an aside that same year I’d run for (and lose) student council Vice President using the slogan Sean B for VP and my campaign posters had a drawing of a kid on a skateboard which I drew and thought was cool, but some other Sean B in my school who was a surfer didn’t take too kindly too and pulled me aside one day and told me to take every last one down or he and his surf friends were going to beat my sorry skater ass because he didn’t want anyone thinking the posters were his implying that he skated.] Anyway, During lunch all 5 or 6 people who were into punk or skateboarding or that kind of thing would end up sitting together at lunch and yes that meant that eventually I’d be sitting with Caleb, who by this time had lost all his mythos and was just a stoner in my mind. To his credit he never made fun of me, though one day he would ask me if I ever got all those skateboards. Which I didn’t, because the story from Erik-with-a-k was bullshit.

Turns out Erik-with-a-k was a pathological liar, the first I’d ever recognized. We’d stopped being friends the previous summer when his mother found a massive stash of porno mags under his bed and he’d played dumb by blaming them on me, saying I’d ask him to hold some things for him but told him he wasn’t allowed to look at them. His mother believed him and called my mother to tell her how I was poisoning the mind of her sweet innocent child and I wasn’t welcome in their home anymore. I got grounded because “you know what you did” though I didn’t know, and it wasn’t until I called Erik-with-a-k to find out what the fuck was going on that I learned what was going on when as he, over the phone, lied to my face about it. I told him to fuck off, he told me he’d kick my ass if he ever saw me again.

A few years later I’d see him again, he’d turned into a cowboy and was hanging out in the back of a pick up truck with some other cowboys in the parking lot of the Denny’s my friends and I would go to. When I say he turned into a cowboy I mean he’d started wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat and had developed a very strong southern drawl. I said “Hey Erik-with-a-k what the fuck is up with the cowboy boots and hat and that southern drawl?” and he said “Boy! Whyount you comm’on over ‘ere and you’ll find out!” and I said “No thanks” and went inside the Denny’s. He and his friends drove away pretty quickly once more of my friends showed up and joined me inside. They were probably worried someone would throw a skateboard at their pickup truck and scratch the paint or something. When I got home that night there was a message on my answering machine from him, full hick-accent and with some good-ol boys a hootin’ and a hollerin’ in the background and conveyin’ the message that I got lucky tonight but he’d find me some other time when I didn’t have all my friends and teach me a lesson about respect.

I’m pretty sure I never saw or heard from him ever again though I passed some dude who looked a hell of a lot like him on the moving sidewalk at Denver airport about 5 years ago and I like to think it was him and he got scared because he didn’t have his rodeo clowns with him and ran anyway as soon as he got off the moving sidewalk. True story.

[This story was originally written for my newsletter/mailing list thing which you should subscribe to if you haven’t already.]