Skunneling - milking joy out of concrete

In case you missed it, Bill Donahue, in his February 1999 column in MetropolisMag, first reported on the sport of Skunneling - a brand of extreme sport then very much in vogue in Ventura (California). I was as impressed by the sport as by Donahue's reporting. He wrote:

(Greg) Small reaches a weedy culvert and hops in. Then, as a large dog hails him, barking and bashing against a high cyclone fence, he sinks into the ground. He disappears within a tubular storm drain, lies down feet-first on a makeshift long skateboard, and starts to roll. The sound of his wheels roars in the pipe, and ahead of him, way beyond the puny range of his headlamp, there is human noise--the haunting, echoey laughter and shouts of a friend careening along at 20 miles per hour.

Ah, skunneling! The very word--a mutation of "skateboarding in tunnels" and a phonic cousin of the slur "scum"-- captures the ancient punk heritage of America's newest way to shatter your collarbone. Skunneling, which has been flourishing in Ventura for the past couple years, is one more pastime invented by scrappy malcontents determined to milk joy out of concrete.

Lovely.

In case you didn't quite understand how anyone can skateboard in a storm drain, this source elucidates:

"It's a form of either laying with your back on the skateboard and pushing with your feet or by lying down on the board and using your hands to pull yourself through the drains."

Ah, of course, lying down. So very lovely.


via Bryan Alexander and Meine Kleine Fabrik

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith