Stacy Peralta

Stacy Peralta Instagram – I was 7 or 8 when this skateboard was handed down to me from an older kid on the block, it’s my first board and this is how I got hooked; down the street from the home I grew up in was a busy shopping center, Steve’s Rexhall Drug store was the corner of it which was on Venice and Centinela, it’s entire perimeter surrounded by beautifully groomed pavement with lots of foot traffic. I was skating there one busy Saturday: kids were darting around on bicycles, pedestrians and others pushing shopping carts and strollers. I remember weaving and dodging through all of them, the kids and parents, the shoppers clenching their shopping bags all the while avoiding them and highly aware that if I hit the most minute crack in the pavement or the tiniest pebble that my clay wheels will lock up and catapult me into concrete. Here I am a young kid standing on this new invention called a skateboard, a little platform of wood and four rock hard wheels, it has no handlebars to hold onto or seat to sit on or pedals to rest my feet on, unlike a bike it’s a very insecure device and far more dangerous and far more tricky to figure out, and as I whiz through all of the people I can feel the hard rumble of the clay wheels vibrating up through my feet and legs, I’m at this little board’s mercy and yet amidst all of this chaos and frenzy coming at me I suddenly feel this incredible sense of stillness. Stillness? I’m weaving through waves of people and things, hundreds of sensations are hitting me including the fear of falling and yet I feel completely still inside. It made no sense to me yet the feeling was intoxicating and it was something I’d never felt before that moment. How is it possible that I could feel such stillness when at that very moment I might face-plant into a metal shopping cart or get bounced off pavement. It is that sublime experience of feeling still while moving rapidly on my board that hooked me to skateboarding, that feeling of profound stillness coming from within while at the same time everything outside of me is chaos and craziness. | Posted on 19/May/2023 20:27:36