Soundwalk

The rumble of hard polyurethane wheels on the concrete, mixed with the familiar scream of old, worn in, bearings gets me excited to skate. Kids cheering and screaming, are already riding the ups and downs of the skateboarding roller coaster. Their wheels slide and scrape. Their trucks clash and grind. The boards pop and snap. In the background is the dull roar of the FDR. The occasional siren of an emergency vehicle blaring down the highway comes as often as it goes, never breaking the concentration of someone trying a trick, or the pace of the chatter coming from people sitting on the sides of the park. A lady walks through the park with her dog. Her dog barks loudly. She shushes, trying to quiet her dog down. If your dogs barks at skateboards, don’t bring it to a skatepark. The droning bell from the school next to the park goes off, and the doors burst open with a wave of conversation, chatter, and straight up yelling. It lasts about three minutes and fades as the security guards continue to tell the kids to “go home”. As the sun goes down, so does the white noise of the park, the sounds of skating slowly fading away, increasingly replaced by the sounds of conversations, followed by the flicks of lighters, and then even louder conversations until, eventually, nothing. The only thing left is the dull roar of the FDR and the occasional blare of a cop or ambulance, but even the roar turns to a whisper and hopefully the blares go away too, but I’m not there listening anymore.