The L town stoners-This is the first real skateboard gang that I had ever really heard of up until this point. I had just moved across town to a rather crusty area of Colorado and had just started meeting a few people who skated in the neighborhood. The fist kid I met was named "lil Jake" . He was good at skateboarding and he was like his nicknamed stated indeed very "lil". We would skate around town and eventually met the likes of Shawn Kline, a younger kid who already had a tattoo of a cross on his arm and was always looking for a place to sleep and Zayn Hood, who up until this point I just saw on the bus and thought to myself "where did he even find orange zip off pants, and why does he think skating in heelies is a good idea". Eventually the gang formed and we, more they, were the "L town stoners" named both after all of them living in Lafayette, Co and their love of smoking weed.
TLG, The lollypop guild-Sooner or later our friend lil Jake had met the likes of Clay Kessack, an asian kid from a different town that came to the local skatepark rocking the hurtingest of nikes and drove a car, which one upped all of us L towners. They began hanging out more and more and eventually started the crew of the lollypop guild. They made stickers, worked on a video that never came out and would skate Clay's basement skatepark allot. Whenever lil Jake would go there I would hear the day after about how awesome Clay's house was, and that there were "soooooo many snacks, soooo dope". As foolish as it seems, I was jealous of this whole thing. Eventually all of my other friends got to skate the basement too, and they all said that they hated Clay's stupid dog. The dog died recently and I now live with Clay so...yeah, I guess I didn't really need to be in a basement with him.
S.W.A.B, skate with a boner- One day when wandering around the cafeteria of Boulder high school I had run into another person holding a skateboard. He was bald and had a beard, I waved and he ignored me...I thought it was weird for a couple of reasons but I figured he was a teacher there. This turned out to be John Brownlee, a kid a couple grades BELOW me who, thanks to puberty, looked like a grown ass man. I would see him at the skatepark drinking beers, hanging with all the cooler kids and smoking cigs. I tried to make small talk with him when I saw him until one day he told me "don't take this personally, but I really don't like you". Needless to say I took it personally, so you can imagine how shocking it was when I got a call on my mom's house phone from him the next day. He said that they had voted me into the crew and on the upcoming Saturday we were going to have a "crew battle" with some other skateboarders. I was confused and excited and then spray painted "swab" on all of my stuff. We drove around in a van, drank beer and it's rumored that chicks used to be super down for the crew right up until I joined...
Trickfactory- This was the crew that I fell into by accident thanks to my habit of constant hating. I was on my usual hating spree at the skatepark when I heard some hating from a new voice, this voice was Bryan Ball. Bryan was thirty something, constantly farting and skating all the time and this was appealing to me. Eventually I was hanging out with all the older skateboarders and underage drinking with over the hill heros it was always packed with arguments of who left Bryans galoshes in the rain, how Brandon would "eat the fuck out of some play dough" or Neal crashing his car in the parking lot of his apartment complex in a sparks induced stupor then teaching children at the ymca the next day. These were really fun times now that I think about it...
1086- As things started changing, we started changing. Friends were moving from Boulder to denver and my friends were making new cooler friends. Eventually I too moved to Denver and lived in the mouse infested living room of the 1086 house. There were parties every night, girl fights, mice, lice, gang wars, hate crimes and so on. The crew still exists I think and I'm about 90% sure that it's still the password to any email, debit card, or facebook account amongst my friends to this day.
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