Old Head #4

Old Head follows Craig, a San Diego skateboarding local, and the last of a dying breed. Old Head episodes will be coming out on a monthly basis (estimated).

If you’ve never been to North Park I honestly feel sorry for you. North Park has like four breweries and everybody who lives there has super successful parents. But like, everyone is still super humble and trying to pursue art in some type of way. And it’s super sick because everyone lives in houses that used to be not sick and in crime areas but now the crime is gone and someone named, like, Ashley with a yoga blog lives in the house but because the house used to be in a crime area she kind of has gangster vibes.

Cruising there from OB is pretty easy, but I make it kind of hard on myself. You could cut through point loma and head up Washington and take that up right to North Park. But I like to take the 8 freeway because I can see a little bit of Sea World from my car window. I think about being a whale and living in an awesome pool and girlies feed me fish all day and everyone has to watch me do tricks and splash around? Damn dude. Being a whale in captivity is dope. I’ve had a couple moments where I got into sea world and popped in the pool with the whales for a little bit. Nothing crazy, I would just roll over to the edge and kick it for a bit. But every time I’d get dragged out and have some CPR done because one of the whales grabbed me and pinned me on the bottom of the tank for 20 minutes. It’s harsh but I get it - locals only.

Going down the 8 east you get stuck in fat traffic regardless of what day it is. That’s mainly due to Mission Valley. Mission Valley is just a little north of north park. You could call it Northest Park but that would be wrong. It’s a valley and people should respect that. Mission Valley is perfect if you just got divorced because there are tons of furniture stores and discount clothes. I knew a homie that got a divorce thrown at him and I was stoked because we were at the best buy in Mission Valley and I was like homie we can make a day out of this, but he wasn’t expecting the divorce so he wasn’t ready to make a day out of it. All good though.

I take Texas off the 8 and roll into North Park. When I get to North Park I like to roll my window down and cruise slowly. You never know when you are going to see the love of your life and you have to remain available and not hiding behind tinted windows. Most women in North Park are not in their thirties and are in fact younger, but occasionally there will be a clearly 30+ year old woman and that is cool. You have to one, make sure you do not scare them because you are driving a van with no windows in the back or sides. You also need to be respectful and not come off the top and say you are saying what’s up. You have to be casual. I try to say something like “Yeah man my leg hurts, but I think it will be alright.” That tells them I have a leg and I’m going through something, but I’ll be able to get through it.

So now that I am rolling up Texas into North Park I realize that it is weird that North Park is on top of a hill and Mission Valley is not. At some point some group of guys had to choose where their spots were going to be and someone chose to be at the bottom of the hill. Like, hey, I bought a bunch of wood and I don’t want to take it up the hill so I’m just going to chill down here. Probably a lot of it has to do where you bought the wood. Like if you have a wood guy on top of the hill you don’t have to take it up the hill, so you are set. But being on top of the hill is good. That’s where north park is. That’s where I’m going.

After a couple hours I find parking off 30th street. You either find parking or run out of gas and if you run out of gas that is where you are parking. But this time I got to keep my gas. I got a little spot outside of an indie book store. I like indie bookstores. It’s kind of our way as a society to get together and say hey this thing is not as good as Amazon so for that reason we need to keep it open. We all pitch in and buy the smelly version of a book or some shit and we go on our way.

But I don’t have book money right now. I need wheels. Bad. Big time. All day. Forever.