[1UP] PRESS START

Nice to see I'm not the only person who thinks of parkour as being real-life platform gaming. [via LocalStain]

They see me rollin', they hatin'

In what is almost certainly the greatest essay about skateboarding you will read today, Sean Wilsey reveals the poetry, the terror and the hidden glory of road rash, speed wobbles, near-fights with skinheads and the rush of Proustian nostalgia that comes with getting your favourite Natas Kaupas pro model back.

At the crest of Green, where it meets Leavenworth, is the lower of the summits of Russian Hill. Green then slopes down again, leveling off midblock on its way to Jones and my house, behind which is the higher summit, at the end of Vallejo. By San Francisco standards, this bit of slope isn’t a hill, because it kinks back to horizontal after about half a block. I set down my board, stepped on, pushed off. My plan was to roll the whole slope and use the flat to slow down gradually before the intersection. I had no backup plan.

Check it out on Buzzfeed here. (Hat tip to Lindsey Adler.)