Posts by Patrick Eisenhauer

Middle School Photos

Posted on March 18, 2015

Since my next post will be about quitting skateboarding, I thought now would be the appropriate time to give the people what they want, that is, a big dump of old photos from roughly 1986-1988.  The image quality varies pretty greatly, sorry.

1986 everybody.

1986 everybody.

Team P.E.B.

Team P.E.B.

Suburban street skating, i.e. jumping off a wall into a driveway.

Your author doing some suburban street skating, ie. jumping off a wall into a banked driveway.

Me boardsliding a picnic table at the old Lutherville.

Me sliding a picnic table bench at the old Lutherville.

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Ed, launch ramp backside air in front of a dramatic sunset.

 

Ed sliding a curb.

Ed sliding a curb.

Brian ollieing off of Jeff B's launch ramp.

Brian ollieing out of Jeff B’s launch ramp.

Brian airing off some skinny ledge. Look at that Rob Roskopp.

Brian airing off some skinny ledge. Look at that Rob Roskopp.

Brian, night skating.

Brian, night skating.

Ed and Brian watching a street contest.

Ed and Brian watching a street contest.

Jeff B getting super extended off his launch ramp.

Jeff B getting super extended off his launch ramp.

Jeff B at Lutherville when the metal ramps were brand new. I don't know if this was just super tweaked or a 180.

Jeff B at Lutherville when the metal ramps were brand new. I don’t know if this was just super tweaked or a 180.

Someone I don't know with a nosepick on the box at Lutherville.

Someone I don’t know with a nosepick on the box at Lutherville.

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Some random with a bent knee Christ thing at a contest during the height of the launch ramp era.

Closed gas stations. The natural habitat of the suburban skater.

Closed gas stations. The natural habitat of the suburban skater.

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An unknown with a FS wall ride transfer at a contest in Ocean City, MD.

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More random shots of people I don’t know. Some guy with a nice FS 5-0 at the old Ocean Bowl vert ramp.

Kids at the Ocean Bowl. I don't think this was a make.

Kids at the Ocean Bowl. I don’t think this was a make.

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Paul Wisniewski with a layback grind to tail on the steep bank at the Save Lutherville contest.

 

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Paul Wisniewski with a FS rock on the Lutherville mini. Texture courtesy of beginners B&W photography experimentation.

Don’t Panic

Posted on February 25, 2015

Below is the video that I’ve excerpted parts of for previous posts in its entirety. When we actually recorded this video is unclear. It was either the summer of 1990 or 1991. I have been saying that it was filmed in 1991, the summer before my senior year, but I am now beginning to suspect that it may have been filmed the previous summer, when I was sixteen. I say that because there is a brief bit, around forty-six minutes in, where we are skating Dookie Ramp 2.0 without a masonite layer, just raw plywood.  That would have been just after Jeff R built the ramp in 1990.  That and rails, I think we’d stopped using rails by 1991, but that is just speculation.…

Towson & Lansdowne

Posted on February 18, 2015

Unlike the rest of my blog, this post is not about one specific spot, like the Ditch or Lutherville, or even thematically grouped, like launch ramps or mini ramps. It is instead about two very different places, Towson and Lansdowne, and two very different styles of skating, street and concrete flow parks. I had considered splitting this up in to two separate posts but decided to keep it together because I find the juxtaposition of these two places interesting. While they are quite dissimilar, what they have in common is that, in my last two years of high school, both of them were frequent destinations. Once we were old enough to drive many more spots opened up to us. We visited other backyard mini…

Ocean City

Posted on January 11, 2015

Growing up I must have spent at least several weeks a year in Ocean City, MD. My family owned a condo there so we went to the beach often. This makes Ocean City an odd place for me to write about as my experiences skateboarding there encompass the entire period covered in this blog. I went from tic-taccing in the parking lot while still in elementary school to board sliding handrails in my late teens. Yet my memories of the place have largely merged in to one continuous blur and it is exceptionally hard to differentiate what happened when.   Saying we owned a condo makes my family sound wealthier than we were. My father, his two brothers and their mother (my paternal grandmother),…

Backyard Mini Ramps

Posted on December 6, 2014

If we had a scene that was specifically ours, it was backyard mini ramps. When I started high school in 1988, the vert ramp scene that had flourished up and down the east coast was on its way out. If you are interested, that scene is nicely documented over at House of Steam. In the late ’80s vert went out of fashion among the kids. The few backyard vert ramps still around were primarily skated by an older crowd.   My high school years, 1988-1992, perfectly coincided with what was a major transition period in skateboarding. The release of The Search for Animal Chin in 1987 marks the apex of vert’s popularity. By the following year, street skating had begun to take prominence and the…

Denny Riordon

Posted on October 20, 2014

Denny Riordon was our local pro, owned our local skate shop and built our local skate park. I had initially planned to interview him about that skate park, Lutherville, but soon realized just how much more he had to offer on the history of east coast skateboarding.  What I didn’t know, until doing this interview, is how much of a pioneer Denny was.  He encompasses the entire history of modern skateboarding, from the rise of polyurethane wheels through to the present.  I’m very proud to be able to present to you the following interview.   Despite being such an important part of our local scene when I was growing up I now realize I don’t know very much about you. I know you lived…

Lutherville

Posted on August 27, 2014

This project has made me realize just how confused my personal chronology is. What I thought was a fairly accurate working timeline quickly fragmented under closer scrutiny. I have resorted to using certain events that I can place in time as markers or signposts, if you will. From those I can then extrapolate and make educated guesses about when, approximately, things happened. Of all the places I plan to write about, my memory of Lutherville is the most jumbled. Besides having trouble with the years I also realized that my understanding of how it came to be is based on rumor, hearsay and conjecture. I plan to interview Denny Riordon soon in the hopes of clearing some of this up. Denny was our local…

Team P.E.B.

Posted on August 10, 2014

If I was to stay true to the “spots” theme this entry should really be titled “Launch Ramps”. Hell, even that is not very accurate. Maybe “Jeff B’s Driveway and in Front of Brian’s House”? How unwieldy is that? Team P.E.B. is much more evocative and fun.   In elementary school I had a super hero club. Inspired by my favorite comic book, the X-Men, and a book of rare animals a relative had given me, I named our “team” the MAMMALS. Knowing myself, I am sure there was also some tortured acronym that MAMMALS was meant to stand for, but I can’t remember what. I assigned all of my friends code names based on animals best suited to their characteristics. I was, of…

The Ditch

Posted on July 8, 2014

I have a theory that you can never truly know a place unless you grow up there. I know this is not a particularly original idea, in fact I think I may have first encountered it in print in an old Stephen King novel, but it’s still an idea I developed independently so I’m laying claim to it. I think I first formalized this theory during my freshman year at college. I had moved out of state for school and that first year I did a fair amount of late night wandering around the surrounding neighborhoods. I quickly realized how little I knew about where I now lived. Live somewhere long enough as an adult and you can become familiar and comfortable with the…