london adventure day 8 (tues. 04.09.2002)
Originally written 04.09.2002.
today was a chill day, imposed more by lack of funds than anything else. i dropped the majority of what little cash i had left on a one day travelcard and headed out. first i followed up on the “grail hub” for my dad. the bicycle hub is the sturmey archer asc and it’s a 3 speed, fixed gear hub that hasn’t been made since the 50s. most shops i enquired at had no clue. i thought i was getting close when one shop i found mentioned some old guy who did sa repairs out of his house. unfortunately, no one knew how to get ahold of this guy. i was directed to a shop that some thought would be in the know and once i got there, i was sent to the back room where a grimey handed mechanic told me th best bet would be a bike swap or the internet. hah! the internet. it’s always fun to see my dad’s street hitting methodology supplanted by technology. so, giving up the search for the hub, i hopped on the docklands light rail (an above ground subway system which connects to the london underground) to cutty sark and maritime greenwich. i didn’t have the pounds to do anything much really, but i thought i’d walk around. greenwich is pretty neat – some quirky little record and kitsch shops as well as some maritime antique stores and lots of cafes. i headed for greenwich park and encountered an exceedingly lovely scene full of grassy hills, roman and saxon ruins, tree lined paths and floral gardens. definitely a good getaway from the madness of the city. there were tons of little kids running around, kids riding bikes, families playing football. it was really nice.
i made my way towards the center of the park and the sir christopher wren built royal observatory. i didn’t have the cash to get in, but i thought i could at least look around and maybe jump a fence. surprise! i didn’t have to. since my copy of let’s go was published, the royal observatory had been made free to the public. so, i went in and saw the prime meridian marker as well as some cool displays of astronomical and navigation equipment. there was also a camera obscura which is like a room that acts like a camera with a 360 degree view projected onto a surface in a darkened view. cool.
i headed back through the park to another free museum, the national maritime museum. they had a large range of maritime artifacts that i wasn’t very interested in, and a special exhibit on the history of the tattoo that i was interested in but that i found largely disappointing.
the free museum frenzy continued as i departed greenwich and took the district/circle line to the south kensington stop. this stop services a number of free museums – the natural history museum, the science museum, and the one i was interested in, the v&a. the v&a was originally to spur public interest in art and design and it continues in this tradition to create a really interesting museum. you have your traditional painting, sculpture, etc, but also exhibits on the design of fashion, musical instruments, printed work, and home furnishings. i wished that i had allotted more time for this museum because it was really quite cool. i did get to see the raphael cartoons (think big drawings/paintings made in preparation for another work, in this case tapestries, not the saturday morning variety, an impressive collection of 20th century objects with their design qualities discussed, and a very cool collection of european garments ranging from hundreds of years ago to the present. as part of this, they had an exhibit that erin would have loved. it was titled “men in skirts” and featured the evolution of skirt-like apparel for men and had examples of togas, kilts, frock coats, and discussed the influence of the punk, grunge, and fetish scenes on skirted fashion. the exhibit concluded with contemporary designers and their attempt to create skirted fashion that was free of gender association. it was an interesting perspective, but save for the kilts, i couldn’t help but see most of the designs as being decidedly feminine. it is interesting to note how, in some ways, women are much more free in fashion than men. that is, they can wear slacks without having their femininity questioned, but with men, only the likes of uber-males like david beckham can get away with wearing a skirt.
the gender bending didn’t stop at the museum, however. i went back to meanwhile for a final skate and discovered that the young girl skater, who was there on my last visit, was once again riding the bowls. this time she was there with a non-skater girlfriend who seemed a bit older and also to lack some of that tomboyness that fades with age. as the girl skated, her older friend has a look on her face that could only be described as envy. the girls who frequent the skate spot back in edinburgh seem so distant and self possessed, almost like mannequins completely oblivious to the skating going on. but, i’d like to think the girl watching her friend at the park was somehow aware of the additional freedom and confidence of her younger companion. then the younger girl did the most peculiar thing. she handed her board to her older friend and returned to her backpack where she retrieved a hairbrush and started brushing her hair.
at least to me, the juxtaposition of skateboarding, an activity which, though in no way inately male, certainly can be almost totally associated with male adolescence, and hair brushing, an activity undertaken with such public vigor only by pre-teen girls, was extremely potent. this scene is a better embodiment of feminism and gender equally than any i could possibly contrive. it is not the abandonment of traditionally feminine activities to prove a point. it is the freedom to choose, at one’s discretion and without regard to the gender-ladenness of various things, the aspects of lifestyle that make one happy. how cool is that?
besides girls skating, it was a fun little session. i watched the italian family take turns dropping into the mini and teach and encourage each other in a display of family unity that seemed so stereotypically italian. i found myself learning some of the mini-ramp tricks i could never do in those halcyon days of adam graham’s backyard ramp: f/s 5-0s, blunt-rock-fakies, tailslides, and some grindy pivot tricks whose names i don’t know. my personal glory was cut short when i watched older locals do huge airs over the hips and do enormously impressive tech tricks on the coping of the mini-ramp-like bowl.
in between runs, i talked with some of the locals and i was once again impressed by the friendliness that skaters extend to other skaters. these kids, who i had only met 5 minutes before were ready to offer me lodging if i wanted to extend my stay in london. it was a tempting offer, but i had exams to revise for and only 2 pounds in my pocket. another time then.
back in junior high and high school, when we skated adam’s ramp in carlisle, pa, we used to have this superstition that you would never say “last run” lest you, invariably, fall spectacularly. well, i’ve found that if i even let the thought “last run” cross my mind, i am surely doomed. thus was the case with my last run when i hung up on a rock and roll and slammed my hip hard on the unforgiving concrete illiciting concerned queries from the kids. this phenomenon was at least empirically corroborated by the bmxer who crashed hard on his last run and another skater who, ollieing down the big 3 set at the edge of the bowls, fell and ripped open some stitches, causing blood to gush everywhere.
i took the tube home and at paddington, i ran into jonesi who i had skated with earlier in the week. we exchanged knowledge of new spots and then bid each other adieu. i got off at my tube stop and hobbled, broken and bruised, back to my hotel.