Skateboard Lessons by Edward "Shred" J. from Watertown, MA

I have skateboarded my whole life. Well, from roughly age 14 on. I got my first skateboard in maybe not the proudest moment of my life, but four boys walked into the local Bradlees with skateboards and five boys walked out with one. As, I said, not the proudest moment maybe, but it got me a board and I was off. Most of the early days of boarding were done in my best friend Stan's parking lot. He built an early ramp in his nice incline driveway and we'd be pumping air off the coping with daily regularity. We moved on from there to our friend Jeff Smith's side yard area, which was yes, big enough for a full on half pipe with 5 feet of flat bottom. We ripped that so much we smelled like wood to folks who came in contact with any of us. While we were skating this monster, we also frequented local skate parks like Zero Gravity and Wooden Wave that were cropping up as the sport built popularity. As I got older, I mostly just street skated all over our city of Boston.
I married, have a boy and taught him how to skateboard. He does pretty well and was even taught to do a little kick turn, but hasn't gone out in a bit and could likely do a heck of a lot more.