Summer Reading

Europe, Books and Old Man Injuries

I wrote most of this while traveling around Europe with my wife, Whitney, during the months of June and July, 2022. I don’t usually journal or write about the books I read, so I thought it would be a fun exercise. Wasn’t planning on putting it on here, but after we got our first few rolls of film developed I thought, “What the hell? Let’s make it a blog!”

Photos were taken by me and Whitney on a Minolta SRT101 and an Olympus PEN-FT.

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Sa Tuna, Spain

Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said

Philip K. Dick

I decided to try out Twitter, which I guess speaks to my age. Or my aging, I should say, of which I’ve been feeling lately. Shortly before leaving New York for Europe, I was at a bar with some friends and Mark Suciu said that he read somewhere that thirty-four marks the end of youth. I had just turned this age and I will attest that this statement felt true. “Youth,” meaning, as I interpreted it anyhow, a body that bounces back from injury quickly. 

Upon this day, my thirty-fourth birthday, a beautiful spring Saturday in Midtown Manhattan, I tried to give myself a gift I have no business gifting. I went out skating and attempted a trick I’d been dreaming about for decades. Within a few tries I pretty much had it, and jumped into a battle that lasted four hours, and ended only after I’d broken two decks and a truck. Not to mention my entire self worth, along with a major tweak in my back, which made my subway hobble home exceptionally miserable. Arriving home, I got straight in bed, somehow physically ill from the strange torment I’d just put my body through. I canceled the small birthday party I’d been planning and wallowed for the next few days.   

After a few weeks of at-home low back rehab I went out skating, only to pull my hamstring. Two weeks later, after feeling like my hamstring was properly healed, I strained my calf. This latest injury happened on my first day in Europe, a trip I had been scheming to make wildly productive. And while I know this sounds like a whole lot of complaining, I’m really here to share that I just finished reading the first of what will hopefully be many books this summer, and I enjoyed it very much. Thanks to someone on Twitter, who recommended Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said, by Philip K Dick.

I liked being transported to a dystopian future that is now in the past. A dismal 1988, (the year I was born) when a Second Civil War is fizzling out, and conquered students live in underground university bunkers and a police state controls the world. The protagonist, a famous TV personality named Jason, wakes up one day and finds he no longer exists. No one recognizes him, no one cares. He remembers his life, nothing has changed for him, but the world has. It’s easy to self-indulge this feeling as an aging professional skateboarder. Weeks pass like years when you’re not skating, and the Internet offers a constant reminder of how irrelevant you are, or will soon become. Nothing matters. Which is fine. Who said it had to? 

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Copenhagen, Denmark

The Glass Hotel

Emily St. John Mandel

It’s been a while since I found a novel that I couldn’t put down, one that I felt like reading over doing anything else. After a few days in Spain, we arrived in Copenhagen at 4pm, with moments to spare before Whitney had to hop on a zoom call. We’re doing the remote thing again. Mornings and afternoons in Europe, evenings and nights online in New York. I haven’t been to Copenhagen since 2012, and I remembered the city being one of the most fantastic places I’d ever visited. That trip was spontaneous, an add-on after a demo tour in Germany. The photographer traveling with the C1rca team was bailing early to drive to Copenhagen for the big contest. “Can I come?” I asked Gentsch, a charismatic German with bleached hair and an endless bag of stories from his decades as the Flip photographer. “Of course,” he said, and I hopped in his car. I walked away from that weekend with over $3000 in cash. The only time in my professional career I made top ten in a contest, “beating” Busenitz, Wes, and a number of other skaters I have no business “competing” against. Chris Cole won it. Nyjah, Ishod, Shane and Ryan Decenzo were in the top five as well. It was fun. 

Ten years later, the end of my youth continues to rear its ugly head and my calf is still in pain, so I won’t be skating the event. The first day, instead, I wandered around and finished the book I started in Spain. It’s called The Glass Hotel and it’s a pleasure and an absolute page turner. The only thing that bothered me is the author seems to have entirely lifted the Bernie Madoff story. I realize this is acceptable in fiction, only in this case it seems a bit too exact, lacking in the artful adjustment that good fiction does well. Hedge fund manager who’s running a Ponzi scheme until it all comes crashing down. There’s more to her story of course. But I don’t know, the similarities bothered me. Mainly because HBO recently released a popular series about the whole thing starring Robert Dinero. Seems like rehashing such a recent cultural phenomenon would be something to avoid. In her defense, the show came out a few years before the book was released, so it’s possible she’d already finished her book and it was caught in publishing limbo. But still. Isn’t it already the most covered Ponzi scheme in history? It seems like she should have picked something else.  

I didn’t do any reading the rest of the time in Copenhagen. Too many events, too many people. I bought a copy of Wuthering Heights at a bookstore one morning, just to have something in my bag at all times. While I love using a Kindle while traveling, it just feels wrong not having a single physical book on me.

I swore off shitty beer this trip, as I never find any pleasure in the lame lagers everywhere in Europe. Buuuuut it’s Copenhagen and I ended up drinking a lot of shitty beers. The event was phenomenal, the perfect sort of skate party to not have to skate in. In the end, I’m just a fan of what these crazy skaters can do. Heitor, Louie and Ishod won the event for me, but I think Nyjah took home the actual trophies.    

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Sifnos, Greece

Sea of Tranquility 

Emily St. John Mandel

We’ve committed a cardinal sin of traveling and returned to the same exact location, two years in a row. Only fitting that I would start and finish a novel about time traveling. I’m not into time traveling books. They lose me. The whole, travel back to change the past that changes the future that is determined by the past that seems to have already changed before it’s changed in the first place. It hurts my brain. Despite my inability to grasp these things, I really loved Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. It reads almost like a sequel to The Glass Hotel, with characters continuing on in satisfying ways. I tore through it quickly and would maybe even read it again. You know, to better grasp the time traveling parts. Or to pretend like I have.

There were no regrets for our return to the island of Sifnos, which felt sort of like time traveling to last summer. The Airbnb we rented was just as we left it, in a delightful little cove with a perfect diving spot twenty steps from our room. There are only two restaurants in town, so we’d rotate. Eggs in the apartment in the morning, and then we’d dine out in the afternoon before Whitney’s first zoom call, which usually fell between nine and ten a.m. in New York. The portions in Greece are so big we would always take something home for dinner. And as a rule, we’d strive to spend at least fifty euros every meal but could never quite do it. The only downside this year were the hundreds of jellyfish lurking in the cove, which made swimming for long bouts or distances pretty nerve-racking. Before arriving, Whitney and I vowed to swim across the cove every day for exercise, but after the first attempt we decided once was enough.

Following that single effort, I somehow emerged from the water with an injured back. Which was only right, seeing as my calf had finally started feeling better. Instead of swimming, I committed to figuring out jump roping, only to realize it hurt my back even more and made me terribly frustrated. It’s like, if I can’t skateboard, I have to find some other random physical activity to hate myself for not being good at. I eventually watched a couple YouTube videos and resolved my issues. This back thing is aggravating, though. Almost three weeks into this trip and I still haven’t touched my skateboard. What is happening? 

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Hydra, Greece

Deacon King Kong 

James McBride

I’m pretty sick of religion this week, what with the end of Roe. I can’t seem to resist the urge to debate random religious kooks who attack me on the Internet if I post my feelings about the decision. It never gets me anywhere. I just get riled up and frustrated with our country and the minority who have worked their way into positions of such consequential power and influence. I live with the arguments in my head, distracting me from wherever I am physically, which this week was the beautiful island of Hydra. Anyway, the book I decided to read wasn’t necessarily religious, but most of the characters were, and they just annoyed me. They were, for the most part, perfectly nice characters, but it’s really hard for me to read about or converse with the hyper-religious and not feel bothered. C’mon people! Live in the now! Not sure why I was surprised, seeing as the word “Deacon” was in the title. But it’s about an alcoholic deacon who shoots a drug dealer, so I was hoping it would move quickly away from the church, but it didn’t. I still enjoyed reading it. I love the 1960’s New York City lore that’s packed in, like rumors of alligators living in the sewers and pythons roaming the bridges. And imagining life in the projects at that time, and all the ethnic and racial tension at play in city politics. Mob stuff is always fun to throw into a novel when done well. And I thought this one did it pretty well. 

In short, I liked the novel. It’s possible my grievances come from the bitterness I’m feeling because I’m still unable to skate due to this back problem. A week out from the initial incident and it’s only getting worse. Not that there are too many worthy spots on Hydra. Hardly any really, but I could have scraped something together. The port town is cool, no cars or wheeled anything is allowed. Not even bicycles. Donkeys are the only form of transportation, which might sound magical, but I actually just find it pretty sad. 

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Istanbul and Antalya, Turkey

The Lola Quartet 

Emily St. John Mandel

This is the first time in a while that I’ve felt the need to pour through an author’s entire oeuvre. The third book I picked up by Emily St. John Mandel is the Lola Quartet, which I enjoyed, not as much as the other two, but enough to still recommend it. The only thing I could not get over while reading it is that this time she seems to have completely lifted another HBO series subplot, which unlike the Bernie Madoff one, I find almost unforgivable. 

Anyone who’s ever spoken to me in person has probably heard me talk about The Wire. I’m utterly obsessed. I was first introduced to the series in college, some sociology professor showed a courtroom clip, and I decided to try it out. The first two episodes didn’t grab me, but by mid-season I was hooked. Since that initial binge I’ve rewatched the entire series—season one through five—over six times. Please resist the urge to do this math, because I have and it’s an embarrassing amount of hours to dedicate to a television show. In my defense, one time I used the show to rehab back from a knee surgery. Exercising is so boring, you know? I needed a distraction. And even though Whitney had already watched it before we met, I wasn’t about to marry her without watching it with her! During the pandemic, I even listened to a podcast breaking down every single episode. Pathetic? Yes, but worth every second. 

Anyway, this all goes to say that I was deeply disturbed when The Lola Quartet introduced a character and subplot closely resembling reporter Scott Templeton from season five. A reporter who starts twisting facts, fibbing quotes, and toying with the truth so it better fits his story. Now I’m sure even David Simon and Ed Burns, the creators, pulled this from real life. Thus is fiction. So it could be argued that Emily did as well. But I don’t know, there’s something that just feels wrong about using the same scandal ten years after the greatest television show in the history of the world already used it. Anyway, don’t let this stop you from reading The Lola Quartet. That was really the only part that bothered me, and it’s a small part of her story.  

Turkey was a last minute addition to the itinerary. Whit had never been to a country in the Middle East, so we thought Istanbul and the eastern waters of the Mediterranean would be worth trying. I had been to Turkey a number of times before and thought it would be the easiest in terms of culture shock. But I had never traveled with a woman and quickly found that even in a city like Istanbul, there are still some customs that made Whitney pretty uncomfortable. At restaurants and in service situations, it was like she didn’t exist. She’d offer a credit card and they wouldn’t take it. Waiters would take our order with their back to her. We would ask for wine glasses, and men would refuse to hand them to her. It was bizarre, and pretty infuriating. This may have been because we were in some of the more touristy, conservative neighborhoods. Or maybe this was a way of being polite? Who knows. We were only there for a few days so it may have just been a handful of unlucky, random encounters. By the time we made our way south to Antalya, everyone seemed way more laid back. The waters were beautiful, the old town was fun to wander through, and we did a lot of reading. My back was still in pain, but I did some serious spot cataloging. I’d love to see some Antalya spots show up in a video sometime. 

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Zurich, Switzerland 

Station Eleven 

Emily St. John Mandel

Zurich was another last minute destination. While trying to figure out our flight from Turkey to Sicily, we kept running into routes with a layover in Zurich. And then it hit me. Wait! One of my best friends lives there! Davis, my oldest friend, had been nagging me to come visit for ages. I called him up to make sure he would be around and a few days later we arrived in Switzerland. 

Neither of us had ever been to Switzerland and our expectations were low. That’s not to say we expected anything bad, we just didn’t anticipate being completely blown away by what a seemingly perfect city Zurich is. It’s clean, easy to get around, and if I had encountered this place in my twenties like Davis had, I would probably be living there too. Our biggest shock was finding Zurich to be the most “swimmable” city we’ve ever been to. On the edge of downtown there’s an enormous lake, with clear, clean water that—considering it flows from the alps—wasn’t even very cold. A public transit ferry drops you off at various beaches or suburb communities. The lake flows into a river that snakes through the city, into sections that are filtered and clean, with free swimming areas and diving spots. I know I’ve used the word clean three times by now, but that’s the word that sticks out the most when I think of Zurich. You could probably drink the river water we were swimming in. I’m not kidding. It was like being in some sci-fi utopian novel where the future . . . works out. Not that I’ve ever read one of those novels, but Zurich is what I imagine the backdrop for one would be like. In short, being there gave me hope for humanity. 

So it was only fitting that I would read a book about a dystopian future, where a plague has wiped out almost all of humanity. It’s funny, I’m really curious how I would have felt about Station Eleven if I hadn’t seen the HBO mini series first. There is no doubt that the novel is excellent, a creative twist on the slightly overdone pandemic nightmare. I love the traveling symphony, and the way the various character arcs come together. But I honestly feel like the show-runners or TV writers who adapted it really improved the story. They managed to bring the two best characters together into a touching story about friendship, which was entirely absent in the novel. So like I said, this novel is great, but it’s rare to come across an adaptation that doesn’t just mess with the story, but adds an ingredient that greatly improves it. I highly recommend both, but if you haven’t watched/read either, read it first and then let me know.   

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Catania, Sicily, Italy

Borne

Jeff VanderMeer

Sicily was the last stop of our summer tour, and it had the most riding on it. I’d yet to step on my board, and was hoping for a miracle. The previous summer, when we ended our three-month Euro jaunt with Patrik Wallner and his wife Phoebe in Greece, we made a silly short 16mm film, in which I play a naive tourist who picks up some hitchhikers. It doesn’t end well for me. For round two, in Sicily, Patrik and I had scripted a slightly more serious short, one that would be the introduction to my next video part. Naturally, it would require some skating.

The bulk of the short was to be handled in Catania, where we figured the best skate spots would be found. This was also where we hoped to shoot the “acting” bits, which our wives grudgingly agreed to perform. Neither Whit nor Phoebe were particularly eager to spend the early days of their vacation acting in a satirical-turned-sort-of-serious skit. Tobi, the fifth wheel of the crew who was cast without his knowledge or permission as my “filmer,” was not too thrilled about dedicating the start of the trip to our film either. Best to get it over with as soon as possible.

Tobi and our wives were great sports, and we managed to get through the shoot with some success. My back only allowed me to skate at fifty percent, and the antique shop where we’d hoped to film the first few shots was closed. So by the time we left Catania we still needed the girls to act, and I really needed to perform. Without any skate clips, there was no way it would all fit together.

I did finish a novel called Borne, by Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy. I’m a fan. This book is also part of a series of sorts, with a book #1.5 and #2, which I plan on reading. This felt like a truly Sci-Fi Fantasy novel, and it made me wonder how many of the skateboarders who rep Jerry Hsu’s brand actually read books like these. As an infrequent dabbler in Sci-Fi and Fantasy books, I think I would feel like a poser sporting the Sci-Fi brand. If asked on the street, who would I say my favorite authors are? I haven’t read nearly enough to know.

Anyway, back to Borne. It’s awesome. There’s a mystical creature, in a dystopian future, created by an evil biotech company. I like the characters. The story moves smoothly and Jeff’s imagination is incredible. I’m curious how it might be adapted for television, it seems ripe for it, but somehow . . . too fantastical at the same time? The creature, Borne, seems like it would be too difficult to create on screen. Either way, I’d watch it.

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Salina, Panarea and Scopello, Sicily, Italy

The Singer’s Gun

Emily St. John Mandel

By some miracle, despite the many hiccups, we got all the shots we needed for the video. I struggled through a couple skate clips, and on the day my back finally felt healed, I took one of the worst slams of my life. I fell directly into a metal gate, my quad bruising so horribly I could barely walk for the remainder of the trip. Whitney and Phoebe strolled through a proper antique shop, despite a forced mid-trip isolation from a terrible case of covid. Tobi went along with it all, despite feeling tricked into a traditional Patrik Wallner production (see Visualtraveling) by way of a “ friends vacation.” The final shot was filmed with only twenty minutes to spare before Whitney and I flew back to the U.S. and Phoebe and Patrik returned to Hong Kong. You can watch the finished product here.

I’m very proud of this piece. Patrik killed it, as did Matt Schleyer and all the filmers who helped me along the way. Maybe I’ll write more about the process of filming the video part in a following Substack. One possibly connected to the publication of my new novel, Off Clark. We’ll see.

Now back to reading. Look, I love her writing, and I’ve once again been swept up into another gripping, enjoyable read by Emily St. John Mandel. Whitney even started to get jealous about all this time I’m spending with another woman. But Emily! What are you doing taking another subplot from The Wire?

This time it’s the infamous season two, which I will admit I may have skipped during one of my rewatch binges. It’s the only season that introduces characters who pretty much disappear in the following seasons. But over time, I’ve come to appreciate season two as one of the great seasons of the greatest show ever made. And so, because of this widely accepted greatness, I don’t understand why Emily would include a story that deals with investigating dead girls that show up in shipping containers, when that is the foundation of the season two plot. Again, it’s different, but there are enough similarities for me to find it difficult to read. 

Otherwise, I liked the story. Much of it takes place in Italy, which was a funny coincidence. It’s always nice to read a novel about a place you're visiting. That used to be my rule back when I was traveling more for skateboarding. If I was going to an interesting, new country, I’d find a novel or two, along with a couple nonfiction books about the place. In the early days, fresh out of college, I was extra diligent and would take notes like I might later have to write a pop quiz essay on the place. As if at any moment, a police officer might arrive at a skate spot and take me into a spotlit corner and hand me a prompt, a pencil and a piece of paper. “Five hundred words on your country’s clandestine methods of influence—go!” 

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Back in the states, I read Emily’s debut novel Last Night in Montreal, which I have to say was my least favorite. There was something very satisfying about finishing an author’s entire body of work. Despite my petty issues, she’s definitely become one of my favorites.

If you got through this long meandering blog post, I appreciate you. Some of the photos in the Sicily batch were taken by these two lovely people, Patrik and Phoebe. Tobi (seen fumbling with his backpack) took the picture of the front blunt, though a water bottle spilled on his film and I don’t think he’s too happy with the way it came out. There was one photo of his from the shoot that made it into an exhibition and sold for a good amount of money. So in the end, Tobi was the only one who actually profited from our silly skit. He deserves it. No one likes being a fifth wheel.

Until next summer, happy reading!

Oh, and I still haven’t read Wuthering Heights.