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I’m reading The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky and Christianity as it is depicted in the story from Elder Zosima and the main character Alyosha make it much more wise and compassionate. Also, at the beginning of the book, the bros’ narcissistic dad makes a glory hole related joke to a priest and it’s fucking hilarious.
I finished that book not too long ago, and without wanting to spoil it, man there is definitely not a satisfying ending. Dostoyevsky jumps around a lot and has great character development, but I think the story line may suffer as a result of wanting to include too much information and asides. The Possessed is a good Dostoyevsky read if you're digging his style.
I think Crime and Punishment is second to none.
Have it on my nightstand, next in line to read!
On the topic of skate churches, there was one that had some prevalence in my hometown for a few years as well. Started off as JUST an indoor skatepark - sick. The owner was an ex-corporate guy in his late 30's who lived an extravagant lifestyle, but left the corporate world after cheating on his wife in an elevator with some chick from his office. Forgot to mention they also had a very handicapped child who was not expected to live past 5. So his wife is at home taking care of their child 24/7, while he's out buying sports cars and hooking up with strangers. After his extramaritals were brought to light, he salvaged his marriage by "finding god again" and quitting his corporate job to....open an indoor skatepark as God had instructed him to.
He had a company called "Glory skateboards", which actually used to hook up Eduardo Craig back in the day and somehow had a decent team. He had toyed around with owning a skateboard company prior to corporate life, but abandoned it for the corporate job as it probably was a time drain and costing too much. This dude was a total "I used to skate" type, who could roll around on the ramps and not much else.
Anyways, the park is pretty fun at first, but the guy in charge is just too much for a lot of the older kids who are immediately turned off by him. He criticized clothes kids would wear if they were the wrong brands, music kids would listen to, hairstyles, tattoo's and piercings, etc. Just tried to clown on you if you weren't right with the lord. As you can imagine, skate church began to become a thing. 30 minute sermon on Friday nights, get to skate for free for 2 hours and he bought pizza for everyone - super cool. Sermons at first were generally agreeable topics, be a good person, do the right thing, God loves you. The cracks started to show over time though. One of the older guys who helped with the park, really great guy actually and he shredded, was doing 360 flip noseslides down hubbas in the late 90's, was giving a sermon one night and favorite bands came up. One kid said ACDC and the speaker said something along the lines of "not my taste, but hey good for you for listening to older music and having an open mind". Really nice inclusive feeling. Afterwards, the owner stopped everyone before they got up to go skate again and made it a point to say that ACDC is the Devil's music and he needed to stop listening to it immediately. The kid who felt validated moments prior, then got bright red and was immediately just ostracized and embarrassed. On a different day, he did a whole sermon about which brands are against god, and I don't recall the whole list but do specifically remember Volcom being on there. The argument, Volcom stands for anti-establishment, and the establishment is an extension of god's will. Anti-establishment = hates god.
The pizza stopped coming. 30 minutes turned into an hour. Friday nights became Friday night AND Sunday morning. The "free" session afterwards only applied if you had paid to get in BEFORE the sermon. Half the park was then taken out for pews and a stage. No skating anymore on Sundays at all. The ramps fell into disrepair, holes went unpatched, screws left sticking out, wax was nowhere to be found.
Church started having guest speakers and shit. A lady came in once who was teaching people how to speak in tongues. "Just let the heavenly spirit flow through you and take over your body." A line of people formed up to the stage, and one by one they were all "taught how to speak in tongues". That was pretty much the moment I thought to myself, "What the fuck is this? These people are all lying, is this a cult?" The owner began passing out a form that was for "minimum required donations" based off your household income. I just stopped going altogether.
I had an interesting personal relationship with the owner during my time there however. He sponsored me and some friends, had us skating demos, even flew me out to Indiana for a skatepark opening one time. The demos were so wack for the most part. He would charge people hundreds of dollars (if not more) to rent out his "professional skateboarding team" for events. This entailed us stacking wooden ramps Tetris style into the back of a pickup truck, and driving to the location, then pulling everything out ourselves and setting it all up. Some event's were cool, we did demos at some schools, and some festival type settings, once at a mini golf course. Some were so extremely awkward I'm embarrassed now even. We did a birthday party in San Bernardino once and there was an immediate language barrier. Myself and the other kid skating + the teenager (non-skater) who drove the truck did not speak Spanish. We didn't bring any ramps to this one at all. For some reason, the birthday kid's mom thought we were bringing the loop and other crazy shit, she got Tony Hawk Boom Boom Huckjam napkins and assumed we would be doing that type of skating. There was a group of kids maybe 3 years younger than I was at the time, skating a really jankie flatbar they had. We skated the rail with them, with not much more than small talk being made. tried to find objects to skate over, so we started stacking empty beer cans from the family eating in the backyard. Ollied over a few kids. We were pretty much just guests that nobody knew. The family was so nice though, they fed all of us a great meal. As we left, the mom came up and handed us an envelope with $500 cash in it for our demo. Felt so bad taking that money. We were never paid for anything, other than the reeeeally shitty boards he gave us. Broke 3 in 1 day one time. We still had to pay for own grip too, so the boards weren't really even "free".
Looking back now I realize it was ripe with manipulation and child labor issues. I was about 14 during this period. I just completely ghosted the owner after I stopped going to the park. Wouldn't answer his phone calls. Saw him at Walmart a few months later, and we made eye-contact, then he just walked right past me with his nose in the air without saying a word.
Eventually he completely destroyed the skatepark, and made the entire inside of the building a church. There was an article in the newspaper about a year later detailing how he was shut down by the city for tax evasion, or zoning issues, something weird and corporate style shadiness. The city and building owner approved the use of that space for a skatepark, but it was now completely a church and for some reason created a huge issue.
TLDR: church bad, religion bad, skating better.
Topic: Skate Church Thread… (Read 3446 times)