When someone breaks into your house and robs you it is hard to think anything positive could come of it..

However, three months later I’m posted up in a new house, Belmont and McCelland, and that past robbery was the catalyst that put me here. Whats so good about Belmont St., well its the house really and everyone that lives and lurks there. Its a quintessential skate house but I’m not talking about a puke mansion that only offers the stench of stale cigarets and twenty pairs of the most foul feet any nose could ever encounter. We’ve got plenty to skate without even leaving our front porch.

The back yard is a stack of banks and ramps that create a mini ramp of a sketchy variety, wall ride off the cinderblock garage, stall in the death box window or drop in off the roof and almost fly into the neighbors yard when you hit the bank on the other side. Out front is a casual hill bomb to stretch your legs out in the morning.

At the top of McCelland the street is perfectly smooth concrete just as good as the skate park, we’ve got enough flat bars and boxes that we could set up a line on the entire block. Its like being fifteen again obsessed with skating everything but mostly just the flat box in-front of your house. Ditching english class after lunch just so you can land five more tail slides.

The only difference now is that I don’t have my parents telling me I can’t build another box because they take up too much space. I can let my obsession with skating run ramped and build anything I want.

Even when we are too lazy to pull out anything to skate the street itself has plenty to skate, small driveway banks and sewer-lid gaps to keep my manhole theory in good practice, if you can do it over a manhole you can do it over anything. There is a beefy stair set and bush gap for the days when you want to feel good about jumping down something but don’t want to stray far from home and a hand rail down the street that gets de knobed every know and again. When I need that extra boost of caffeinated energy its a quick cruise to the coffee hut on the corner of 900s.

I’m bound to be entertained by the witty Mr. Mike Murdock or have a beautiful coffee girl like Danya Allen or Vlada Kleynburg to smile at. After that tasty cup of joe I’ll bomb down to the Great Harvest bread shop for a warm and hefty slice of fresh baked bread thats always free. On the way back home I can slap a wall ride on the Gelato shop. If I feel like splurging there is a burrito shop, coffee garden and movie theater all on the same corner. Two blocks down from that and I’m at the infamous Liberty Park three block and shark tooth ledges. All of this is literally five minutes from home.

Residing inside is Matty Coles, Dirk Hogan, Cameron Stark, Tate Dunham and myself. Dirk is the team manager for the local Sugarhouse skate shop Blindside. The owner Mo is always down to lend us his VX to film with. Matty and Cameron hold down the fort managing the Layton Blindside. Needless to say there are plenty of motivated heads living in the house and thats the most important part.

When the people you live with are always hyped to go skate you feed off each others energy. The roar of urethane is always thundering down the street and the crsip snap of flat ground tricks coax me off the couch and into the street. Somedays its quiet on the block and you get a random visit from Lizard King mobbing around on Mark Whites little 125 motor cycle. There are few sights more entertaining then a super charged Lizard on a mini bike popping wheelies and doing power skids in the road. Other days there will be fifteen crewing up to tear apart the city. Its always a glorious sight to see that big of a mob ready to shred.

Or at least I think its a glorious sight... some of the neighbors don’t exactly feel the same way. Like the angry old lady accross the street thats been trying to get us kicked out for the past three months. She has been taking photos of every car parked at the house and sending them to the city trying to convince them there are a bunch of homeless squatters living here. Sorry lady, I know you’re a desolate old hag but its not illegal to have friends.The only thing she’s got on us is catching our friend Camden Case pissing in her yard on two separate occasions.

Come on Camden, keep it your pants and use the bathroom inside. There is also the insolent fat bastard on McCelland that never says a word he just stands on the sidewalk outside his house starring at us shaking his head. Sorry grandpa, you don’t own the street and your bad hawaiian button up and fat belly aren’t going to stop us from skating. A couple hatters is a small price to pay for all the goodness we’ve got going on.

At the end of the day I can nerd out on skate videos in front of the big screen, start cracking beers instead of ollies or try and get creative in the art studio we have in the back. The couch is comfortable and the door is always open so if you’re ever in the hood roll on by because what I’m essentially telling you is the block is hot on Belmont st.