Tales: Jody Smith
Telling stories and spinning a yarn with the pro skater from Cornwall.
More like this...
Life is all about the stories you can tell. So in this spirit, we ask the great, the good and the downright talented to tell us their tales of misadventure.
Step up DC European Team skater Jody Smith...
"To skate the good spots in America you usually have to go to the schools, which usually means jumping fences. It always seems sketchy, but once you’re in there it’s cool.
We went to this school in Los Angeles and there must have been about 15 of us in this one high school. It was cool, we were all skating around and it got to a point where there were literally only three of us skating, everyone else was just sat down. I was one of the guys still skating when this police guy just came in. I think he was like some kind of rookie cop trying to make his first arrest.
He shouted, ‘You! You, skating! The rest of you can leave.’ So, 12 people got to go and I was one of the ones left standing there like, ‘oh no, why did he have to see me?’ He asked the most random, crazy things, like my eye colour, my height, weight, my mother’s name, all this stuff.
He had a gun next to him, so I was just like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got brown eyes, my Mum’s name’s, blah, blah, blah.’ So he said, ‘Right, I’m going to write you up a ticket for $500,’ after he’d asked all these questions and he then goes, ‘You’re in luck guys, because I don’t have my ticket pad with me, you can leave.’
I didn’t want to skate a school again when I was in America. At least, I’ve just got back from America and I did skate another school when I was out there, but it’s still in the back of your mind when you’re jumping the fence. It kind of made my bum twitch a little."
Subscribe to HUCK for six issues
Only £21 (UK) / £44 (EU) / £59 (Rest of the World).
Tales: Jody Smith (text) by Liz Seabrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Add Your Comment...
Please note: Your comment may be held in moderation for approval by an administrator to prevent spamming. This usually doesn't take long, please be patient.