Peligro fantastico!.

Danger is a big issue these days. It's out there. We've seen it. Bonafide peril. And aside from flags edging out urinating Calvins on our country's bumpers, this recent tragic and downright scary turn of events has put some of our past worries in perspective. Consumer confidence? Lawn darts? The too-sexy jobs of our teenage daughters? Pittance. You can bet even former Second Lady Tipper Gore dreams of those salad days when racy WASP lyrics blazed bright as the number-one threat to our nation's children.

StOLe tHe PeNt aND DraNK aLL Mg

JD SHe WeNt aND HiJaCKeD My BraND New Car

I Say AC, SHe sass DC

THe DaMNeD BitCH iS JUSt too BiZarre

Blackie Lawless - WASP

Perhaps it is our overwhelming concern for day-to-day safety that makes real Earth-shattering disaster so much more horrifying. For all the accidents and danger, the US is practically Nerf-covered compared with the sharp, rusted edges of the rest of civilization--a lesson that bites you like a bad dog once you enter the so-called Third World.

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT???

And it could easily happen. I saw plenty of bad dogs on my recent skateboarding trip to Chile and Argentina. Packs of dogs roam the streets of South America--collarless and brazen, unabashedly unneutered. In all fairness, Cairo was the only one of us who was actually bitten, but small scruffy herds cruise around unfettered in a style unseen in the States. They're actually amazingly good-natured, these street dogs. In the poorer areas they snoot through the gutters and dodge asshole-ish children, but in many of the finer shopping districts you can see them sprawled out on the lawns, tummies full of McDonald's and Telepizza bits. A one-eyed dog in Valparaiso would sit and lay down on command (he didn't know me from Jesse!), but politely declined the crust I offered him. Household trash is set in face-high garbage baskets to keep dogs from dragging it all over the streets, but in general, they're benevolently accepted as members of the community.

"They're like automatic buddies," Preston said, And they really were. It was fun to watch them prey on couples, following them for a few blocks as if they were their own faithful dogs, hoping to get invited in for tacos.

And while you might pet a stray dog and accidentally touch a scabby sore or some other yuck, the rabies fears seemed unsubstantiated and the cities haven't taken to rounding up the lot for the public safety. But this was just the tip of the danger iceberg.

PLANES, TRAINS, & AUTOMOBILES

At the airport in Santiago, Chile, we rented cars. Not from the "Hello-my-friend!" dude in the blue sports coat with the leather patches peeling and flapping off the elbows who hounded us from the second we got off the plane, but from a more traditional counter-style vendor. Our crew consisted of me, Ed Templeton, Austin Stephens, Caswell Berry, Diego Bucchieri, Preston Maigetter, Roberto Aleman, and Diego's friend The Father, so we needed more than one car. Discovering they were out of vans, we chose the next biggest car from the laminated picture sheet they showed us--Jeep Cherokees. Ed needed an automatic because he can't drive a stick and I was told my Jeep would be diesel. No problem.

A few minutes later, the counter man met us on the curb in a small Mitsubishi something or other.

"Diego, this isn't a Jeep," Ed complained.

"Yeah, yeah, this is what we call Jeep," Diego responded. The argument of semantics didn't last too long because we were too busy laughing when they pulled up in my "Jeep" a lime-green diesel Suzuki Samurai.

For those not familiar with Suzuki's rich automotive heritage, the Samurai was introduced in the '80s and was quickly embraced by teenage girls for its adorably compact size, its easy-down soft top, and the fact that its color schemes matched the wine coolers and Boone's Farm wines of its occupants. It was Spring Break on wheels, and briefly gave the VW convertible Rabbit a run for its money as the rich-girl Sweet-16 car of choice. Sadly, within the first drunken year of release, it was discovered the Samurai not only had the maneuverability of its ancient warrior namesake, but was just as apt to somersault and roll. Take these cutie-pie SUVs around a corner any faster than 30 and they'd spill their contents faster than a stomach of Arby's and Southern Comfort.

It was in this death trap we'd be navigating the questionable boulevards and byways of Latin America. As the rental man painstakingly studied the car to record all pre-existing damage on a special form, I waved the buckle-less end of my seatbelt at him. His pensive brow lifted.

"No problem!" he said with a smile. "No worry about it!"

"Oh no. No I won't!" I laughed back. "Bueno, bueno!"

This became the general extent of my inter-lingual communication on this trip--someone saying something to me, and me moving my head in a roundabout, not-necessarily-a-nod-but-not-really-a-shake fashion and mumbling "Bueno, bueno."

If I could grasp that a question had been asked, I might pump it up to "Si, es bueno." Should they prod any further than that I usually garbled out a "No habla Espanol." Past that, I would just ignore them. Actually, I wish I could say I politely ignored them, or maybe smiled nicely. But in reality, I'm ashamed to say, I got in the extremely bad habit of answering them in abusive English.

BLAME IT ON ED

Ed got me into it. He started it. Not saying I'm not prone to poor behavior, but he's the one who made it funny. Here's the situation: As in the US, the only people who come up and talk to complete strangers in Chile and Argentina are people who want something, i.e. money. I was extremely cordial to any skater or regular person who attempted conversation with me. I'd hunt down Diego or one of the others as a translator or pantomime for 10 minutes until it was determined that the child I was conversing with was letting me know that he truly and wholly loved Andrew Reynolds. And it's not that I didn't fork over money at least five times a day to whoever asked for it, 'cause I did, gladly. It just got to the point where, rather than try and bridge the language chasm to get involved in whatever embarrassing gimme-some-change gambit they were trying to pull us into, it just got easier to say something like, "Sir, shut your taco hole," which Ed made up. When I pointed out that Chileans don't really eat tacos that m uch it was changed to "Shut your bean hole," Again, extremely shameful behavior. Let us never speak of it again.

A lesser stupid habit I got into was asking, "Que?" after someone spoke to me in Spanish. "Que?" I'd ask, proud of my mastery of the Spanish word for what, "Que?" I'd repeat after they reiterated. It was as if I might somehow understand a question in a language I'm completely ignorant of if only it was repeated to me enough times. I pretty much broke myself of this inclination after the first couple days, but Caswell was asking, "Que?" 'til the bitter end. While the group would ignore a stranger's request and keep moving, Caswell would stop dead in his tracks to hear the man out. "Que?" he'd innocently ask his toothless inquisitor. You could sometimes look back and see him painstakingly bending down to hear a small child repeat his request for coins: "Que?" Caswell would whisper earnestly.

MEET THE CREW

Caswell Berry was our go-to man on the trip. We'd get to a spot and tell Caswell "Go to it!" He's the kind of kid--like Andrew Reynolds, Jerry Hsu, or Mark Appleyard--who no matter what or how horrible the spot is, can do a trick. Every trip needs a go-to man. If not, you'd have to suffer through even more tour articles with tricks over chains and frontside nose-slides on brightly-colored walls. Not that Caswell is in any way a pushover. Hardly. He's hot shit. And once he gets this Shemp haircut situation figured out, he should be hell on the ladies too.

You know how when you go on a vacation you tend to stay up too late and get sunburned and eat a bunch of crappy food and sometimes drink too much and smell bad and try and meet ALL the girls and skate all day long and get back and feel like you have to actually recover from your vacation? You know how that feels? Well, Thrasher video man Preston Maigetter has been on vacation for the last four years. He's got that land pirate stamina that Hell Rides are made of. But without the narcotics. In times past, fellas like Preston were the cowboys and Vikings of the world--laugh all day, sleep where you fall, grip life by the husk, etc. Ed said Preston reminded him of a youthful Skipper from Gilligan's Island. I don't know about that (especially after I was cast as Gilligan in the arrangement), but Preston's easily as good-natured. "Let's do it!" he says to almost any suggestion. I both envy and fear for him.

Austin Stephens doesn't talk much, but he spoke a little more on this trip. He alleged that every time Ed took a photo, he could sell it for 1,000 dollars in one of his gallery shows.

"So, you just made 4,000 dollars right then?" he would ask.

"No. Not even," Ed would answer.

But still, Austin half-heartedly would object when Ed would take photos of him.

"I'm not trying to make you rich."

We all had a chuckle when, while Ed was photographing children getting food out of the trash in front of a grocery store, Austin quietly piped in, "Ah hah! That's 3,000 dollars for me." Ed the Id, Austin the Super-ego.

Roberto Aleman is from Spain and has bullfighters in his family. His anger while skating was eclipsed only by the intensity of the beatings he took. One night Roberto ate the biggest steak I have ever seen. It was four-inches-thick and had the circumference of a Frisbee. A thick ring of fat lined half of it, and he sucked the slab down before we were even done with our salads. Maybe with bullfighters in the family, it's kind of a vendetta thing.

Cairo had the interesting task of having to write a final term paper for his religious studies class while on the trip. "So, was Moses before or after Adam and Eve?" he'd ask of anyone in earshot. This wasn't an actual question, but by the fact that these are some of the only Biblical characters I can come up with, you get a pretty good idea how much help we were.

Ed Templeton, the veteran of the sport and second generation street style innovator. Artist and conversationalist. What a pleasure. Vans full of foul-tempered teens with their headphones on have nothing on a trip with The Tempster.

Diego Bucchieri is The Butcher of Buenos Aries and was our beloved tour guide. We pretty much flapped around like idiots until Diego told us where to go or what to do. The only time we defied him was when he tried to make us stay in a hotel that looked and smelled like a fish restaurant. We stayed up the street at The Ritz for eight dollars more a night.

THE STREETS OF SANTIAGO

Santiago, Chile was our first stop, and I was amazed by its lack of resemblance to Mexico. Chile has a noticeably European flair, and many neighborhoods look as if they could fit in in Germany or Los Angeles. The Andes fence in the city to the east, with peaks so high they get confused for clouds. We skated a large park with pond-style terrain not built for skating but filled with rippers of all ages.

On our third day we took a day trip to the seaside city of Valparaiso where Caswell feebled a large downhill rail and I photographed the professional photographer's dream--an old man in front of a brightly-colored building. As I was shooting the elegant dilapidation of a neighboring hillside, he emerged from his misty blue abode, just as old and photogenic as can be. While lining my ancient friend in my sites and pondering the beauty of his lifetime of struggle and the crapitude of his dwelling, I practically salivated imagining the praise I'd receive from the impossible-to-please photovest shrouded elders of my photo lab and camera store.

"You finally got it!" they'd say, wishing they'd bothered to learn my name over the last four years I've been patronizing their businesses. Looking back, I only wish that a jam-faced child or perhaps a wobbly-legged baby goat could have wandered through the frame and made it a shot of true National Geographic caliber.

But back to the danger. At the hotel on our third stop of Mendoza, Argentina: they had the old-fashioned kind of elevator where the door is a metal fence and you have to open and close it yourself. A couple of times I forgot to close the door after exiting and the maid had to hoof-it up five flights to shut the gate so other people could use the elevator. It won't move if all the doors on all the floors aren't shut. Not only could you feasibly open the gate and jump down the shaft if you had the inking, the metal fence had spaces big enough to stick a few fingers or even your whole hand through to get sliced off Cuisinart-style as you passed a floor. Whereas Americans would find this design a lawsuit waiting to happen, the Argentineans take the more pragmatic view of, "Well, don't stick your fingers in there." The practicality of this approach is mind-boggling.

The waddling buffet line that are the peoples of the US would likewise cast a wary eye at the four-foot deep open air gutters that line all the streets and sidewalks of Mendoza. While Americans are used to the idea that any impediment to their path is someone else's fault, the grandmothers and toddlers of Mendoza are accustomed to leaping these chasms and avoiding their ankle-breaking clutches when exiting busses and taxis like god-damned gibbons.

PUB CRAWL

We stayed downtown in Buenos Aries and Preston happily pointed out an Irish pub--The Kilkenny--right by our hotel, which he remembered fondly from a past trip. While having an Irish pub in Buenos Aries is no more or less stupid than having one in Des Moines, it seemed as weird to me as the Chinese restaurants we went to. Friday night was the big night at the Kilkenny and we rolled in just as Preston was saddling up to his first lady of the evening. Now, one of my major impediments to meeting gals in bars (aside from my beloved Katherine--hi sweetie!) is my intolerance for asinine conversation. I romantically imagine the razor-sharp, JD Salinger-inspired dialogue needed to effectively chat up the birds and hypothesize how I might deftly deliver it to give the ladies a hint of my complex and irreverent nature. I'm not talking about clever pick-up lines or anything like that. Just good back and forth, funny and fun. This, it should be noted, has never happened. Instead, the bulk of my exchange with the women of Buenos Aries (and the dudes, more often) was reduced to hometown jubilation.

"We're from Los Angeles!" Preston told one of them.

"Los Angeles?" an excited Argentinean responded, "Los Angeles?"

"Los Angeles!" one of us replied.

Now three dudes were looking at me. "Los Angeles?" they asked.

"Si. Los Angeles," I agreed, actually living in San Diego. "Los Angeles. Es bueno, no?"

"Los Angeles!" they roared with approval.

We were in. Even Diego, a native of Buenos Aries, had agreed that he was from Los Angeles.

"It's better for the girls if they think I'm American," he told me. I think even Roberto was claiming the US by the end of the night.

Though my new Irish pub friends were having fun trying to get girls to come and talk to me, their nearly-mute and possibly retarded buddy from Los Angeles, I decided to go fetch Ed, Austin, and Caswell so they could ogle Preston's little filly, a fetching teenage number who was now latched to his side. While Preston is certainly no less intelligent than me, he is decidedly more good-natured, meaning he can keep up the pleasant small talk all night long. They were carrying on about everything under the sun-laughing and having a great time.

With promises of "Preston's in there with the Argentinean Tracy Lords!" I drug the dudes over to the Kilkenny. By the time we reached the door the place was packed, and I began the arduous process of leading the Man Train.

ALL ABOARD THE MAN TRAIN!

For those not familiar with the Man Train, it's a shameful style of bar or club entry where a pack of four-to-20 girl-less dudes plow through the throngs seeking "action," or at least a place where they can safely station. One by one, in tight single-file formation, you weave and squeeze through the bar, hoping that around the next blind turn you'll find an open booth surrounded by girls or at least some floor space where your man pack can stand together with something bordering on self-respect. More often than not, the conductor of the Man Train will chugga-chugga-chugga the train 'round and 'round the bar, looking for the non-existent spot until finally running headlong into the bathrooms. "Back it up!" the conductor yells. At this point the caboose becomes the engine, and the Man Train makes its opprobrious return trip, making eye contact a second time with those they unceremoniously squeezed past moments earlier.

In our case, the Man Train had a fairly short route and put us back at a corner booth with Preston, his date, and the many fans of Los Angeles. Preston had a ball that night. He had no sooner returned from walking Tracy to the bus station (with some good-bye groping!) when he wandered back, right into a conversation with his soon-to-be second--albeit more heavy-set--special lady friend of the night. This one was saucy! She pounded beers while Preston arm wrestled all comers. One after another, the friends of Los Angeles were shamed by his mighty pythons. Some cross-table smooching followed (right) and even her dumpy friend was having a bail. Although I went home shortly after, Preston informed me that things were heating up nicely until, on the curb awaiting a cab back to her place, lady #2 projectile vomited halfway across the street.

"I knew it was all over when she started chuggin' red wine at three in the morning", Preston later noted. Danger, narrowly dodged.

THE DAY AFTER

As there were no demos or appointments to be kept, we pretty much bided our time between skating and tracking down vegetarian restaurants from a list Ed printed off the internet. We'd drive all over town for one and then Caswell would go from there in search of a McDonald's. One night he couldn't find the Golden Arches, so he bought six candy bars from a road-side vendor.

We never did adjust to the five-hour time difference from California. Instead, we just stayed up really late and slept until one or two in the afternoon. Argentinean networks must have gotten a great deal on American movies from the '60s, '70s, and '80s, 'cause we watched unedited classics including Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, and Star Wars almost every night. On one especially dreamy night, I went to bed with The Godfather, Part II and woke up just in time for Smoky and the Bandit.

GAP ATTACK!

Holy shit! Wanna talk about danger? We made camera man Preston ollie a giant gap! Now Preston is no slouch on the stuntwood (he was Tom Boyle's doubles partner in the '98 X-Games for shit's sake), but a few nights of making party had left Preston looking a little haggard. Cairo had wrapped up a monster kickflip over the gap when we started bringing up the Peter Smolik fantasy.

Some background: As a hill-bore member of the hip-hop generation, Peter Smolik and his boys, like so many other players on the BET, like to enjoy a little of the pricey and high brow Hennesey whiskey (Henn-Dog, as it's called) when celebrating or just plain relaxing at home. I'm not sure how it started, but we had somehow been discussing what Smolik's ultimate high might be. After some consideration, we decided that nothing might please 01' Dirty more than landing one of his trademark super-technical tricks, then grabbin' a bottle of Henn-Dog straight from the grip of an awaiting homie.

"Shit, I'm skatin' Crock and I come off some super-techy shit and snatch that bottle a' Henn-Dog," we imagined him saying.

Keep in mind there is no basis of truth in this. It's 100-percent conjecture. But in the spirit of Smolik we began offering up imaginary bottles of Henn-Dog to whoever was attempting a trick.

"Land that shit and we'll have the Henn-Dog waitin!"' we'd cheer.

So, Preston was eye-balling the gap and we started making claims of all kinds of booze-oriented rewards. He seemed content to try it for a sixer until Ed went straight for the jugular and upped the ante to the Henn-Dog.

"For the Henn-Dog!" he hollered.

Knowing that such a claim from an avowed non-drinker would never be made in jest, Preston got serious. The takeoff was muddy and the landing slippery, but the 200-pounder began the tossing of the carcass, A couple of dangerous slip-outs followed.

"That Henn-Dog's a barkin,"' we goaded him, as he skidded into the wall then hiked back to the top.

A few tries and a cheering section of 20 or more passersby later, Preston guided her home, not for the bottle of Henn-Dog, but for the still-honorable eighth-try consolation prize of a shot. Skill won out over danger, and the Americans were once again victorious.

PERSPECTIVE

Chile and Argentina may not be a sidewalk surfer's Mecca, but there were enough smooth-ish, hassle-free spots to make up for all the dodgy, cracked-up, feces-laden ones. In a few cases, (see Austin's kffsbs), I was actually squatting in a puddle of urine to get the shot. On the flip side, the spot where Caswell got the noseblunt slide was a city building where the town's children had been granted permission to skate. Apparently the mayor told them, "We can't afford a skatepark for you, so skate here!" Skaters are also allowed hill-reign of many marble monuments and parks. Mendoza, for example, was filled with public squares, each yielding something to ride.

I really was prepared for fantastic danger when I went to South America. In reality, any small hazards that might exist are understandable considering Chile and Argentina's economic woes. Drinkable tap water and regularly maintained, poop-free sidewalks will surely come with economic stability, although I'm the wrong guy to speculate on how that can be accomplished. Until then, the folks in South America will pet stray dogs, watch out for holes, keep their fingers out of elevator shafts, and generally use common sense and their own resourcefulness to avoid danger and enjoy life.

"When I saw the towers fall on TV, I was so sad. I couldn't believe it," an Argentinean skater told me. "We love the US and want to be just like the US."

I rarely feel patriotic, and sometimes wonder if I'd be better off in another country--some mellower, more out of the way country whose currency may not be so strong, but whose need to referee the affairs of the world isn't either. In lots of ways, I'd rather step in dog crap and be unemployed with a diesel Suzuki Samurai than worry if the next plane I get on will be used as a bomb by people I can never hope to understand.