Tulsa: state of mind.

THIS FABULOUS GETAWAY vacation wonderland is known for its rusty train yards, polluting oil refineries, a plethora of skilled welders, and topped off with the 1929 race riots. This should give you a good idea of what Tulsa's all about. If I'm not mistaken, the race riots, along with the boom of the 1920's white guy oil money, are the only reasons you see a Tulsa dot on the weather map when the meteorologist lady with the fake tits is doing her two-second bubbly forecast for the rest of the country. In other news and claims to fame, Tulsa can say that Rumble Fish and the Outsiders were both filmed there, and a few years back you could have seen Peter Ramondetta walking on the wrong side of the tracks with "them" types.

WAIT, I TAKE THAT BACK. You wouldn't have seen Peter with that Ponyboy guy because that dude just had a gay name. Pete would have been with that one Cherry chick at the drive-in, for sure. Let's all not get too carried away and start in with an Okie from Muskogee Merle Haggard sing-along, but what I'm trying to get at is that Peter and I are both from Tulsa. I've wanted to do an article on our hometown for some time now. We've tried before but failed miserably--along with relatives getting us too stoned and drunk, add in the local pool halls and bars with names like Dead Town and you can see why we didn't get much done in past attempts. Healthy hangovers and a 360 flip photo that went to a website somewhere were about all that we could seem to accomplish. This time was different; I was trying to get a job with Circa (so I was on my best behavior) and all the different family members that were once bad influences have since moved closer to us, so they can fuck our lives up in our new homes. I failed to mention that we had a new kind of motivation this time, called Lee Dupont and Sierra Fellers. Lee more so than Sierra, solely based on the fact that he's big and scary looking. I could tell Lee didn't want to be in Oklahoma only to watch three other douche bags overindulge in cheap beer and beef jerky.

Now that I've signed my contract with Circa, I can say "Lee, you're big and scary looking" and not worry about any job repercussions, except for the black eye that I'm sure in his mind I will deserve for some reason or another in the near future.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, this time we handled business for seven straight days just north of Bushland. Part of the reason why our past attempts were unsuccessful, aside from the hangovers off the 3.2 beer, was because Peter had no one to skate with. Ernie Torres is from Tulsa as well, and I originally wanted him in the Tulsa article, but he was a no-show. You really can't blame him; once you're out of your hometown you should avoid going back at any cost. So we had one Sierra Fellers fill in for him. He's from Montana or some shit, so it's kind of the same thing. So, with the help of our honorary Tulsan, we were able to finally get some of our hometown in print.

Tulsa truly is a gold mine of untapped terrain--but be warned Southern California, before you send out armies of teams to blow up the spots, you're not going to be able to find them without Peter. As far as I know, the only coverage so far came from the Real team with Peter as the pilot. In California people are racing to land switch 360 flips down the Carlsbad gap (true story), which is part of the reason why we wanted to get out of town for awhile. I don't think Oklahoma even has a word for racing, unless you're talking about NASCAR. This kind of sponsor-driven, selling-your-product version of skating is something that the Midwest, for the most part, has never thought about. You don't have to go to a spot and run down a list of things that have already been done before you skate it. Only thing you need to ask is, "Hey y'all, what did Peter do, man?" That's an easy one to answer because he's usually asking himself that same question while standing next to you, but not out loud or in the third person; for the most part he's not that kind of weirdo.

THE MIDWEST SPEAKS a different kind of language, and it's a lot slower than other parts of the world. This spills over into the rest of their way of life--which is exactly the reason why I can justify calling it a relaxing vacation town, having spent the last eight or so years in Southern California. It was a perfect place for the four of us to find ourselves for seven days.

It was kind of like a cheaper version of a Barcelona skate trip. I know that just sounded like a huge leap, but not so much. People talk funny, you don't get kicked out of spots, and the locals like to drink a lot and take naps. So take away the 300-plus-year-old buildings and rich culture and heritage Spain has to offer and it's kind of the same thing. The downtown does have a unique look with all the old buildings that were built in a time when Tulsa was rich enough to make every ledge and skyscraper out of the finest marble. Factor in an understaffed police force and, as the NASCAR fans would say, start your engines. Peter has stopped smoking everything and drinking hard booze, which allows his brain to work more quickly--in turn allowing the rest of him to stay on the board. He claims it's helping, but from what I've seen of him in the past I'm not so sure it was really ever a problem. As far as I can tell, Sierra is still innocent--it's really hard to even get a beer in him, let alone any kind of smoke--so they seemed to be on the same page with each other.

We met up every morning around 2:00pm or so for breakfast at a little diner on the old Route 66 next to a pawnshop and cattycorner to a graveyard. In fact, I think it was called the Route 66 diner. Pretty clever. My dad and I had frequented this establishment many a mornings in my formative years. The clientel looked like they were either taking a break from robbing the graves across the street or that the meth lab they were working in earlier exploded and they had to get away from the hectic hustle and bustle of their crazy work schedule. At one time I'm sure it was a nice restaurant, but now you're lucky not to get a cigarette ash in your coffee. We had the same overweight, mustache-sporting, running-nose having, cold-giving waitress every morning/afternoon. With all this said about her, she was actually a very nice woman, just not the kind of person you want bringing eggs to you. This fine eatery served as our home base if you will for the next several days. Peter and Sierra would discuss what they wanted to do or where they wanted to go while I sat in my chair quietly, afraid of Lee and whatever was floating in my coffee. (Once again, Lee, you're scary.)

ONLY IN TULSA can you find a place called Hell. The Hell ditch was a spot we went to straight from the snot coffee restaurant. It's called the Hell ditch because in the summertime it's hot as H-E-double-hockey sticks. Hell ditch wasn't that hellish; I would have call it the Purgatory ditch on that day. Peter started it with a frontside flip that you can see in this article and Sierra ended it with a heelflip that you can't see because yours truly nutted himself on a fence while Sierra landed it. It's a long, graphic, and stupid story. I'm sorry for missing it; you would have enjoyed it. Another spot that I had coined the Broach double set was on our list of things to do. My dad is an architect, and the double set is at one of the buildings he designed. Sierra was able to get a switch 360 flipper down it, and I was finally able to get a Broach photo on the Broach double.

I moved away from Oklahoma when I was young, and I'm not sure if I really did any kind of justice to my roots with this little article. The point I really wanted to make, that I've completely skipped over, is that the whole time I was growing up in Oklahoma and Texas all I wanted to do was leave--thinking that California was some kind of holy land. Don't misunderstand me; it is, and I was right. If you live in Texas or Oklahoma, you should leave. (Especially Texas.) Don't go to LA (especially Texans; we have too many of you fucking idiots messing up everything good in the world as it is), it has too many cars and people already. Most of the time, in my holy land, there's a bum dressed like Jesus sleeping in his own excrement on my favorite spot. Bum shit's a bummer. It's the worst form of skate stopper know to man. So the next chance I get, I'm going back home to skate with people like my cousin, who made it fun in the first place. For all of us, those people exist only in one spot: wherever you're from.