Part 2

“What are you doing up here, sir?” He asked me.
“Oh, you know, just taking some pictures of the nice buildings,” I said, motioning to the view around us.
“Well you can’t take pictures here, it’s private property.”
“Um…I’m not taking pictures of your property, I’m just taking pictures from your private property. Is there some kind of problem?” I asked, as calmly as possible.
“We’ve had numerous reports of skateboards in the parking complex…and apparently some near misses with cars and pedestrians…”

Wow. So now the only thing going through my mind is the question of where the heck HC and Mark are.

“We’ve found what we think to be the skateboarders’ car on the level below us. I’ve got Juan over there right now checking it out,” he informed me.
“Oh, really? I wouldn’t know anything about it…”
“Oh, you mean you’re NOT skateboarding?"

What do you say to this? Honestly I drew a blank here.

“Um…no? I’m just taking pictures man, my friends may or may not have their skateboards with them, I don’t remember. They should be back any time and we’ll just take off, you don’t have to worry about it…”

And this dude was huge. I’m 6 feet tall and he was bigger and blacker than I, and he was wearing a suit. I didn’t think I’d be able to take him.

“Walk down with me to meet up with Juan…”

At this point I hear him talking on his shoulder radio, I can’t quite make out what is being said from the other end. Needless to say, we went and met up with Juan, who was doing his best to see past the tint of HC’s windows.

“There’s like 20 skateboards in the back here…see?” Juan said as we approached.

I laughed pretty hard on the inside right then. Damn us for bringing our entire quiver to the this session. A lot of small talk and little white lies happened right then, and eventually, a few (a few very awkward) minutes later, HC emerged from seemingly nowhere carrying his board under arm.

“Have you been skating in the parking complex?” The black dude asked him.
“What? Nah, I was just skating around town…walked all the way back up here to my car.”
Not a bad answer, I thought.
“Alright because we have numerous witness complaining about skateboar---”
“Nah man, I maybe skated up like a level or two, but only to get back to my car.”

Juan and “BBD” (that’s Big, Black Dude) eventually let us get into our car and take off peacefully after we talked them out of “taking us downstairs” (whatever that means).
We’re driving away and I look to HC.

“DUDE! WHERE WERE YOU GUYS! WHERE IS MARK!?”
“Man, don’t worry about it, we were hiding out, Mark is gonna meet up with us in the usual spot.”
“WHAT?!”

We picked up mark coming out of the stairwell a few levels down. We went to Subway.

After filling up with food and stories, the guys seemed to be relatively ungrateful for my hard-core backup on this one. Apparently they missed how uncomfortable it was to wait for 15 minutes in the heat, and then take the heat for another 15. With no backup, and no idea why it’d be me, the one who stopped skating when he realized he didn’t want to get caught, got caught. That is ridiculous. But that day I learned that I didn’t have the juevos to skate places with security. Or cars. Or pedestrians. Or tight turns.

Man, what did I learn that day?

Email me your close calls with security.

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