Random Skateboard Memories: Back Smith

I’d go to the park often to skate. Mainly, I’d be in the parking lot just practicing flip tricks. There wasn’t that much
to skate there other than mid sized stair sets. There was a 7 stair and a 9 stair but nothing smaller. If you wanted
to grind something, you had curbs and parking blocks.

There was this one parking block that I waxed up almost daily during the summer. My go to trick was to ollie over
the top to a 50-50 on it. I’d do that all the time. I could slappy boardslide it but that didn’t feel like a real trick. If you
don’t ollie onto it, it's not a real trick.

I never really figured out how to noseslide or tailslide it. On a few occasions, I got lucky enough to ollie over the
top to a 5-0 on it.

When I was young, there were some tricks that just seemed impossible. Like there was no way I could figure out
how to do them outside the video game. Bluntslides, smith grinds, and crooked grinds I could only dream of doing.

So, one day, I’m pushing up to the parking block and I’m just going for a 50-50. I pop the ollie and I can’t remember
what happened to my front truck or what it did or how it got there but immediately I’m doing a backside smith grind
on the parking block.

I looked at my board and I am completely locked in. The front end of the board is dipped down. The wheels aren’t
touching the ground and the right edge of my board is sliding against the concrete parking block. My back foot is
solid on the tail and I’m just sliding. I slid for a few feet and I was so stunned that I got into a back smith that my
body froze up and I just grinded off the parking block and rolled away.

This was the first and only time I’ve ever done a back smith.