Skate now Smile Later: A Central City Saga
- C.M. Pereida
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
People were always saying, “This city is getting so big!” But to him, it had always been a big city—its bright lights spilling across the skyline, its streets alive with motion and noise. The homeless, the hustlers, the tourists: all threads in the restless fabric of the place.
There had always been secret corners of concrete perfect for skating, and this was one of the best. Across from Central City General Hospital, itself facing the downtown skatepark, the building rose twelve stories high. The top seven were nothing but parking lot, a slope that made for long, exhilarating rides downhill. In a parking lot like this you could all the way down.
Looming above it all were the big orange signs, their message unchanged through the years: “Central City Project Management.”
For as long as he could remember, the site had been “under construction.” He had memorized the routines of the guards and workers—first to slip past them unnoticed, later to toy with them, to skate in peace while they fumed. He grinned at the memory of the nicknames he’d given them: Detective Dump, Capt. Butt crack, with his plumber’s pants; Sgt. Sushi, the wiry Asian guard; Big Happy, the Black woman with the magnificent Afro who sometimes perched a security cap atop it; and The Scientist, a tall bald man in a white coat, sinister, super suspicious looking.
Now, as he carved down the new sidewalks, nostalgia pressed against him like a tide. The fences and barricades remained, but the work was finished. No contractors’ equipment lingered, no wet concrete demanded watchful eyes. The familiar faces had vanished, replaced soon enough by a new set of guards—probably CCPD.
He slowed, letting the city breathe around him. Every glance carried echoes: laughter, taunts, the scrape of wheels against pavement. Above him, cranes loomed like mechanical giants, stretching the skyline higher and higher. For the first time in years, he asked himself: Why here? Why this place? These high-rise condos were worlds he would never enter, rooms he would never see. Yet the streets, the sidewalks, the rhythm of construction and skating—they were his.
They always had been.
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