Most people imagine someone who says ‘dude’ a lot.

They are mostly young, fast, reckless, with a conditional respect for the laws of nature and the city of San Diego. they come from as far away as Temecula and Perris. There are dozens of them and they only come out at night.

Metal on concrete gathering momentum in a downhill spiral, the slap and scrape of wood echoing along 11 stories of parking structure ramp and crash barriers; the amphetamine pulsing and psychotic gibbering of Slayer pumping like - blood from a hundred femoral arteries splash off downtown skyscraper walls; marijuana smoke lifts toward the neon-washed midnight sky, where it curdles into blue-veined milk.

Christopher Yandall is considered one of the best slalom skaters in the world.

It is 12:25 a.m. at the Community Concourse parking structure at Second and Ash. No cops in sight. Tattooed thrashers and slalom skaters pour from the elevator, wielding boards and attitudes. The scene is something from a science fiction movie: Civilization has collapsed, and roving bands of predatory youth race on steel wheels over the cities’ abandoned infrastructure, beneath jaundice-colored fluorescence and to a death-metal soundtrack.

“Sometimes the cops will come by and just watch,” says Christopher Yandall, a kind of elder statesman to these ramp rats. At 40 Yandall has been skateboarding for more than 20 years and is considered one of the best slalom skaters in the world. He also designs boards and trucks (the metal rig beneath the board) and is currently promoting a new truck design that will allow increased speed and maneuverability. Increased speed down this concourse ramp seems about as wise as adding methedrine to your espresso.

Community Concourse parking structure. "It’s a lot safer coming here than trying to do it out on the streets."

“This is incredible,” I say, looking at the Escher-like cementscape populated with Clockwork Orange urchins. “It’s bizarre, and it’s a city lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Yandall glides slowly in tight circles down past the ninth level as I jog alongside him. A heavyset man, mustached, my Honolulu-born Samoan guide into this nocturnal heart of urban weirdness smiles at me and says, “Oh, yeah.”

Ari: “Rollerblading’s for fags. The bladers have all stolen skateboarders’ moves."

Slayer’s “Divine Intervention” screams from the open doors of a panel van like men in a burning freeway wreck: Awakened in a web-like hell / How did I reach this place? / Why are they hunting me? /I cannot look at God's face. / Paralyzing brilliant light / Trying to run but cannot speak /I cannot look at God's face.

My first introduction to Yandall was by electronic mail. He works in the county administration building on computers that make sure your taxes are assessed efficiently. His e-mail suggested you gotta see this, and I agreed to meet him.

A skater getting sick air. “If we didn’t have Jesus, we’d never be able to do any of these things.”

Over lunch in a noisy Italian place on India Street, Yandall spoke of his involvement in skateboarding that began in 1974 when he worked at a Pacific Beach surf shop. His 20-year avocation has led him to an association with )ani Soderhall in Paris, who publishes SLALOM!, an English-language skateboarding magazine published in Europe, for which Yandall is a contributing writer.

“Slalom is the racing aspect of the sport,” Yandall begins, chewing salad and appearing completely sane in a white shirt and tie. “I lived in Germany for two years and worked for a computer company out there. That’s how I met [Soderhall]. The racing aspect of the sport is just huge in Europe, and here it’s just dead. It’s a lost art of riding your board, cruising the street, getting some speed up. In Europe it’s huge...huge! In Russia, France, Germany!

“There are two magazines here that speak for the sport, that’s Transworld, out of Oceanside, and Thrasher, from out of Northern California. So SLALOM!'s gonna play its part in the sport. I don’t look at it as a negative thing that skateboard slalom is a subculture. A lot of people do because these guys are hellcats. I was the same way too when I was that age. I was a rebel.”

Yandall’s skateboarding resumé (a real document, like any other resumé), written when he was 23 years old, reads in part, “My major experience in skateboarding is skating in any terrain. I am physically a byproduct of the sport. No broken bones or acute sprains. I have developed my body to do many things on a skateboard that others in the sport respect as an innovator of pedidexterity. My business life in the sport was nourished by many associates along my travels....

“When P.B. [Surf Shop) started to take their skate department more seriously, Larry Gordon of Gordon & Smith decided to go into manufacturing, and this is also when I won the first major contest of San Diego. All this was happening while the urethane wheel was proving itself with precision bearings, and Bennett Trucks were beginning to roll off the assembly line. In early 1975 the first world contest was held in San Diego. I took first place in slalom, beating out 150 competitors and proved to the industry that a flexible board and Tracker Trucks’ new design with precision bearing wheels were worthy of competition.”

That first San Diego contest was held at Kate Sessions Park. Yandall’s resumé goes on to list other contest placings in such arenas as the Cow Palace in 1976 and the Ethnic Festival Exhibition in Detroit in 1978.

When asked how dangerous Yandall considers slalom skating, he says, “It’s no more dangerous than skydiving.”

Does Yandall have any idea how many injuries or fatalities result every year as a result of this sport?

He shrugs, “It’s minimal. More guys die snowboarding, but there’s a lot of road rash. Skateboarding is less masochistic or suicidal than football. You have a tendency to protect yourself and not try to ride above your abilities.”

Leafing through SLALOM!, I find a picture of Yandall and other skateboarders careening around an empty swimming pool. The photo summons images from William Burroughs and J.G. Ballard. “That’s in Detroit,” Yandall says past his fork, “in Birmingham.”

“What kind of speeds can you get up to in a swimming pool?”

“I’ve been up to 55, 60. World record is 57. I’ve been in the 50s. I’m sure I’ve gone faster, but I never really recorded it.”

The concourse parking attendants leave at midnight. That is the signal for the night rollers to come out of the shadows. The police don’t show up unless they’re called. I’m told, “Or somebody jumps off,” Yandall laughs.

It is about a quarter of a mile from the top to the bottom floor. That’s on the ramps, not straight down. The consensus is that 30 is the maximum speed one could generate, given the ramp’s angle, which doesn’t sound terribly fast, but I mounted a board, probably didn’t hit 10 miles an hour, and danced off with ungraceful panic after only a few feet.

Walking downward, dodging skaters as they speed toward my back. Forty, maybe 50 kids here tonight. The sodium lighting renders everything in minimum shadow, creating the illusion that the skaters are one-dimensional, flat, cut-out figures moving through a urine-colored atmosphere. This thought prompts me to ask Yandall when he next passes, “What do they do for bathrooms?”

“You’ll smell it as you go down,” he points ahead with his chin. “One asshole actually rode down and pissed four floors as he went. My buddy took a turn on it and ate shit.”

Back up top, near the elevators, Yandall wants to show me something. A group of a dozen or so teenagers, maybe a couple of guys in their 20s, are gathered to take turns literally climbing the walls on their boards. Three girls perched on a ledge watch adoringly, a. The artificial embankments on either side are sloped nearly perfectly for this variation on the sport. About 20 feet from the top floor of the building, the ramp curves downward to the left, and on both sides the concrete’s line gently rises into a wall approximately 4 feet high. You don’t want to lose it even for a second at the lip of this wall. No. You get too good, too fast, too high, a cramp in your leg at just the wrong fraction of a second, and you will enjoy freefall for maybe eight seconds before you become bone-and-blood purée, finally and truly at one with the city of San Diego.

The wall on the left makes structural sense, assuming this was designed as a parking structure and not a thrash pavilion. The wall on the left keeps vehicles from plummeting into the abyss, the Spiral of Death in the center of the building. Just looking over the side can make you queasy. Eleven stories down, the building swirls like a funnel, the inside of a cement cyclone. That is the dangerous side that very few lunatics brave. As to the way the wall slopes on the right, I can only assume the architect the city hired wanted to rock-and-roll a little on urethane, steel, and wood himself. It seems designed exacdy for safe wall-boarding.

One Asian kid wearing what seems to be regulation clothes— baggy pants, XL T-shirt, high-topped sneakers, and hair shaved in unlikely places — is good, very good. But there is another guy, named Ari, 22, who, dressed identically except for the optional backwards-turned baseball cap, is very good on the killer wall. The side that will suck you to your doom should God decide to stop your clock...or even make you sneeze.

Can't explain the other side

answers lost before their eyes

violence searches from inside

state of mind that never dies.

Born into a chosen way of life

that doesn't fit today

To die a painful death it seems

is better than your misery

contemplating rearranging

changing all your way of thinking.

— Slayer, “Circle of Belief’

“There’s nothing to break up here. It keeps us off the streets and out of trouble,” says Ari from Mission Beach. “Hey!” The 22-year-old sees the underside of Chris’s board and says, “That thing’s got Seismic Trucks, huh? It’s more like a car suspension.” Yandall allows that it does and it is. Ari rides a board known as a Sector 9, made in La Jolla. Yandall used to make them.

“Yeah,” Ari says, “there are guys from all over that come here. Victor used to come from Alpine with all these guys.” A conversation ensues between Ari and Yandall about the legendary Victor, who owns and operates the SK8 skateboard shop in Temecula. They exchange names of famous skateboarders from San Diego: Doug Saladino, Steve Cathey, Henry Hester, Bob Skolberg, Greg Weaver. No one mentions Mark “Gator” Anthony, the famous San Diego skateboarder who murdered a girl in P.B. in 1990.

With Slayer screaming in my ear, I’m tempted to ask about Gator, if any of them knew him. But this strikes me as a possible breach of unspoken night-thrash etiquette. Instead I ask Ari if he has ever broken anything while skating the concourse.

“Nah,” he indicates the surroundings. “There’s nothing to break up here. It’s all concrete.”

I let the misunderstanding slide. Ari is eager to be well represented and talks about himself and the sport in a headlong rush.

Without prompting, he says, “I never drink. Alcohol is devil juice. Who wants to get all sloppy up here? We need a public skateboard park. Like in Santa Rosa. A $50,000 park. In San Diego, where skateboarding pretty much started, a huge city, they don t have a public park. It’s ridiculous. They’ve got tennis courts, golf courses — public!”

A guy named Jim from La Jolla points out, “It’s probably a liability thing.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, the Boys Club of America is what’s done everything else.” Ari spins his skateboard wheels as he talks.

“How about the YMCA?” Yandall asks. “Have you seen that park they’ve got there?”

“Yeah,” Ari nods, looking like an uppity Lost Boy. “It’s $25. Why pay that when you can come here for free?”

“It’s illegal,” someone points out.

“We used to get kicked out of here all the time,” Yandall remembers. “Even after midnight. The cops tried to give us tickets but we said, ‘No ID. What are you gonna do? Arrest us?’ They’d leave. They just stopped coming up here. You ever see cops?” Yandall’s question is directed to Ari.

“We just saw one before,” says Ari vaguely. “I heard they turn off the elevators sometimes.”

“No kidding?” His friend seems incredulous. What a dirty trick.

“Yeah, this one guy was tellin’ me he had to walk back up here to get his car after they turned off the elevators one night.” More to the point, why don’t they just turn them off every night? No one seems to have a ready answer to that one. I get a sense of superstition or reluctance to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Forget the grommets and the nylon pivots. The action springs never wear out and the pivot point does not exist. The turning arc is incredible, and without any adjustments, high speed can be obtained without ANY high-speed wobbles. Why? Because it has been engineered to use the planing of the board directly proportional to the optimum pivoting geometry. Without drawing out the dimensions (which is no problem anyways, because the drug [sic) has been patented, due to its radically different approach to the pivot axis), suffice it to say that the future of artful skateboarding relies on new technology to springboard the sport into the 4th generation of skateboard products. As for decks, the boards are now getting shorter and snappier.... ” (Chris Yandall writing on Seismic Trucks in SLALOM! February 1994)

Most of the kids wear no protective gear whatsoever. Only a few wear helmets, elbow and knee pads (those that do, I notice, seem to be very good, in control and competent, if less dramatic than the hot-doggers). Most of them look like children: the Wild Boys on wheels. Beneath the sickly light, they flow down the city structure, crouched or standing, ponytails streaming, tattoos blurred. The sound of the wheels on cement echoes in the great concrete drum like the sound of metallic rain, a hail of ball bearings on a patch of downtown.

Though none is in evidence on the nights I visit, Yandall claims there are, occasionally, doctors and lawyers who skate the concourse. “I met a surgeon up here,” he said. “He was on roller skates.” Yandall seems to free-associate as he flows down the ramp in a lazy S pattern. I walk briskly alongside. “I'm an Eagle Scout,” he says. “I was an Eagle Scout, and I’d like to start an Explorer post for slalom skateboarders. I have two young kids right now, and they take a lot of time. I’ve got to ease into it. I’m working into a home business right now on my computer. World Wide Web. Hypertext processing. It’s just that not everybody has high-speed modems, so it’s very limited. But being able to work with graphics, you know, dial in and use graphics somewhere, it’s awesome.”

Yandall’s job with the county’s computers is, he says, “Not something your average skateboarder would do.”

Exactly how would Yandall describe the average skateboarder? “I wouldn’t,” he says. “It varies. There are extremes.” “Most people,” I suggest, “imagine someone who says ‘dude’ a lot.”

“Yeah, there are definitely surfer types. But you’ll see bladers, skateboarders, rollerskaters, and guys on some strange-looking tricycles. It’s a highly modified tricycle. You’ll maybe also see lugers. They have these long boards and they lay down, feet first. With a lower center of gravity you go faster.” On the nights I visited the concourse I saw neither lugers nor tricyclists, but the others were well represented.

Yandall’s parents are from American and British Samoa. His father was “in the service, so I lived all over the States and Germany. Australia. Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, and parts of California.” Aside from skateboarding and snowboarding, Yandall plays basketball, skis seasonally, and water-skis. “I love to dance too,” he adds.

“Before I was popular as a skateboarder in the mid-’70s, I was a surf bum down in P.B. I was going to State back then. I studied computers. Those were my Top Ramen days.”

From computers, Yandall switches to his current fascination with The Urantia Book. The two subjects are not unrelated. Yandall discovered references to the 2097-page religious volume on the information highway and began to download. “Although I’d been reading the book for 25 years. I just came back from a weekend gathering this guy has annually in the Santa Cruz area. He’s got a house in the redwoods. It’s unbelievable.”

Yandall continues, “The book is one volume with four areas. The first chapter defines the cosmos and has this incredible definition of God.”

Yandall now seemed like a character from a Philip K. Dick novel. I could almost see the beanie with the little propeller.

I once picked up a guy named Sufi hitchhiking in Big Sur, and he kept me awake during a long drive to San Francisco by regaling me with information about The Urantia Book. It was 25 years ago, and I’d forgotten every word he told me except for one part.

“Isn’t this book,” I ask carefully, “supposedly written by people on another planet or something?”

Yandall nods. He flips his skateboard up and down with one foot. “Celestials,” he nods. “A lot of the book is from human sources. A guy named Matthew Brock for one. The fundamentalists hate the book because it makes too much sense.

“It’s something you can grasp onto,” Yandall says, as earnest as a man can be. “Urantia is another name for the Earth. From the perspective of the universe, our planet is named Urantia. A guy named Sadler, who died in 1969, was a psychiatrist who’d been working on the book since the 1930s. One of the guys in his group was called the Sleeping Subject. He was receiving transmissions from the cosmos. He had no idea what was being said; he was just saying all this stuff and they were recording it. In 1955 they published the book. The last part gives the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

“I’m on the Internet, and I belong to a Urantia study group, and a lot of material is showing up through human sources.”

Yandall is cut off by a phalanx of skaters racing downward, the sound of their wheels deafening.

By 1:30 a.m. I count more than 50 skaters, boarders, and their girlfriends, who now sit in a circle near the Slayer van, smoking grass and watching the action.

“Chuck’s here all the time,” Yandall points out a young-looking, muscular blond. Chuck is 30 years old and has been coming to the concourse “for about two years. Pretty much every Friday night. It’s a lot safer coming here than trying to do it out on the streets, because there’s less cars driving up here. You can go all over the place. It’s a lot more fun.”

How long does Chuck spend here on the average Friday night?

“A couple of hours. Providing the conditions are right.” Conditions?

“Sometimes we get pretty packed out here and it’s a nightmare.” Has Chuck ever seen anyone get hurt up here?

“Not seriously. You get these raspberries.” He lifts his arm to show a bright-red abrasion on his elbow. “You’re not really going that fast here. All the turns take up your speed. Even if you’re going in the straightest line possible, you’re not gonna go fast enough to seriously — I mean, unless, of course, you take on one of these walls, and I haven’t seen anybody do that yet. That’s the only way to really get hurt here...or get hit by a car.”

The Sector 9s and Madrids continue to roll. The sound drifts up the acoustic well in the center of the concourse, a thin background thunder you can hear even over the music.

Yandall is again discussing his truck design with An and his 19-year-old friend Jim. Between Slayer cuts, sirens sound in the distance, the scraping of wood against cement is constant. An has taken a break from riding the lip of the Abyss (or “the corkscrew,” as it is called). He is sweating and flushed. His baggy black T-shirt clings to his back.

The elevator opens every few minutes, disgorging menacing- looking boys and boyish-looking men. They will hop on their boards and disappear downward into the pool of golden light. Out over the rooftop, the Emerald-Shapery center squats beneath its green neon halos. The John Burnham building is across the way, and Lutheran Tower. The Plaza Hotel sports more neon, and Broadway is a faded, late-night ribbon of headlights, taillights, and streetlights. Coronado snores dimly on the horizon.

“Is this a meditative thing?” I ask Yandall or An, anyone who’ll answer. “Is this a way to get zoned out?”

“You mean, is it a spiritual experience? Yeah.” Yandall agrees. “These guys don’t want to go out drinking and partying. It’s like surfing. Just you and the board.”

“It’s legal, it’s clean,” says 16-year-old Neil from Torrey Pines High School. His hair is shaved on the sides, long in the back beneath a baseball cap.

“Actually, I think it’s illegal,” I point out.

“Oh, yeah. Well, I guess it is.”

I ask Ari what goes through his mind as he defies gravity and climbs the wall of the corkscrew, and he answers in no-mystical terms. “I think about grinding the lip. See how the lip has an edge on it? You wanna get it between your wheels, so it makes a noise.” “You’re not thinking about falling?”

“No.”

“But it’s possible, right? I mean, you could fall, right?” “Yeah, you could definitely fall 11 stories.”

My back is to the corkscrew, and Yandall, behind me, screams as if someone’s just gone over the side. When I spin around in horror, he laughs at me. I have to remind myself, he’s got 40 pounds on me.

I notice a kid rubbing something on the opposite curb. “What’s he doing?” I ask no one in particular.

A 13-year-old kid named Ryan, from Clairemont, looks at me like I’m a Republican congressman. “He’s waxing the curb.” “You put surfboard wax on the curb?”

Ryan shrugs, “Any kind of wax.”

A girl rises from the circle of pot smokers and changes the Slayer tape. The new one sounds indistinguishable from the old. As she leans into the dashboard of the van, I can read the back of her shirt: FLOWER SNIFFIN’ KITTY PETTIN’ BABY KISSIN’ CORPORATE ROCK WHORES.

After 2:00 a.m., three skaters take the inside corkscrew path down, their skates locked at an angle, their faces intensely focused. Few attempt it. Someone mentions Victor from Temecula again, the 50-plus skateboard shop owner. “Victor takes the corkscrew,” Ari says, but Victor isn’t here. “He’s usually around,” Ari says, “when we session it.” Sessions sometimes last until 5:00 a.m.

Ari displays his new board and announces, “We traded a chalice for it.”

“A chalice?” I have visions of Ari breaking into a church.

“It’s a religious smoking implement from Jamaica,” Ari says matter-of-factly. “It’s made out of a coconut. The bowl is made out of clay, the tube you suck out of is made out of bamboo. Then there’s a rope you can hold under your hand, and the rope’s made out of hemp.”

“You see,” Jim steps in. “The reason for the rope is, when you get deep into that spiritual thinking about God, you might get so into that trance of love, you just might lose what you’re doing and forget about being here and just be on this higher plane...”

“You might drop it,” Ari cuts him off.

“Yeah,” Jim shrugs.

“You mean a chalice is like a bong?”

“Yeah, it’s used to see Jah and everything.”

“Oh.”

“When you’re smoking, you’re supposed to think about God.”

“But you traded it for a skateboard?”

“Yeah.” Yandall, Jim, and a few bystanders crack up with laughter. “But we got a bunch of ’em. We sell ’em at Lovely Chalice in Mission Beach. It’s a low-rider bike shop/skate- board shop/clothing shop.”

I mention that nobody’s drinking beer up here, or any alcohol.

“I totally think alcohol is the worst thing you can do for your body and your soul and your mind,” Ari is warming to the subject again. “It’s totally physically addictive. People can’t stop; they become alcoholics. They think they’re macho by outdrinking each other, and they just become losers and bums on the street. It ruins families.”

“I can’t see skateboarding drunk,” I agree.

“It doesn’t mix,” Jim adds.

“The rush you get from this,” Ari gestures around the session, “is the best drug you can do.”

“How come there are no girls on wheels up here?” “There are sometimes,” Ari says. “You’ll see them on luges, just like on ice. They’re made out of metal, and they lay down.”

“You’ll see them on Rollerblades,” Yandall adds.

“Rollerblading’s for fags,” Ari laughs. “It sucks.” “The bladers really get down on the skateboarders too,” Yandall says. “From what I hear, the bladers have all stolen skateboarders’ moves. You know, like sliding down handrails and shit like that. Then they say they do it better."

“Yeah,” Ari laughs. “I mean, Rollerblades are connected to your feet. How hard is it to get in the air? On skateboards you have to use physics — you have to suck it back, then bring it forward. Rollerbladers are just people who can’t skate. Girls can Rollerblade better than guys, though you’ll never see a girl as good as a guy on a skateboard I’ve seen girl Rollerbladers do 540s [turns] on a half-pipe.” “Girls bear children,” Jim pronounces. “Guys skate.” “There’s a few girls who skateboard,” Ari allows, “but they’re, like, dykes. Girls like skateboarders. Skateboarders get lots of chicks.” Ari laughs, but he’s not kidding — at least he doesn’t think so.

Like rock musicians? “More. Rock musicians get sluts. Skaters get quality. There’s a Hoover down in Mission Beach if you ever want some head.” Everyone laughs and seems to know who Ari is talking about.

“So,” I venture, “I’m picturing rumbles between Rollerbladers and skateboarders.”

“Nah,” Yandall dismisses the idea. “Rollerbladers run. See, we can get off our skateboards. They’re stuck, so they’re gonna fall down and get beat up.” Yandall seems to be enjoying the idea.

“But fighting is stupid,” Ari says quickly. “You should love each other.”

“Yeah,” Jim nods. “That’s right.” Yandall agrees.

“You should be able to talk things out,” Ari looks to his companions seriously. “Diplomacy. That’s the key, eh?” The others bob their heads, including those in the small group behind Yandall, Jim, and Ari. Ari is now the focus of attention. I can see he is some kind of unofficial leader.

“What do you think about when you’re skating?” I ask Ari, a man with answers.

“Taking out your aggressions on an inanimate object is the best thing you can do. It hurts no one but yourself. Therefore, you are not taking your aggressions out on your wife or your kids or sister or your brother or someone down the street. There’s nothing more positive in the world than skateboarding. Especially now. There’s so much negativity in the world and negative role models, and the media glorifies it. I think that’s really wrong. We need more positive things like skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing. It’s all about gravity. If we didn’t have gravity then we’d never be able to do any of these things."

“If we didn’t have Jesus,” Jim seems to be reminding Ari, “we’d never be able to do any of these things.”

“If we didn’t have Jesus,” Ari elaborates, “we wouldn’t even be privileged to do any of these things.”

“Is there something spiritual then,” I ask, “about movement itself?”

“Yeah,” Ari says. “It seems that the faster you go, the slower it is. The faster you go, everything slows down.”

“Everything gets shorter too,” says Jim, trying to clarify this crypticism.

“You mean space gets abbreviated?” I venture.

“Exactly,” Ari and Jim say in unison.

“Surfing and snowboarding is even more,” Ari says, “because you’re immersed in God. God’s all around you. Skateboarding’s more of an urban thing.”

“You can’t always be in the water or in the mountains,” Jim points out reasonably.

“Life is about balance," Ari waxes. “Tao. Positive and negative. You can’t do anything in excess. If you skateboard in excess, it’s no fun anymore. You start hurting yourself. Moderation is the key. The extreme path just brings anguish and heartache.” Ari’s audience listens enraptured.

“You guys are pretty philosophical for, um, urban athletes.”

“When you skate downtown, you see it all. You’re immersed. Everything’s happening all around you. If somebody messes with you, you can get away quick. You can protect yourself with a skateboard too.”

“Yeah, it’s like a shield,” Jim says, as if it just occurred to him.

“But fighting’s stupid. You can’t always run faster. I’m a pretty spiritual person,” Ari continues, “so I try and influence anybody that’s around me. I fully believe we’re living in the End. It’s the final test This planet we’re living on, we got a choice. Either you choose to go to the black or you choose to go to white. There’s no in between. It’s all in your heart. Right now black is winning, but the divine light is not gonna let it win. It’s gonna destroy everything.”

While Ari was saying “black is winning,” a boy no older than 10 or 11, sitting at Ari’s feet, said, “By far.”

“You feel that way too, huh?” I ask the young boy, and he just nods glumly.

“Are you a member of any particular religion?” I ask the skateboard mystic.

“I don’t believe in organized religion,” says Ari. “I feel it warps the individual soul. The soul is individual even when it’s in its atomic form.” There is no question, I have walked into the pages of a Philip K. Dick novel.

“It still has an individual personality. It shouldn’t be clumped together in a commune. You have an individual relationship with Jesus. And Jesus is just a representation, a manifestation of what God intended humanity to be. Divine love for everybody, not taking into consideration who they are, what they do, what they wear or anything. You should love everybody.” At this point I ask Yandall, “Is this common? Guys into surf and skateboarding being so spiritual?”

“Well, it matures,” he says. “It turns into experience. You get up in the morning, you got a plan, you ask God, ‘Is this plan correct?’ If you take that path, it works. People that commit suicide miss the whole point.”

It is almost 2:30 a.m., and it occurs to me that the heady conversation might have something to do with thrashing wheels over concrete for two hours. “Do you guys get kind of spaced skating and have these kinds of discussions often?”

“Yeah,” Ari answers. “You have a euphoric experience, you’re really buzzing. It’s total nirvana.”

“It’s like surfing when you have a six-foot day and you get tubed all day long.” “It’s like Transcendental Meditation.”

“It’s orgasmic” Everyone answers at once.

The strains of Slayer have been silenced at some point. Fewer than a dozen skaters are left, at least on the rooftop of the concourse. Sirens again can be heard below. Sluggish clouds of marijuana smoke still hang in the air, stained yellow by the concourse lighting, drifting nightward like shapeless prayers.