Major Buzzkill

So, a customer came in this weekend with a longboard that he had purchased last year.  It’s a very nice Sector9 Cloud Nine (38″ double-kick that he had set up on some blank trucks and Arbor Sucrose wheels).  The kid is in high school and seemed a little socially awkward, like he may be picked on quite a bit.  Anyway, he said that he let some friends borrow his board, and they jumped on it weird, and now it wouldn’t roll.  He wanted me to fix it for him, so I gave him a cost estimate ($10 for new bearings) and he said he’d be back later to pick the board up.

Well, I took the one problem wheel off and couldn’t believe what I saw.  The innermost bearing was smashed to bits, with only 2 balls remaining inside the bearing.  Both shields were smashed off, and the wheel was just barely being held on by the one remaining bearing.  So, I wrestled with the bearing to remove all the guts from the wheel and put new ones in.  The actual aluminum that the truck is made out of was bowed out on this side as well…which is no good, no matter how you slice it.  Upon removing the second wheel, it became apparent to me what happened.  The second was nearly as bad as the first, except that all the balls and bits were left in the wheel.  His “friends” set his board up on edge, and stomped it as hard as they possibly could!  They were out to destroy the damn board!

I guess the most shocking part to me was finally seeing the manifestation of all this “longboarder vs. skateboarder” infighting.  Sure, kids can be huge fucking dicks sometimes, but Johnny Law is out to get everybody equally.  There’s absolutely no reason to destroy someone else’s stuff just because it’s different than yours!