Superbowl

 

Steve Alba phoned me. It was 2002. “I need you to try and check on a pool over in Santa Ana. A friend of mine was working on a powerline and he said that he looked down and saw a huge kidney pool in an apartment complex. From what he could see, it is pretty empty.” I drove over the next day. The apartments were small one-story bungalow type things that sat in a huge rectangle on the property. The pool was situated in the middle of it all. There was an old rotting wooden fence around it and I could readily see white plaster and blue tiles between the slats. I looked inside. Huge pool. Virtually empty. I knew that there was no possible way  that this pool could be skated without people knowing. The people that lived there had front doors and windows facing the pool only a few feet away. I was already being looked at.

I approached the Manager unit and knocked. A man of about thirty years old answered. I used my gift for gab. I explained that we wanted to skate the pool for a few hours and take photographs. He named a fee. I had no problem with that. The next weekend, we drove over. We brought stickers for the kids in the apartment complex and took some rides. It was pretty fun. It was a super bowl…  and it just happened to be Superbowl Sunday. The pool didn’t last. The Manager put a chain and lock on it to deter the local kids from skating. Word went out into the local high schools…  The Manager told me that kids were climbing in there all the time. He was going to put water in it… The pool went away. Many had sampled its sweetness. I drove by a year or so ago. It was early. Quiet. Dawn. They had filled in the deep end and it looked like it was going to be a wading pool or a huge fountain or something…

Such a loss. Find it, drain it, grind it, share it. Tomorrow, it may be gone. Thanks to MRZ for the Chuck Hults image. Skate- Ozzie