Paul Bass Photo
Jay Clark put his foot on his DGK Boo board. He glared at the concrete bench.
If a truck had roared past, he wouldn’t have noticed. If a flock of geese had swooped past, he wouldn’t have noticed.
His eye, and his mind, fixed on the path to his next “nose-slslide 360.”
As it turns out, no geese or trucks or even humans were passing by the Edgewood Skate Park Thursday as Clark worked on honing his skateboarding moves. It was 9:30 a.m., the beginning of another day on the road for the 27-year-old Groton nomad.
Clark, who said he had most recently worked as a landscaper, had slept in a tent in the woods the night before. Clark left Groton “on tour” on a Trek bike he said he discovered abandoned outside an apartment complex. Two skateboards in tow, he plans to check out skateboarding spots along the Atlantic coast. After New Haven (he’d visited Edgewood’s skate park before), he plans to hit New York, New Jersey, eventually Virginia. He’s posting videos along the way on Instagram @grillcheeseandsoda.
Since Clark discovered skateboarding in his teens from watching Tony Hawk videos, the sport has been his passion. He compared it to boxing, but with yourself. To put everything you have into something. And emerge stronger. You realize that “you’re nothing.” You realize you need to work harder to be something.
“In a small town, nobody’s really doing anything. I’ve skated all the spots 100 times or more. Way more,” he explained about why he launched his tour, in a conversation on the “Word of the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program. “I want to keep getting better on my progression.”
On Thursday that progression involved honing the nose-slide 360.
“The energy is perfectly focused,” he said. “You focus a lot. It’s all you think about. Totally focused, like a video game. Don’t take any little bit of not doing it.”
And off he went. Watch the result in the above video.
Clark grabbed the board, prepared to keep practicing.
He expects to be long gone from New Haven by the weekend. It might take a while to make it down South: Right now he’s walking his bike, he said. “The wheel’s a little broke.”
But he’s determined to keep going.
“I gotta keep moving,” Clark reflected. “Keep moving or lose it.”
Click on the video to watch the full conversation with skateboarder Tony on the“Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s“LoveBabz LoveTalk” program. Click here to subscribe to WNHH FM’s“LoveBabz LoveTalk” and here to subscribe to other WNHH programs.
Well, if someone sees him around, they should tell him to hike his bike over to the Bradley Street Bike Co-Op and fix that wheel! :)