Hoodie buy takes me back to my skater youth

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2021 (1734 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Boxing Day, I bought myself a Sk8 Skates hoodie. I’ve wanted a black zip-up hoodie like this since I was 15, and when I saw the sale on Instagram, I thought to myself, “Now is the time to buy it.”

I’m 41 years old. I’ve never really skateboarded, I tried a few times when I was younger but I never quite got the hang of it, though I swear I landed an ollie once in the St. James Civic Centre parking lot on my friend Becky’s skateboard in the mid-’90s. I don’t think she even saw me do it, but I would hold on to that claim of fame for years. I ollied once.

Becky and I wanted so badly to be skater chicks — Bettys. She was far more invested than I, because she had a skateboard, a subscription to Thrasher magazine and she looked the part. I was what you’d call a poser. I couldn’t afford to dress the part and my parents certainly wouldn’t dream of letting me even have a skateboard because they were scared that I’d get hurt. They were probably right. And to be quite honest, I didn’t have the passion for it to defy them. I just liked the culture and wanted to be cool.

All that being said, the Sk8 hoodie still holds a lot of significance for me. Not just because I think Sk8 is a Winnipeg institution, but because back then when I was a poser kid, the guys who ran the store were really kind to me and my friend Becky and they became important parts of our awkward teenage existence. In fact, we had a super hilarious and weird friendship with them that didn’t last terribly long, but that has held a special place in my heart and my life even now.

It all started so ridiculously.

One night, when we were on the phone with one another, Becky and I decided to call Sk8 on a three-way call. It was the mid-’90s and we were about 15. I have no idea why we decided to call the store, considering it was closed, but we did.

Their answering machine kicked in after a few rings. They had an actual tape recorder answering machine, so you only had however long your tape length was before your machine would stop recording messages. After the sound of the tone, we started talking in these high-pitched voices, introducing ourselves as our on-the-spot aliases, Rainbow and she was Lacy Curtain.

All these years later, I don’t even remember what we talked about, but I know that we’d sing Love Child by the Supremes in our high-pitched voices and we often kept talking until we got cut off, so we’d call back to talk some more.

We started doing this regularly. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t really have an answer. It was probably because we were silly kids fighting off boredom, and the little skate shop was the coolest thing we knew.

We kept up our rouse for awhile, and then one day we went to the shop on Corydon Avenue. I felt like I was going to explode, like my secret alter ego was obvious, even though there was no way that it could be. Much to Becky’s hesitation, I made it known that we were Rainbow and Lacy Curtain.

The guy behind the counter responded with “You’re those f—en girls who keep using up all the tape on our answering machine.”

For a second I dreaded my decision to reveal our true identity, but the guy at the shop was cool. They all were. In a weird way they sort of adopted us after that. They didn’t have to, but they were always kind to us, and they’d give us an abundance of Sk8 stickers. In return we’d take weird crafts that we’d made for them every time we’d go to the shop.

Once, Becky wrote them a letter that they’d run as an ad in Stylus magazine. An inside joke that probably didn’t make sense t o many, but was hilarious to us. The late Jai Pereira even gave me a T-shirt because it had a rainbow on it, because that was my alter ego.

I will never forget how they embraced us and made us feel.

Years later, when I was a young adult working at the casino I worked with Jai’s partner Alana Lowry. Her locker was close to mine, so every time I’d see her before a shift she would enthusiastically say “Hi Rainbow!”

It’s funny how that stuck.

Jai and Alana died in a motorcycle accident in 2001. They left behind two kids and a whole bunch of people who loved and adored them. They were known for being pillars in the community, and even though my interaction with them was so minuscule, they left a profound impact on me.

All these years later I finally got my Sk8 hoodie, and it brings back warm memories of a Winnipeg institution and some incredible people who helped build it.

Shelka79@hotmail.com

Twitter: @ShelleyACook