The New Yorker asks Joseph O'Neill a few questions about his story "The Sinking of the Houston" (paywall) in this week's magazine.  

The middle son and his friends head to Brooklyn, seeking a skateboarding spot they've heard about. You name some fairly au-courant skaters-what is the extent of your knowledge of skateboarding culture, and how did you acquire it?

I don't skate. My sons do, avidly, and over the years I've watched hundreds of skate videos with them and filmed thousands of their tricks, or attempted tricks. Landing a new trick is very difficult. It takes a lot of skill, perseverance, and courage.

The skaters mentioned in the story are New York pros who are respected and adored by East Coast teen-agers. (There's a low-key, but significant, East-vs.-West partition in American skating.) I'm a bit of a Dennis Busenitz fan, although of course I'd watch any footage of Rodney Mullen or Andrew Reynolds. Or, say, Aaron Homoki or Shane O'Neill, who do very different things.

I'm old. I genuinely believed that me and my friends invented skateboarding. We went from owning clay wheels when we were very small to our good better best half pipe in my teens. We didn't know have any idea that it was going on all around us at the same time. I still skate at a park next to my house. I joke with my kids that we couldn't have even conceived of the parks that most video game kids now overlook. We were learning how to surf like skateboarders with ollies and floaters. Seeing the dogtown documentary was an eye opener. I had no idea our little crew of wannabe outlaws was replicated in tons of suburbs and cities. The culture felt so unique. The punk rock, the clothes, the lingo. Skating now has evolved so far past me with kick flip tricks on boards that seem too small to me. I am old now and when I surf the skate park and cruise through the walls and turns, I see most of the guys filming tricks on flat ground with amazing kick flips. The times have changed and I get nostalgic for the times past, but I still can't believe the parks our taxes pay for.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

A favorite photo is of Phil Edwards on an early skateboard, looking cool, of course.  It has to be in one of my early-surfing photo books, can't locate it.  Of course Edwards became obsolete when he was rather young.  

New Yorker remains a sharp magazine.  Its owner, who poured money into it during lean years, died rcently, so I suppose its future is somewhat cloudy.   Editor David Remnick's been around quite a while.  He organized great coverage of 9/11.  Now, their offices are at 1 World Trade Center.

I really liked this dad's quick account of being engaged with his sons. 

The Encyclopedia of Surfing has the entire movie, Skaterdater.  Classic.  

I saw an old Sims E Hosoi kamikaze deck. The guy said it could sell for a thousand. I wish I had it. I had that deck in the hey day. I had it with Tracker trucks, B 52's two tones, the tail bone and ribs. I had the Sims E Lamar model. I had the Powell Peralta skill with the sword with Independents and mini cubics. I cant even recall how they died or got replaced. they look like 1975 El Dorado cadillacs in an age of Miatas.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.