This weekend I went to a great neighborhood pub in Greenpoint called Boulevard Tavern. Located under the BQE, this spot features classic dub tunes, $5 jack and a beer, and $5 all you can eat BBQ from the owner manning the grill around back. I was getting quite drunk and chatting with the cute bartender when my friend and I headed out back for a quick burger. Since there were only a few regulars at the bar, I left my board next o my jacket at the bar and went their courtyard.
We returned minutes later, and my board was gone. I asked the bartender if maybe she had moved it, but she had not. A dude playing pool overheard and said while smoking a stog outside, he witnessed some dude come running out of the bar with a longboard under his arm. They watched him run under the BQE and vanish into the night, and thought it strange he was running with a board instead of skating. We ask around and soon figure out which guy it was….my buddy’s co-worker was a regular at this joint and enraged someone would dare steal from his bar, got on the case.
He got the owners to cue up the surveillance footage and we see this douche paying his tab, grabbing the board and jetting. Next, we check his tab, which was brilliantly paid via credit card- now we had footage, his credit card, and his name- Mike Miller. My boy asks around, and interviews everyone at the bar to get more info on this scumbag. Before long he finds a girl who had given Mike her number earlier in the week, and he had called her earlier that day. Now we had his cell number. We get the girl to call him on a pseudo booty call, but he did not answer the phone and avoided our cleverly woven trap.
So many people call him and leave a variety of voicemails ranging from diplomatic to graphically violent. In my voicemail, I explained that he couldn’t really sell my board on the street for all that much, and that it meant a lot to me as a conveyance and a piece of art, and that I hoped he would do the right thing and return my property.
The owners of the bar suggested I call the cops and file a report, which I believed was pointless, but they thought he might have a record and the cops might be able to pull up some info on this swine. While waiting for the po-po, I met another regular who told me this same asshole had been at the bar two nights earlier, when someone mysteriously shat on the bathroom floor. Mike Miller was suspected, but never implicated. However, after this stunt, it was clear he was some kind of sociopath that runs around shitting on floors and stealing longboards on the fly.
The cops arrive sipping Slurpy’s, and I tell them this guy stole my property, and I have all this info on him and footage of him robbing me etc… As soon as I mentioned it was my skateboard that had been stolen, they rapidly lost interest, and as expected, told me they might be able to get around to looking into it a few months from now. I told them thanks for nothing, enjoy your slurpies, and bid them good night. … I returned to the bar to consume several free rounds of drinks, and headed home feeling saddened, shocked and dismayed, albeit somewhat optimistic. I felt that with all the info we had, and the whole bar and its patrons on the lookout, this criminal mastermind wouldn’t last long.
The next morning I leave yet another voicemail, and when I checked my phone around four, saw I had a voicemail from the culprit himself. He apologized, said he was hammered and thought my board was his, and was real sorry, and wanted to get it back to me before he got his ass beat. I suggested he drop it off at the bar, hoping he might catch a pool cue to the face as he left, and I stopped by later that night to reunite with my board.
From this harrowing adventure, I learned that no matter how chill and small the place is, never leave your longboard unattended- stash it behind the bar or something. This story was fortunate enough to end well, and allows me to bring u the next segment about the epic custom painting of my deck…..Fuck you Mike Miller.
I came to a dead end street underneath a small drawbridge leading into Queens. I noticed in the corner this monkey, small metal bowl, wooden stake and orange peel. As i mused over these strangely positioned items, an ice cream truck that had been parked midway down the street drives to the end and the large circular dead end. He then drives around the loop twice, slows down and looks at me, and then drives off. It was quite clear he was a serial killer, and that I had stumbled across either his trophy collection or incriminating clues to a recently comitted violent crime. I waited until he had driven to the end of the block before discretely snapping a quick photo, and getting the fuck out of there.
I came across these tracks underneath the small drawbridge I crossed into Queens with, and as the LIE arrived I raced down the paralell sidewalk. As we raced neck and neck, I felt like I was in the Wild West about to rob a train full of gold. As the road ended, the tracks continurd towards Manhattan, and I decided to follow them on foot.
One of the classic appeals of longboarding is riding the concrete wave. This concept board has taken the love and feel of surfing, and combined it with the longboard experience to make an interesting double-decked board called the 
Brooklyn Barbarosa 