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From Drugs to Skateboarding

Tuesday, 22 May 2007

Photograph by Darrow Montgomery All Darren Harper wants to do is get some skateboarding in before dark. Normally, Freedom Plaza would be teeming with skaters of all shapes, sizes, and skills, but the U.S. Park Police, which administers the site, has been enforcing the no-skating rule today. Most of the skaters have either gone home or scattered to the smaller spots around downtown. Harper ventures onto the plaza and pushes around. He slaps down an ollie, launching himself into the air by kicking down on the tail of the board, and then takes a running start for a couple of tricks along a ledge. One of the kids spots a tall police officer approaching on a bicycle. The kids frantically stash their boards in a trash can, but Harper just keeps skating. “I don’t run,” Harper, 25, explains. “I’m a grown man. And it’s not like I got an eight-ball in my pocket or something. I got a skateboard.” “Sorry,” the officer says, “but you can’t skate here today.” Harper nods and steps off his board. He heads to the U.S. Courthouse on Constitution Avenue, which he figures he’ll have to himself. He’s right: Someone before him has even set up a bicycle rack at the base of the fountain to form an improvised sliding rail. Harper takes off his jacket, steps on his board, and pops a big ollie. He lands, pushes the ground once for speed, and then ollies up into a wheelie (a trick called a “manual”) on the terraced steps of the fountain’s base. On his return runs, he mirrors the same tricks while riding “switch,” or with his normally back foot forward in his stance. Like a basketball player with a highly developed off hand, ambidexterity on a board is a mark of a great skater. “That’s both ways,” he says after a switch manual, flashing his first grin of the afternoon. “I’m versatile with it.” Just as he decides to work the rail, two special security officers wearing blue blazers and badges emerge from the courthouse. Both have thick, ex-cop builds. Neither appears to want an autograph. “Hey!” the older one shouts from the doorway. “You can’t do that.” Harper stares at him and pops an insolent ollie. The guards hustle down the steps to the fountain. The guard puts his nose inches from Harper’s face and barks, “You hard of hearing?” Harper fixes him with a withering gaze. “No, I’m not hard of hearing,” he says calmly. “But I can’t hear you when I’m skating.” “Look, you can’t be here,” the younger guard tells Harper. “And you’re gonna put that bike rack back where it was.” Harper sneers. “Man, I’m just out here expressing myself,” he says. “I ain’t defacing nothing. I’m just riding the flats. Y’all got nothing better to do?” “You got to go,” the guard says, sticking a finger in Harper’s face. “And you ain’t putting up no bike rack on the steps.” Harper turns his head and spits. “I ain’t moving shit,” he says, locking eyes with the guard. “You seen me. I didn’t touch it, and I ain’t touching it.” “You wanna go to jail?” the guard says. “The fuck you talking about, jail,” Harper shoots back. “For what? I’m just skating.” “Tell your story while you walk, son.”   Just a few years ago, Harper was what would generously be described as at-risk. “Everything those rappers rap about, I lived,” he says.(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery) Harper whirls and bumps chests with both guards. “Man, I ain’t no son,” Harper says. “I’m a grown man, nigga.” “Southeast for life!” Harper yells. “Alabama Avenue! That’s real, nigga. You ask about me.” The guards holler right back at Harper, who decides it’s not worth sticking around. He disengages, grabs his stuff, and walks away. Behind Harper, the two guards raise their arms in a triumphant what’s up now? and taunt him. “Thirty-five years on the force,” the older one says. “NYC!” shouts the other. “Yeah, well, comb your Jheri curl,” Harper calls over his shoulder to the young guard. To the older one, he shouts, “Those light-skinned niggas went out a long time ago!” But as he rolls back along Constitution toward the Archives, Harper’s smile fades. “I hate when people address me wrong,” he explains. “The guy at [Freedom Plaza], his tone, he was the nicest, coolest dude. Them dudes, they mad at something. Like, ‘Let’s just go fuck with this dude.’ ” To the guards, Harper probably looked like your average thugged-out skatepunk. Actually, he is a way-above-average thugged-out skatepunk, which explains why he took their behavior as such an affront. Thanks to a handful of top-shelf sponsors that pay him to promote their brands, skateboarding is more than a pastime for him—it’s his job. What’s more, he’s on the verge of becoming skateboarding’s next superstar. As incongruent as it seems for Harper—with his baggy jeans, oversize T-shirt, white-gold Jesus pieces, and braids—to have a chance to become the face of skateboarding, consider how unlikely it was for him to get this far in the first place. He grew up in Southeast. Both of his parents had drug problems, and his father was in and out of jail throughout his childhood. While skaters in Rockville and Arlington were hitting up their fathers for gas money, Harper shoplifted groceries so his family could eat. Just a few years ago, Harper was what would generously be described as at-risk. He ran wild in the streets, selling drugs, fighting, stealing. He carried a gun when he answered the door. “Everything those rappers rap about, I lived,” he says. Full Story: Washington Free Weekly , published 2/2/2007

 

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