I’ve been looking forward to today for awhile, because it was the ‘hug the library’ day. The event was planed to form a circle around the famous New York Public Library and to hold it for 5 minutes.
My day started around 7:30 when with after several snooze button presses from the alarm I woke up. On meetup.com I set up a morning session for the NYC skateboarding group at the Tribeca skatepark. I thought that this morning might be the only time I would be able to skate over the weekend.
I was twenty minutes late to my own meetup, but the one guy that joined me didn’t mind. This park is a little on the small side, and I feel each time I go there it’s so crowded that I’m unable to skate it. Today however, due the time and perhaps that it’s the Maloof Money Cup weekend here in NYC it was empty at 9:30. So I got to skate and get more comfortable on the obstacles there. I even did a simple run of ollieing over the euro gap, then nose sliding the slanted ledge, then rolling down to ollie the A frame, and finishing with a kickflip to fakie on a very mellow bank. That’s a very simple line but when it is crowded I would not be able to do that. By 11 more skaters started to fell up the park, and I met a few old dudes that ripped. On a scary note trying a simple 180 over the euro gap my board slipped out fast and I almost smacked my face on the pavement, I was within inches. My wrists hurt from bracing that fall.
After a quick lunch and transit ride I got to the Library Hug over an hour early. I sat and waited a little bit in Bryant Park. At around 1:15 I went to the entrance to meet up with the ULU group. They were very active with the table and trying to organize the event. I took a pile of leaflets for the event, and tried to talk to people in Bryant Park about it. Most people didn’t seem to care, and I can’t say I blame them, they wanted their day in the park. I will say I’m happy no one chewed me out, and people politely declined. When you approach people with anything you’re taking a gamble on how they will react.
At 1:40 I was given a staff shirt, and a duty. I was to make sure the hug line, would not block the entrance to three points of a café connected to the library in Bryant Park. At a little before 2:00 the line started to move around the building. There were a lot of people, but it did not reach to the back of the library. So I did not need to watch over those entry ways, and I joined the hug line we had. The people had an energy to them, and I think it was a positive thing. After 5 or 10 minutes people went back to the front of the library. Christian Zabriskie from ULU gave thanks and the councilman Jimmy Van Bramer gave a nice speech. I think it was a positive event and CNN’s website put up an article about it quickly.
My good friends were there, I’ll call them E.H. and C.T. Both of them wanted to go to a bar quickly. I went with them even though I wanted to linger around and say good byes to so many familiar faces I saw at this event. And drinking at 2:30 in the afternoon is generally not my thing. So we saw a bar down the street, and went into it. 20 minutes later most of the ULU crew came into the same bar. It was a nice celebration and talking to them I know they put a lot of work into this. They pulled it off, and now the focus is for next week’s 24 hour read in.
After a couple of hours of hard drinking me, E.H., and C.T. left the bar. I thought we were going to go back to Queens, but E.H. suggested we go to central park. I thought, I’ve been to Central Park plenty of times so I reluctantly agreed to go. It ended up being a lot of fun. We saw ducks, I bombed some hills on my skateboard, and it was a good ending to a great day.
Tomorrow I’m going to the Maloof Money Cup pro skateboard contest. So there will be yet another blog tomorrow night. Keep busy people.
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