*This article was written by our good friend Steve Leopold.
So, you have been thinking about skateboarding off you roof, huh? First of all you probably are not good enough anyway, I hope you get hurt. But if you are good enough let me give you a few pointers. First of all, don’t ride on the shingles. Classic mistake. What you want to do is get a piece of plywood and set it on the roof. The second mistake is hitting the gutters. The last thing you want to do is have your wheels hitting the gutters, making you fall six feet to the ground with all the neighbor kids watching you.
On that note, be prepared for all the neighbor kids to watch you when you pull a stunt like this. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the little squirts watching but when they say how awesome it is when you fall and nearly break your arm, quite frankly I want to kill them. The neighbor kids are not all you have to be worried about. Of course they are going to tell their parents that the cool skateboard guy down the street was jumping off his roof on his skateboard, and all the neighbors are going to stare at you through their blinds, the mail lady is going to look at you like you are stupid, and the old man taking a walk is going to say something to the effect “You’re going to kill yourself doing that” and you just say “Alright ol’ man Jenkins.” But, you keep trying it anyways. The first time you try this you are going to bail out and see how hard this really is. But you’re not going to quit, you don’t go down like that. You are then going to realize that getting up on the roof is more strenuous than jumping off of it. A ladder just will not do the trick. I suggest climbing on a SUV or a truck to get up. A ladder is too many steps. So about your fourth or fifth try you are getting tired of doing all that climbing, so you tell yourself that you are not going to push the board away and are going to land it.
You climb up that last fateful time before you can say you ‘skateboarded off the roof’. The kids are cheering you on (to fall), the sun is beating on your back, you get up and walk across the roof, your board is in place, you think of how you are going to pop the tail and everything your legs have to do to make this perfect. Now you’re rolling down the roof, this is it, you can feel it. You clear the gutters, the board is still on your feet. The ground is ever approaching, you know this is the one. You finally land. A cracking of wood pierces your ears. The worst sound in the world to you. The little hood rat of kids yells things like “that was sweet” and “tubular” and I even heard “righteous”. The kids scatter, nobody is staring at you anymore because it is over. If you are going to skateboard off your roof, make sure you have another board.
