Bro Moment: Leprechaun Air

It was the summer of 1991.

Somehow Tom Todd, Shannon Baugher, and I had made our way (on our Skateboards) from the Three Rivers Festival in downtown Fort Wayne to the Carnival/Midway at the Colosseum.

It was the summer after my freshman year in high school and for some reason (attention whore) that week I was compelled to attend all social events “incognito.”

I had a disguise kit that consisted of a pair of inflatable pink glasses and an old man’s fedora. Both borrowed from the legendary Dave Nash.

So there we were at the Midway.
Cheap scary rides. Carnies. 90s Era teenagers. #Mullets everywhere.

What I remember very vividly was the slow, dark exhausted skate through the parking lot up to the entry.

Shannon was showing Tom and what he had called the “leprechaun air.”

This trick was dope. It consisted of him riding, stepping temporarily off his board, jumping, and clicking his heels... like a leprechaun and then leaping back on his skateboard.

We finally made our way into the kingdom of noise.

Everything gets real foggy after that except for one event.

I remember some guys smoking cigarettes calling us over to a booth and trying to get us to pay like $10 for them to take our photos by what appeared to be a crude Prototype of a digital camera.

They quickly realized that these 15-year-olds skateboarders had no money. So they offered to take a picture for free. Shannon, Tom, and I, in my disguise.

Tom looked pretty chill and serious. Shannon had this goofy grin. And I looked like a jackass in my disguise.

I don’t remember all the details and maybe that’s part of the magic of this strange memory. I still have the tattered low resolution photo they gave us that night.

I spent a lot of time that summer with Tom and Shannon. Great memories. Great guys. Lots of stupid crap we did.

So this illustration is a depiction of the actual jacked up digital photo we had taken of us that night. Tom, Shannon, super thankful I know you guys.