An often overlooked but all too well known aspect of skating, blowing it is a bit of a dark art.
Skating without a helmet, chopping into the oncoming lane on a blind corner, posting rowdy spots in public online spaces, no gloves, imbibing at the spot, grabbing stinkbug, pendying the straight, or getting into altercations with people who live at the spot and are less than stoked; these are all examples of blowing it.
Basically doing a bad thing. Try not to blow it!
I've had my fair share of locals trying to blow the spots on my behalf, which honestly feels worse than blowing a spot out of my own stupidity. 3 particular events stand out to me:
1. Local retired veteran threw a construction sign into the street cuz he didnt like us skating the hill next to his house. He tried to blame us but we had video of him throwing it into the street and saying some out of pocket stuff. Cops came, we got to stay and skate. Dude got a ticket for defacing govt property and was told to stop calling about us.
2. A different local at the same spot took pictures of our license plates because we had lined the streets with our cars on the same day that he had an open house. He claimed that it caused his open house to flop because no potential buyer could find a place to park so they could look at the house. This was rather hard to believe considering we already dispurce our vehicles throughout that neoghborhood when big seshes like that had occured, but definitely a new one for the diary.
3. A lady (not even a citizen of the town we were in) drove up a hill we were skating and called the cops saying there were "kids riding scooters down a hill." Cop pulls up to a group of 22-32 yr old guys with beards and visible tattoos and goes "well, you sure dont look like the 'kids' riding their 'scooters' down the hill. So I'll just say I couldn't find 'em and we'll both have a nice evening."
Trying to skate faster than everyone and race people who aren't trying to race on an open road with traffic in a fat pack. True story of The Bike Helmet kid at Zoobomb sessions circa 2017. We all tried to nicely warn him, but he just couldn't understand how important going slow and not blowing lane was. He took All of our helpful advice personally and kept skating his way. Dude eventually got smoked by a car in the uphill traffic lane on the most blow able spots in town :/
Cops are definitely getting called if I catch someone grabbing stinkbug
