Cariboo Brewing

So the world was supposed to end this past Friday, but if you’re reading this the world never blew up!

It’s a Party Cab Christmas and it’s that time of year where we dust off the Party Cab and, with a pack of elves on longboards, we bring toys and joys to the streets and homes of Vancouver. It’s the Coast Longboarding Toys For Kids Parade!! We have been doing this for years now. It feels great to do something like this and helps the poor kids feel like special kids Christmas day as they open a gift like thousands of spoiled brats world wide.

The Party Cab needed some love so Hoodie came over to blow up the tires and fix the wires so we could pound Christmas tunes downtown Vancouver while screaming, crying, and pleading with the rich to donate toys for kids, donate to the food banks, give blankets to the homeless, just be aware of others and not yourself for once. As always, we had a blast!

Party Cab Pete also came over and donated his time. He added a new crank and sprocket that he put on with a little elbow grease, Cariboo Root Beer and Fireball Whiskey. He looked and tested everything, making sure it was in tip top shape and ready to go!

Just a quick little history on Party Cab Pete. When I graduated school and made the move to Vancouver, I moved here for opportunity. That was my big plan in life and one of the jobs I did was drive a rickshaw bike around town Wednesday till Saturday every week making a killing! Well shorty after I started riding, Party Cab Pete was hired on and we rocked this city like none other. Picking up hookers for tourists and taking our cut, drinking beers, and showing tourists the ins and out of the streets of Vancouver! Racing and crashing cabs, getting stabbed and chased by cops! What a life! I miss it! so when Romi, the owner, sold his bikes I made sure I bought one!

Party Cab Pete is the man! We started Party Cab! Here is a short video about the good times and rough times in the Party Cab world! Even though I’ve retired as a Party Cab driver, you can still grab a party cab ride from the main man, Party Cab Pete on the streets of Vancouver. You’ll know when you see him. He’s not like the rest of the losers that are out there with bike helmets sucking ass!

With the Party Cab Santa Sleigh all ready to go, Hoodie showed up and woke me up off the couch. As I pulled on my Santa suit, grumbling about getting to old for this shit, I was Santa yet again. I’ve owned four Santa suits in my life and I was Santa for the first time at a mentally challenged house in Williams Lake my mom used to work at. Back then I was still in elementary school. If I’m going to keep this Santa shit up, I need a respectable Old Saint Nick suit with all the bells and whistles, including the golden glasses he has too! If I keep working with Cariboo doing this blog I will naturally get a red nose and a big Santa belly, so that’s not a issue. Oh man.

We cranked the tunes and to start it all off Hoodie had to tackle the first big hill. And he had to do it with a 350 pound Santa Claus in the back ringing Christmas bells and waving to everyone on Burrard St. after Hoodie made it passed the point where he failed last year, I knew he was ready for the long day of lugging me around the Lower Mainland!

We rolled up to the art galley at noon (that was the time everyone was meeting) and we rolled up in style ’til Hoodie smashed the tire off the curb and blew the left side clean out. So he dropped me off and headed to Simon’s Bike Shop where they hooked him up with a new tube and labour and Santa hooked them up with six ice cold Cariboo Genuine Drafts in the Christmas green can!

Oh yeah, on a side note: ROCK LOUIE is one of my new sponsors for the 2013 season and they sent me a care package that I just got in the mail last week! Stoked on the glasses! Big thanks to the ROCK LOUIE TEAM! I love the glasses!!

While we waited some of Santa’s little elves got into the spirit of Christmas!

Then Billie showed up to get her picture with Santa! I told her not to tell her friends that I’m the real Santa Claus!

Then, when we were finally ready to go, we hit up the TD bank and they hooked Santa up with some nice green gloves! Perfect! just turned them inside out and Santa was set for the winter!

Then we made our way down Granville St and took a group picture in front of a cop car. But the picture is kinda pointless because we can’t even see the car! No cops busted us this year!

Then, after almost getting smoked by a city bus, lucky Santa got his picture with a Davie St transvestite with aids and a broken nose. Santa doesn’t let transvestites sit on his lap.

We pushed up Robson St and the people were stunned with our message! Donate to the Salvation Army, give this Christmas, feed the poor! We just kept banging our message home!

We saw a few crazy things this day. One of them was a lady on Robson St, set up with a table for cleaning dog asses. Santa waved at her and talked dirty as they flew by. She smiled while cleaning the brown donut with a circular motion. It looked effective and thrilling! Santa wondered how much. Then we saw a balding street person with no shirt.

Then we decided to take our show to the Downtown Eastside and let them know we were thinking of them, and on the way we got to bomb a nice hill for some thrills without eating pills.

At the bottom of the hill we decided to stop by the Flatspot Skate Shop in Chinatown and show our support. They ended up giving us a hoodie to donate for the kids. They opened their doors wide and we rolled the party cab right in the store to shotgun some beers and check out the new shop!

One of the owners, Mischa, looked like he was in pain when the circus rode in and started giving away Cariboo shotguns in his nice smelling store for Christmas!

We wrapped things up at the shop, said our ‘thanks you’s and ‘Merry Christmas’s, and pushed on! Our next stop was the parkades!

We rolled into the rough part of town and the folks stopped to enjoy the message of cheer to what I guess to be their struggle of a day! I think next year we’re going to do a banana food drive where we give all the junkies and poor people bananas to eat in the alleys and in the streets!

To add to it all, we even helped a guy in a wheelchair rip the streets. He was stoked and we had the music pumping for the holiday cheer! We dropped him off at a gathering of people where we arrived to giant cheers and clapping for us all!! Feels good to do good!

Then a real treat for everyone pushing that day was they got to meet Team Green Captain, former World Champion Scoot Smith from Team Green! And it just so happened Santa had some Cariboo Scoot cards in the party cab so all the riders got hooked up with one of those each!

We got to the Cambie parkade and it was time to do some thrashin’ and crashin’.

Hoodie rode Santa up ten floors with some help till we got to the very top of the parkade for a Boo break and a gangsta break! And a piss break!

While we were having a break I couldn’t help but notice that someone chopped up the Cariboo carving board and made it into a Cariboo race board! That gave us the idea to pitch Cariboo on designing a really sick ass race board for the 2013 season! Could you imagine that? I’d just rip off some company’s shape like all the other companies do and get Boo to press them for us all!!

You can’t teach an old dawg new tricks can you!! As we decide to do the final parkade decent, the old boy slipped on the slick tarmack and bounced his head off the rough cold wet cement, causing him to lay there and bleed head sauce while Santa laughed at him til’ it wasn’t funny anymore! He was OK though. Look at him all curled up like a new born baby. Sucks to be forty I guess!

We all left the parkade with blood and a few bumps and bruises. While taking pictures looking backwards off the party cab I smashed my head off a couple signs and posts, almost knocking me right out of the park! It didn’t take me down, but the second pipe hurt!

We decided to get the toys to the kids. Normally CTV takes our toys but this year it was closed and they didn’t have the tree up. I knew this but didn’t tell anyone. When we got there everyone was confused and we were forced to skate to the fancy hotels and pretend that the news told us they were doing a toys for kids thing and we would show up in there lobby with the whole crew skating in there followed by Santa Boo and the party cab blasting Christmas tunes, creating this huge scene only to play stupid and get kicked out by security while putting nice presents under the tree!

We were up shit creek without a paddle. Where the hell can we donate these toys! We were getting kicked out of every hotel tree we tried to stuff full of presents. Then word from an elf was that the fire hall in the West End is taking donations. I mean, when I tell you we toured the city spreading the word, we toured the city spreading the word!

We got to the fire hall after hours of skating and we were all very happy to finally donate our toys for the good little poor kids across this city of ours. The boys at the fire hall loved us but were happy to see us go!

Santa needed a to take a break after all the excitement and relive himself, that jolly old fellow! A poetic piss:

We rode to Santa’s Boos van outside his old apartment downtown and the elves that were left got a nice little treat from Santa. He had some ice cold Scandal Ale and Scandal Lager in the hatch all ready to go. And everything was going well until Santa’s old retarded building manager came and yelled at Santa Boo until he realized that he can’t kick Santa out of the alley anymore because he’s got nothing on Santa now that Santa doesn’t live there! So Santa pushed a few buttons as the old man left shaking his fists. Santa was mad because he found out that after 11 years in that dump hole the new people that moved in got a new stove! Cockroach sucker!

After a long day of doing good it was time to come home to our new co-op and enjoy a co-op Christmas with the tree and the snow in the city. This is the first Christmas without my mom and the first Christmas I’m not going home. It’s a new time in Striker Boo’s life. It’s time to be the one to create Christmas and new traditions in the Lyons family! Shit’s getting exciting!

Here’s a Coast Longboarding poem I wrote seven years ago (I’m guessing)! Enjoy!! Read it with the Night Before Christmas theme in you head.

STRIKE A LIGHT?