Last year I bought a house on a hill here in Los Angeles. It’s beautiful and I love it. But what I love more than anything is skating the curb out front and playing ignorant rap music out the patio speakers and drinking beer on my porch on a Sunday afternoon like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, except it’s the reverse and the old white people walking by are giving the Asian kid homeowner the stink-eye. This world always told me that I’d amount to nothing as a skateboarder, as an artist, as a minority, as a writer, as a photographer, as a young person without a real job. I wasn’t supposed to happen, I shouldn’t live here, none of it makes sense. But it did because there’s more of us than the world thought and there’s more to us than the world gave us credit for. Don’t listen to what anyone has to say and eventually, they’ll start listening to you.
