I’m not sure what the current art world/political feelings are about Banksy, and I don’t really care. I always like his work. It’s funny, creative, and clever—and it usually makes a point. I was in L.A. earlier this week when I saw that some new pieces had popped up in advance of his film premiere. I had the afternoon free, so I grabbed my camera, did a bit of location research, and hit the road.

I was excited to coincidentally be in town to see this. I happened to be in New York in the fall of ’08 when the Village Pet Store, and other large pieces, were on display as well, so I’ve been lucky in the timing department.

So much of Banksy’s stuff gets defaced, stolen, or damaged, that I wanted to snap some shots as soon as I could. There’s something fun about going on a little hunt for street art like this. You have an address and a general description (La Brea and 4th, behind a fence), but that’s all. It’s a bit of a thrill to be walking down a block, looking around every corner, and suddenly spot what you’re looking for. My ever-patient wife—who has become a fan in her own right after seeing the NY stuff a few years ago—came along with me, snapping her own action shots along the way.

The Guard piece on La Brea was on a wall in a nondescript, under construction building surrounded by used car dealerships. It was behind a fence, and there was a security guard walking around the empty space, and sitting in his car. (You know, it would be pretty funny if that was actually Banksy in there in disguise—I always wonder about stuff like that.) Other than that carload of Japanese hipsters that pulled up and snapped some photos with their phones, no one else seemed to pay any attention.

The “Park” piece was on a brick wall behind a parking lot in downtown L.A. (near the theater where the premiere was held, I believe). Again, I knew the general area, but still had a jolt of excitement at spotting it. It’s odd/fun feeling to stand and get excited about something on a wall that thousands of people an hour walk by, most not noticing, almost all not caring.

Forty-eight hours later I’m back on the other side of the country and I see that the La Brea Guard piece is gone (look at the before and after) and surrounded in controversy. I’m glad I was in the right place at the right time, because it was a fun way to spend an afternoon.

This is a new thing that I’m going to try here. Stories About Songs.  I touched on it here, and it got me thinking—over all the years and all the shows that I’ve been to, there are some songs, some moments, that stand out above all the rest.  Sometimes there’s a clear reason, and sometimes it’s a simple memory strongly connected to a song that was playing at the time.  There’s usually a story behind them, and I’m going to occasionally share some of them here.

—

One year ago today I was in Hampton, Virginia.  I was there to see Phish, and it was a big deal.

Five years after announcing their breakup, the band was back for a run of three shows at the Hampton Coliseum, itself a special place in the hearts and minds of fans.  This was a group event.  The band has gotten back together, but our band had gotten back together too.  Some of my very closest friends were gathering to take it all in together.

It was hard to have musical expectations in that situation.  Five years after a break up—fueled by apathy and (sadly) drugs—I just hoped to have a good time, and hear some of the music I loved.

As the first show approached, people got to chatting: “What do you think they’ll open with?” “Do you think they’ll play…?”, etc.  Unless you’re very familiar with Phish’s music, it’s hard to appreciate the weight behind any of these songs; why fans may groan when the band starts up “Bug,” but jump up and cheer when they break into “Tweezer.” The names don’t mean anything.  It’s what’s beneath the names.

For a band that’s so associated with improvisation, a core group of their earliest and most highly regarded material is based on long, composed sections of music. Sweeping. Soaring. Technical. Epic. The type of material that doesn’t lend itself to a lack of practice and a haze of pills. Some of these songs were pushed out of the rotation as a result, and the fans knew it.

One of these songs is Fluffhead.  The ultimate combination of old fan favorite and Sweeping/Soaring/Technical/Epic.  On the way down to Virginia, my friend Byte said to us “I wonder if they’ll bust out Fluffhead?”  We chuckled.  ”They haven’t played it in years right?” “Nope.”

When the time finally came for the first show to begin, the energy inside the coliseum was at an all time high.  This was it.  It may be hard to understand how much this band and this music means to people. Years and years of travelling, stories, frustration, memories, and special moments were shared with the four guys that were about to walk on the stage.  And while time had passed, and everyone’s lives were different now, this was a moment that really, truly meant something.

So what were they going to play, or more specifically, what were they going to open with?  Anyone, myself included, would have told you it didn’t matter.  Just taking the stage was enough.  But everyone would have been lying.  It did matter.  It set a tone no matter how you looked at it.

We broke up.  We went to rehab.  We swore we’d never play again.  Now here we are.

When the lights went down as the band walked on the stage, the roar of the fans was about as loud as I’ve ever heard.  They all walked out and picked up their instruments like they had done so many times before, and like everyone thought they may never do again.

As the crowd continued their wild cheers driven purely by seeing them on stage again together, the first few notes of the opener started to drift out of the PA…

Fluffhead.

It was already so loud that it took a few seconds for the crowd to realize what they were hearing—for the shock to set in. All at once, this crowd that you would have sworn couldn’t get any louder turned the dial that stopped at ten up to twelve.

I honestly can’t think of a stronger musical statement.

We’re back and we’re not fucking around.

This one moment—this one choice—didn’t just set the tone for that show, or that tour, but for the rest of the band’s career.  And to be honest, it set the tone for how I would feel about them moving forward.  This was the real deal. So this is how it’s gonna be huh? They were clearly serious and I would take them seriously.

Of all the shows, in all the years, this one song—these few seconds as the waves of excitement expanded through the crowd—stand above anything else I’ve ever experienced. If you could bottle the feeling in that room at that moment you could solve a lot of problems. Pure, pure bundles of joy.

—Killington, VT  6 March 2010

Every now and then I get a song so stuck in my head that there’s nothing I can do, so I just run with it. Lately that song is Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy In New York.”

I grew up listening to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel. Their music always brings me back to a very specific time in my life. When I was old enough to appreciate music, but too young to drive. There were certain albums that my family always had in the car—The Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Simon and Garfunkel. I played a lot of soccer with a couple of close friends, and my parents would drive us all everywhere. Hours and hours at a time. Listening to all this music. I’m lucky that my Mom has great taste in music because a lot of this really formed that foundation of music that I would listen to for the rest of my life. I haven’t listened to much Simon and Garfunkel in a lot of years. It was always there, and I of course heard it here and there and it would always bring me right back.

A few months ago I was in New York for a couple of days, visiting with friends and seeing Phish at Madison Square Garden. Phish at the Garden is always an event. It’s amazing how you fall right back into familiar patterns as if they were yesterday, and not ten years ago. After the last show I saw, as we were shuffling out, “The Only Living Boy In New York” was playing over the PA. After four or so hours of the lights being down, and the music playing, walking out with the house lights on can be a melancholy feeling. A return to reality. These days, losing yourself in a Phish show for a few hours can really feel like an escape to a past life. I close my eyes, and there I am in the same city, in the same venue, sitting next to my same friends, listening to the same band play the same song. (And if that sounds like a bad thing, it’s really not—it’s something I’m grateful for.)

As we made our way out, I stopped and listened to “The Only Living Boy In New York.” It had probably been years since I’d heard the song, but standing there is Madison Square Garden it seemed just exactly right. Having a song tied closely to an event or memory—whether it’s a movie, something I experienced, or just something I imagined—is one of my favorite things going. Those little scenes are everywhere all the time, and I love that sometimes a song can bring you right back there.

Since that day, I haven’t really been able to go too long without thinking of that song, and that little moment. It’s only in the past week or so that I’ve actually been playing it over and over, for whatever reason. And what a fucking song huh?

You start poking around and reading about it and it takes on even more weight. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, friends since they were kids, and now on the brink of a breakup. Art heading to Mexico to try do some acting in a movie. Paul left alone in New York to work on the album.

Tom, get your plane right on time.
I know you’ve been eager to fly now.
Hey let your honesty shine, shine, shine

Of course, Simon and Garfunkel used to perform under the name “Tom and Jerry” when they were coming up. I’ll let you guess who Tom was. That’s just some poignant, heavy, beautiful history right there. I have to tell you, it reminds me of one of my all-time favorite musical images: Paul McCartney stopping by to visit Brian Wilson—deep in the dark throes of his paranoia and drugs and sandboxes—putting his arm around him as they sat at Brian’s piano, and saying “Thank you for Pet Sounds.” That image gives me the chills. And the fact that “The Only Living Boy In New York” kinda-sorta-maybe-dare-I-say-it reminds me of “God Only Knows”—in that when both songs come up on the album they really demand that you stop whatever you’re doing and listen—doesn’t hurt either.

And to top this all off, as I start reading more about the song, guess who happened to drop by the studio right after they finished recording the vocals on that day back in 1969?

Bob Fucking Dylan.

In this world of Pitchfork-style music criticism, I increasingly don’t care for much that’s written about music, but damn, there’s nothing like finding out a great story about a piece of music that means something to you. Couple that with a scene in your head that plays when you hear the song, and you’re ready to listen to one song non-stop for days on end.

As I’ve been doing.

Everyone’s making lists. It’s the end of the year; it’s the end of the decade; it’s time for a good list. I used to love making year-end album lists. I’d spend time pouring through my iTunes library, finding all the albums that I loved from that year. The obvious, the less obvious. I’d keep a running list of candidates during the year. And ten? How could I narrow it down to just ten albums. There would need to be a bunch of runners up. Ones that just barely missed the cut.

No more.

Somewhere along the way I stopped wanting to force everything into this form. Sure, a list of my Top 10 albums of 2006 may be a good historical checkpoint for what I was listening to at the time, but not for much else. Do I even listen to half of them anymore? Lately I’ve been more drawn to fewer works that I really love. Ones that five or ten years from now I’ll still be excited to hear. I’d rather look back at 2009 and remember a handful of music that stuck with me, than see a list of albums that I haven’t listened to in ages.¹

This all became crystalized for me when I starting thinking about it in the same way that I’ve been thinking about photography lately. I take a lot of photos over the course of a year. Not nearly as many as some, but more than the average. Whenever I’m taking photos—whether it’s a concert, or a trip, or a walk through the woods—I may take hundreds at a time. I spend a lot of time reviewing them, and editing them, and thinking about them. And you know what? If I take a few hundred photos wandering around the streets of New York and I’m left with one that I’m really happy with, I’m good with that. Shit, if I really like the photo I’m thrilled.

I store all of my photos sorted by month, with individual project folders for each event during that month. When I’m in the middle of July and running around and filling up project after project with images it’s hard to have perspective on anything outside of what’s in front of me. But when I go back in December and flip though those same photos, I don’t care about the fifty photos of the bird on the beach. Hopefully there’s one or two that stand out. I’ll walk away with those.

I always hope that (almost) any photo I post online evokes some sort of response. Not necessarily words or feelings, but something. I want it to grab me first in some way, and if it does for someone else, great. If not, it probably means something to me anyways. If I can look back at the end of the year and see a few things that say something, that carries me. That lasts.

That’s where I’m at with music these days. I listen to a lot of music. It’s all around me all the time, and a lot of it’s very good. But at the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of the decade, if I’m left with a handful of music that really means something to me—that really grabs me—that’s what I’m going to take away.

It’s easy to take a lot of photos and it’s easy to listen to a lot of good music, but it’s hard to find something that really grabs you. But I keep listening, and I keep shooting.

¹ All of this is no knock on anyone else. I read, and get a lot of enjoyment out of, a lot of other people’s wrap-ups. It’s more a reflection on a shift that I’m personally going through than anything else.

I was in New York last week and had the chance to attend the opening of the new Nike Soccer Shop.  I grew up playing a lot of soccer, and while I don’t play as much anymore, I’m always excited by the opportunity to check out new gear and keep up with what’s going on in that world.

Located within the massive 57th Street Niketown, the Nike Soccer Shop is a new space dedicated to both the competitive player looking to get fine-tuned equipment, and the casual fan looking for the latest colors to support their team.  An entire section of the second floor has been rebuilt in the style of a classic soccer locker room, with wooden benches, and jerseys hanging in each locker.  Because the store gets so much international traffic (not to mention the rise in popularity of European club soccer in the past few years), there are individual lockers dedicated to every club team that Nike sponsors. (Side note: I asked one of the staff what the best selling jersey was—Barcelona, by far.) In addition to all the licensed gear, the Soccer Shop serves as a location where players of all skill levels can have a pair of custom boots designed just for them.

To highlight this, Landon Donovan (the all-time leading US goal-scorer and active cap leader) was on hand to demonstrate the design process.  While a score of press looked on, Donovan and a trained Nike staffer walked through having a custom boot created. He ended up with an old-school black-on-black look that I appreciated.  Personally, being able to see Donovan talk about soccer—a few hours before the World Cup draw no less—will add an extra level of excitement to the World Cup this summer.

After watching Donovan walk through the customization process, I was invited into the Nike ID lab to run through the design process myself.  It was an eye-opening experience. With the guidance of a Nike specialist, I was able to build a shoe that wasn’t just for wet grass or indoor, but could be tweaked down to the material on the instep, which is adjusted based on where on the field you play, the likelihood of taking shots on goal, etc.  And that doesn’t even touch on the cosmetic options.  Everything, down to the color of the stitching, could be changed to build a unique shoe.

I know that Nike ID has been around for a while, and the concept of building a custom shoe isn’t brand-new , but sitting there I couldn’t help but think back to when I was playing soccer as a kid.  The idea of a wet-grass removable cleat versus a standard molded rubber cleat was foreign to almost everyone.  They literally had to be mail-ordered (and good luck getting replacement screws).

I grew up a few hours outside New York City, and I’m fairly certain that if something like the Nike Soccer Shop existed back in the day, I would have been dragging my ass into NYC once a year before the season started for some custom goodness.

Last summer Lance Armstrong and Nike presented the STAGES art exhibition in Paris. The exhibition brought together over twenty world-renowned artists who donated pieces inspired by Lance, and his LIVESTRONG fight against cancer.

Last week the STAGES show opened a three-week stay at the Deitch Projects gallery in New York. I had a chance to attend the opening and take a closer look at some of the pieces. In addition to the works of KAWS, Ed Ruscha, Shepard Fairey and more, New York street-art legend Futura also had a piece that joined the exhibition in New York.

The scene was an interesting mix of art and sport, with everyone from local New York art scenesters to kids on skateboards to Nike executives in attendance. Many of the artists were on hand to discuss their work as well. It was hard to miss when Lance himself showed up about halfway through the event. While soft-spoken and understated, he was still the man everyone wanted to say hello to, or catch a glimpse of. There was a buzz in the room as he made his way through chatting with friends, having photos taken, and generally seeming to enjoy himself.

I spent a lot of time walking around looking at all the various pieces. There was a nice mix of paintings, photos, and sculptures. One piece that I kept coming back to was Tom Sachs’ object-art piece “Lance’s Tequila Bike For Girls.” It was a mixture of creativity, humor, and ingenuity that I loved. The bike was prominently displayed in the middle of the floor, so that you could walk around it on all sides and enjoy every little detail. Every time I walked by I seemed to notice something else.

At one point later in the evening a crowd gathering around the tequila bike. Tom Sachs and Lance had decided to put it through its paces. Everything that was needed for a good old-fashioned round of shooters—from the limes, to the knife, to the salt shaker and shot glasses—was contained within the bike. Suddenly Sachs was slicing limes and Lance was filling shot glasses with the motorized tequila pump. Everyone cheered as they threw down the shots. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more practical piece of modern art for the tequila connoisseur.

As much fun as it was taking in the scene and getting to see some amazing works of art, the cause that brought everyone there was never far from my mind. Throughout the night, the whole room seemed to be bathed in various shades of yellow, which has become so synonymous with the LIVESTRONG cause. It’s a testament to Lance, Nike, and the work of his foundation that the art world and the sport world can combine for something as unique as STAGES.

STAGES will be open to the public in New York: October 31 through November 21, 2009. The show will move to Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach in early December.

I was taking a train from New York to back to Boston recently, and—as I usually do when I am coming home from a trip—I started flicking through the photos that I had taken on my iPhone.  I’ve never stopped to give it a lot of thought, but this had become common procedure for me.  Suddenly I realized that with all of the SLRs and Point & Shoots and Flips that I tend to carry around, the images on my iPhone actually tell the truest story of what I’ve been doing.  Thumbing through my iPhone cameraroll is an accurate re-telling of what’s been happening in my life on a day-to-day basis.

I’ve always liked the camera in the iPhone, and have been relatively happy with the results that you can get from it, but I hadn’t stopped to think much about the role it was playing.  I enjoy taking photos, and I have a lot of fun doing so.  Still, with an SLR, and even a Point & Shoot, I spend more time thinking about the shot—how it’s framed, are the settings correct, etc.  With the iPhone camera you take the shot.  Maybe it comes out, maybe it doesn’t.  There’s a charm to that.

It also leads to a lot of shots that you may not stop to take with another camera: a sign at the airport, the cup of coffee you just ordered, a funny bumper sticker.  I used to keep boxes of old ticket stubs from concerts and movies, but now I take a photo of the movie poster as I’m walking into the theater, or the marquee outside of a show.  It makes a nice timeline.  I also takes tons of photos of food.  I probably have a photo of every meal I’ve eaten in a decent restaurant in the past year (much to my wife’s delight).

And it’s not just photos, it’s screenshots too.  A funny text or Twitter.  Something cool I see online.  A map of a trip.  It all gets dumped into the photoroll without much thought, but afterwards they become pieces of a puzzle that are easy to put back together.

You don’t have to read a lot about photography to see the oft-repeated phrase “The best camera is the one that’s with you.” While this has always been true, when I stop to think about it with regards to the iPhone, it’s incredible.  In the roughly two years that I’ve had this phone, I don’t think it’s ever been more than 30 seconds away from me. Seriously.  It’s usually in my pocket.  Sometimes it may be upstairs when I’m downstairs, but that’s about it.  I don’t go out of the house without it.  I don’t leave it home when I go somewhere.  It’s literally with me everywhere, and as result, I have photos of things that I may have never captured with a regular camera.

I’ve never kept a journal.  I have a website/blog/Tumblr dealy.  I have a Flickr photostream.  I have this column.  These are all outlets for sharing specific information that I choose.  I put at least a small amount of thought into everything I post on these sites.  I take a certain amount of pride in it all.

And yet I can sit, as I often do, and look at all the photos on my phone and feel like I’m watching the story of my own life.  As mundane as it sometimes is, I never get tired of it.

I made a quick run down to New York last weekend  to see the fine gents of You Look Nice Today perform one of their first shows on the East Coast.  The YLNT podcast, a self-proclaimed “Journal of emotional hygiene,” is one of my favorite things to listen to.

I gave up on explaining what I was going to see pretty quickly.

“You’re going to see a podcast?”
“Well, no…  I mean, I know them from the podcast, but it’s a normal comedy show.”
“Where do they normally play?”
“It’s on the Internet.  A podcast. But they do some live shows too.”
“What’s it about?”

My wife came along with me, being the good sport that she is.  I tried to play her some of the episodes in the car during the week leading up to the show, but every time I put it on, I got a puzzled look. “I don’t get it,” she said  “What are they talking about?”  I hoped she’d just figure it out as it went along.

Having never been to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, we got there a bit early.  We quickly found some decent seats in the small basement theater.  Shortly after, the ukulele refrain of the YLNT theme played through the PA and Messrs. Sandwich, Simpson, and Mann made their way to the three spotlighted chairs in the front of the room.

It’s an interesting experience to see something like YLNT live, having only really heard it in pre-recorded form.  The best part of the show is never knowing where it’s going to go (I don’t think they know either¹).  The non-sequiturs are absurd and brillant.

Watching live, you can see some of  this happening.  A glance in one direction.  A nod of the head.  You can actually watch some of it unfold.  There’s also a few awkward pauses, and a touch of nervousness—things that can be edited out for a podcast.  It was really fun to see how much these guys make each other laugh too.  You get a full picture.

I don’t listen to a lot of comedians, and I have only been to a few comedy clubs in my life.  I can’t really say how this compared to anything else.  I know it made me laugh a lot, and I know it made my wife laugh too.

Driving home after the show we played an old episode, and suddenly it made more sense to my wife.

“Who’s that?”
“Was he the one in the middle or on the side?”
“Why do they call him Sandwich?”

I’ll take that as a win.

¹ I have no idea how the show is put together, but I always imagine it similar to Curb Your Enthusiasm: a rough outline to get from Point A to Point B, and in between, anything can happen.

Earlier this month the famed Boston radio station WBCN went off the air.  WBCN was one of those things that was just always there, and I never stopped to think too much about it.  Over the last few days that they were broadcasting, people started to pay more attention in a “I can’t believe this is really happening way.”

I think the first time I really became aware of WBCN was when I was in high school, and living in Connecticut.  I had started to become intrigued by this band from Burlington, VT that I was hearing a lot about—Phish.  Back then, in order to get news updates and tour dates, you had to call into an telephone hotline, which was basically just an answering machine where they would read off the latest info.  I found out that Phish would soon be playing a radio show for the “Rock Of Boston, WBCN.”  I talked my parents into driving me and a friend up for the night and we saw the show.  I remember thinking that if Phish was playing a show for them, they must be pretty cool.  WBCN was now on my radar.

Within a few years I was living in Boston and going to school.  WBCN became an immediate pre-set on my car radio.  You just knew they were a big deal.  You’d pass Fenway Park and see the old, black building out on the far side with the huge, white WBCN logo scrawled across the front.  It was part of the fabric of the area.

When I was in college, I started taking a bunch of classes on writing, and American literature; The Beats and the Vietnam War—your basic liberal arts education.  One of my favorite professors was a life-long Boston resident.  She’d tell us tales of what Boston was like in the heady times of the late Sixties and Seventies.  She talked about how WBCN was always on—an ever-present soundtrack to that bygone era that was so easy for me to romanticize.  And I could still go home, tune the radio to 104.1 and, in a way, tie into that history.

Towards the end of college I started interning for the local radio rep at the Boston Virgin Records office (a position that, incidentally, lead to the job I have today, in a roundabout way).  I have tons of great memories of this time, but I’ll never forget the feeling of excitement when my old boss Howard would stick his head out the door of his office and announce something like “‘BCN added Lenny!”  The whole office would cheer.  It was a big deal.  A big fish in a pretty big pond.

Years later, back in the music business after a few detours, I stood in the BCN studio near Fenway and had one of my all-time musical idols hand me a glass of champagne that had just been poured from a bottle presented to him as a gift from Oedipus, a local legend in his own right.  In hindsight, it made some sort of cosmic sense that that was where we were.  I still have the cork from that bottle.

Over the past few years WBCN changed a lot.  Like a lot of stations, they constantly tweaked the format of music they played.  They seemed to lose a bit of identity, and along the way my listening faded.  Still, I work in the music industry, and even with all the ups and downs, ‘BCN was still ‘BCN.  Having a single added there was still a big deal.

So a few weeks ago, on the night that they were to sign off for good, I knew I had to listen for one last time.  I sat at my computer and listened to them play one last set of great music, and share stories.  Something else cool happened as well.  I started looking on Facebook (a site that I’ve had more negative feelings towards than positive of late), and it seemed like everyone I knew that had any connection whatsoever to Boston was talking about ‘BCN going off of the air.  It was a nice moment, and it reminded me that I’m happy to have a central place to share those thoughts.  The internet may have diluted the community effect that radio has these days, but it also brought a diverse group of people together to share their thoughts on it.

I sat there with my headphones on, listening to them play Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” one last time.  As the song ended, they played a montage of highlights from the long and wild life of the station.  As it ended, the call letters of the new station were spoken, and then it cut to static.  I listened to that static for a long time without even realizing it.  WBCN going off the air was never a “my life will never be the same” moment.  It wasn’t something I thought about on a regular basis.  But sitting there, listening to that static, gave a me a chance to reflect on that thread that has been woven through all my years living in Boston.  It’s strange to think that it’s gone.

Take a listen for yourself:

When I was in high school I played soccer.  For a small town in Connecticut, we had a good team.  I loved playing, but I hated training; especially running the hills behind our field—a punishment that I avoided as much as possible.

Last weekend I got the chance to go to Ohio for the launch of LeBron James’ newest Nike signature shoe.  The actual launch took place at the local Akron community center where James played basketball in when he was growing up.  It was an Event: Keenan Thompson from SNL was the MC; Nike webcast the event globally; national ESPN reporters were filing reports on location.  And of course, James himself was there to answer questions.

The trip, however, wasn’t all about flashing the newest shoes for the camera.  It was, as much as anything, a chance to see the Akron in which LeBron James grew up, and the community that nurtured him and allowed him to become the superstar that he is today.

Over the course of two days, we travelled around the area and met a number of people that had an impact on James’ career.  I had never been to Akron before this, so I had no frame of reference—only the impressions I was left with.

We visited the Summit Lake Community Center, where James first learned to play basketball when he was six or seven years old.   Walking into the entrance, it felt like any other well-worn community center, except on the wall next to the gym entrance, and above the old trophy case, was a large collage of cut-out magazine covers and newspaper articles featuring James.  There was a handwritten note saying “We Love You LeBron”—the type of note you’d expect to see attached to an All-Conference announcement at another school.

Coach Frank Walker walked us through the same gym where he’d coached kids for 20 years, including James.  The temperature inside the old gym was noticeably hotter.  The air was thick.  The polyurethane coating underneath the backboards was worn away from years and years of use.

We visited St. Vincent-St. Mary high school where James and his core group of basketball playing friends—The “Fab 5″— attended.  The school at which they won the National Championship in 2003.

As I walked through the main entrance of SVSM I noticed a sign above the door, donated by the 1983 Student Council.  It read “Through These Doors Walks A Winner.” This type of sign probably adorns some wall of most high schools around the country.  I bet students walk underneath it everyday and give it no thought at all.  I’m sure there are some that couldn’t tell you what it says if you asked them.  That sign was hanging above the door for a decade before LeBron James walked underneath it as a student.

I couldn’t help but wonder, do people look at it differently now?  Did LeBron notice it when he was there?

Today, SVSM is the high school “where LeBron James played.”  You can’t escape it. What does it mean for the young kids of Akron?  Are they more inspired having that story right in front of them?  By contrast, there used to be rumors that someone in our high school league could dunk—though I never saw it myself. That’s quite a difference.

I don’t know what impact going to the same school as LeBron James has on the people that come after him. I don’t know if you play any harder because you’re practicing on the same worn-down wooden floors that he played on.  I’d guess that a lot of it is subtle and subconscious.

If I wanted to point to one sign though, it’s what I saw as we were leaving the school. SVSM has a steep hill that runs out behind it.  As our bus circled  to leave, I saw two kids—maybe seven or eight years old—running up and down the hill behind the school.  They were laughing, but they were working; training.  I used to hate running hills when I played sports in high school, and this hill was a hell of a lot steeper.

On a Friday afternoon in the late summer these two kids chose to go and run hills together.  As I watched them run up the hill behind the school where he saw such levels of success, I couldn’t help but wonder: would they have been doing it they didn’t have his story somewhere in the back of their minds?