Carlos Truan

I met Carlos through Cattackular (Cat). Well I met Carlos sort of before Cat. Let me explain.

I was in Austin for StupidFest, the first meeting of skaters from the NeverWas Facebook group. I got there a few days before Chris and Ben. Chris I was picking up at the Airport and Ben who was driving in, both planned on staying in the van while we were there. So the day before the came, I went to House Park to get some skating in and meet some of the local NeverWas folks. Skated for a bit. Then was I leaving this guy was getting out of his car, which was parked next the van, he asked about my van and my travels. He loved it and said, “His Girlfriend “CAT” would like it too!” and wanted to show her. She wasn’t at the park at the time. However, the next day Chris and Ben show up. We head out to one of the many StupidFest group meetups where I’m taking photos and I catch a photo of this girl named “Cat”.

She was doing these amazing layback slash grinds on top on the ditch onto a parking block. BADASS. I showed her the photo and she was super excited about it. And we got to talking. I asked her name is she replied “Cat”. I was like wait a minute. My girl’s name Kat. I’m meeting two KCats first time in my life in a 2 month period? I tell her my girl’s name Kat and tattoo artist, she tells me her boyfriend is a tattoo artist. How weird is that. I also tell her that I may have met her boyfriend. Since, how many other Cats are there in Austin. Yup, Cat confirms that she and Carlos are boyfriend/girlfriend. They both skate and skate together. SO Rad! She tells me his age and what he likes to skate. Which is perfectly inline of my type of skating, boardslides, slappies, and quarters. Low impact skating. I didn’t get a chance to meet up with Carlos when I was there in October but I made it one the things on my list to do when I got back to Austin.

Fast forward to January. I finally get back to Austin where I made it a point to meet with Carlos. It just so happened Cat (@cattackular) posted a post of Carlos’s tshirts for sale. There was a few shirts left. Awesome. I let her know I wanted one and I could stop by Carlos’s tattoo studio to pick up the next. Perfect.

The next day I drove over to Perfection Tattoo shop where I formally met Carlos.

I introduced myself and also said we have met before. We met at House Park at my van. He was painting a pink, baby blue, and white checker banner for the upcoming Tattoo convention in Austin. The banner was way cool looking. We talked a bunch about skating, tattooos, our girlfriends both name Cat/Kat, the Van, and a bunch of great conversational pieces. We both love doing boardslides and took a break from skating for a bit. Me, I got married then got not married moved back to Boston then picked up skating again. Carlos was getting into trouble hanging with the wrong crowd which led him to some time away. One the things that struck me in our conversation was Carlos telling me that he would fight all the time when he was in jail. He said he fought all the time because he felt he had to show whoever it was that started a fight with him, he wasn’t scared. I asked, “Were you a good fighter?” He said, “No, I can’t fight.” Which meant he knew he was going to beat up each time but kept fighting to show them he wasn’t afraid. That’s some crazy power, right there. I’m impressed.