The Sign: If it weren't for the store name spray-painted on its front, the sherbet-orange structure on the corner of White Oak Drive and Oxford, just north of Interstate 10, might look like Santa's chilled-out summer workshop if instead of a sleigh, Santa used skates.

Beyond the shaggy greenery, lawn chairs and worn umbrellas in the fenced-in front yard, a giant plastic candy cane props the door open. Passersby know it's a skate shop because that's what the sign says: Montrose Skate Shop. But there are also a couple of dragons and a city skyline, done by the local collective the Insomniacs, for good measure.

"That's my skate dragon," John McKay, the shop owner, said of the creatures gracing his storefront.

McKay said the Insomniacs contacted him almost 10 years ago and because he'd been having trouble keeping idle taggers from marking up the warehouse-like building, he said sure, work your magic.

And they did. McKay said he hardly ever deals with taggers anymore, which may also have to do with the neighborhood transforming over the years as well.

It's not exactly a coherent narrative or landscape. The action unfolds independent of its surrounding.

The cartoonish letters – seemingly capitalized at random – seem to spring from a burst of white. To the right, the dragons twist and turn in a foreground whose relationship to the distant city is unclear. It's like watching a kids' show with the sound off. Colorful and disjointed. With a hint of sugar-fueled danger.

The Place: The colorful chaos carries through to the inside, where a rainbow of skate wheels line glass cases and Roller Derby posters cover the ceiling. Two beat-up leather chairs tie the room together. There's a fridge and a sink to one side. Rows of custom helmets against the back wall.

Confusingly, the Montrose Skate Shop is not in Montrose; it's at the edge of the Heights. The original location was in Montrose, but McKay moved here 12 years ago. He's made the place his home – literally.

"You become what you do, and I am the skate guy and I own the skate shop," explained McKay matter-of-factly. Photos along the walls chronicle how he became the skate guy. In the '80s, McKay was part of an informal but intimate group of street skaters. A black-and-white photo shows them as a ragtag group of leather-wearing free spirits. McKay and his crew were critical in getting skates recognized as street-legal in the city -- a fight that landed him in jail more than once, said McKay.

"There's a lot of history in this shop," said Kit Busch, who's been a loyal customer since the shop first opened in 1984.

McKay, 67, remembers it all – the oyster-shell streets from his childhood moving around Houston, the heyday of downtown, even the very different Heights neighborhood of just 10 years ago. His stepfather and mother were carnies, and McKay's first job was operating three "kiddie rides," as he calls them. "I loved it," he said.

The creative energy of the carnival life was hard to replicate as an adult. During the oil boom, he found work as a machinist. But being "normal," was a challenge. "It never ends," he said. "It's always my shortcoming."

When things went belly-up, McKay lost his job and ended up homeless. He lived in a warehouse for two years. There was an old hot tub, and he used to sit in the water to cool off under the shade of an umbrella. "I would just sit there and ponder any way to survive," he said. "I realized it's not always up to you."

Living on the street was isolating. "Once you develop a street look, people avoid you," he said. "But that doesn't eliminate the need to communicate."

To get by, he did odd jobs. He still had some tools and a chunk of change in savings that he refused to spend. Later, he used those savings to start the shop.

He had always biked, but when he saw people putting skateboard wheels on roller skates and taking to the street, he found a scene and energy that felt like his time around carnivals. "We hung out all the time," he said. "It was one big clan, kind of, loose-knit. If you went, you were."

Today, the scene lives on in Roller Derby competitions and a handful of regular group-skating routes, at roller rinks and in the occasional joust that McKay puts on in front of his shop. But there's nothing quite like that moment and group he once belonged to, the Urban Animals, which had its 35th reunion this year.

McKay doesn't mind change. In fact, he welcomes evolution. But he does wonder what happened to everyone, some of whom still post on the group's Facebook page. Some days, he said, he can sit in his leather chair and just replay old memories like a movie in his mind. "Not that they're anything special," he said, "but they're mine."