Jeff Ho was the first person I interviewed and Lucia Griggi photographed for this book. This was way back in the spring of 2009, when I was working on a couple of other books and was too frazzled to be doing anything right. Okay we got ahead of ourselves. Let me go back and ask some […]
The many faces of Steve Caballero and friends. Cab is a classic case of a skate park kid made good. Born in 1964 – the Year of the Dragon – Caballero utilized the dragon theme in his graphics, as he became one of the leading skateboard stars out of the 1970s and into the 1980s. […]
The answer is: We may never know. Many inventors and corporations are quick to stake a claim, but finding that first commercially produced skateboard may be a futile search. In the first edition of the Quarterly Skateboarder, a full-page ad by Skee Skate of California makes a heavy claim: “This is it!!!! The skateboard that […]
Cred is important in skateboarding, so let me establish mine. I began skating when I was ten in sunny California around 1970, in the bad old days of clay wheels. I also started surfing about then, walking with my purple Haut longboard every day from Santa Cruz’ Seventh Avenue to Cowells, and putting in the […]
The skateboard was invented in 1956, by Marty McFly. It was all something of an accident, because just after the terrorists murdered the professor, McFly jumped into a DeLorean DMC-12 automobile that was also a time machine, powered by the Flux Capacitor. McFly made good his getaway by going back in time. In the Hill […]
Into the 1980s, NHS morphed into Santa Cruz Skateboards and became a powerhouse assembling a Murderer’s Row of top vert skaters that included Keith Meek, Jeff Grosso, Jason Jesse and Rob Roskopp. Well, that caption sucks, according to Tim Piumarta: “As to your ‘Murderer’s Row:’ you totally miss the point. NHS never ‘morphed’ into anything. […]
The writer John Smythe wrote about Nathan Pratt in the June, 1977 issue of Skateboarder Magazine: Keeping the low profile in his speed profile, Nathan Pratt remains unknown by choice rather than chance. In dealing with this individual, the visibility factor cannot be ignored. For instance, Pratt shows up at the opening day of a […]
Never met Wes Humpston. I wasn’t there when Lucia took his portrait, and our only communication was by email. Reading up on Humpston online and in the Concrete Wave book Bulldog’s Art by Wes Humpston, I began to understand that Humpston was a part of the Dogtown skateboard crew beginning in the early 1970s. He […]
Here’s and interview with Peggy Oki Straight out of· ‘The Skateboard: The Good The Bad And The Gnarly’ Written By Ben Marcus. When and where did you start skateboarding? That was a long time ago! I would say at the age of around ten, when my father bought my brother and I our own “Black […]
Mr. Powell Explains the Evolution That Lead to Bones. Lucia Griggi took a couple of great portraits of George Powell as this book was getting started, and then I didn’t bother him again until early September. I was fiending to turn in Chapter Five of this book – which had grown to 100,000+ words – […]
Zephyr, Z Boys, Dogtown. You could write a book. Make a documentary! In 1994, Craig Stecyk III wrote the intro to F%@#% You Heroes, a collection of Glen Friedman’s rap, punk and skate photos from 1976 – 1991. That book included a lot of photos of Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Bob Biniak, Paul Constantineau, Shogo […]
TOM SIMS INTERVIEW PART 1: Here is where I get confused because I seem to think Sims was run by Brad Dorfman and Vision in the 1980s? By the late 70?s I got very busy getting snowboarding off the ground, and licensed Sims Skateboards to Brad Dorfman in 1981. At the time we had the […]