Vert And Freestyle Skateboarding
What happened with skateboarding during the 80's and 90's?
Well, it really died in the 80's and 90's really. It just went completely dead and then it came back. In the 80's it came back through punk rock skate, you know, like, just punkers just carrying it on out in the streets. Punk rock being affiliated with skateboarding and then the music became popular with skateboarding again and it grew. It grew back again, like, kind of like skate rock thing. And then it died again in the 90's and came back in the form of, like, street skating where it just went to another level of world industries, and Jessie Martinez and Rodney Mullin and all those guys kind of took it to another level of technicality with the street skating.
Was vert skating popular during the 80's?
It was for a while, vertical skateboarding has come and gone because I think that it's hard to afford a skate park or a half pipe or something and where skateboarding always went back to is where I wanted it to be to begin with, the backyards, it would go back into the school yards, it would go back into the back yards, empty swimming pools, it would go into drainage ditches, it would go into empty sewer pipes, stuff like that. That's the most exciting part of skateboarding, its always been the subversive part of skateboarding that people ignore and that people aren't aware of.
How does it feel to be part of skateboarding history?
I'm really stoked that at 50 years old I not only was a part of skateboarding history, but I lived to see where skateboarding has evolved to, because now it's evolved to the best it ever was and ever will be. It's not going to die out again. It's very versatile, there's a lot going on -- it's not all about street skating, it's not all about vert skating, it's about just being involved in skateboarding and being a part of something that's really exciting and that's a multicultural event.
Are there limits to skateboarding?
There's no plateau. Wherever the next crazy concept or idea is going, somebody like Danny Way jumping out of a helicopter into a twenty-five foot ramp and than flying out the other end a hundred feet or whatever, that's where it's going.
Who were the best skateboarders during the 80's and 90's?
Christian Hosoi and Tony Hawks battled it out in the 80's, they were great. Steve Caballero, great skateboarder, I mentioned him earlier as a matter of fact. Mark Gonzales came out of the like late 80's and early 90's, he was amazing. Tommy Guerrero, I sponsored a bunch of guys that were iconic back in the 80's, like Fred Smith, Craig Johnson, Billy Danforth, Eddie Radigee. Dave Duncan is even involved in skateboarding today. To this day he is one of the XGames announcers and then some of the young guns who came out of that era. Even guys like Rodney Mullen, guys like Adam Mcnate. Some guys kind of disappeared somehow. There has been a few legends, like Tim Brasch; we just had a memorial for him up north which they have every year. That is really a pertinent part of the skateboarding world is that a lot of the guys that we lose are like lost soldiers and stuff and we honor them because they go out like heroes. Fortunately, a lot of them do not go out to stupid circumstances like drug overdoses and stuff like that.
Which famous 3rd generation skateboarders have disappeared from the scene?
Some guys kind of disappeared off, kind of went off. A few guys we've lost like Pat Brennan. Shane Cross, he's not from the eighties or the nineties, from just lately. A lot of kids end up burning bright and then you lose them. That happens a lot. Back in the surfing old days and back in the rock star kind of stuff. A lot of it revolved around drugs and alcohol which is unfortunate. But with skateboarding it's usually something a little bit more hardcore than that. It's something more like they're in the wrong place at the wrong time or just going super fast. This one kid who was like unfortunately on the back of a motorcycle or something; one guy got paralyzed, one guy got killed. Crazy stuff like that happens and I think there are a lot of great skateboarders that are still alive and still involved somehow in skate boarding but somehow we've lost a lot of them too.
