Skate SD: Building Skateboarding's Future - Documentary

foreign [Music] [Music] park for the first time I think that they see the Daredevil antics and the excitement and the vibe even if they're not there to skate they're drawn to it and when people find it they're stuck in it skateboarding is expression to who somebody is it's just an outlet [Music] it's really an independent sport if you would call it but we never called skateboarding like a sport it's always been like up to you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] has come a long way and it's easy to forget how scarce it was in the early days the lack of skate parks the lack of inclusion and nowadays there are skate parks everywhere and everyone's welcome to skate and the mainstream Embraces skateboarding as legitimate none of that stuff happened when I was a kid and a lot of that is San Diego's contributions to the current state of skateboarding [Music] I'm proud of San Diego as being this incubator for skateboarding where it just it started here you know it's like Hawaiians being proud of of Surfing you know surfing started in Hawaii they should be proud of that it's part of their culture skateboarding is part of our culture as San diegans we should be proud of the history and that a lot of things started here thank you every skatepark has a history sometimes you're so focused on the skateboarding you forget about this whole Foundation underneath and it sort of makes you realize that if it wasn't for where you're born and raised you might not have been introduced to the whole world Through Skateboarding that can unite all of us together and it's almost like we all have something in common you can see it through skateboarding the history of skateboarding in San Diego goes way back and it's as rich as it is complicated you know all over the USA these small pockets of surfers were taking what they were doing in the water and applying it to land it really was these small pockets of surf scenes that kind of gave way to skateboarding but it wasn't until really 1974 1975. San Diego really started to push things forward with some big groundbreaking events that basically changed the landscape of skateboarding forever [Applause] [Music] yeah I mean really back then but it was more surf skating if anything we were trying to serve on our skateboards because that just went together you know you could do surf Style on a skateboard and carve Hills and do it in a surfing like kind of movement all the Surfers would ride them down to the beach for transportation really got to the point where all a major surf companies had a skateboard model the early companies would be like Hobie and Gordon and Smith Bain it was a kind of a natural thing really to happen but the equipment wasn't where it is now obviously you know skateboards were a toy before pretty much and and it was hard to do things when when I look at photos of the boards they were riding I mean you're just like wow that's crazy that they could do that on that board you know I can barely stand on that board they're tiny they're skinny the trucks can't handle a lot of torque I started on Clay with ball bearings they're great going straight and doing like but when you got speed and crank it turned they'd just slide out it was very limited on what you could do because Clay is very hard and they don't grip well I guess they got them from from roller skate wheels right and they were some sort of composite plastic thing or something they just didn't work you know this was a time where skaters were trying to ride on metal and Clay wheels and it looked super dangerous and really hard to ride so in 1973 Frank nasworthy started a business in Encinitas California making urethane skateboard wheels after seeing the potential for a better way to skate [Music] he eventually called the business Cadillac because of the smoothness of this ride I started selling Wheels in April of 1973 out of the back of my Dodge Dart the first year I did about 40 000 wheels and then the next year it was in hundreds of thousands so San Diego was the birthplace of where urethane meets skateboards the urethane wheel was the flash point that changed skateboarding forever the minute that skaters got themselves on urethane Wheels everything changed it was almost like the whole world opened up to them now you could go over little rocks and they would drip you wouldn't hurt yourself so it made skateboarding what it is today bar not I mean there's no comparison it's pretty incredible that even years later we're still basically riding the same type of urethane wheels that they were riding way back in the day so this is an invention that really opened up a world of possibilities for skaters it was really neat when I started skating because I Grew From The Clay well into the urethane Revolution and watched equipment evolve tracker trucks was here in North County and they developed the first skateboard wider truck that gave you stability and it enabled you to be able to do more radical type skating maneuvers it happened fast people started being able to do more radical things because the equipment did progress pretty quickly thank you a big part of the skateboard industry you know emerged out of San Diego and some of the new technologies really opened up a whole new world for skateboarders we suddenly had control of your skateboard the board would stay under you really introduced this aggressive new style that then was adapted to them these new terrains that were a little bit more challenging kids took this device in anywhere where there was asphalt and in particular Hills from that emerged local groups of skaters who would meet up in La Costa and other places where you know there was fresh new asphalt and very little traffic [Music] it was awesome the pavement on Black Hill in 74 was like butter the asphalt was top-notch it was so wide and nobody cared we weren't intruding we weren't trespassing it was public streets and I just went this is just cool it didn't take long before I figured I'm not just going to watch so then I started skating and then more and more people showed up every Sunday where the races but people were skating every day there foreign to me is that Florida came to La Costa Dogtown Canada La Costa so clearly there was a hub of something happening the place just exploded with good ideas and then tangible product to look see ride it's just like sharing the knowledge and Sharing The Stoke and it was a lot of fun for a long time but you can imagine if you're going to go down on something like this you leave your DNA behind [Music] I did a little bit of that downhill stuff but to me that's like daredevilness you know like I don't like this anymore so I immediately got out of that and started skating in the pools and the ditches we used to skate in these ditches because we could Traverse and have something that would hold us up with an embankment it was so much more like surfing a wave a big part of skateboarding in the early days was emulating surfing because you were you were carving and so they were emulating waves people who served had the same sort of mentality as people who skated especially back in those days it wasn't widely accepted as an activity or a sport and so you had to go to different remote places inaccessible places to do it I heard about these big pipes out in the Arizona desert so I frequented it and we'd go out there and camp and these pipes were 20 foot wide 20 foot in diameter two foot concrete we would skate these sections and it would be like surfing 20-foot surf front side and back side and we just go boom just like this on both sides you know and that was something man you know you know that sensation was just too good not to create Tom's first inclination was probably to figure out a way to steal one of these pipes out of the desert but obviously that was not going to be possible so for him he decided to recreate it the best way he could back home in San Diego foreign at the time I was doing carpentry work so I kind of knew how to frame stuff I took that exact dimension of the radius because it was so perfect Tom was inspired you can imagine Tom and his friends basically just trying to figure out how to form something similar to what they were riding in the desert so they had wood they had nails and Hammers and a lot of imagination called the ramp Rampage and from that the birth of the skateboarding half pipe that was the original half-pipe in Encinitas first one ever built as far as I know you know if somebody can claim to fame before that I'd like to meet them and shake their hand but I didn't copy anybody that's for sure you know it was a primitive ramp no decks no flat bottom basically half a pipe but back then it was a new invention so what we all know today as a skateboarding half pipe came to fruition in an unlikely place uh really the birth of DIY skateboarding you got to wonder what the the neighbors thought of that at first when these kids were out there this big wooden half pipe that probably looked very dangerous to a passerby but to a skater well this thing looked perfect and everybody wanted a piece it was a zoo at my house I mean on any given day there'd be you know 20 30 people wanting to come over and skate I'd wake up in the morning there'd be guys hanging out you know I did be honest with you I only went there a few times because it was a full-on boys scene the boys you know what I'm saying so I showed up and wrote it maybe for a couple hours maybe two or three times there was one time I showed up there's probably you know 20 30 boys and I just was like the only girl and I was like you know yeah you know I'll just write it for real quick and it was hard to get going at first right because it was really wide just took it to another level really and things just kept getting better and better and harder and harder and more radical [Music] we got a lot of notoriety about this ramp people want to know how to build one so that's when I got to go together with my brother and he drew up a set of complete working plans and we started reproducing Blueprints and we sold tens of thousands of these ramp plans all around the world Japan Korea Germany people were building skateboard ramps and I couldn't believe it they were all Rampage from Rampage plants you know the little ramp in Encinitas California basically became the literal blueprint for skateboarders all over the world for them to replicate on their own I lived there for about three years you know and skated it every day and and you know that's when this whole skate park thing came in and obviously the first skate park from what I know was the Carlsbad skate park and John O'Malley you know he was instrumental in it and I did a little bit of stuff there you know worked there a little bit the most famous of the original skate parks was the Carlsbad skate park an entrepreneur at the time had this idea of creating a business around skateboarding which was growing and he hired a young Surfer to design a custom facility you know at that point there was no precedent so they had to build it from scratch they had to conceive it from scratch the term skate park was coined with the design of that Park you know in the corner of that diagram is the word skatepark possibly that's the first time it was ever written down what's crazy to think of a world before skate parks but in the mid 70s the word hadn't even been invented yet there were no Parks dedicated to skateboarding that all changed in 1976 when the Carlsbad skate park opened its doors [Music] the first time I saw Carlsbad skate park it was like oh my God look at that it really is a skate park let's go we and we spent all days skating for at least eight hours it was so fun it was another dimension of skateboarding in a skate park [Music] the sensation of dropping into the bowl and carving it it was perfect because everything was smooth transition and it was like everybody was out there it was just the place to be [Music] the Carlsbad skate park was really nothing like the skate parks you'd see today more of a flowing cement surf style course the skaters that went there in early days actually progressed Way Beyond the boundaries of the park pretty quickly on the business side of things people saw what was possible build a skate park make it fun and interesting skaters will pay you to ride it thank you you know the original Carlsbad skatepark was clearly a success all of a sudden budding entrepreneurs saw an opportunity you know after Carlsbad as the other Parks began to open they were offering more and more challenging terrain because they wanted to one-up each other and attract more of those skaters to their Park in its wake the skate parks began to open that were all packed and kids were skating all over the place by some estimates numbered in three or four hundred skate parks the parks had opened up after Carlsbad took their Cube from that Park but they evolved the design a little bit or they built something a little bit larger It All Happened really pretty fast I mean it went from surfing to carving downhill to carve in a bowl and then I can get out of the bowl well in the early days when I really fell in love with skateboarding it had already evolved from just sidewalk surfing to pool skating so by the time I started people were already doing Aerials out of bowls well I was born in San Diego because my dad was in the Navy and he was stationed here and then retired here as I grew up here and fell in love with skating I realized that this was one of the best places you could be a skateboarder when I went to the park it was just this Hub of creativity I mean not just skateboarding Style music fashion like a way of thinking a way of approaching life it was all very do-it-yourself and that's what drew me in but it was pretty obvious skateboarding was mostly boys men you rarely saw girls at the skate park it just didn't seem like something girls chose to do or for some reason discouraged by it into a skate park it was mostly the guy skating 75 percent of the time I was at the skate parks I would be the only girl there are a few girls that did start crossing over in the Parks and trying to do the pools but really there weren't a lot of girls skating there was not but then they built Del Mar skateboard Ranch and I was the resident Pro there when they first opened it and I was there like five days a week I started working there the second day they were open I was the worker bee you know sweeping out pools checking people in to skate those were the days when it was 100 people skating I mean it was really packed so at the time yeah skateboarding was huge like every kid I knew had a skateboard but I wasn't allowed to do it so it was like this like a thing you know like I couldn't touch it but I really wanted it and that was the beginning of the park explosion we had a lot of skate parks in San Diego Carlsbad Vista and then Del Mar so the skate park opened I needed to get my parents assigned a waiver to skate there I think my mom was holding it over my head like I'm not citing anything like come on you know I probably cried a thousand times and until it was just basically they submitted and they said they pushed me into a life of skateboarding just remember all these Parks were popping up but there was one in Spring Valley there was one in their Oasis and unfortunately my mom wasn't going to take me anywhere she wasn't she wasn't taking me to Spring Valley I think she took me to Oasis one time but how do I say it being a girl she didn't want me skateboarding but then you know Del Mar opened I begged or begged or begged her to take me to Del Mar and she did so first time I skated I was horrible couldn't figure it out I was just like are you kidding me this is so weird and I'm watching people going how are they doing this and the next time I came back I was I just got it it just clicked immediately I think for a lot of us young skaters at the time it simply spoke to us and unlike other sports it was really something we could you know grab a hold of and that it clearly had hold on us it wasn't just something we did it was who we were back then the people that had started the skate parks a lot of them were just investors you know and they just didn't have a connection to skateboarding so and Del Mar the the people that owned it had no connection to skateboarding well it was called surf and turf Recreation and it was a group of doctors and you know professionals from Orange County Del Mar skate park it's a golf Ranch it's a bunch of golfers they come over and look at him and go back over and whack little balls in a hole right they but they own the property and they realized that all the kids wanted to be there hell there's money to be made so it was a business and yes there's a lot of people in skateboard industry period who are not skateboarders but they are money investors they see there's money to be made you definitely had to have people with money to back it because it was very expensive to lay cement like that this was the era of pay to play skateboarding it truly became a business at this time build a park skaters come skate it they pay repeat from design to construction that didn't always match up in the early days of skate parks a lot of times you would have a thought of what the park was going to be like but after it was built it was an entirely different Beast you know we saw skate parks that were poorly designed hastily built that ended up being downright dangerous for some skaters By 1979 you had a number of skate parks that were very challenging and as new skateboarders were coming in to the latest fad they were going to these places and trying to learn how to skateboard at these you know Pro level facilities and inevitably you know several of them were getting injured and the insurance for these skate parks started to get really expensive from what I remember when the skate park opened in 1978 uh insurance was like eleven thousand dollars a year by the end of it it was like over a hundred thousand a year I think that set a precedent for the future where we knew that skateboarding went up and down like this the popularity of skateboarding because it was a fad [Music] no it really was a blur watching it collapse around you and there's nothing you can do I mean it's just heartbreaking [Music] you know in that time span there were probably hundreds of skate parks in the U.S and it all dwindled down to three that were still businesses I don't remember the gradual downturn I just remember all of a sudden it's like wow there's nobody here [Music] it went from 100 people skating to two people skating [Music] started [Music] it just when I first started skating in the late 70s it was a boom of skating and there were skate parks all over San Diego and so I was excited like once I'm old enough I'm going to all this Park Spring Valley in Escondido and and they all close with an ear the last two skate parks remaining in San Diego were Del Mar skate Ranch and Oasis skate park it was pretty obvious from just the crowd and the vibe at Oasis that it was going to close and it eventually did and then Del Mar was the only park Del Mar was the only park at San Diego at some point Del Mar was the only Park in Southern California you know the last of the original San Diego skate parks was the Del Mar skateboard Ranch but people in San Diego rarely knew the a that it existed and B certainly where it was even when you described where it was oh it's near the racetrack [Music] we were sort of tucked away and eventually the skate park came under the management of the golf shop which was really the profitable business there and they kept it open for some reason and I was trusted to help run this place they trusted a 20-something-year-old skater to run this arcade skate park miniature golf snack bar and I don't know why I didn't have anything else to do and we were doing anything to get people into skate and then you always expected you know this could be the last day [Music] I don't think skateboarding was even really on anybody's radar in San Diego like other than people that wanted to skate you know at Del Mar it was kind of obvious that there was nobody skating there like whenever I'd go it was just like six or seven people at the most like that was a crowded weekend you know in 1981. started skating there all the time you know skating there for four or five hours you'd learn something and and you just got to know all these people that had the same they were they were loving the same thing you know here back then there wasn't a whole lot going on in the North County San Diego so it wasn't as if I could go down the street and there's skaters everywhere so in the skate park that was it this is what you had [Music] felt like it like every weekend you'd start seeing more people you know so 83. all San Diego would come to the skate park on the weekends you know like so then you'd have 20 people there you know of all different ages and we were the Del Mar locals it was hard to see that all over the country skateboarding was continuing to recede and Shrink it's just that that one place happened to be where all the remaining skateboarders started to concentrate somebody told me they go hey did you see that kid Tony Hawk skating he's from Oasis because Oasis skate park it had closed down so Tony was a local Darren and his dad started bringing him up to Del Mar so I went out to watch him and you know he could do stuff but he wasn't a standout or anything and then just he would come every day after school and that was his life was to he'd get out of school go straight to Del Mar and then Tony just got better and better and better but because of the state of skateboarding it wasn't like you held him up like you know that guy's the next Tony Hawk you know it wasn't like that it was just the skater who was better than other skaters the first day a skating the skate Ranch as I remember it Tony rolls in flying out of the pool like up to my eye level and I'm hearing the sound of the wheels leaving the concrete and spinning freely in the air that and that was just like wow thank you worked for it definitely but he was definitely a prodigy I could just tell he had the talent he had the drive but yeah he was so far ahead of me that it was just like oh my God I could not believe the stuff he was doing Tony was just on his own thing it was like you could see this whole new era coming when you saw Tony skate like oh is this how it's going to be [Music] it's hard to explain to people who don't skate you know when I'm on my skateboard that's when I'm in complete control of my destiny of everything around me sometimes you'll try something it's just an idea and you're learning it because you know it's possible and that's the goal people think like I see kids and they're just trying kickflips for hours like why it's because every little bit you're learning along the way you're making little adjustments maybe they're not perceived by the naked eye but you're getting a little bit closer foreign you know it's possible you know you could do it and eventually you put all your effort into it and you do it [Music] and for me that has always been the central quest of skateboarding as new tricks [Music] I was skating with people every day who were really creating what it was about to become I knew that this kid next to me Tony was just blowing Minds with what he was doing but he was blowing minds of the people standing around that bowl in the park not anywhere anyone beyond that it was just a matter of time before people took notice when I was in high school I hid my skateboard usually in the bushes outside of school just so I wasn't carrying it around so I wasn't there wasn't a reason to make fun of me if I wasn't at school I was at the skatepark until it closed like absolutely I was there at all hours and then go home go to sleep wake up go to school start the day over it was just that common Bond of everybody there foreign didn't really fit in anywhere else by the time I got there in 81 was the same crew that you would see all the time and so it became an extended family I mean their kids would come there for eight hours and not leave the skate park and I'd look back at it now and I just go wow we had it made we had a skate park to ourselves you know and we could do whatever we wanted as long as we didn't set the place on fire [Music] you know I picked up Escape photography when I was working there I started shooting photos just for fun [Music] and then I had all these people to practice on [Music] it was all big blank canvas and we were just figuring out what we could do with our skateboards that did seem like every week New Tricks were being developed not just by me I mean by all the skaters there's a skateboarder you earned respect at the skate park for the risks you took and the things you achieved by your own Merit by your own efforts and it wasn't so important that you were the best skater or anything it was that you were pushing yourself [Music] when I first started skating Del Mar and I didn't have any female friends that skated but for me it didn't matter we were all good friends [Music] growing up at the skatepark I felt like that was my second home seriously all those guys I feel lots of love for you know [Music] nobody cared who you were nobody cared where you came from whether you're a rich poor black white brown green yellow nobody cared you were just skaters it was so unique and so rad that like everybody was just like loving the same thing you know and at this point you know I felt like a loner and skateboarding was kind of like oh come on in loners it just felt really really good to be part of that Tennis Club people used to call it can you turn your music down no no we we would have to or else we'd get in trouble from the main boss there was definitely some disputes over territory the golfers hated us the golfers like one end was the skate park the other one was the was the the driving range and those two did not meet very often you're total Outcast and they felt like we were Rebels or whatever and some of us were some of us weren't you know I'm not really into rules a lot I like breaking rules but when I was the manager I tried to take care of the skate park and I think we knew that we were fortunate we were trying not to blow it well my dad saw that there was this group of skaters devoted to doing it with really no organization so he started the castle organization California amateur skateboard league and eventually formed the NSA National skateboarding Association to start sanctioning events at different parks so he was the leader in just trying to bring the industry together you know at that time skateboarding was so small that any opportunity for skateboarders to get together was celebrated if there was an event you went just to be there and just to see who was there and to see the skateboarding going on when the Del Mar contest came around it was sort of like the last of the summer series it was definitely the event that everybody was at that was where you got to see the Pinnacle of skateboarding by the best skateboarders in the world and in Tony's case the record speaks for itself he was the clear-cut winner of all of those events he was winning contest he was the guy and we want our guy to win nothing got past him Tony was the guy as I started to get more successful in the Skate World people would come there expecting to see me and most likely I was going to be there you know I hear on that all the time yeah man it went to marred I was hoping you'd be there and there you were right in the keyhole like yeah I lived there you know the Del Mar skate rental is really special because we all had that place to meet up and you just had to go there and you just meet new people who all had that same interest that same passion for this one thing Del Mar skate Ranch became this mecca for skateboarders from all over the world you know it basically I don't say it save skateboarding but it definitely gave people a place to go where you can see Tony Hawk flying you could see all the rad things that went on there loves skateboarding hate skateboarding it changes a lot of people's minds well I'm from Illinois and I'm out here for the winter so that's the first time I've ever seen anything like this oh they're crazy I mean it's good exercise I'm good sport for the kids I'm glad they're doing it it became a destination so anyone that skated was going to congregate there from all over and and so on any given day there'd be people from other countries or way out of town that made the pilgrimage because that was the skate park that's where the skate scene was word spread of skateboarding in a truly organic way but it wasn't until transwood skateboarding came along that the world finally began to see what was happening Transworld magazine was in Oceanside and so if you were skating Del Mar and doing something special it was more likely that you were going to get coverage because it was easy for them I consumed myself with skateboarding information and what educated me was Thrasher and transworth magazine my first recollection of the scene um you know of the skateboard scene it was all about Del Mar you know what I mean it was like that was the epicenter of skateboarding they were trying to cover all the newest tricks all the events and so anything that was put in the magazine was for the rest of the Skate World to Aspire to basically you know before the internet there was nothing else being a photographer I wanted to bring skateboarding to them you know because some people when you live in Denmark or someplace everything you see is from a magazine and that was their connection to the skateboard world maybe Transworld added a lot to the Mystique of Del Mar I think that was one of the great Services of the magazine in particular was getting out there into the rest of the world and showing people what skateboarding was really about me and like four friends actually skated from the Oceanside Pier to Del Mar there was a contest taking place started early in the morning and just took the Coast Highway all the way probably roughly 20 miles none of us had memberships we hung out there for a day We snuck in and we took the bus back home I didn't have a membership to Del Mar because my father being as busy as he was he wasn't going to you know take me to get that and so it was an aspirational thing for me to be a member at Del Mar and you know never having to really officially do it was kind of a bummer by 1986 skateboarding was growing pretty fast at that point it was an interesting shift in perspective skateboarding had become focused on ramps at least on the competitive level I started traveling a lot for competitions I was skating other backyard ramps and it was almost like for lack of better word I kind of grown out of Del Mar's style of skating I know a lot of the pros Tony and others were traveling quite a bit and most of the contests at that point were being held in arenas all over the world it's ironic that the skate park would close during a pretty dramatic upswing an interest in skateboarding [Music] I think it closed sometime in June of 1987 uh we didn't really get much information that was going to happen it was just like two days before it's going to close and so then it was like reality like wait what your whole world had just been like and there's not gonna be like you're done it's over [Music] I mean there were there were a lot of people who were you know I consider really good friends who I'd see at the skate park every day and once it closed I literally have never seen them again I think a lot of people just without the skate park just kind of faded into other parts of their lives I do remember it closing I think that took a little while to to really hit but I think the last time I skated Del Mar was probably a month or so before they closed it down and tore it down and um then after that I didn't skate for 23 years I think [Music] when I knew Del Mar was closed was like well I don't really miss skating there I just missed being there and that stuck with me for a long time but yeah I mean by that time I was already traveling the world and going on tours and skating International competitions and and so Del Mar was sort of left in the dust anyway there was definitely a scattering of the tribes people didn't have each other's phone numbers it wasn't like everybody got together like a paddle out and we all gave each other our numbers like here you go man I'm gonna miss you her yearbooks none of that it was whoa everybody's gone you know I think for locals losing Del Mar was simply losing the clubhouse losing the place where everybody got together the local skateboarding Community kind of lost its its glue really they suddenly didn't have a place to get together so they just skated their own stuff and they built their own ranch every scene had their local campus or two or three or whatever and we started making convert ramps in local backyards that probably stuck around for about a couple of months at a time everybody started building ramps so it just went from skate parks to ramps and then backyard ramps and there were no public ramps it sucked because at that point now we had to start calling people and I remember the next place to escape vert was the Fallbrook ramp you'd go there and everybody'd be there but all the Del Mar locals will be there and the decks are packed so I'm like oh cool I can skate here all the time no you can't skate here all the time there's rules there's you know certain times you can go here you're you got a call like I don't want to ever have to call anybody hey can I come skate your ramp in here no I'm not skating today because that to me like I want to skate today now backyard ramps only last a short while because neighbors complained of the noise and the chaos and even then there were so few ramps and they were impossible to maintain and so skaters took to the streets skating out in the streets it made skateboarding more accessible than having to get a membership or having to find a friend with a ramp kids wanted to establish places to skate and so I felt like it was really a refreshing time to just grab your board and enjoy the journey to and from wherever it is that you're going I know that a lot of people were resorted to school yards you know when Del Mar shut down it was a lot of you know School yards a lot of downtown areas we're searching for anything anything that was skatable we'd just be on missions like on our backpacks to find new train to skate you know back then it was mainly stairs and then like little handrails and gaps suddenly the world was their playground and they weren't confined to the skate park or the backyards and that changed everything that really is what made skateboarding rise up again anything was skatable at that point the wall of curb Mahindra for me it was that kind of a turning point was like this is starting to become a thing you know and then a year later I started working at Transworld and to their credit they started really pushing Street skating there was so much good skating in those magazines it actually was kind of exciting for me to be there and then to shoot it you know like I felt like oh I'm on the Forefront of this let's go with it you know the style of skating evolved very rapidly then so people started to realize that they could go down the handrails and they could do bigger gaps I mean that jump was very quick back in those days people just cared about Street skating and then the magazines kind of followed because we want to do what all the skaters are doing I think transport Skateboard Magazine helped to kind of us in a new era of skateboarding I guess it was really responsible for presenting skateboard culture and the scene in San Diego you know to the rest of the world it would basically be like a brochure to San Diego skate spots you know you'd open the magazine you'd look through oh there's a rail in downtown San Diego there's a schoolyard in North County there's a Ledge in Rancho Bernardo I mean it was all in the magazine because it was all happening right here you can see that like San Diego is like turning heads and like making it like this is the can I can we go here I I can't really explain why this is it must have been where it was happening and you know and it was happening here it's amazing to think that some of the most famous skate spots in the world are things that most people walk by and use for the purpose they were intended for and they don't think twice about it inevitably there were locations that became iconic because skaters did certain tricks that were documented and published people all over the world came to know these basic features of an industrial park or a schoolyard in the San Diego area a lot of these places where the driving force of the skateboard scene when they were around and being that these skate spots were showcased in Transworld magazines it really highlighted San Diego as the epicenter of skateboarding foreign we tried to show other places we are called Transworld skateboarding and there wasn't a lot of trans world going on lots of times it was a lot of San Diego and California and it's just what we ran and that's what kids saw around the world there's just like so many spots built perfectly for skateboarding Point Loma High School City College San Diego and the car is about yeah be able to do something on one of these Monument spots that no one's done it's a huge accomplishment you know that's when I realized like oh these are like destination spots like that have been on the cover of this magazine it is now a Proving Ground that if you did it there you were looked upon as like one of the best in skateboarding it's a one-up contest it's super competitive and skateboarding is all about technicality you know the tricks are they're either big or they're technical you've got to come up with a new trick to get it in the mag this is I don't want another call do you understand don't go to another bank don't go to some 7-Eleven parking lot go to the school go somewhere where there's no business all right you're out of here no more calls today as skateboarding took to the streets I became more and more obvious that it was considered an illegal activity and that you were trespassing on on property everywhere I went I was confronted with signs that literally told me no skateboarding no skateboarding and I think that was the case for most skateboarders there's a few skaters just troublemakers trying to like ruin property and make racket and you're going to look at it as a crime yeah I was breaking the law every day shooting photos and usually at a business or a school yard the police would look at it as just a nuisance that you were there when skating got really popular then there was more security guards more signs more skate Stoppers more police they'd be mad and I I knew why they were mad and I know why a business was a business owner was mad you know you're either you know disrupting their business or destroying their property it was just it was a weird place and these were dedicated young athletes who were essentially outlawed by virtue of the fact they were pursuing something that didn't have a sanctioned place you know if you're a skateboarder I mean for the longest time I mean you're an outlaw because quite essentially it was illegal to escape anywhere that was a big intriguing thing about skateboarding because it wasn't an organized sport you know I mean it was a culture it was a lifestyle it was rebellious by Nature because you had to sneak and hop the fence in order to escape you know skateboarding had really changed at that point the barrier to entry was was pretty intense and pretty high it was an intimidating thing to take on as a as a kid I think I think that the passion overrides the risk I mean the risk of getting in trouble not just the risk of your body as much as skateboarding is an individual Pursuit there is a collective celebration and push for people who who test the limits you have to be in a certain mind state to be creative enough to try a trick over and over and over again it's a mental battle with yourself you don't get to take the shortcuts you're going to fall you're going to take the beat downs you know going through that can be a really frustrating and can almost make you feel like a failure and that you're not good enough professionals are not people can't even really see what they're capable of when they're capable of so much more there's times where you're like I'll Never Land This and nobody can help you out but yourself [Music] in the early 90s mid 90s there was hardly any career to be made in skateboarding even if you were a top Pro it was minimal so it wasn't a career choice it was more you did it because you loved it and sure maybe maybe you made some board royalties but there was no other sponsorships happening nothing that was mainstream it was all just skate brands but by that time skate culture was considered more Street culture [Music] by the mid 90s skateboarding had a bit of a Resurgence and interest and like the companies that made skateboards and wheels and other hard Goods the shoe brands could appeal to a much broader Market because unlike a skateboard everybody needs a pair of shoes and some Footwear Brands based here in San Diego you know Osiris shoes DC Shoes became very very successful I got the design for DC Shoes in its Heyday and a lot of those guys were you know taking home big checks I mean I don't know exact figures but I mean let's say a quarter million to you know a three-quarters of a million dollars a year those shoe brands became the cool Brands and that's how you identified a skater were they wearing DC or Osiris the shoe movement became bigger than skateboard sales and people that didn't skate saw skating is becoming cool and that's kind of when you knew that you know skateboarding was permeating and influencing you know a larger part of popular culture it was so awesome because there was so much new stuff going on and it seemed like all of a sudden people started catching on to it like that were outside of skateboarding in a really short period of time and I don't I don't like citing them as having anything to do with skateboarding hitting the mainstream but like going to the first X Games in Rhode Island and 95 like it was it was weird to see that when we went to the X game the first X Games in in Rhode Island it was a shock it was everything I didn't want us to turn into was that the skate course looked like a children's playground and I mean it was called the extreme games come on you know like you couldn't get it more wrong among skateboarders than that the thing about paying dues is that skate companies had put a lot into skateboarding when there was not a lot of money to be made they brought skateboarding up to a point where ESPN wanted to cover skateboarding because ESPN they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart they're doing it to make money it's business it's capitalism but it happened the skateboarding was good and within the year they changed the name so by 1996 it was now the X Games which was slightly more palatable when you dropped in to run two the the crowd the fans were already in a frenzy the media were looking for the icons and the heroes to tell the stories about and of course Tony was still on top of this game and so became the face of skateboarding some people didn't want ESPN to come in and take advantage of skateboarding but then another part was appreciative and understood that hey look skateboarding needs the exposure that these people can offer the good that came out of X Games was that we were able to reach a new audience the only fans of skateboarding in the 80s and 90s early 90s the only people who enjoyed skateboarding or watching skateboarding were skaters themselves and suddenly skateboarding was in your living room and it was it was a sports event to watch the X Games chose to add best trick event to their 99 event and what that means is for 20 minutes you watch people mostly just falling trying impossibly hard maneuvers but in that event more tricks happened early on than in any other best trick event and that was not usual early on in this event Tony surprised even himself pulling off an incredible variable 720 which was a trick that would probably have won the contest anyway I had landed my best trick up to that point in my life that was the best trick I could do so I thought that's it that's what I came here for I'm done but there were still a ton of time left on the clock this is when the announcer got in Tony's ear saying dude that 900 because you knew I'd been trying it and I thought all right I'll show you what on 900 looks like I'm not gonna there's no way I'm gonna make it when Tony was attempting this feat this 900 two and a half rotations this was the first time the mainstream really got to see how difficult these moves are to actually pull off nobody could have foreseen was about to happen at this event I started trying it I tried maybe three or four and realized very quickly that I can do this now I've felt I've fallen forward I've fallen backwards split the difference and that's it [Applause] at this point the contest is over but Tony Hawk is showing no signs of quit all of us are at home glued to our TVs we are right there in the battle with Tony when the time ran out I wasn't even bothered by that because in skateboarding you're gonna just keep trying it at its core skating as DIY and it's Renegade and its passion and I think that that's what people saw there that night because that's that's exactly what it was it was like I don't care if you turn off the cameras and I didn't care if I got hurt I was doing it at the core of it it's the same as anyone trying to learn how to do a kickflip it's just these small adjustments and it's the perseverance and it's the determination to get you there that's the skate mentality you're gonna just keep trying Against All Odds and even if that's just for yourself that's good enough you keep trying until you do it eventually you get it the Elation someone feels when they land their first kickflip is probably the same that I felt do 900. I remember when I made it I still kind of didn't believe that it happened and I went up the next wall and realized I was still on my skateboard and then I turned and I saw all of my peers running towards me on the ramp and that's when it became a reality there was still a part of me that thought no one's going to Care no no one cared when I did a 720. in 1985. the Skate World did but but it didn't make news it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things and so I just did it for myself The Stoke of this moment in skateboarding changed all of us this was truly a time where the mainstream the rest of the world could get a real look at Raw skateboarding at its best I think that at the whole the event was an opportunity for mainstream to really look at what this culture was doing getting to seeing the work that this guy was putting in to make that make it happen I don't think it could have been written any more perfect and what it has meant to skateboarding thereafter has uh has done nothing but benefit the culture it's just the X Games man like is it going to matter 10 years from now well I guess it does but I guess the worst thing is that they get credit for the place that that happened I mean in my eyes you know that would be like why didn't this happen like somewhere like where we all skate or we're skateboarding gets to claim it as like this happened here but it also wouldn't have made a big deal like it did to the whole world you know so Tony made careers for a lot of people so we happened to thank for it when that 900 happened that was a breakthrough and I didn't I wasn't surprised I'm like of course anytime you mentioned skateboarding people just like Tony Hawk Tony Hawk you know and like that's what it was you know like he paved the way for all of us to make a little bit of money and there's even more you can do there's a video game you know it broke down barriers that we never thought were possible Tony was not just for the top skateboarder but he also had this Blockbuster video game and those things together really created the celebrity we know of is Tony Hawk this video game was really I think for a lot of people the first exposure to skateboarding and so you started to see more people more kids trickle into the sport and so skating really took off I did the 900 at the X Games and our video game became a top seller and suddenly there was a lot of interest in skateboarding it was like I want to skateboard I want to go skate it was like where are you gonna go there's good luck there were no parks that sudden hype for skateboarding did not translate to skate parks being built most kids just didn't have a place to go and there were a few cities looking to build skate parks looking to find a solution to this growing number of kids who were skating but getting in trouble for it because they didn't have a sanctioned place to do it and so you started to see more cities try it out and of course not everybody understood how to do it when we would plan tours like early 2000s there were very few cities to choose from because those are the cities had skate parks so our routing was like okay we're gonna go over here and then we're gonna go up the coast to here and try to hit this one in the Midwest and try to because there was just a lack of parks and so it was weird there was this huge interest we were getting thousands of people at these skate parks to watch us but there were only a handful of skate parks that was the Catalyst for starting a foundation for public skate parks that was like 2000 2001 when I saw this explosion of interest and a lack of facilities and I thought I could bridge that Gap you know with that platform he understood he had a voice to share what he understood about skateboarding and to really bring a lot of attention to things like the lack of places to skate he saw an opportunity to take his Fame and some of the fortune he was making at that time and dedicate it to a cause and for him the cause was creating skate parks creating safe sanctioned places for kids to go and skate and do this thing that's inherently healthy and so you know when Tony started the foundation it was a pretty simple idea [Music] to have a public facility that you don't have to pay to use is hugely important because if you have a place where you have to pay to use you're just being elitist and you're excluding so many people that could Thrive there foreign first 10 years there was a lot of work put into making the case for why a community needed a skate park it was a lot of uphill political battle back then particularly with some of these older entrenched politicians who had their concept of public Recreation which was basically stick and ball Sports you know the same Paradigm that everybody was been using since the 1950s but obviously things change and you know there's a lot of pushback initially a lot of cities still had this old stigma there's like skaters are outcasts they're troublemakers and that was a big push in those days making City councils understand how it would benefit their communities you need to show people who you are why you love this activity why it's such an important part of your life and why you need a place to go and do it with my success and so much attention on skateboarding I was able to affect change like I was able to speak on behalf of skateboarding and the importance of having these facilities [Music] when I first started skateboarding Del Mar skate Ranch was where I belonged that's where I felt like I found my my family my non-related bloodline family and it was never lost on me how lucky I was to have this place to go and skate you know I yes I got lucky that I grew up in San Diego and then I eventually lived near Del Mar skate Ranch and so when I started a foundation that was my main idea was that I want a place for these kids to go where they feel like they belong they can hang out with their friends they're not kicked out it was more to have a sense of belonging and it's still a hard sell like not all of them went for it and we had to fight that for years decades and eventually won them over I mean we're talking about thousands of skate parks now [Music] it's pretty incredible to think that Tony's non-profit from right here in San Diego has done more to help develop free public skate parks all over the country than any other organization on the planet [Music] the foundations and work in every state it's helped provide these skate parks and help get behind the communities Empower them to do with what they're trying to do and ensure that all the work they were doing would result in a quality skate Market you know you don't want them to repeat what the guys in the 70s did it's a very specific skill [Music] I think now cities have to build skate parks it's a Civic thing now is you you've got to have a skate park it's like having a basketball court or a dog park you've got to have it and the whole thing where you have a fence around it and you put a toll booth up at the front it doesn't really work it's all good I think that public parks just the acknowledgment that skateboarding steering we need to do something about it and then to see the response from the communities once they do that it's really good and I went out trying to create skateboarding as a paid entertainment and I think that that's not the way it's supposed to be you know you don't have to pay to ride a wave you shouldn't have to pay to write a skateboard foreign I think it's a great activity for anybody to be involved in I mean I've seen it change families you know I've seen it change kids lives and you know a lot of women girls have started in the skate parks and just having skate parks gives all these kids more of a chance to go skateboarding I'm so stoked it's become an accepted thing for girls to be skating the girls themselves decided you know what I'm just going to skate I don't care what people think of me I don't care what people say I'm gonna go skate these girls are amazing and they're skating now they're not skating like a girl they're skating state of women's skateboarding today is better than ever I can only assume that the free skate parks is helping to support women in skating because they can just show up and they don't have to go through a whole process and be vetted and sign waivers and pay and the idea that it's open to them goes a long way [Music] [Applause] [Music] you know the proliferation of skate parks in California LED that the proliferation of skate parks across the country and then abroad as influence goes culturally right and so you're seeing skate parks all through certainly North America South America Europe Africa Middle East I mean it's everywhere I mean the fact that it's in the Olympics means it's a sport that's that's practiced on every continent and what Tony started was you know a simple idea but the impact has been profound it's almost like the whole skatepark is another family that you can only really really meet if you go there day in and day out like you'll meet someone and you'll see them skateboard and we all have something in common I basically feel like every person in San Diego at every single skate park is a part of my family [Music] it's just grown to where skateboarding is accepted people don't go oh you're a skateboarder you know no my son's a skateboarder my nephew is a skateboarder my grandson's a skateboarder I skated you know it's not a weird thing anymore to be a skateboarder you it's weird not to skateboard in a lot of sports you enter the court or the field and you have your ball or your bat and there's a specific thing you're allowed to do and a lot of things you're not allowed to do in skateboarding you walk into a huge skateboard park and there are no rules it's like come in and here you go kid make a decision the moment you step through the threshold where you're going to go what are you going to do it's up to you no one's telling you there's no coaches no pressure and these kids they learn to navigate these parks and they put together their own lines based on what they can do and what's fun for them and they keep going and the skatepark offers endless opportunities for that [Music] the drive to always be a better person is crystallized in skateboarding do something and you fall down and then what do you do you get up and you do it again who has that kind of determination to go through something that causes you pain emotional pain physical pain and the pride that it comes from the meeting the challenge and passing through the challenge is like nothing that anybody can hand you that's a different kind of person those are my favorite kind of people I hope San diegans are aware of the impact that San Diego skateboarders have had on the whole culture skateboarding benefited from the influence of San Diego skaters the evolution of skating was accelerated because of San Diego [Music] everyone contributed in their own way but collectively it was a huge push for skateboarding foreign [Music] for the first time even if they're not there to skate they're they're drawn to it and that's how I felt for someone to the skate park that was it I vividly remember it and I feel like that experience happens over and over and over kids go to the park and they're like did he really just jump down those stairs I want a skateboard that's all it takes [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: RIDE Channel

Views: 105,884

Keywords: Skate, Skateboarding, Skating, Ride, Skate Videos, Skate SD, Documentary, San Diego, Tony Hawk, Urethane Wheels, Frank Nasworthy, Tom Stewart, First Halfpipe, Transworld, Dave swift, Grant Brittain, Alphonso Rawls, Bahne, documentary

Id: 7_TqXruEsvY

Length: 76min 48sec (4608 seconds)

Published: Mon May 15 2023