The Summer of 1987 (though I don't remember the day, sadly
enough :( . I had a friend down the street, a few years older than me who had
got a Thrasher skate mag from a friend of his. As he flipped through it, he
explained how rad skating was. Me, being young and impressionable at the tender
age of 8, agreed, because this dude was older and I wanted to be
"cool" in his eyes. Back then, the older boys on the block used to
dare me to do things they were too chicken to do themselves or use me to
practice all the latest WWF wrestling moves, including the sleeper, the figure
four leglock, being body slammed, and yes, pile drived (driven?) with a motorcycle helmet
on.
Anyway, young, impressionable, and eager to please, right?
So, as we leafed through Thrasher, we played skateshop fantasy, picking out the
boards that we would like. My friend drooled over the Tony Hawk chicken skull
and I was torn between the Caballero dragon and the Hosoi Hammerhead, not
having any idea who these guys were. I "settled" on the Caballero
dragon and from that day, Steve Caballero became my favorite skater, cuz I
liked his graphic, not ever seeing the man skate of course and having no idea
what he even looked like. My friend was quick to warn me though, that Vision
was for poseurs, and to stay the hell away from Vision skateboards and street
wear. Powell-Peralta and Santa Cruz were the way to go. This, of course is
hilarious in retrospect as neither one of us at that point even owned a
skateboard, let alone ever stepped foot on one.
A few days later, my friend's dad took him to the local
K-Mart and bought him a Valterra Skateboard. This particular Valterra model had
green wheels and had some kind of a green demon as the graphic, with green
rails and tailguard to compliment. The bearings on this board weren't horrible
if I recall and much better than the awful Nash board I would come to posses.
So one night, under the glow of the yard lamps, with the boom box playing music
from hair bands such as Poison, AD/DC, and the late night Dr. Demento show, I
learned to ride a skateboard.
To this day, I am not sure where my friend learned how to
ride, but I remember him teaching me proper foot placement (I pushed mongo at
first), how to push, and how to turn by carving. The best part though was later that night, we
bombed the hill that was our dead-end, subdivision road, and a couple of the
neighbors' really steep, and therefore really fun driveways. One of the
neighbors yelled at us for trespassing and at the tender age of eight,
experienced my first instance of skate harassment in my rural Southern Ohio
subdivision. My friend would also later slam into the side of a moving car coming
out of this same driveway.
The next morning, I begged my dad for a skateboard, and
having borrowed my friend's Thrasher, I tried to convince my Dad to buy me a
"real" skateboard. This was the plan of my friend you see, I pointed
eagerly at the Skates on Haight and tried to convince my Dad how much I wanted,
no...needed that Caballero skateboard. I had to have it or I risked being a
poseur for the rest of my life, and you don't want to risk your son being a poseur, do you? My Dad instantly deflated me with a "no
son, that's too much money for a toy when I can pick you up one from K-Mart for
much less. My fate was sealed and I was doomed. My Dad showed up with a banana
shaped Nash skateboard a few days later, the one that had the sawblades on the
grip tape. I Fn' hated that board and a year later I would break it in a ploy
to get a new one. It didn't quite work out for me as I wound up with an even more horrid generic board from a Myrtle Beach street vendor. It was pink, with a
bear/moon graphic, and bearings that were way more horrible than the Nash, if
you want to call them bearings that is.
Upon seeing my Nash skateboard, my friend helpfully chimed
in with "Timmy is a poseur" over and over again, in a singsong voice.
I pushed around his driveway on it a few times and down the road, huffing and puffing to keep up as my Nash bearings
screamed to keep up with the better riding Valterra (Yeah, comparing Nash to
Valterra.) My friend tired of me trailing so far behind and soon, I threw the
Nash aside and the Valterra became our skateboard for the next few years.
Sessions around his house usually involved trying to miserably ollie, kickturn,
and in the summer of 1988, with the Bullet Boys playing from the boombox, we
put together a “ramp” consisting of a piece of plywood and a cinderblock in my
friend’s driveway. It didn’t work out too well.
Then in the summer of 1992, I managed to get
a hold of a used McGill Snakeskin setup, with Tracker Trucks, and Santa Cruz
Bullet Wheels. Skating was making a comeback, and all the other skaters at school
had the new style boards. Needless to say, there was no association between they and I, and even trying to mimic the flip tricks they did in secret with a vert board was damned hard to say the least. I threw the BMX aside in favor of the
McGill. I never sessioned with anyone, but continued to make sad attempts at ollies, bombing hills,
and getting thrown out of various neighbors’ properties for bombing their
driveways. I kept at it until the summer
of 93’ when on one of these attempts, spiral fractured my leg in two places in
a freak accident where I was thrown from the board, hitting just the right
place on my leg while bombing a driveway. I went away in the ambulance that evening, ending skating for me 20 years ago on Memorial Day. As my dad forcibly retired from his job at the steel mill, we lost health insurance and he faced me with a difficult choice. I could continue to skateboard or, save up for a few years, buy a car, and learn how to drive. He simply couldn't afford both and insurance for a teenager. I chose to buy a car and learn how to drive...
I often thought about skating. Especially walking down a lonely part of street to college, work, or elsewhere, my mind would wander and I found myself mentally skateboarding, but willed it away. College came, girls came, then career, marriage, kids and fast forward 18 years later to the spring of 2011, almost 2 1/2 years ago. Out of the blue, I decided to start skating again at the age of 33. I'm almost 35 now and I'm out there every day if possible, weather and slam recovery permitting, at least in some capacity, even if it's trying to flip the board around in the driveway.
It's my hope with this at least I can share some of the experiences and fun that my friends and I have and have had from getting back into skateboarding and share our musings about the lifestyle from the ordinary dude perspective who have spouses, jobs, kids, careers, and mortgages, because you know there's nothing like picking up your kids from school while wearing a Black Flag T-shirt and riding in on your skateboard...
TRR
You totally need a Nash sticker...
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