817 pine st. w.oakland 1993

baggy bens, stranger t shirt, spitfire hat. worn out vans.  From left to right.... myself, pip,onio, and juju. my old 1986 pickup. small wheels skinny board. 

I think this was the day i shot my first real ad.... for a couple days i had been trying to do a kick flip backside disaster... at the time a few of us were doing backside kick flips on vert, so when real wanted an ad i wanted to do something no one had done or seen...at least on a vert ramp. The night before jake and i had one of our usual skates, thin lizzy blaring, jake cuing his drop in to the beginning of the song or at least the punchiest part of the song. At the end of the session i got into the the kick flip back disaster, to the point where i knew i had it .... but was terrified to slam, and maybe miss the chance of shooting the sequence for the real ad.  this was the time of -the death of vert- and i was well aware of why it was dying,on the top of that list ...the accessibility of a vert ramp to skate. Vert had become slightly robotic, over flared, and i think very suburban. Don't get me wrong.... i love vert skating, i think its so fucking raw, the speed and flying through the air is almost like a super hero come to life. But..... no pads, out on the streets, in the early 90's..... basically street skating was the place to be, the thing to do, and the mecca, EMB was exactly one train stop away from me. So i did see that happening and was fucking blown away by how cool it looked, how care-free it was, but mostly by its creativeness and how rapidly the likes of mike carroll, javonte, ronnie bertino, and other locals at EMB were pushing it. But i felt vert in my bones and was trying to take some of the shit i saw on the street to vert..... not exactly TRYING but maybe absorbing, or mocking.... For me to do a back tail slide across the big block at EMB i'd probably have to pitch a tent on the stage there and camp out for a year, but i could emulate it on our shitty indoor ghetto vert ramp. I became obsessed with trying street type tricks on vert..... and any skater that has done something no one has done, it's a really fucking amazing feeling, and becomes almost addictive. (i don't mean that in a bragging way.. because hosoi was doing 10ft air that you couldn't touch, but just that you were able to throw in your little creative 2cents) 

So gabe morford who i barely knew at the time, showed up in a gold late 80's malibu(i think), and asks what i wanted to shoot? i remember kinda mumbling "kick flip backside disaster."... take note this was 35mm film days, so every attempt at a sequence was dollars being spent on film. "how many rolls we on?" was such a common question and so much pressure. I was kinda doubting i could do it, but i figured if i didn't at least i would fail at trying something unseen, and maybe the word would get back to real headquarters as such,  rather than trying to shot something more standard..... in fact maybe thats why there is a backside ollie photo in the ad, it was the back up in case i failed, and they threw it in the ad. Within a couple tries, it was flipping really good and i slammed a few to disaster and jumped off..... part due to fear and shock that i was coming so close. any skater knows that feeling, where you kind of surprise yourself and then you have to make the decision..... -am i going to stick this?- I usually go through every possible slam first.... the best would be landing primo or all four wheels on deck, which would launch me head first into the middle of the ramp and there i would die. Ok and... I'm a bailer, i mean, i have to bail something kind of a lot before i make it. I think doctors refer to it as VERTITUS. But somehow for some miracle i landed it quickly.... and the one i made was better than any i bailed..... there was one problem, gabes flash didn't go off on the -money shot- (thats when after you land a trick they take a picture of you cumming all over your own face).....but really it was the middle "catch" photo.....REAL said they'd just cut in another photo from another attempt... but none looked good to me and i was so bummed. I demanded to see the negatives... at the time i was in the local community college photo class... i stood strong in protest stating "my dad's a tv repair man, he can fix this photo" but really i begged Gabe to try to make it work..... and he did, it's just a little darker. I don't know, maybe this is too long winded, but i found the truck photo this morn and then when i was writing this i found the sequence on the internet and it brought up so many memories. These times were really character building and so relevant for the rest of life, I had to got through intense human comparisons, and had to look at myself through the eyes of others and often ask myself "would i be stoked on this" I think thats a beautiful thing about skateboarding... you can really be humbled by it. This sequence was only as rad as it was till the next page of the magazine was turned or until someone did it better. It's painful to see folks in bike world learning these lessons late in life... and trying to hold onto their glory like it will never end. If that makes sense, i know it's got parallels in so many worlds like music, and art,  and probably scholastic-ly as well. One of the kids at the vert ramp there other day said have "have you ever done a kick flip lein air?" i quickly replied i think i invented it.... i mean was the first one to do it...i mean i'm a fucking kook. I turned red, and apologized for my words, but you get older and try and hang onto some of the past... i should of just said "yes, but that was a longtime ago"

 Fuckin-A life can be that first sip of a cold beer that burns the back of your throat, it can be the bottom warmer part, and lots of times it's the can you reach for thats surprisingly empty and you forget how good it tasted as you pounded it.