Skate Dad

This guy is clearly pitching his product but the general design is solid. If you don't want to use his stuff I have used Liquid Nails instead with the same great results.

Wow this guy was blowing up the fledging street scene in the late 80's. Natas was THE ollie master. Fire hydrants and garbage cans no problem for Natas. Check out his board in the first Sanata Cruz Video, it has no nose and no concave. Looks like it was cut out of some plywood. Sick! The other great thing Natas did was introduce me to fIREHOSE.

The Santa Cruz Wheels on Fire and Streets on Fire videos where some of the first "pure" skate videos. They did not have the "acting" that the bones brigade videos did, mostly just pure skating with a little bit of silliness thrown in, just like every skate video today. Jeff is currently handling stuff at NHS and I got to skate with him a few times and he is still ripping the mini-ramp with his super smooth style. Enjoy some of Jeff's footage from Wheels on Fire.

Matt Hensley single handedly blew up the street skating scene. I remember when I first saw his part in H-Street "Shackle Me Not" video I knew street skating had changed forever. He was the first person I heard use the term flatground and then I watched him just ride down a sidewalk and shred everything in sight. I spent the next month trying to learn that stuff and turning my shins into shredded meat chunks.

Matt is still doing cool stuff, playing accordion for the great Irish band Flogging Molly.

Enjoy the bonus intro footage as well!

My skate bud Rob picked up one of these at Ohana recently and I thought it looked interesting. As usual he is pretty mellow about his gear but I rode his board for a second and thought I just had to get one. I picked up the 7.75 team deck and man is this board sick! Insane amounts of pop and it holds up to having an old fat guy like me doing lipsides on curbs with it. I broke 2 previous boards doing that trick. Do yourself a favor and grab yourself a Beer Run board, you will not regret it!

Beer Run Skateboards

Every Friday I feature one of my favorite skaters. Today it is Mark Gonzales, one of the pioneers of street skating. Mark is the person that decided we could all slide down handrails on our skateboards as well as do darkslides, sliding on your grip tape instead of the bottom of your board. What a mad man. Watch this footage from 1991's Video Days and you will see just how far ahead of his time he was. You could drop this footage into a video today and it would be considered a great video, but this is from 18(!!!!!) years ago!! Just look at that board he is riding, it must be at least 9 inches wide. The other thing that a lot of people don't know about The Gonz is he ripped vert as well as you can see towards the end of this clip.

I was lucky enough to skate with Gonz once at the Vans skatepark in Milpitas a few years ago. Not only does he rip but he is a pretty cool dude. Enjoy the video.

Being a parent usually does not leave a lot of free time to get out and ride very often. You can maybe carve out one weekend morning but face it, at our age we need to skate a lot just to keep in shape. I have been skating at least 4 days a week for the past 3 weeks for at least 30 minutes. The result, I dropped 10 pounds and my stamina is way up. Here are the 5 things I do to make it happen:

1. Have your board with you at all times. I keep my board in my car all the time, that way you always know where it is and never forget it at home. You can't skate without your skate.
2. Find some skate buddies at work. This can be tough but there is usually at least one other person that either skates now or has skated before that you can convince to skate again. The more people you get involved the better so you always have someone to go skate with.
3. Scope out spots close to your office. Street is the easiest thing to skate during the lunch skate but of course parks will do just fine if they are close. I don't want to spend my half my lunch hour in the car, I want to ride! One benefit to this economy is that a lot of office buildings are sitting empty so they are totally skateable during the day. Also the spots don't have to be epic, a nice red curb is a lot of fun for a mellow lunch session.
4. Bring a change of cloths. No matter how cold it is you are hopefully going to work up a sweat skating. Either change into skate clothes before you go skate or have something to change into once you get back. Socks are key, you don't want to walk around for the rest of the day in wet socks. That is how you get things like athletes foot.
5. Get creative with scheduling. I block as much time off around lunch as possible, you want to avoid having to go straight from skating into a meeting, your are going to be hot a sweaty and people are going to look at you funny. No meetings before 2PM is my rule and no meetings start after 11. Depending on your work you can be flexible here but just try to avoid the right after skate meeting.

Now go out and skate at lunch tomorrow!

Here is my 1 and a half year old son Jack with his first no help skateboard ride. Well I pushed and let go for a little bit. He is so stoked to be on the board. Anyone recommend a good board for a little grom?

Sorry for the huge delay here. Working, skating and raising 2 kids leaves like 0 free time these days but I am back in the saddle and posting again so stay tuned for some good stuff!

Chris Miller is the guy I wanted to skate like growing up and still want to skate like today. Sure Tony Hawk had the insane tricks, Steve Caballero had the style and Christian Hosoi had the height. For me though Chris Miller had the one thing those guys did not and that was the speed. He never did anything slow and I loved that, why do a really hard trick slow when you could do a fairly easy trick at 500 miles per hour? Here is a collection of some great Chris Miller footage.

And finally the worst slam my young eyes had ever seen