Untitled - Ted Reckas

Slide
CONTROLLED
STEP ON BOARD THE URETHANE TRAIN WITH
THE FASTEST SKATERS IN THE WORLD.
By Ted Reckas | Photos by Sean Armenta
Remember the first time you took your hands off the
handlebars while riding a bike?
You looked down and saw those ghost-like handle grips gliding
down the street, and suddenly, you understood the rule of physics
at work, on a visceral level. Your trajectory is governed by something you can’t fully grasp—gyroscopic stability—but somehow,
magically, it still works.
That is what going downhill on a skateboard feels like. It’s gravity propelled, it’s scary, fun, totally free—and it has been honed in
Laguna Beach over the decades into something beyond sport or art.
“I remember skating down Coast Highway with no cars on it,”
Darren “Dags” Madrigal says of his early 1970s childhood experience. Local parents like Dags say the skateboard is a teacher of simple
lessons: When you fall, get back on. Look at where you want to go.
Don’t push when gravity is pulling you along. Share the road.
Skateboarding is a primary color in Laguna Beach’s cultural pastiche. Recently Clarke Brogger, pastor at a local church, could be
seen skating down the street with a cervical collar still on his neck.
A pack of kids skated by, some preparing for the downhill racing
world tour, others just heading over to a friend’s house. Clarke was
headed to check the surf at Thalia Street beach, where he had broken his neck surfing weeks earlier.
SEVERAL GENERATIONS OF LAGUNA BEACH SKATERS GATHER FOR A GROUP SHOT.
78 OCINSITE.COM
LAGUNA BEACH MAGAZINE JUNE/JULY 2011
79
TED RECKAS
GLENN MURRAY HAS BEEN SKATING IN LAGUNA SINCE THE TIME OF CLAY WHEELS.
From Water to Land
Skateboarding came from surfing. In the 1920s,
before surfers could even drive into what is now
Malibu, it was here in Laguna they rode flat, heavy,
finless planks, dove for abalone, and eventually transitioned to shaping balsa wood boards in their backyards. It was here in his father’s garage on Gaviota
Street that Hobie Alter launched his surf brand that
became a household name. Surf luminaries have
continued to make their homes here, from Quiksilver CEO Bob McKnight, Volcom founder Richard
Woolcott, Billabong President Paul Naude and Hur-
80 OCINSITE.COM
LAGUNA LOCAL HUNTER SCHWIRTZ, 15, IN RED AND
BLUE LEATHERS, HEADS FOR THE INSIDE LINE.
ley President Roger Wyatt, to Peter Townend, the
first world champion of surfing, and modern-day
free surfers like Erik “Frog” Nelson, Hans Hagen,
Jon Rose and others.
In the late 1950s skateboards were metal wheels
harvested from dime store roller skates, tacked
onto a piece of 2-by-8-inch scrap. Laguna waterman, skater and author Craig Lockwood, and J.J.
Gasparotti crafted varnished decks with clay wheels
taken from roller-rink skates they found in the Assistance League Thrift Store—an improvement, but
still unreliable.
When the skateboard craze began in the 1960s,
at the hands of surfers finding diversion on the
ocean’s down days, Laguna was ground zero.
Laguna local Spider Wills’ vintage skate film
“Downhill Motion,” opens with a simple imperative still relevant for Laguna youth 35 years later:
“The day begins … is it going to be a surf day or
a skateboard day?”
Skateboarding was originally approached as surfing on land, and early skaters like Joey Cabell, Mickey
Munoz and local Dougie Brown literally looked for the
concrete equivalent of waves. Enter the steep streets of
Laguna. Park Avenue, which was paved in 1963, but
ended short of the hilltop—the Top Of the World
development was still years away—left a sweeping
path of inclined asphalt with no cars. Sidewalk surfing became street surfing as swell, wind and tide were
replaced with a more perennial force: gravity.
When founder of Surfer Magazine John Severson
started the quarterly Skateboarder in 1964, soon-tobe “Endless Summer” star Mike Hynson, as well as
surfers Joey Cabell and Tor Johnson were featured
in the first issue, skating down Hidden Valley Road.
The terrestrial progression mimicked the aquatic
MATT MACUL
Z STUDIOS
CHANCE GAUL, A LBAG MEMBER, LEADS THE WARM UP RUN IN THE HILLS OF LAGUNA.
MARK GOLTER AT THE TOP OF HIS RACING CAREER IN 2002 (LEFT) AND SON SKYLER, 5 (RIGHT).
one; although Phil Edwards and Butch Van Artsdalen were making early stabs at Pipeline, most
California surfers still sought angling slides at San
Onofre and Doheny. Concurrently, skateboarding
was still focused below the S-turn on Park Avenue
and other, broader hills outside of Laguna.
Randolph “Spider” Wills, so named for the
climbing ability he gained in tactical training as an
Air Force intelligence operative, became a cameraman for NBC television and documented the 1975
Laguna skate scene in “Downhill Motion.”
Spider, on hearing that skaters are now taking on
Alta Vista—one of the steepest, windiest streets in
Laguna—says, “Oh my God. That is nuts. You could
be killed.”
And on the equipment of his day, that was a distinct possibility.
Tools of the Trade
Urethane wheels changed everything. Developed
in the early 1970s, they provided skaters a smooth,
solid ride at high speed. Oak Street Surf Shop, now
Laguna Surf and Sport, shipped out cases daily to
pockets of skaters around the country, mentions local surfer/skater Glen Murray. At the time, Glen was
making fiberglass skate decks as a student at Laguna
Beach High School.
Grip tape and improved trucks also pushed skating to new levels. The 1975 Signal Hill downhill
championships, featured on ABC’s “Guinness Book
of World Records,” showed that skateboarding was
no longer a no shoes, no shirt activity at the edge of
the sand, but something done in full face helmets
and leather suits worn by motorcycle racers. The
area below the S-turn on Park Avenue, once the hot
zone for nascent skateboarding, became the place
where you slowed down from freeway speeds when
your run was over.
Win or Crash Trying
Mark Golter was a kid living on Hidden Valley
Road adjacent to Park Avenue in the 1970s and remembers watching skaters like Roger Hickey, the
first downhill world champion in 1979, push the
boundaries of skating.
“They would come through the S-turn at 60 mph
all suited up in leathers and helmets. It was like Star
Wars. It was just incredible,” says Mark, who eventually received so many skateboarding tickets from
frustrated cops who had no legal basis to cite him
(there was no skateboarding ordinance until the
city’s partial skate ban in April), he was forbidden
to own a skateboard.
“I would be walking with my skateboard and a
cop would pull up, put my skateboard in his trunk
and drive off,” he remembers. “When I was 18 I got
them all back, about a dozen boards.”
In the 1980s, skaters like Jack Morrissey, skimboarding legend Bill Bryan, Jesse Roach and Dags
Madrigal raced down Skyline Drive, actually adding costumes to the mix. Dags won with a low-tech
approach: wearing a trench coat, he went straight
down the hill impossibly fast, as competitors
watched what appeared to be a suicide run, then
opened his jacket like a drag chute.
He reached the bottom of the hill first without
crashing and became the Skyline Downhill champ.
“It was one of the best memories of my life, to
have that title. We shouldn’t do it like that now, but
it would be really cool to have downhill races that
were sanctioned in a safe way,” Dags says.
Mark Golter, who took the Skyline title in 1995
LAGUNA BEACH MAGAZINE JUNE/JULY 2011
81
CHAD GIBBS
A Skate Ban
in Laguna?
Last year, a group of Bluebird Canyon residents lead by Alan Bernstein launched an effort
to effectively ban skateboarding in Laguna
Beach, asserting that they did not want to be
responsible for killing a kid with their car. They
taped flyers to mailboxes with a call to join them,
“especially if you are tired of being afraid.”
In the 1960s, beachfront homeowners got
surfing banned at certain beaches in the summer. The ’70s brought the first attempted skate
ban, which failed outright.
The new attempts have been refuted, and
two camps have emerged debating the issue at
city council meetings: one arguing that downhill
skateboarding is too dangerous, the other arguing
that the greater danger is erratic drivers.
The death of Scott Davis, and severe brain
injury of Thomas Cannon while skating in Laguna
WYATT GIBBS
FROM LEFT: DAVE GIBBS, WYATT GIBBS, CHAD GIBBS, CRAIG LOCKWOOD, SPIDER WILLS AND CORKY SMITH.
BOTTOM: JUDE YOUNG AND SKYLER GOLTER
and 1996, earning second in 1997 after getting
hit by a car and breaking his nose, claims to
have sponsors lined up for a major event on
Park Avenue next year, although city approval
is forthcoming.
Mark took the Gravity Games bronze medal
in 2001, gold in 2002, and the International
Gravity Sports Association world title in 2002
and 2003. Downhill skateboarding was about
nasty amounts of speed, and Mark, with yellow flames licking the shoulders of his racing
leathers, was the nastiest.
Then Mark experienced his fifth concussion in 2003.
“I had reached the peak of everything you can
do in the sport,” he says. “Gary Hardwick, a good
friend and teammate I traveled the world with,
committed suicide that year. I went into a depression and left the sport. I focused on family, got
married, and later had my son.”
Downhill skating changed too; the X Games
cancelled street luge, a close cousin of downhill
skating, and Gravity Games cancelled downhill
skateboarding in 2004. Competition downshifted
and the sport returned to its side street roots,
before coming back in recent years.
82 OCINSITE.COM
Coming Up Fast
Evren Ozan, the 2009 junior world champ
at 17, typifies today’s speed maestro. The quiet,
long-haired kid had an award-winning Native
American flute album to his credit by age 8, and
he stands out for his politeness. His crew, Laguna
Beach Danger Riders, participates in organized
races, but he feels little of the competitiveness of
Mark Golter’s time.
“If you win every single race, which is pretty
hard to do, you could make money and support yourself,” he says. “I like skateboarding too
much. I don’t want to make it that. I was actually
thinking about becoming a pilot. I have enough
money saved up to go to flight school.”
Evren started riding a Suzuki SV650 sport bike
after repeated dislocations of both shoulders.
The goal is to stay in touch with twisty roads and
practice for downhill races while skateboarding
as little as possible, to limit the probability of dislocating his shoulder during racing season. The
pressure from putting his hand down in a controlled slide, nevermind a crash, could easily dislocate it again. Once racing season is over he can
take the time off for surgery and recovery.
“On a bike you look through the turn and
get your body position right before the turn.
That helps a lot in skating—and getting comfortable going fast next to other things,” Evren
says. “It takes away the edge. It feels slow, after
riding a motorcycle, so you can push for more
speed on a skateboard.”
Mark’s top speed was 70 mph. Evren estimates his around 69 mph, and attests to the
existence of hills in Colorado and Brazil where
skaters regularly go 75 mph or 80 mph. Evren
clearly has a need for speed, but resides at the
forefront of a more nuanced style of skating:
high speed sliding.
Drifters
Kelly Slater showed going fast and carving
hard had reached a logical limit on waves in the
early 1990s. The best surfers were pushing their
boards beyond it, sliding as they went. Fin release, previously a prelude to falling, was now
the goal. Skateboarding has followed suit, with
controlled slides opening the door to even higher speeds in fast turns.
“It’s not that crazy to bomb a hill at 50 mph
now,” Evren says. “Before, that was insane. You
couldn’t stop if you didn’t know how to slide.
TED RECKAS
ROGER JONES
(LEFT) AND AVERY
CROWL AT THE LBAG
HANGOUT—AKA,
CHAD GIBBS’
GARAGE.
TED RECKAS
Now everyone knows how to slide. I could see the
next generation being really talented skaters.”
They already are. A younger crew, Laguna Beach
Alpha Groms (LBAG), regularly takes the podium
at slide jams. Going fast is a given—now it’s about
mastering the slide, used to control speed and direction through a turn. In addition to races, a new type
of contest, the slide jam, has emerged, pitting skaters against steeper hills with tighter curves, where
they win based on the skill and style of their slides,
not just crossing the line first.
Mark says, “These are the full-on, perfect downhill athletes now. They can drift, control their
slides and go fast. These guys are faster than we
ever were: Evren Ozan, Byrne Jones, Riley Crowe.
Then there are a slew of guys under them. Hunter
Schwirtz is probably the best 15-year-old in the
world. He beat 50 pros two months ago at the Talega
Slide Jam. Wyatt (Gibbs) is coming up strong too.
They are competing on a world-class level.”
Have Straight A’s, Will Travel
This is no “Dogtown”—the kids are meticulous
about safety gear and spotters; they’re on the honor
roll and they’re sober as a 5 a.m. wake-up call. At a
recent Laguna city council meeting on skateboarding
regulations, Wyatt said, “We don’t do drugs, we don’t
drink alcohol because we’re too busy skateboarding
on hills. I believe that if our skateboarding privileges
were taken away, we’d be in the house playing Nazi
zombie black ops. ”
The LBAG de facto headquarters is the Gibbs’
garage, and Wyatt’s dad Chad, a Laguna surfer,
helped coordinate a seminar on skateboarding
safety and etiquette. That’s right—skateboarding
is condoned by parents, many who grew up skating, naturally.
Chance Gaul, a LBAG member, is the 2010 International Gravity Sports Association junior world
champ of downhill racing. (The champion each
year is the total points winner after numerous races
around the world.) At 14 he hasn’t started high
school yet, but his contracts with Jet Skateboards
and Abec 11 wheels will pay his travel expenses to
Europe, South Africa and Canada this year, along
with a $400 per month stipend. And if he’s too
early on an emerging trend, Mark Golter’s son
Skyler already has a custom skate model made by
his sponsor Madrid Skateboards. At age 5, he has
almost three years of skating under his belt. He’ll
probably be doing 90 mph and earning a big paycheck by 2020, when he’ll be 14. LBM
Beach attest to the danger.
Heather Mutts thought she had killed a skater
but he was unhurt. She cried as she recounted
the story to the city council. She said, “Please,
please let’s not tempt fate any longer. We are on
a certain course to tragic loss.”
But Davis and Cannon were exceptions, and
doctors and teachers at Laguna’s award-winning
schools are among those who skate now. Police
records show far fewer skaters are hit by cars
than pedestrians in crosswalks are. A recent
video by a Laguna skater shows the appalling
habits of motorists in Laguna. There have also
been reports of drivers intentionally running skaters off the road.
The city council recently banned skating on
certain hills in town, while keeping others open.
But to some skaters, any ban is a loss.
“They are sucking the coolness out of this
town. I want my kid to be able to skate down
the hill,” says Darren “Dagwood” Madrigal,
who grew up skateboarding in town and now
works for Volcom.
For in-depth coverage of the issue, visit
OCinSite.com/skateboarding.
LAGUNA BEACH MAGAZINE JUNE/JULY 2011
83