Catching Skateboards
On most of my adventures, I am not ordained as a Buddhist priest.
In 1986, Johnny and I moved off to the mainland to my old hometown of Carpinteria, on the Southern California coast. Johnny enrolled in Carpinteria High School and I went to work for a local screenprinting company. Johnny got an after school job in the "Sunshine Store" which sold beach gear; sunscreen, beach towels, bathing suits, boogie boards and skateboards. That turned out to be a fateful position. Johnny's boss, Bernie was offered some tickets to the premiere of a new skateboard movie, "The Search for Animal Chin", released by Powell-Peralta Skateboard Company, with headquarters in Santa Barbara's Lower East Side.
The Santa Barbara premiere was held in the old Mission Theater on lower State Street that has since been torn down. It wasn't an event you could buy a ticket for. All these kids had some connection to the people who made their living through, or had some committed involvement in the Santa Barbara skateboard world. The line went down the block; there were mostly excited young skaters like JW, and a few older skaters, and skateshop owners. When we entered, each person was handed a soda and a box of popcorn and as we turned to go to our seats, there in the middle of this swarming lobby was a white haired and bearded gentlemen who I immediately recognized as a nearly mythical figure out of my past, looking exactly as he did when I had seen him last, decades before. It was Vernon Johnson!
You might remember Vern Johnson from Chapter 12. He was the man who created quite a stir by purchasing an old Santa Barbara Transit Co. bus, loading his whole family, his wife and eight kids in it, and going for a tour across Russia! In 1962, I had worked briefly on his congressional campaign.
Then, quarter of a century later, I returned to Santa Barbara with my own teenage son and there in the middle of a crowd of excited skateboarders stands Vern Johnson, beaming with bliss at the whole spectacle. With white hair and short white beard, he looks exactly as he did the last time I saw him about twenty-five years before.
I went up to shake his hand and explain how it is that I recognized him and we have a few laughs as the mob swarms past us. I find out why he's here. He says that he's "part of the family" in this skateboard company. The fact that he's there gives me a feeling this night is fateful, as it has turned out to be. He was always ahead of his time and at this moment he's the symbolic patriarch of this skateboard scene. As I learned later, it turns out that three of those kids he took with him across Russia were part of that skateboard company. One daughter, Christie, was married to the company president, George Powell; another daughter, Jill, was the company's buyer, and his son, Court Johnson, VCJ, was the company's artist, creator of most of the logos adorning the skateboards, wheels, stickers and t-shirts.
The theater was packed with excited young skaters; a large video projector was propped on some seats in the middle, ready to go. Someone named Stacy Peralta was introduced and cheers went up in the crowd. He was the director of the movie, and known pretty much as one the first skateboarders to actually make a career of it. He was a hero to all these kids. He had invented being a skateboard pro. He was "older" now, in his late twenties, and had gathered a team of younger skaters, "The Bones Brigade."
Well, the video was called, The Search For Animal Chin...and the thin plot is that a group of skaters are trying to catch up with an elusive sort of Zen master of skateboarding. The supposed search for him in various parts of California, Nevada and Hawaii was an excuse to show off these five professional skaters in some great skate spots...hey never do catch up with Animal Chin, but the point of the allegory is a journey in search of fun...search for the sweet spots...pursuit of happiness...which is what skateboarding is all about, and for me, what ramp building was all about.
The following year, 1987, I went to work for Powell-Peralta in Santa Barbara, chronicled at length in my second book, "Anti-Gravity Device Company". At first I was part of the shop crew that built things for the factory, and maintained the machinery. We were tasked to crate trade show exhibits designed by the art department, and the various ramps and obstacles used in our professional team's demos.
The most elaborate thing we built was a half pipe ramp on a trailer that folded up like a clamshell for transporting. It was the centerpiece for the company's summer tour across the United States. I was tapped to be the driver and lead the setup at each event with our other roadie, Sledge.
I was signed up for the first part of the trip; across the South, starting our demos in Texas and Louisiana, across Mississippi and Alabama to Florida, Georgia, up through the Carolinas, ending my part in Washington, DC, midsummer.
In South Carolina, one of our top pros, Lance Mountain, joined the tour and it so happened that a UPS shipment had arrived for us at the sponsoring skateshop. The package from Santa Barbara was the first exposure of the new Lance Mountain model skateboard deck. Emcee-ing the whole affair over a PA from one of the rollouts was Jim Fitzpatrick, longtime surfer and skateboarder. Fitz presented the deck to Lance with a great flourish and mock grandiloquent. Lance was clearly uncomfortable shilling for his own product. Though he shredded on cue as far as the skating went, I'm sure the hardest work he had to do was that kind of thing. Ray Barbee, and Jim Thiebaud had become part of the tour at that point.
At this same South Carolina demo, the only place we could set up the ramp was the narrow alley in front of the skateshop. This spot was especially dangerous for the spectators, since they could not be kept at our normal distance. Anticipating where loose skateboards were most likely to go flying into the crowd, I stationed Sledge, two locals and myself, at the four spots where the flatbottom meets the transition at the edges of the ramp. Our hands ready to catch loose boards, each of us had stopped at least one skateboard this way. Toward the end of the demo, sure enough, one of our pros, Brandon Chapman, fell backward in a classic Wilson so that his skateboard launched right toward me. It took a bad hop, just clearing my fingertips, hitting me square in the mouth. Blood, blood, blood. One of my bloody teeth, root and all, landed grossly on the ramp.
The paramedics advised me to hold that knocked out tooth in my cheek, which I did, and at the emergency room they put it into a glass of milk while they stitched my lip, and cleaned me up. Then a friendly lady doctor wired that tooth right back into my skull, and sent me back to the skate demo in time to take down the ramp with Sledge, load up and make it to the next city on schedule, next day. You can catch a skateboard with your mouth, but it hurts, and you might not get all your teeth back.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
In 1986, Johnny and I moved off to the mainland to my old hometown of Carpinteria, on the Southern California coast. Johnny enrolled in Carpinteria High School and I went to work for a local screenprinting company. Johnny got an after school job in the "Sunshine Store" which sold beach gear; sunscreen, beach towels, bathing suits, boogie boards and skateboards. That turned out to be a fateful position. Johnny's boss, Bernie was offered some tickets to the premiere of a new skateboard movie, "The Search for Animal Chin", released by Powell-Peralta Skateboard Company, with headquarters in Santa Barbara's Lower East Side.
The Santa Barbara premiere was held in the old Mission Theater on lower State Street that has since been torn down. It wasn't an event you could buy a ticket for. All these kids had some connection to the people who made their living through, or had some committed involvement in the Santa Barbara skateboard world. The line went down the block; there were mostly excited young skaters like JW, and a few older skaters, and skateshop owners. When we entered, each person was handed a soda and a box of popcorn and as we turned to go to our seats, there in the middle of this swarming lobby was a white haired and bearded gentlemen who I immediately recognized as a nearly mythical figure out of my past, looking exactly as he did when I had seen him last, decades before. It was Vernon Johnson!
You might remember Vern Johnson from Chapter 12. He was the man who created quite a stir by purchasing an old Santa Barbara Transit Co. bus, loading his whole family, his wife and eight kids in it, and going for a tour across Russia! In 1962, I had worked briefly on his congressional campaign.
Then, quarter of a century later, I returned to Santa Barbara with my own teenage son and there in the middle of a crowd of excited skateboarders stands Vern Johnson, beaming with bliss at the whole spectacle. With white hair and short white beard, he looks exactly as he did the last time I saw him about twenty-five years before.
I went up to shake his hand and explain how it is that I recognized him and we have a few laughs as the mob swarms past us. I find out why he's here. He says that he's "part of the family" in this skateboard company. The fact that he's there gives me a feeling this night is fateful, as it has turned out to be. He was always ahead of his time and at this moment he's the symbolic patriarch of this skateboard scene. As I learned later, it turns out that three of those kids he took with him across Russia were part of that skateboard company. One daughter, Christie, was married to the company president, George Powell; another daughter, Jill, was the company's buyer, and his son, Court Johnson, VCJ, was the company's artist, creator of most of the logos adorning the skateboards, wheels, stickers and t-shirts.
The theater was packed with excited young skaters; a large video projector was propped on some seats in the middle, ready to go. Someone named Stacy Peralta was introduced and cheers went up in the crowd. He was the director of the movie, and known pretty much as one the first skateboarders to actually make a career of it. He was a hero to all these kids. He had invented being a skateboard pro. He was "older" now, in his late twenties, and had gathered a team of younger skaters, "The Bones Brigade."
Well, the video was called, The Search For Animal Chin...and the thin plot is that a group of skaters are trying to catch up with an elusive sort of Zen master of skateboarding. The supposed search for him in various parts of California, Nevada and Hawaii was an excuse to show off these five professional skaters in some great skate spots...hey never do catch up with Animal Chin, but the point of the allegory is a journey in search of fun...search for the sweet spots...pursuit of happiness...which is what skateboarding is all about, and for me, what ramp building was all about.
The following year, 1987, I went to work for Powell-Peralta in Santa Barbara, chronicled at length in my second book, "Anti-Gravity Device Company". At first I was part of the shop crew that built things for the factory, and maintained the machinery. We were tasked to crate trade show exhibits designed by the art department, and the various ramps and obstacles used in our professional team's demos.
The most elaborate thing we built was a half pipe ramp on a trailer that folded up like a clamshell for transporting. It was the centerpiece for the company's summer tour across the United States. I was tapped to be the driver and lead the setup at each event with our other roadie, Sledge.
I was signed up for the first part of the trip; across the South, starting our demos in Texas and Louisiana, across Mississippi and Alabama to Florida, Georgia, up through the Carolinas, ending my part in Washington, DC, midsummer.
In South Carolina, one of our top pros, Lance Mountain, joined the tour and it so happened that a UPS shipment had arrived for us at the sponsoring skateshop. The package from Santa Barbara was the first exposure of the new Lance Mountain model skateboard deck. Emcee-ing the whole affair over a PA from one of the rollouts was Jim Fitzpatrick, longtime surfer and skateboarder. Fitz presented the deck to Lance with a great flourish and mock grandiloquent. Lance was clearly uncomfortable shilling for his own product. Though he shredded on cue as far as the skating went, I'm sure the hardest work he had to do was that kind of thing. Ray Barbee, and Jim Thiebaud had become part of the tour at that point.
At this same South Carolina demo, the only place we could set up the ramp was the narrow alley in front of the skateshop. This spot was especially dangerous for the spectators, since they could not be kept at our normal distance. Anticipating where loose skateboards were most likely to go flying into the crowd, I stationed Sledge, two locals and myself, at the four spots where the flatbottom meets the transition at the edges of the ramp. Our hands ready to catch loose boards, each of us had stopped at least one skateboard this way. Toward the end of the demo, sure enough, one of our pros, Brandon Chapman, fell backward in a classic Wilson so that his skateboard launched right toward me. It took a bad hop, just clearing my fingertips, hitting me square in the mouth. Blood, blood, blood. One of my bloody teeth, root and all, landed grossly on the ramp.
The paramedics advised me to hold that knocked out tooth in my cheek, which I did, and at the emergency room they put it into a glass of milk while they stitched my lip, and cleaned me up. Then a friendly lady doctor wired that tooth right back into my skull, and sent me back to the skate demo in time to take down the ramp with Sledge, load up and make it to the next city on schedule, next day. You can catch a skateboard with your mouth, but it hurts, and you might not get all your teeth back.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com