ncer: Support forthis program comes from the KBPS Explorer Local Content Fund, supporting new ideas and programs for San Diego.

[skateboarding sounds] ♪♪♪ Tony Hawk: Kids that go to the skatepark for the first time, I think that they see the daredevil antics and the excitement and the vibe.

Even if they're not there to skate, they're drawn to it, and when people find it, they're stuck in it.

Brandon Turner: Skateboarding is an expression to who somebody is.

It's just an outlet.

It's really an independent sport, if you'd call it, but we never called skateboarding, like, a sport, it's always been, like, up to you.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Tony: Well, skateboarding has come a long way, and it's easy to forget how scarce it was in the early days, the lack of skateparks, the lack of inclusion, and nowadays there are skateparks everywhere, and everyone's welcome to skate, and the mainstream embraces skateboarding as legitimate.

None of that stuff happened when I was a kid, and a lot of that is San Diego's contributions to the current state of skateboarding.

Grant Brittain: I'm proud of San Diego as being this incubator for skateboarding, where it just--it started here, you know?

It's like Hawaiians being proud of surfing, you know?

Surfing started in Hawaii, they should be proud of that, it's part of their culture.

Skateboarding is part of our culture.

As San Diegans, we should be proud of the history and that a lot of things started here.

Bryce Wettstein: Every skatepark has a history.

Sometimes you're so focused on the skateboarding, you forget about this whole foundation underneath, and it sort of makes you realize that if it wasn't for where you were born and raised, you might not have been introduced to the whole world of skateboarding that can unite all of us together, and it's almost like we all have something in common.

You can see it through skateboarding.

Chris Cote: The history of skateboarding in San Diego goes way back, and it's as rich as it is complicated.

You know, all over the USA, these small pockets of surfers were taking what they were doing in the water and applying it to land.

It really was these small pockets of surf scenes that kind of gave way to skateboarding, but it wasn't 'til really 1974, 1975, San Diego really started to push things forward with some big, groundbreaking events that basically changed the landscape of skateboarding forever.

♪♪♪ Kim Cespedes: Yeah, I mean, really back then, but it was more surf-skating if anything.

We were trying to surf on our skateboards, 'cause that just went together.

You know, you could do surf style on a skateboard and carve hills and do it in a surfing-like kind of movement.

All the surfers would ride them down to the beach for transportation, really.

It got to the point where all the major surf companies had a skateboard model.

The early companies would be like Hobie and Gordon and Smith, Bahne.

It was kind of a natural thing, really, to happen, but the equipment wasn't where it is now, obviously.

Grant: You know, skateboards were a toy before, pretty much, and it was hard to do things.

When I look at photos of the boards they were riding, I mean, you're just like, wow, that's crazy that they could do that on that board.

You know, I can barely stand on that board, they're tiny, they're skinny, the trucks can't handle a lot of torque.

Kim: I started on clay with ball bearings.

They're great going straight and doing, like, doo-de-doo, but when you got speed and crank a turn, they'd just slide out.

It was very limited on what you could do, 'cause clay is very hard and they don't grip.

Tom Stewart: Well, I guess they got them from roller skate wheels, right?

I mean, they were some sort of composite-y plastic then or something, they just didn't work.

Chris: You know, this was a time where skaters were trying to ride on metal and clay wheels, and it looked super dangerous and really hard to ride.

So, in 1973, Frank Nasworthy started a business in Encinitas, California, making urethane skateboard wheels after seeing the potential for a better way to skate.

Chris: He eventually called the business Cadillac because of the smoothness of this ride.

Frank Nasworthy: I started selling wheels in April of 1973 out of the back of my Dodge Dart.

The first year I did about 40,000 wheels, and then the next year it was in the hundreds of thousands.

So, San Diego was--it's the birthplace of where urethane meets skateboards.

Chris: The urethane wheel was the flashpoint that changed skateboarding forever.

The minute that skaters got themselves on urethane wheels, everything changed.

It was almost like the whole world opened up to them.

Tom: Now you could go over little rocks and they would grip, you wouldn't hurt yourself, so it made skateboarding what it is today, bar none.

I mean, there's no comparison.

Chris: It's pretty incredible that even years later, we're still basically riding the same type of urethane wheels that they were riding way back in the day, so this is an invention that really opened up a world of possibilities for skaters.

Kim: It was really neat when I started skating, because I grew from the clay wheel into the urethane revolution and watched equipment evolve.

Tracker Trucks was here in North County, and they developed the first skateboard wider truck.

That gave you stability and enabled you to be able to do more radical type skating maneuvers.

It happened fast, people started being able to do more radical things, because the equipment did progress pretty quickly.

Miki Vuckovich: A big part of the skateboard industry, you know, emerged out of San Diego, and some of the new technologies really opened up a whole new world for skateboarders.

You suddenly had control of your skateboard, the board would stay under you.

Really introduced this aggressive new style that then was adapted to these new terrains that were a little bit more challenging.

Kids took this device anywhere where there was asphalt and particularly hills.

From that emerged local groups of skaters who would meet up in La Costa and other places where, you know, there was fresh new asphalt and very little traffic.

Di Dootson: It was awesome.

The pavement on Black Hill in '74 was like butter.

The asphalt was top notch, it was so wide, and nobody cared.

We weren't intruding, we weren't trespassing, it was public streets, and I just went, this is just cool.

It didn't take long before I figured, I'm not just gonna watch, so then I started skating, and then more and more people showed up.

Every Sunday were the races, but people were skating every day there.

The thing that was really the clue to me is that Florida came to La Costa, Dogtown came to La Costa, so clearly there was a hub of something happening.

The place just exploded with good ideas, and then tangible product to look, see, ride.

It's just like sharing the knowledge and sharing the stoke, and it was a lot of fun for a long time.

But you can imagine if you're gonna go down on something like this, you leave your DNA behind.

Tom: Yeah, I did a little bit of that downhill stuff, but to me that's, like, daredevilness, you know?

Like, I don't like this anymore, so I immediately got out of that and started skating in the pools and the ditches.

We used to skate in these ditches because we could traverse and have something that would hold us up on an embankment.

It was so much more like surfing a wave.

Tony: A big part of skateboarding in the early days was emulating surfing because you were carving, and so they were emulating waves.

People who surfed had the same sort of mentality as people who skated, especially back in those days.

It wasn't widely accepted as an activity or a sport, and so you had to go to different remote places, inaccessible places to do it.

Tom: I heard about these big pipes out in the Arizona desert, so I frequented it, and we'd go out there and camp.

And these pipes were 20 foot wide, 20 foot in diameter, 2 foot concrete.

We would skate these sections, and it'd be like surfing 20 foot surf, frontside and backside, and we'd just go boom, just like this on both sides, you know.

And that was something, man, you know?

Chris: You know, that sensation was just too good not to create.

Tom's first inclination was probably to figure out a way to steal one of these pipes out of the desert, but obviously that was not going to be possible, so for him, he decided to recreate it the best way he could back home in San Diego.

Tom: At the time, I was doing carpentry work, so I kind of knew how to frame stuff.

I took that exact dimension of the radius because it was so perfect.

Chris: Tom was inspired.

You can imagine Tom and his friends basically just trying to figure out how to form something similar to what they were riding in the desert.

So, they had wood, they had nails and hammers, and a lot of imagination.

Tom called the ramp Rampage, and from that the birth of the skateboarding halfpipe.

Tom: That was the original halfpipe in Encinitas, first one ever built as far as I know, you know.

If somebody can claim the fame before that, I'd like to meet them and shake their hand.

But I didn't copy anybody, that's for sure, you know.

Chris: It was a primitive ramp, no decks, no flat bottom, basically half a pipe, but back then it was a new invention.

So, what we all know today as a skateboarding halfpipe came to fruition in an unlikely place.

Really, the birth of DIY skateboarding.

You gotta wonder what the neighbors thought of that at first when these kids were out there, this big, wooden halfpipe that probably looked very dangerous to a passerby, but to a skater, well, this thing looked perfect, and everybody wanted a piece.

Tom: It was a zoo at my house.

I mean, on any given day there'd be, you know, 20, 30 people wanting to come over and skate.

I'd wake up in the morning, there'd be guys hanging out, you know.

Kim: To be honest with you, I only went there a few times, 'cause it was a full on boys scene, the boys, you know what I'm saying?

So, I showed up, rode it maybe for a couple hours, maybe two or three times.

There was one time I showed up, there's probably, you know, 20, 30 boys, and I just was like, the only girl, and I was like, you know, yeah, you know.

I'll just ride it real quick, and it was hard to get going at first, right?

'Cause it was really wide.

Just took it to another level, really, and things just kept getting better and better and harder and harder and more radical.

Tom: We got a lot of notoriety about this ramp.

People wanna know how to build one, so that's when I got together with my brother, and he drew up a set of complete working plans, and we started reproducing blueprints.

And we sold tens of thousands of these ramp plans all around the world.

Japan, Korea, Germany, people were building skateboard ramps, and I couldn't believe it, and they were all Rampage from Rampage plans.

Chris: You know, the little ramp in Encinitas, California basically became the literal blueprint for skateboarders all over the world for them to replicate on their own.

Tom: I lived there for about three years, you know, and skated it every day, and, you know, that's when this whole skatepark thing came in, and obviously the first skatepark, from what I know, was the Carlsbad Skatepark.

And John O'Malley, you know, he was instrumental in it, and I did a little bit of stuff there, you know, worked there a little bit.

Miki: The most famous of the original skateparks was the Carlsbad Skatepark.

An entrepreneur at the time had this idea of creating a business around skateboarding, which was growing, and he hired a young surfer to design a custom facility.

You know, at that point there was no precedent, so they had to build it from scratch, they had to conceive it from scratch.

The term skatepark was coined with the design of that park, you know, in the corner of that diagram is the word skatepark, and possibly that's the first time it was ever written down.

Chris: Well, it's crazy to think of a world before skateparks, but in the mid '70s, the word hadn't even been invented yet.

There were no parks dedicated to skateboarding.

That all changed in 1976 when the Carlsbad Skatepark opened its doors.

Kim: The first time I saw Carlsbad Skatepark, it was like, oh my God, look at that, it really is a skatepark, let's go!

And we spent all day skating for at least 8 hours.

It was so fun.

It was another dimension of skateboarding in a skatepark.

The sensation of dropping into the bowl and carving it, it was perfect, 'cause everything was smooth transition.

And it was like everybody was out there, it was just the place to be.

Chris: The Carlsbad Skatepark was really nothing like the skateparks you'd see today, more of a flowing cement surf-style course.

The skaters that went there in early days actually progressed way beyond the boundaries of the park pretty quickly.

On the business side of things, people saw what was possible, build a skatepark, make it fun and interesting, skaters will pay you to ride it.

Miki: You know, the original Carlsbad Skatepark was clearly a success.

All of a sudden, budding entrepreneurs saw an opportunity.

You know, after Carlsbad, as the other parks began to open, they were offering more and more challenging terrain, because they wanted to one-up each other and attract more skaters to their park.

In its wake, skateparks began to open that were all packed, and kids were skating all over the place which by some estimates numbered in 300 or 400 skateparks.

The parks that opened up after Carlsbad took their cue from that park, but they evolved the design a little bit, or they built something a little bit larger.

Di: And it all happened really pretty fast.

I mean, it went from surfing to carving downhill to carving a bowl, and then I can get out of the bowl.

Tony: Well, in the early days when I really fell in love with skateboarding, it had already evolved from just sidewalk surfing to pool skating, so by the time I started, people were already doing aerials out of bowls.

Well, I was born in San Diego because my dad was in the navy, and he was stationed here, and then retired here.

As I grew up here and fell in love with skating, I realized that this was one of the best places you could be a skateboarder.

When I went to the park, it was just this hub of creativity.

I mean, not just skateboarding, style, music, fashion, like, a way of thinking, a way of approaching life.

It was all very do-it-yourself, and that's what drew me in.

But it was pretty obvious, skateboarding was mostly boys, men.

You rarely saw girls at the skatepark, it just didn't seem like something girls chose to do, or was forced--for some reason, discouraged by it.

Kim: Going to a skatepark, it was mostly the guys skating.

Seventy five percent of the time I was at the skateparks, I would be the only girl there.

There are a few girls that did start crossing over in the parks and trying to do the pools, but really, there weren't a lot of girls skating, there was not.

But then they built Del Mar skateboard ranch, and I was the resident pro there when they first opened it, and I was there, like, five days a week.

Grant: I started working there the second day they were opened.

I was the worker bee, you know, sweeping out pools, checking people in to skate, those were the days when it was 100 people skating.

I mean, it was really packed.

Dave Swift: So, at the time, yeah, skateboarding was huge.

Like, every kid I knew had a skateboard, but I wasn't allowed to do it, so it was like this, like, ugh thing, you know?

Like, I couldn't touch it, but I really wanted it, and that was the beginning of the park explosion.

You know, we had a lot of skateparks in San Diego.

Carlsbad, Vista, then Del Mar.

So, the skatepark opened, I needed to get my parents to sign the waiver to skate there.

I think my mom was holding it over my head, like, "I'm not signing anything!"

I'm like, come on, and then, you know, I probably cried a thousand times, until it was basically, they just submitted, and they pushed me into a life of skateboarding.

Leigh Parkin: Yeah, I just remember all these parks were popping.

But there was one in Spring Valley, there was one in Oasis, and unfortunately my mom wasn't gonna take me anywhere.

She wasn't, she wasn't taking me to Spring Valley.

I think she took me to Oasis one time, but how do I say it.

Being a girl, she didn't want me skateboarding.

But then, you know, Del Mar opened, I begged her, begged her, begged her to take me to Del Mar, and she did, so.

First time I skated; I was horrible.

Couldn't figure it out, I was just, like, are you kidding me?

This is so weird, and I'm watching people going, how are they doing this?

And the next time I came back, I was--I just got it, it just clicked immediately.

Miki: I think for a lot of us young skaters at the time, it simply spoke to us, and unlike other sports it was really something we could, you know, grab ahold of, and it clearly had a hold on us.

It wasn't just something we did; it was who we were.

Grant: Back then, the people that had started the skateparks, a lot of them were just investors, you know, and they just didn't have a connection to skateboarding, so--and Del Mar, the people that owned it had no connection to skateboarding.

Well, it was called Surf and Turf recreation, and it was a group of doctors and, you know, professionals from Orange County.

Kim: Del Mar skatepark, it's a golf ranch, it's a bunch of golfers.

They come over and look at it and go, oh, oh, and go back over and whack little balls in a hole, right?

But they own the property, and they realized that all the kids wanted to be there.

Hell, there's money to be made.

So, it was a business, and yes, there's a lot of people in skateboard industry period who are not skateboarders, but they are money investors.

They see there's money to be made.

You definitely had to have people with money to back it, 'cause it was very expensive to lay cement like that.

Chris: This was the era of pay to play skateboarding.

I truly became a business at this time.

Build a park, skaters come skate it, they pay, repeat.

From design to construction, that didn't always match up in the early days of skateparks.

A lot of times you would have a thought of what the park was gonna be like, but after it was built, it was an entirely different beast.

You know, we saw skateparks that were poorly designed, hastily built, that ended up being downright dangerous for some skaters.

Miki: By 1979 you had a number of skateparks that were very challenging, and as new skateboarders were coming into the latest fad, they were going to these places and trying to learn how to skateboard at these, you know, pro level facilities, and inevitably, you know, several of them were getting injured, and the insurance for these skateparks started to get really expensive.

Grant: From what I remember, when the skatepark opened in 1978, insurance was, like, $11,000 a year.

By the end of it, it was, like, over $100,000 a year.

I think that set a precedent for the future, where we knew that skateboarding went up and down like this, the popularity of skateboarding, because it was a fad.

Di: No, it really was a blur, watching it collapse around you, and there's nothing you can do.

I mean, it's just heartbreaking.

Grant: You know, in that timespan there were probably hundreds of skateparks in the US, and it all dwindled down to three that were still businesses.

I don't remember the gradual downturn, I just remember all of a sudden, it's like, wow, there's nobody here.

It went from 100 people skating to two people skating.

You just thought--it just died.

Tony: When I first started skating in the late '70s, it was a boom of skating, and there were skateparks all over San Diego.

And so, I was excited, like, once I'm old enough, I'm going to all those parks, Spring Valley and Escondido, and they all closed within a year.

The last two skateparks remaining in San Diego were Del Mar Skate Ranch and Oasis Skate Park.

It was pretty obvious from just the crowd and the vibe at Oasis that it was going to close, and it eventually did, and then Del Mar was the only park.

Del Mar was the only park at San Diego, at some point Del Mar was the only park in Southern California.

Miki: You know, the last of the original San Diego skateparks was the Del Mar Skateboard Ranch, but people in San Diego rarely knew that, A, that it existed, and B, certainly where it was.

Even when you described where it was, oh, it's near the racetrack.

We were sort of tucked away, and eventually the skatepark came under the management of the golf shop, which was really the profitable business there.

Grant: They kept it open for some reason, and I was trusted to help run this place.

They trusted a 20-something year old skater to run this arcade, skatepark, miniature golf, snack bar, and I don't know why.

I didn't have anything else to do.

And we were doing anything to get people in to skate, and then you always expected, you know, this could be the last day.

Dave: I don't think skateboarding was even really on anybody's radar in San Diego.

Like, other than people that wanted to skate.

You know, at Del Mar, it was kind of obvious that there was nobody skating there.

Like, whenever I'd go, it was just, like, six or seven people at the most.

Like, that was a crowded weekend, you know, in 1981.

Started skating there all the time, you know, skating there for four or five hours, you'd learn something, and you just got to know all these people that had the same--they were loving the same thing, you know?

Adrian Demain: Even up here back then, there wasn't a whole lot going on in the North County San Diego, so it wasn't as if I could go down the street and there's skaters everywhere.

So, the skatepark, that was it, that was what you had.

Dave: Felt like it, like, every weekend you'd start seeing more people, or, you know, so '83, all of San Diego would come to the skatepark on the weekends, you know.

So, then you'd have 20 people there, you know, of all different ages, and we were the Del Mar locals.

Miki: It was hard to see that all over the country, skateboarding was continuing to recede and shrink.

It just--that that one place happened to be where all the remaining skateboarders started to concentrate.

Grant: Somebody told me, they'd go, hey, did you see that kid Tony Hawk skating?

He's from Oasis, 'cause Oasis Skatepark, it had closed down, so Tony was a local there, and his dad started bringing him up to Del Mar.

So, I went out to watch him, and, you know, he could do stuff, but he wasn't a standout or anything.

And then, just, he would come every day after school.

And that was his life, was he'd get out of school, go straight to Del Mar, and then Tony just got better and better and better.

But because of the state of skateboarding, it wasn't like you held him up, like, you know, that guy's the next Tony Hawk.

You know, it wasn't like that, it was just this skater who was better than other skaters.

Adrian: The first day skating with Skate Ranch, as I remember it, Tony rolls in.

He comes flying out of the pool, like, up to my eye level, and I'm hearing the sound of the wheels leaving the concrete and spinning freely in the air, that zzzzz, and that was just, like, wow.

Leigh: He worked for it, definitely, but he was definitely a prodigy.

I could just tell he had the talent, he had the drive, but yeah, he was so far ahead of me that it was just, like, oh my God, I could not believe the stuff he was doing.

[skateboarding sounds] Dave: Tony was just on his own thing.

It was like, you could see this whole new era coming when you saw Tony skate.

Like, oh, is this how it's gonna be?

Tony: It's hard to explain to people who don't skate.

You know, when I'm on my skateboard, that's when I'm in complete control of my destiny, of everything around me.

Sometimes you'll try something, it's just an idea, and you're learning it 'cause you know it's possible, and that's the goal.

People think, like, I see kids and they're just trying kickflips for hours, like, why?

And it's 'cause every little bit, you're learning along the way.

You're making little adjustments.

Maybe they're not perceived by the naked eye, but you're getting a little bit closer.

You know it's possible, you know you could do it, and eventually you put all your effort into it and you do it.

And for me, that has always been the central quest of skateboarding, is new tricks.

Miki: I was skating with people every day who were really creating what it was about to become.

I knew that this kid next to me, Tony, was just blowing minds with what he was doing, but he was blowing minds of the people standing around that bowl in the park, not anywhere--anyone beyond that.

It was just a matter of time before people took notice.

Tony: When I was in high school, I hid my skateboard, usually in the bushes outside of school, just so I wasn't carrying it around, so I wasn't--there wasn't a reason to make fun of me.

If I wasn't at school, I was at the skatepark until it closed.

Like, absolutely, I was there at all hours, and then go home, go to sleep, wake up, go to school, start the day over.

Adrian: It was just that common bond of, everybody there didn't really fit in anywhere else.

By the time I got there in '81 was the same crew that you would see all the time, and so it became an extended family.

Grant: I mean, there--kids would come there for eight hours and not leave the skatepark, and I look back at it now, and I just go, wow, we had it made.

We had a skatepark to ourselves, you know?

And we could do whatever we wanted as long as we didn't set the place on fire.

You know, I picked up skate photography when I was working there, and I started shooting photos just for fun, and then I had all these people to practice on.

Tony: It was all a big, blank canvas, and we were just figuring out what we could do with our skateboards.

It did seem like every week new tricks were being developed.

Not just by me, I mean, by all the skaters.

Miki: As a skateboarder, you earned respect at the skatepark for the risks you took and the things you achieved by your own merit, by your own efforts, and it wasn't so important that you were the best skater or anything, it was that you were pushing yourself.

Leigh: When I first started skating Del Mar, and I didn't have any female friends that skated, but for me it didn't matter.

We were all good friends.

Growing up at the skatepark, I felt like that was my second home.

Like, seriously, all those guys I feel lots of love for, you know?

Nobody cared who you were, nobody cared where you came from.

Whether you were rich, poor, black, white, brown, green, yellow, nobody cared, you were just skaters.

Dave: It was so unique and so rad that, like, everybody was just, like, loving the same thing, you know?

And at this point, you know, I felt like a loner, and skateboarding was kind of, like, oh, come on in, loners!

It just felt really, really good to be part of that.

[phone ringing] Grant: The tennis club people used to call, like, "Can you turn your music down?"

"No!"

No, we would have to, or else we'd get in trouble from the main boss.

Dave: There was definitely some disputes over territory.

Tony: The golfers hated us, the golfers, like, one end was the skatepark, the other end was the driving range, and those two did not meet very often.

Leigh: We were total outcasts.

They felt like we were rebels or whatever, and some of us were, some of us weren't, you know.

Grant: I'm not really into rules a lot.

I like breaking rules, but when I was the manager, I tried to take care of the skatepark, and I think we knew that we were fortunate.

We were trying not to blow it.

Tony: Well, my dad saw that there was this group of skaters devoted to doing it with really no organization, so he started the CASTLE organization, California Amateur Skateboard League, and eventually formed the NSA, National Skateboarding Association, to start sanctioning events at different parks.

So, he was the leader in just trying to bring the industry together.

Miki: You know, at that time skateboarding was so small that any opportunity for skateboarders to get together was celebrated.

If there was an event, you went just to be there, and just to see who was there and to see the skateboarding going on.

When the Del Mar contests came around, it was sort of like the last of the summer series.

It was definitely the event that everybody was at.

That was where you got to see the pinnacle of skateboarding by the best skateboarders in the world, and in Tony's case, the record speaks for itself.

He was the clear cut winner of all of those events.

Dave: He was winning contests, he was the guy.

And we want our guy to win.

Nothing got past him.

Tony was the guy.

Tony: As I started to get more successful in the skate world, people would come there expecting to see me, and most likely, I was gonna be there.

You know, I hear that all the time.

"Yeah man, I went to Del Mar, and I was hoping you'd be there, and there you were, right in the keyhole."

I'm like, "Yeah, I live there."

Miki: You know, the Del Mar Skate Ranch was really special, because we all had that place to meet up, and you just had to go there, and you would just meet new people who all had that same interest, that same passion for this one thing.

Del Mar Skate Ranch became this Mecca for skateboarders from all over the world.

Dave: You know, it basically--I don't wanna say it saved skateboarding, but it definitely gave people a place to go where you could see Tony Hawk flying, you could see all the rad things that went on there.

Love skateboarding, hate skateboarding, it changed a lot of people's minds.

male: Well, I'm from Illinois, and I'm out here for the winter, so this is the first time ever seeing anything like this.

They're crazy.

I mean, it's good exercise and good sport for the kids, I'm glad they're doing it.

Tony: It became a destination, so anyone that skated was going to congregate there from all over.

And so on any given day there'd be people from other countries or way out of town that made the pilgrimage, because that was the skatepark, that's where the skate scene was.

Chris: Word spread of skateboarding in a truly organic way, but it wasn't until Transworld Skateboarding came along that the world finally began to see what was happening.

Tony: Transworld Magazine was in Oceanside, and so if you were skating Del Mar and doing something special, it was more likely that you were gonna get coverage, because it was easy for them.

Alphonzo Rawls: I consumed myself with skateboarding education, and what educated me was Thrasher and Transworld Magazine.

My first recollection of the scene, you know, of the skateboard scene, it was all about Del Mar, you know what I mean?

It was like that was the epicenter of skateboarding.

Tony: They were trying to cover all the newest tricks, all of the events, and so anything that was put in the magazine was for the rest of the skate world to aspire to, basically.

Grant: You know, before the internet there was nothing else.

Being a photographer, I wanted to bring skateboarding to them, you know?

'Cause some people, when you live in Denmark or some place, everything you see is from a magazine.

That was their connection to the skateboard world.

Maybe Transworld added a lot to the mystique of Del Mar.

Miki: I think that was one of the great services of the magazine, in particular was getting out there into the rest of the world and showing people what skateboarding was really about.

Alphonzo: Me and, like, four friends actually skated from the Oceanside pier to Del Mar.

There was a contest taking place.

Started early in the morning and just took the Coast Highway all the way.

That's probably roughly 20 miles.

None of us had memberships, we hung out there for a day, we snuck in, and we took the bus back home.

I didn't have a membership to Del Mar because my father, being as busy as he was, he wasn't going to, you know, take me to get that, and so it was an aspirational thing for me to be a member at Del Mar when, you know, never having to really officially do it was kind of a bummer.

Miki: By 1986 skateboarding was growing pretty fast at that point.

It was an interesting shift in perspective.

Skateboarding had become focused on ramps, at least at the competitive level.

Tony: I started travelling a lot for competitions.

I was skating other backyard ramps, and it was almost like, for lack of a better word, I'd kind of grown out of Del Mar's style of skating.

Miki: I know a lot of the pros, Tony and others, were travelling quite a bit, and most of the contests at that point were being held in arenas all over the world.

It's ironic that the skatepark would close during a pretty dramatic upswing in interest in skateboarding.

Dave: I think it closed some time in June of '87, 1987, and we didn't really get much information that it was gonna happen, it was just, like, two days before, "It's gonna close!"

And so then it was, like, reality, like, wait, what?

Your whole world had just been like, pfft, and there's not gonna be any, like, you're done, it's over.

Miki: Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of people who were, you know, I considered really good friends who I'd see at the skatepark every day, and once it closed, I literally have never seen them again.

Yeah, I think a lot of people just, without the skatepark, just kind of faded into other parts of their lives.

Leigh: I do remember it closing.

I think that took a little while to really hit, but I think the last time I skated Del Mar was probably a month or so before they closed it down and tore it down, and then after that I didn't skate for 23 years, I think.

Tony: When I knew Del Mar was closed, it was like, well, I don't really miss skating there, I just miss being there.

That stuck with me for a long time, but, yeah, I mean, by that time I was already travelling the world and going on tours and skating international competitions, and so Del Mar was sort of left in the dust anyway.

Dave: There was definitely a scattering of the tribes.

People didn't have each other's phone numbers, it wasn't like everybody got together at, like, a paddle out, and we all gave each other our numbers, like, "Here you go, man, I'm gonna miss you," or yearbooks, none of that.

It was, "Whoa, everybody's gone!"

Miki: You know, I think for locals, losing Del Mar was simply losing the clubhouse, losing the place where everybody got together.

The local skateboarding community kind of lost its glue, really.

They suddenly didn't have a place to get together, so they just skated their own stuff and they built their own ramps.

Alphonzo: Every scene had their local ramps or two or three or whatever, and we started making vert ramps in local backyards that probably stuck around for about a couple of months at a time.

Grant: Everybody started building ramps, so it just went from skateparks to ramps, and then backyard ramps, and there were no public ramps.

Dave: It sucked, because at that point now we had to start calling people, and I remember the next place to skate vert was the Fallsburg Ramp.

You'd go there, and everybody'd be there.

Like, all the Del Mar locals would be there, and the decks are packed, so I'm like, oh, cool, I can skate here all the time.

No, you can't skate here all the time, there's rules, there's, you know, certain times that you can go here, you're--you gotta call.

Like, I don't wanna ever have to call anybody, "Hey, can I come skate your ramp?"

and hear, "No, I'm not skating today."

'Cause that, to me, like, I wanna skate today, now.

Tony: Backyard ramps only lasted a short while because neighbors complained of the noise and the chaos, and even then, there were so few ramps, and they were impossible to maintain, and so skaters took to the streets.

Alphonzo: Skating out in the streets, it made skateboarding more accessible than having to get a membership or having to find a friend with a ramp.

Kids wanted to establish places to skate, and so I felt like it was really a refreshing time to just grab your board and enjoy the journey to and from wherever it is that you're going.

I know that a lot of people were--resorted to schoolyards, you know, when Del Mar shut down.

There was a lot of, you know, schoolyards, a lot of downtown areas.

Brandon: We were searching for anything, anything that was skateable.

We'd just be on missions, like, on our backpacks to find new terrain to skate, you know.

Back then it was mainly stairs, and then, like, little handrails and gaps.

Tony: Suddenly the world was their playground, and they weren't confined to the skatepark or the backyards, and that changed everything.

That really is what made skateboarding rise up again.

Dave: Anything was skateable at that point.

A wall, a curb, a handrail.

For me, it was, like, kind of a turning point, where it was like, this is starting to become a thing, you know?

And then a year later I started working at Transworld, and to their credit, they started really pushing street skating.

There was so much good skating in those magazines, it actually was kind of exciting for me to be there and then to shoot it, you know?

Like, I felt like, oh, I'm on the forefront of this, let's go with it, you know?

Tony: The style of skating evolved very rabidly then.

So, people started to realize that they could go down the handrails, and they could do bigger gaps.

I mean, that jump was very quick.

Grant: Back in those days, people just cared about street skating, and then the magazines kind of followed because we wanna do what all the skaters were doing.

Alphonzo: I think Transworld Skateboarding Magazine helped to kind of usher in a new era of skateboarding.

I guess it was really responsible for presenting skateboard culture and the scene in San Diego, you know, to the rest of the world.

Chris: It would basically be like a brochure to San Diego's skate spots.

You know, you'd open the magazine, you'd look through.

"Oh, there's a rail in downtown San Diego, there's a schoolyard in North County, there's a ledge in Rancho Bernardo.

I mean, it was all in the magazine, because it was all happening right here.

Dave: You could see that, like, San Diego was, like, turning heads, and, like, making it, like, this is the place, can I--can we go here?

I can't really explain why.

This is--must have been where it was happening, and, you know, it was happening here.

Miki: It's amazing to think that some of the most famous skate spots in the world are things that most people walk by and use for the purpose they were intended for, and they don't think twice about it.

Inevitably there were locations that became iconic because skaters did certain tricks that were documented and published.

People all over the world came to know these basic features of an industrial park or a schoolyard in the San Diego area.

Alphonzo: A lot of these places were the driving force of the skateboard scene when they were around and being that these skate spots were showcased in Transworld Magazine, it really highlighted San Diego as the epicenter of skateboarding.

Grant: We tried to show other places.

We were called Transworld Skateboarding, and there wasn't a lot of Transworld going on lots of times, it was a lot of San Diego and California, and it's just what we ran, and that's what kids saw around the world.

Brandon: There was just, like, so many spots built perfectly for skateboarding.

Point Loma High School, City College, San Dieguito and the college that, yeah.

You ever do something on one of these monument spots that no one's done, it's a huge accomplishment.

Dave: That's when I realized, like, oh, these are, like, destination spots, like, that have been on the cover of this magazine.

It is now a proving ground that if you did it there, you were looked upon as, like, one of the best in skateboarding.

Grant: It's a one-up contest, it's super competitive, and skateboarding's all about technicality.

You know, the tricks are, they're either big or they're technical.

You've gotta come up with a new trick to get it in the mag.

male speaker: This is [bleep], I don't want another call, do you understand?

Don't go to another bank, don't go to some 7-11 parking lot, go to a school, go somewhere where there's no business or no people, all right?

You're out of here, no more calls today.

Tony: As skateboarding took to the streets, it became more and more obvious that it was considered an illegal activity, and that you were trespassing on property.

Miki: Everywhere I went, I was confronted with signs that literally told me, "No skateboarding, no skateboarding," and I think that was the case for most skateboarders.

Brandon: They just view skaters as just troublemakers, trying to, like, ruin property and make racket.

They began to look at it as a crime.

Grant: Yeah, I was breaking the law every day shooting photos, and usually at a business or in a schoolyard.

The police would look at it as just a nuisance that you were there.

When skating got really popular, then there was more security guards, more signs, more skate stoppers, more police, they'd be mad.

I knew why they were mad, and I know why a business was, a business owner was mad.

You know, you're either disrupting their business or destroying their property, it was just--it was a weird place.

Miki: And these were dedicated young athletes who were essentially outlawed by virtue of the fact that they were pursuing something that didn't have a sanctioned place.

Alphonzo: You know, if you're a skateboarder, I mean, for the longest time, I mean, you're an outlaw, because quite essentially it was illegal to skate anywhere.

That was a big, intriguing thing about skateboarding, because it wasn't an organized sport, you know what I mean?

It was a culture, it was a lifestyle, it was rebellious by nature, because you had to sneak and hop the fence in order to skate.

Miki: You know, skateboarding had really changed at that point.

The barrier to entry was pretty intense and pretty high.

It was an intimidating thing to take on as a kid, I think.

Tony: I think that the passion overrides the risk, I mean, the risk of getting in trouble, not just the risk of your body.

As much as skateboarding is an individual pursuit, there is a collective celebration and push for people who test the limits.

Brandon: You have to be in a certain mind state to be creative enough to try a trick over and over and over again.

It's a mental battle with yourself.

You don't get to take the shortcuts, you're gonna fall, you're gonna take the beat downs.

You know, going through that could be really frustrating, and can almost make you feel like a failure, and that you're not good enough.

Professionals or not, people can't even really see what they're capable of.

When they're capable of so much more, there's times where you get, like, I'll never land this, and nobody can help you out but yourself.

Tony: In the early '90s, mid '90s, there was hardly any career to be made in skateboarding.

Even if you were a top pro, it was minimal, so it wasn't a career choice.

It was more you did it 'cause you loved it, and sure, maybe you made some board royalties, but there was no other sponsorships happening, nothing that was mainstream.

It was all just skate brands, but by that time, skate culture was considered more street culture.

Miki: By the mid '90s, skateboarding had a bit of a resurgence in interest, and unlike the companies who made skateboards and wheels and other hard goods, the shoe brands could appeal to a much broader market, because unlike a skateboard, everybody needs a pair of shoes, and some footwear brands based here in San Diego, you know, Osiris Shoes, DC Shoes, became very, very successful.

Alphonzo: I got to design for DC Shoes in its heyday, and a lot of those guys were, you know, taking home big checks.

I mean, I don't know exact figures, but, I mean, let's say a quarter million to, you know, three quarters of a million dollars a year.

Tony: Those shoes brands became the cool brands, and that's how you identified a skater.

Were they wearing DC or Osiris?

The shoe movement became bigger than skateboard sales, and people that didn't skate saw skating as becoming cool.

Alphonzo: And that's kind of when you know that, you know, skateboarding was permeating and influencing, you know, a larger part of popular culture.

Dave: It was so awesome, 'cause there was so much new stuff going on, and it seemed like all of a sudden people started catching on to it, like, that were outside of skateboarding, in a really short period of time.

And I don't like citing them as having anything to do with skateboarding hitting the mainstream, but, like, going to the first X Games in Rhode Island in '95, like, it was weird to see that.

Grant: When we went to the first X Game, the first X Games in Rhode Island, it was a shock.

It was everything I didn't want us to turn into was that.

Miki: The skate course looked like a children's playground, and, I mean, it was called the Extreme Games, come on, you know?

Like, you couldn't get it more wrong among skateboarders than that.

Grant: The thing about paying dues is that skate companies had put a lot into skateboarding when there was not a lot of money to be made.

They brought skateboarding up to a point where ESPN wanted to cover skateboarding, 'cause ESPN, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it to make money, it's business, it's capitalism.

Miki: But it happened, the skateboarding was good, and within the year they changed the name, so by 1996 it was now the X Games, which was slightly more palatable.

female speaker: When you dropped in to run two, the crowds, the fans were already in a frenzy.

Miki: The media were looking for, you know, the icons and the heroes to tell the stories about, and of course Tony was still on top of his game, and so he became the face of skateboarding.

Alphonzo: Some people didn't want ESPN to come in and take advantage of skateboarding, but then another part was appreciative and understood that, hey, look, skateboarding needs the exposure that these people can offer.

Tony: The good that came out of X Games was that we were able to reach a new audience.

The only fans of skateboarding in the '80s and the '90s, early '90s, the only people who enjoyed skateboarding or watching skateboarding were skaters themselves.

And suddenly skateboarding was in your living room, and it was a sports event to watch.

The X Games chose to add best trick even to their '99 event, and what that means is for 20 minutes you watched people mostly just falling, trying impossibly hard maneuvers.

But in that event, more tricks happened early on than in any other best trick event, and that was not usual.

Chris: Early on in this event, Tony surprised even himself, pulling off an incredible Varial 720, which was a trick that would probably have won the contest anyway.

Tony: I had landed my best trick.

Up to that point in my life, that was the best trick I could do, so I thought, that's it, that's what I came here for, I'm done.

Chris: But there was still a ton of time left on the clock.

This is when the announcer got in Tony's ear, saying-- Tony: "Do that 900!"

'Cause he knew I'd been trying it, and I thought, alright, I'll show you what a 900 looks like.

I'm not gonna--there's no way I'm gonna make it.

Chris: When Tony was attempting this feat, this 900, two and a half rotations, this was the first time the mainstream really got to see how difficult these moves are to actually pull off.

Nobody could've foreseen what was about to happen at this event.

Tony: I started trying it.

I tried maybe three or four and realized very quickly that I can do this now.

I've felt--I've fallen forward, I've fallen backwards, split the difference and that's it.

Chris: At this point the contest is over, but Tony Hawk is showing no signs of quit.

All of us are at home glued to our TVs.

We are right there in the battle with Tony.

Tony: When the time ran out, I wasn't even bothered by that, because in skateboarding you're gonna just keep trying it.

At its core skating is DIY, and it's renegade, and it's passion, and I think that that's what people saw there that night, 'cause that's exactly what it was, is like, I don't care if you turn of the cameras, and I didn't care if I got hurt, I was doing it.

At the core of it, it's the same as anyone trying to learn how to do a kickflip.

It's just these small adjustments, and it's the perseverance, and it's the determination to get you there.

That's the skate mentality.

You're gonna just keep trying against all odds, and even if that's just for yourself, that's good enough.

You keep trying until you do it.

Eventually you get it.

The elation someone feels when they land their first kickflip is probably the same that I felt doing the 900.

I remember when I made it, I still kind of didn't believe that it'd happened, and I went up the next wall and realized I was still on my skateboard, and then I turned, and I saw all of my peers running towards me on the ramp, and that's when it became a reality.

There was still a part of me that thought, no one's gonna care.

No one cared when I did a 720 in 1985.

The skate world did, but it didn't make news, it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

And so, I just did it for myself.

Chris: The stoke of this moment in skateboarding changed all of us.

This was truly a time where the mainstream, the rest of the world could get a real look at raw skateboarding at its best.

Alphonzo: I think that at the whole, the event was an opportunity for mainstream to really look at what this culture was doing, getting to see the work that this guy was putting in to make it happen.

I don't think it could've been written any more perfect, and what it has meant to skateboarding thereafter has done nothing but benefit the culture.

Dave: It's just the X Games, man.

Like, is it gonna matter ten years from now?

Well, I guess it does, but I guess the worst thing is that they get credit for the place that that happened.

I mean, in my eyes, you know, that would be like, oh, why didn't it just happen, like, somewhere, like, where we all skate, or where skateboarding gets to claim it as, like, this happened here.

But it also wouldn't have made a big deal like it did to the whole world.

You know, so Tony made careers for a lot of people, so we have him to thank for it.

Brandon: When that 900 happened, that was the breakthrough, and I didn't--I wasn't surprised.

I'm like, of course.

Anytime you mention skateboarding, people just like, Tony Hawk, Tony Hawk, you know?

And, like, that's what it was, you know?

Like, he paved the way for all of us to make a little bit of money, and there's even more you can do.

There's the video game, you know, it broke down barriers that we never thought were possible.

Miki: Tony was just not sort of the top skateboarder, but he also had this blockbuster video game, and those things together really created the celebrity we know of as Tony Hawk.

This video game was really, I think for a lot of people, the first exposure to skateboarding, and so you started to see more people, more kids trickle into the sport.

And so skating really took off.

Tony: I did the 900 at the X Games, and our video game became a top seller, and suddenly there was a lot of interest in skateboarding.

It was like, I wanna skateboard, I wanna go skate!

It was like, where are you gonna go?

There's--good luck!

There were no parks.

That sudden hype for skateboarding did not translate to skateparks being built.

Miki: Most kids just didn't have a place to go.

And there were a few cities looking to build skateparks, looking to find a solution to this growing number of kids who were skating, but getting in trouble for it, because they didn't have a sanctioned place to do it, and so you started to see more cities try it out.

And of course, not everybody understood how to do it.

Tony: When we would plan tours, like, early 2000s, there were very few cities to choose from, because those were the cities that had skateparks.

So, our routing was, like, okay, we're gonna go over here, and then we're gonna go up the coast to here, and try to hit this one in the Midwest, and try--because there was just a lack of parks.

And so, it was weird.

There was this huge interest, we were getting thousands of people at these skateparks to watch us, but there were only a handful of skateparks.

That was the catalyst for starting a foundation for public skateparks, that was, like, 2000, 2001 when I saw this explosion of interest and a lack of facilities, and I thought I could bridge that gap.

Miki: You know, with that platform, he understood, he had a voice to share what he understood about skateboarding and to really bring a lot of attention to things like the lack of places to skate.

He saw an opportunity to take his fame and some of the fortune he was making at that time and dedicate it to the cause, and for him the cause was creating skateparks, creating safe, sanctioned places for kids to go and skate and do this thing that's inherently healthy, and so, you know, when Tony started the foundation, it was a pretty simple idea.

Tony: To have a public facility that you don't have to pay to use is hugely important, because if you have a place where you have to pay to use, you're just being elitist, and you're excluding so many people that could thrive there.

Miki: Those first ten years, there was a lot of work put into making the case for why a community needed a skatepark.

It was a lot of uphill political battle back then, particularly with some of these older, entrenched politicians who had their concept of public recreation, which was basically stick and ball sports.

You know, the same paradigm that everybody has been using since the 1950s, but obviously things change, and, you know, there's a lot of pushback initially.

Tony: A lot of cities still had this old stigma that's like, skaters are outcasts, they're troublemakers, and that was a big push in those days, making city councils understand how it would benefit their communities.

Miki: You needed to show people who you are, why you loved this activity, why it's such an important part of your life, and why you need a place to go and do it.

Tony: With my success and so much attention on skateboarding, I was able to affect change.

Like, I was able to speak on behalf of skateboarding and the importance of having these facilities.

Tony: When I first started skateboarding, Del Mar Skate Ranch was where I belonged, that's where I felt like I found my family, my non-related bloodline family, and it was never lost on me how lucky I was to have this place to go and skate.

You know, I, yes, I got lucky that I grew up in San Diego and that I eventually lived near Del Mark Skate Ranch, and so when I started the foundation, that was my main idea, was that I want a place for these kids to go where they feel like they belong, they can hang out with their friends, they're not kicked out.

It was more to have a sense of belonging.

And it's still a hard sell, like, not all of them went for it, and we had to fight that for years, decades, and eventually won them over.

I mean, we're talking about thousands of skateparks now.

Chris: It's pretty incredible to think that Tony's non-profit, from right here in San Diego, has done more to help develop free, public skateparks all over the country than any other organization on the planet.

Miki: You know, the foundation's done work in every state.

It's helped provide these skateparks and help get behind the communities, empower them to do what they're trying to do, and ensure that all the work they were doing would result in a quality skatepark.

You know, you don't want them to repeat what the guys in the '70s did, it's a very specific skill.

Grant: I think now cities have to build skateparks, it's a civic thing now, is you've gotta have a skatepark, it's like having a basketball court or a dog park, and you gotta have it.

And the whole thing where you have a fence around it and you put a toll booth up at the front, it doesn't really work.

Frank: It's all good, I think that public parks, just the acknowledgment that skateboarding's there and we need to do something about it, and then to see the response from the communities once they do that, it's really good.

And I went out trying to create skateboarding as a paid entertainment, and I think that that's not the way it's supposed to be.

You know, you don't have to pay to ride a wave, you shouldn't have to pay to ride a skateboard.

Grant: I think it's a great activity for anybody to be involved in.

I mean, I've seen it change families, you know, I've seen it change kid's lives, and, you know, a lot of women, girls, have started in the skateparks, and just having skateparks gives all of these kids more of a chance to go skateboarding.

Leigh: I'm so stoked, it's become an accepted thing for girls to be skating.

The girls themselves decided, you know what, I'm just gonna skate, I don't care what people think of me, I don't care what people say, I'm gonna go skate.

These girls are amazing, and they're skating now, they're not skating like a girl, they're skating.

Tony: The state of women's skateboarding today is better than ever.

I can only assume that the free skateparks is helping to support women in skating, because they can just show up, and they don't have to go through a whole process and be vetted and sign waivers and pay.

And the idea that it's open to them goes a long way.

Miki: You know, the proliferation of skateparks in California led to the proliferation of skateparks across the country, and then abroad, as influence goes, culturally, right?

And so, you're seeing skateparks all through certainly North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East.

I mean, it's everywhere.

I mean, the fact that it's in the Olympics means it's a sport that's practiced on every continent.

What Tony started was, you know, a simple idea, but the impacts have been profound.

Bryce: It's almost like the whole skatepark is another family that you can only really, really meet if you go there day in and day out.

Like, you'll meet someone, and you'll see them skateboard, and we all have something in common.

I basically feel like every person in San Diego at every legal skatepark is a part of my family.

Grant: It's just grown to where skateboarding is accepted.

People don't go, "Oh, you're a skateboarder?"

You know, no, my son's a skateboarder, my nephew's a skateboarder, my grandson's a skateboarder, I skated.

You know, it's not a weird thing anymore to be a skateboarder, you know?

It's weird not to skateboard.

Miki: In a lot of sports you enter the court or the field and you have your ball or your bat, and there's a specific thing you're allowed to do, and a lot of things you're not allowed to do.

And in skateboarding you walk into a huge skateboard park, and there are no rules.

It's like, come in, and here you go, kid, make a decision the moment you step through the threshold.

Where are you gonna go, what are you gonna do?

It's up to you.

No one's telling you, there's no coaches, no pressure, and these kids, they learn to navigate these parks, and they put together their own lines based on what they can do and what's fun for them, and they keep going, and the skatepark offers endless opportunities for that.

Di: The drive to always be a better person is crystalized in skateboarding.

You do something and you fall down, and then what do you do?

You get up and you do it again.

Di: Who has that kind of determination to go through something that causes you pain, emotional pain, physical pain?

And the pride that it comes from that meeting the challenge and passing through the challenge is like nothing that anybody can hand you.

I mean, that's a different kind of person, those are my favorite kind of people.

Tony: I hope San Diegans are aware of impact that San Diego skateboarders have had on the whole culture.

Skateboarding benefited from the influence of San Diego skaters.

The evolution of skating was accelerated because of San Diego.

Everyone contributed in their own way, but collectively it was a huge push for skateboarding.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Tony: Kids that go to the skatepark for the first time, even if they're not there to skate, they're drawn to it.

And that's how I felt, first time I went to the skatepark, that was it.

I vividly remember it, and I feel like that experience happens over and over and over.

Kids go to the park and they're like, "Did he really just jump down those stairs?

I wanna skateboard!"

That's all it takes.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ female announcer: Support for this program comes from the KBPS Explorer Local Content Fund, supporting new ideas and programs for San Diego.