 the pros were there. It was the first time I’d gotten to see any of those guys skate live. Since the Am contest at Trashmore was on a separate weekend from the Pros, I didn’t get to see any of the guys skate then. Tahoe was a party scene. The ramp was in the middle of nowhere and there were tons of people and ripping skateboarding. It was really cool.
What skaters stand out in your brain from those sessions that were just going off?
Lance. Christian. Stevie. Blender was there. Grigley was there.
Chris Miller?
Yep. Gator.
That was the first time you saw the heavy-duty pros riding?
Yeah. I knew that I had a ways to go as far as trying to be as good as these guys. When the idea for me turning pro came up, I didn’t like it. I felt like I wasn’t ready for it. It took a lot of convincing to get me to do that. Just being able to see those guys ride that I had seen in magazines and videos and being part of that was really cool.
Was Fausto there?
Fausto was there. That was the first time I met him. Novak was there. The entire industry was there.
What was it like meeting Fausto?
Meeting Fausto and Novak, I didn’t know who I was meeting then. I only knew that they were the owners of NHS and Indy. I was overwhelmed by the amount of people I was meeting. I was thrown into the throes of the concentrated epitome of the industry at that event, and I was just floored. It was a really cool experience.
Did you go to San Francisco after that and chill with the Santa Cruz guys?
We went and stayed in San Jose for a lot of the summer. Then I went down to Del Mar and did that scene for a while. I stayed at Larry Balma’s house. Even though I wasn’t riding for him, he was cool enough to let me crash on the couch while Pribble was staying there.
So you and Pribble were cruising around.
We drove his Rabbit around quite a bit. He put a lot of miles on that thing in the mid ‘80s.
Did you go and hang out with Caballero and do the San Jose scene with him? Didn’t he have his ramp going then?
No. It might have already been cut down to a mini ramp, but I never got to skate it. There wasn’t much to skate in San Jose at that time. That’s one of the reasons we spent a lot of time down in Del Mar. It was all about the NSA contests back then. It was contest travel. I stayed in San Jose because it was close to NHS, but there wasn’t a lot of transition going on in San Jose then. In ‘89, shortly after I moved out there, Corey and I opened up a skatepark there.
When you went to Del Mar, who were you hanging out with? Were you skating with Reese Simpson and all those dudes?
Reese was one of ‘em. Owen Nieder, Don Pollard, Adrian Demain, little Rex Kay, Bruno Herzog, Swank… That was a rad scene down there.
Did you guys shoot up to Upland and hang out with Salba?
I got to skate Upland once. I skated the full pipe the most because I had never skated anything like it before. We skated there for half a day on our way back up north.
So you were in San Jose for a few weeks and then you flew home to Indianapolis?
We drove around to a couple of contests first. There was the big street contest in Oceanside. They had a bank ramp up onto a picnic table, curbs, launch ramps, a wall ride… I think I did okay in that contest. I spent a lot of time in San Jose, but there was a lot of traveling to contests.
Were you doing any photo sessions and trying to get photos in the magazines?
We shot with photographers a little bit, but that was just the sessions that were happening and not orchestrated events.
What did you do after hanging out on the West Coast and doing the contests?
That was ‘85. I started college at the end of the summer. I went to IUPUI in Indianapolis. I didn’t really have an idea of what I wanted to focus on, so I was just getting the basics out of the way. That’s when the proposition of turning pro and the obligation of traveling came up and I literally didn’t even finish my first semester of college.
Who talked to you about going pro?
It was Tim Piumarta and others at NHS.
You didn’t know if you should do it?
After I finally warmed up to the idea, I definitely felt like there was added pressure. Being from Indiana, I felt like I had a lot more to prove. I didn’t look at it like it was the greatest thing. It was more like, “Now it’s getting serious and I need to really prove myself.” The first pro contest I entered it was a BMX/skate contest in Southern California. Freestylin’ Magazine covered it, which was a BMX/skate mag. Billy Ruff was there. Lester was there. It wasn’t a huge event, which was cool, because I didn’t have to skate against Tony, Stevie and Lance. I remember Ruff was really cool to me. He could tell I was nervous as hell, so he gave me some advice. He said, “First run. Do what you know how to do and stick it and then make sure you pop out on the platform.” He also made me feel like I deserved to be there, which calmed my nerves a bit. I’ll never forget it. That was really cool of him.
Billy Ruff rips. I remember seeing him at contests. He was super consistent.
He was a contest machine. I became good friends with Billy and traveled a lot with him over the next few years. Pribble had Del Mar and Upland contest videos that we used to watch for hours on end. It was cool to get that advice and support at the same time from someone like Billy. That was my first contest and I think I got second, and it was all downhill from there. [Laughs]
I remember when things started blowing up and they had all those Roskopp Santa Cruz ads. I was like, “This is going to get big.” There came a point, where it seemed like if you came out with the right model and the right graphic, you were going to sell a million skateboards.
Yeah. There were only a handful of pro skaters at the time. There were like 40 or 50 pros then. It was a good time to be a pro, that’s for sure.
Did you turn pro after Roskopp?
Yeah. That was a couple of years later. I was riding Roskopp’s second model as an amateur.
You were in the perfect position because Santa Cruz blew up. When did your first pro model come out?
1986.
What was the graphic?
It was computer grid hands holding the world, which was exploding in half from a nuclear bomb. There was a mushroom cloud with my name in it.
What were the dimensions of the board?
It was a little under 10” and 30”. The tail was 9”. The tail was almost the widest part of the board. Christian’s first Alva board influenced the shape.
What did it feel like to get your first pro model in your hands?
It was a trip. There were no computers or Internet or email to share graphic concepts. I remember sitting in the bedroom of the house I grew up in and opening up envelopes with 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper taped together with this rough sketch that Jim Phillips had drawn. I had gone to the mall and grabbed a couple of books and then he created the graphic from the ideas and pieces of art that I had given him. When the final version was done, and seeing it on an actual board, it was definitely surreal. It happened so fast that I didn’t have time to mentally prepare for that moment. That made it even sweeter, to have it happen and to get that from something that I loved as opposed to having that expectation or entitlement, strictly because I enjoyed doing it. It was an amazing feeling.
What did your parents think?
Well, it really started to hit when checks started rolling in. It was still an unknown to them. They were like, “Okay, so you have your name on a board and this company is flying you around. That’s great. Good for you.” I know they were proud, but I bet in the back of their minds they were wondering how long this was going to last and was it worth quitting college. When the checks started coming in, and I was making money, things changed a little. Even though my parents were probably like, “This isn’t going to last. You can’t skateboard forever.” I was making more money than they were, at that point, so that added an element of legitimacy.
Being from the Midwest, you probably didn’t get too big a head about it and you were super humble and grateful. Did you keep your head together with it?
I think so. I am fairly conservative by nature, especially fiscally. I wasn’t spending my money like it was always going to keep on rolling in. I was 18, at the time, so I still felt