DOGTOWN DAYS: MEMORY OF A SKATEBOARDING YOUTH (in LA Weekly)

Posted: January 7th, 2010

 

 

I was 10 years old and Dogtown-obsessed. And though I’d yet to actually step foot on a surfboard, I’d seen Super Session twice and had Gerry Lopez’s tube-riding stance so deeply etched in my brain that the vision of a plum tree hanging over the sidewalk at the end of our street was less flora and concrete to me than it was the Banzai Pipeline. My two older brothers and I skated Toe Nails, the Toilet Bowl and the abandoned Jungleland on Logan Earth Skis, Bennett trucks and Road Rider 4s. We listened to Zep, Nugent and Peter Frampton. We wore Vans, OP cord shorts and long-sleeve tees deliberately frayed and oversized because that’s what Alva, Jay-boy, Biniak and Shogo wore. We were middle-class Valley kids trying to look poor, and our scabby knees, puka-shell necklaces and sweat-matted hair parted way off to the side were badges of defiance.

 http://www.laweekly.com/2008-08-07/columns/dogtown-days-memory-of-a-skateboarding-youth

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