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CE
O.L
TER
T
DEALER
BCX
FORTZ
The deadly box looms as Duane releases a backside air at P.P. K.T. photo.
INTERVIEW:
duane
peters
KT WITH DP ON THE WAY TO
SF INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
K.T.: How old are you?
D.P.: 20.
K.T.: When did you start skateboarding?
Was there a time that you can pinpoint
when you got into it heavy?
D.P.: Yeah! It was about the eighth grade.
I remember exactly. I'm not trying to
sound schmedly or anything, but I was at
school and some kid comes up and goes,
There's one of them there empty pools
over across the street, over on Maple
Street." And we just went and checked it
out. I had like a Bengal board or some
crap like that, we rode it for about half a
day with water in the bottom and a piece
of plywood over the water. Finally we
emptied it out and like the helicopter
patrol would chase us out all the time. We
had it down though, there was about 10
guys out there in that pool during school.
We'd hang out and skate, we were hitting
over the light after the first week. Frontside
and backside kickturns and carves.
K.T.: Did you skate right into a pool
before you were doing nose wheelies and
the like?
D.P.: Fug no! I rode ramps before I rode
that. Just a piece of plywood tilted up. I
used to ride Newport Pier after school, do
berts and walkovers.
K.T.: You weren't even thinking of pools
before then?
D.P.: No way, not even. But like we
began finding and getting connections
with other people across the city.
Gangs of skaters, it was cool. We
would trade pools for other spots, mostly
pools.
K.T.: What was L.A. like at that time?
D.P.: At that time there were plenty of
pools. Then GO FOR IT! came out and
that amped everyone out. We would go
on trips. This guy Stuart was the only one
that could drive, we'd go to Bellagio and
Kenter and all over LA., checking all
these spots that we'd found out about.
One time we had gone to Sunset Pool
and Stacy was there. We had just missed
him and that's like the first time we had
ever heard about going back and forth,
gyrating off the lips and all that stuff, and
we were just going "no way."
K.T.: We were talking about the Fruit
Bowl the other day, what was happening
with you then?
D.P.: Check this out, we'd take the bus to
Fruit Bowl, a 45-minute ride, you know. -
Take it there every day for a year-maybe
a year and a half. We'd skate there and
then take another bus to the Concrete
Wave all the way over in Anaheim, it
would be totally zooed...everyone knows
that. Then we'd go back to Fruit Bowl
again till nighttime, sessioning with guys
with stereos and using car headlights,
they'd have three or four cars out there.
Check it out in the last two months of Fruit
Bowl, there was no hour when there was
no one skating the pool. This was around
75, 76, 77.
K.T.: What were you riding then, equip-
ment wise?
D.P.: On the last days I had...what did I
D.P. edges out while still in control at Kitty Pool.
have? I had something homemade, a Tile
Stick, it was the kind. Barckley used to
make them. There was five of us, Paul
Wooldridge, Steve Rabbit, Chris Barckley
and me and some other goon. Bolster
used to do ads with me and Barckley and
Wooldridge, but he never printed them, he
always printed this one guy...it was with
Mojo Skates, Barckley's dad owned Mojo
Skates. Like a backside turn on a hill all
stylish, that's the guy Bolster recom-
mended.
K.T.: Were you surfing at this time?
D.P.: Yeah, I was.
K.T.: Totally into it?
D.P.: Yeah, I surfed ten times more than I
skated right then, at that point. During
Fruit Bowl even, skating was secondhand.
K.T.: When did skating become more
important than surfing? Or skiing?
D.P.: Well, think about this, you start
making money at skateboarding even
when surfing is more important to you,
you're going to skate. Specially when
skating was ruling.
K.T.: Did you ever think of skating as a
career or did you just keep skating because
you were so stoked?
D.P.: Yeah, I was totally stoked. The thing
that really got me going on Pro skating
was this Polaroid ad we did at Skatetopia.
with Wooldridge and Steve Rabbit, that
was my big push to turn Pro, although I
didn't even enter a Pro contest until a
year after that.
K.T.: Did they pay you?
D.P.: Yeah, it was Polaroid Polarvision.
We got $1,000.
K.T.: Did you think of the money when
you skated after that?
D.P.: I don't know, I never really thought
about it...like whenever a contest would
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