ALVA
that's fine. If they're gonna do something like that, the pictures are what
the kids are gonna buy, and they should just keep their mouths shut, and
not say anything. They should not go pro or con, either way. They should
just take their fuckin' pictures, and stick them in the magazine, and if
that's all the kids wanna buy, then that's fine. Kids like to look at pictures.
Thrasher has its scene representing the harcore as far as I'm concerned,
the real viewpoint, the street-gut level of skating.
"But the real reasons some people want to promote the "Candy-ass"
skateboard point of view is because they don't want parents walking into
a store and bum on skating because it's too radical. They say that they are
fully behind it and they're doing things for the good of the sport. But it's
obvious that they want to benefit from this in the long run. Look at parents
nowadays, they know their kids are radical, they see their kids comin'
home with mohawks and buying lots of records, having torn jeans, etc.
The kids aren't gonna change. Some parents are realizing that it's better
for a kid to go out and release all his pent up energies skating on the streets
or on the banks rather than join a gang, or become a drug dealer or street
crime.
"It's good to channel your energy, especially in something like
skateboarding because, it's just a good release. You get a lot of aggression
out, pent up hostilities. I'd rather take it out on a ramp than on someone's
face. You see people on the street who have no outlet to release their
energy, except through violence, beat up their girl friend or wife, yell at
their kids. Skateboarding is a good thing. It's different now, the kids
today, some are so extremely dedicated, they're not going to ever let it die.
Before, it took its good points from surfing and now its starting to do its
own thing."
Ever since T.A. started skating, he has been going strong,
in attitude as well as in skating.
Severely solid backside grinds on bare trucks at the AIR BOWL
In Arizona, April 1984.
Outspoken, honest, wild, aggressive, ville, ambitious, corrosive...all good words
to describe Tony Alva's personality.
ON THE FRUIT BOWL, AND VARIOUS DRY AND SUNDRY
MATTERS OF LITTLE IMPORTANCE
"At the Fruit Bowl we used to tear 'em up so hard. We'd come there and
everybody'd leave after two runs. Except for a few guys, we used to skate
with Waldo.
"Greg Weaver, I used to skate with him down in San Diego because I
lived in North County for awhile. That's what those guys were like any-
ways. They probably still are.
"Paul Constantineau, I saw him just the other day, he lives in Laurel
Canyon with his wife.
"Those 'Dog Town' epics, to those concerned, we just liked the stories.
They weren't bogus really. I thought they were cool. Outlandish but cool
and fun. They were just stories with characters. In a way they related to
what was really happening but just in a bizarre fashion.
"I went to college and was going under an English major, eventually.
But I couldn't get real serious about it, because school for some reason just
seemed like...a lot of people I've known who've gotten somewhere in
life, that I respected, didn't do it through going through school really. For
awhile I went to bartending school, had a bartending job. Tended bar at
Charley Brown's, a big dinner house place. I made good tips but the grool
got to me. But working with nice cocktail waitresses that's the best thing,
or getting big tips from drunk businessmen you've just made three mar-
tinis for. Then I got into Dental technology.
"Back in '81 or so, that's when it was really happening. I was living in
my dad's hose, everybody was into goin' to gigs a lot in L.A. Just skating
a lot during the days, and going to gigs at night. Then there was the heavy
duty Huntington Beach contingent of hard-core punkers that was making
the L.A. scene really rowdy. Since we were living in Huntington Beach
we were right in the middle of the whole scene.
"I hung out with the Circle Jerks a lot, I used to roadie for them. X
played at my twenty-first birthday party when I lived in Malibu. Heavily
into The Germs, The Crowd, The Klan, Vicious Circle. It started to show
that most of the kids that were in the bands or related to the bands or sup-
ported the bands were skateboarders. That's when after a while, when
everybody was trying to be so punk rock, it wasn't that cool to be a
skateboarder. You see, most of the H.C. Punkers used to be surfers, and
they used to see skateboarders and say, 'Hey, I used to skate!' then they'd
be back on their skates again. The next thing you know, in the surfing
magazines all the surfers have nice short new-wave haircuts. They're all
trying to be punkers too? It's a big circle. It all comes back to, everyone
wants to be cool.
"There are still some good things to come qut of skateboarding."
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