I met Eddie Hicks at his mother's drinking establishment, Hicks' Fisher-
man's Inn. He was busy putting the finishing touches on a spacious bar/dance
floor addition with a nice view of the Bay. Unless he gets on a roll, talking
to Eddie about the trials and tribulations of operating a public skate ramp
is like skating uphill with square wheels. He is a stocky surfer-type dude
with street smarts and years of experience with speed thrills. Name it-
surfing, water-skiing or skating-Eddie has mastered them all and usually
has a lot to say, except to a drunken writer who takes too many pictures
and writes everything down.
You have to respect the guy. Since he sold a $20,000, professional water-
skiing boat for half its value to build two steel ramps on the Fisherman's
Inn property last year, things have not been as smooth as they once were.
In 1983 when Eddie stole his first ramp, he set into motion the creation
of a series of improved ramps (12 in all) that have brought tremendous ses-
sions and drawn skaters the likes of Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, Lester
Kasai, Dan Wilkes, Jesse Martinez, and Rick Demontrond, to name a few.
The Pipeline has seen ramps and skaters come and go throughout the whole
freaking thing all has been cool, until recently. Threatening the whole scene
has been a killer shitgrip,
which is soon to strangle
the Pipeline and all who
skate it if the tide does not
turn.
It is not simpleton
neighbors nor even com-
munist cops who foul the
skating scene but the
greedheads at the insur-
ance companies and sue-
happy jerk-offs who are
hooked by the first mealy-
mouthed lawyer promising
instant riches to anyone
playing the injury game. If
a ramp operator is lucky
enough to get insurance, he
will probably pay exorbi-
tant rates from which, in
most cases, he will never
reap any benefits other
than peace of mind. And
that, young squires, is what
...Click!
There is little doubt that it takes big bucks to secure the big premiums
needed for an operation like the Pipeline. After living in this state for over
fourteen years, I have come to the conclusion that there is not one Maryland
politician or insurance agent who should not be kicked in the scrotum with
a steel-toed boot for letting the situation get this far out of hand. Even an
insurance agent can figure it out: it is insane to operate a ramp without
insurance, therefore making the rates so high that only the truly insane will
pay them.
"The ramp is living on a prayer," Eddie says as he prepares a tube of
caulking for the windows. "The whole plan was to make a skate park. I
was into it. It was like life or death.
"But if someone sues, we could lose the property. It's not worth the gam-
ble, to lose everything you own."
A seasoned skater himself, Eddie knows that the skaters who visit his
ramps almost every day do not consider the risks on or off the ramps. That
is where the tragedy lies. The Chesapeake Pipeline is more than a hangout.
It has become a tradition, if not the symbol of a way of life. Yet it is teeter-
ing on the brink of extinc-
tion for the shittiest of all
reasons: money.
On a good day you can
see past Pleasure Island to
Hart and Miller's Islands
where the spoils from the
dredging of Baltimore's
harbor are dumped. On a
good day, from the same
perspective, you can see
hot sessions from coping to
coping on Hell Ramp
courtesy of local skaters.
Names like Mike Ryan,
Dean and Scott McLain,
Rudy Costelo, Dan
"Booger" Brown and
Charles "Bucky" Lasek,
among others, are not
known throughout the
country but dominate the
local scene with con-
sistently, radical skating.
"Skaters are more tolerant of each other," says Rudy Costelo, skateboard
expert extraordinaire for a local surfing- beachwear-skateboarding shop.
"Everybody here says, 'I skate, you skate-let's skate." But a lot of places
I've skated, the guys won't even let you on their ramp," he says, slightly
amazed
Fisherman's Inn, Chesapeake Skates the Bay and Bucky Lasek in a frontside boneless.
we pay for in America and everyone gets the coping enema-from the ramp
owner to the skater-and it happens everywhere, even at the Pipeline.
Hernando Cortez led the the Spaniards to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan
in 1519. The Spaniards brought drunkenness, disease, death and eventual
ruin to a once great people. A detailed development that spanned three-
thousand years, beginning before the emergence of the Toltec Indians and
ending with the Aztec Empire, was completely destroyed by drunken rapists
in less time than it takes to work through a decent lawsuit.
This is all totally meaningless, unless you consider what will happen
to Eddie Hicks when some dork wipes out on his ramp and sues for the
family jewels. In the most extreme case, everything would be flushed into
the Bay like so much sewage. The bar, the ramps, the property and
Chesapeake Skates, the skateshop Eddie operates out of a trailer, could
all be handed to some circle-jerk lawyer and the nosepick who lost it on
his ramp. Eddie is bitter about this-not openly-but still bitter and who
can blame him? The ramps are not insured and never have been; no com-
pany in the Western Hemisphere will lay their money on the line for such
a radical concept as skateboarding.
With a little imagination, the phone calls to the agents can easily be heard:
"Did you say that you would like to insure a Hell Ramp, Mr. Hicks?"
"Yes, sir. It's an eleven-and-a-half foot steel half-pipe with nine-and-a-
half foot transitions, two-feet of vert and it's twenty-feet wide and skaters
I don't even know come from four states and Washington DC. to reach
speeds of over twenty miles per hour to get some righteous air and perform
all sorts of gravity defiance including but not limited to, 360s, Madonnas,
Christ airs....
"Christ airs? Twenty miles per hour, Mr. Hicks?"
The Rude Boy, as fellow skaters call him, has toured the country pro-
moting punk bands for fun and profit. He set up camp for nearly a year
in Newport Beach about a block away from the Vision factory.
Rude Boy and Scott McLain have teamed up to form Mobtown Skates-
borrowing Baltimore's nickname-and are always looking for backing to
open an East Coast center for original board designs and skatewear. Their
ideas are creative, their plans are tentative and the Pipeline is a favorite
haunt for discussing tactics, skating and downing a few cold ones. When
Mike Ryan arrives on the scene and the sun is near set, the "old timers"
display nothing but class during their always entertaining sessions.
"I'm too old to ever turn pro," Mike admits. "Someone like Bucky could
do it...but I just come here to have fun and skate."
Even the youngest skaters performing rock n' rolls on Chessy II (the
smallest ramp, Chester, is about six feet high and all wood) impress a
crowd of ten to twenty spectators detouring on their way to the bars or the
Bay. And even the most experienced skaters are awed by the escapades of
the Dundalk Boy Wonder, Bucky Lasek. At 14. Bucky is capable of just
about anything on and off the ramp. It must be his skill and surely not his
size (five-foot maybe and ninety pounds including his board) that helps
him to achieve that just- shot-out-of-a-cannon look on every section of the
ramp.
Rivaling Bucky is Harrisburg's Booger Brown. Booger is a hard-core
"Yes, sir. Then there is Chessy II. That ramp is also steel but is only skater all the way and plays the part to its utmost. He is smooth on
eight-and-a-half feet high and..."
839089
Hell Ramp, knocking off finger-flip-layback airs, many different footplants
and varials, and he throws in a few freeze-frame gymnast plants that always
receive a chorus of "No Way!" from other skaters. Booger is sponsored
but was recently quoted as saying he would never turn pro.
Like many ramps around the country, the Pipeline's future rests on the
flip of a coin, and who is not pissed? Take the sport/art which is once again
falling prey to money-hungry weasels and blood-sucking wombats whose
only goal is to squeeze all the bucks from skating they can before they move
to another venue, to castrate it and pull it into the abyss. Take skating now
and compare it to the Great Fall a few years back.
The cross hairs of blame must be pointed at the politicians, insurance
companies and even skate companies that make skating impossible, turn-
ing it into an old cow to be milked for everything it is worth.
"You shouldn't have took more than you gave
Then we wouldn't be in this mess today
I know we've all got different ways
But the dues you've got to pay are still the same."
Dave Mason
There is no hope for Hell Ramp or any permanent skating structure or
Maryland, for that matter, but there is still hope for skaters, who, through
divine wisdom and wizardry or just plain luck, have always had places to
skate-man-made or home-made-and who refuse to be intimidated by
flunkies, coppers and any other slime molds who happen to stand in their way.
There is something in skating, or anything fun, for that matter, that attracts
scumbags, trying to tear it down, like a magnet attracts nails. Keep a vigil.
Beware, for there ain't no justice.
"Know ye that we are much busied with great and constant
labour to convert the infidel...five hundred temples razed
to the ground, and twenty thousand idols of the devils wor-
shipped smashed and burned."
Bishop Zumurraga 1531
1 had thought seriously about skating Hell Ramp during the weekends
of interviews and photos but neither the opportunity not the proper ambiance
ever presented itself. That, and I was slightly underqualified. I had done
some street skating-pure downhill on a cheap board but I was dying
to get my licks in on Hell Ramp. A copper with a speed gun once clocked
a skater at nineteen miles per hour on the flat after a drop, but he was not
going for speed.
How will the Hell Ramp be remembered? As a Supernova spewing
extraordinarily good times and sessions or as another despondent level of
human achievement leaving nothing but a burnt crust?
I must consult the worm on this one...If the Chesapeake Pipeline does
not last the year, the memories of the monster sessions, the skate-jams,
the sunsets, the friendships and Eddie, who made it all possible because
all he wanted to do was skate and give other people a place to skate....the
memories will always be there for the skaters. Who knows? The skaters
themselves will always have the last laugh because they can skate anywhere
at any time, to the chagrin of the highest of the high officials and ramps
be damned.
So if the Pipeline bites the dust in 1987, like so many before her, as the
Aztecs were hacked to pieces in 1521, the skaters will stand as martyrs
screwed by the system-or even seek revenge like the Aztec Emperor
Montezuma, for the destruction of a peaceful world.
"Mezcal dates from the middle of the sixteenth century when
Spanish conquistadors had conquered the New World. When
they ran out of their traditional rum, the battle-scarred fighters
looked for something else to celebrate with...Some say it
unlocks the door to a world of wonderous experiences. Others
say it sets free a spirit of celebration. Still others say that eating
the worm locks in the enchantment and excitement of Mezcal.
From The Mystique of Mezcal
Maybe the worm will help straighten out this early morning quandry
of the Chesapeake Pipeline, but I doubt it. Not even the prospect of the
worm nor of the bass guitar string garrote can straighten this mess out.
And everything written before this can all be written off as mad, drunken
Hold it! Dan "Booger" Brown scores a perfect gymnast plant atop the thick vert gibberish, save the comments on Maryland politicians and insurance agents,
at Hell.
which, after all is said and done, is not important. Salud.
69
68