A youthful Tommy grinds the Peanut Bowl at Campbell
Skatepark, summer 1978.
I didn't enter. I was knee high to a grass-
hopper's butthole. I could do maybe six or
seven 360's and back then that was pretty
good. Stacy saw me doing them and he said
"Wow, that's really good." My jaw was
hangin' on the ground, my hair was standing
on end. Just like kids nowadays, y'know, but,
you didn't go "Can I have your autograph
and stickers?" You just met him or saw him
and got to watch him skate. He did 360's with
his long hair and it went like a fan-just like
you saw in the magazine.
How do you get along with Stacy now and
what's it like skating for him?
We get along great. He's got to be the nicest
person in the industry. He came on tour with
us for about a week. I don't see other team
sponsors going out and doing it. He's always
there at contests for you. Always helping you
out. He's coaching you and it's really good
that he's there. I don't see that with any of
the other captains or owners, ever.
Have you skated on Stacy's little ramp in
his backyard?
Oh, yeah. He has a cool little ramp. It's about
twelve feet wide, four feet high with eight or
ten foot of flat, It's so fun. He rips it.
The mini ramp concept-is that some-
thing you can relate to?
Oh I totally dig it. It's pure fun. It's not as
competitive, it's just fun. Just grind across
the whole thing and have a good time. That's
really killer.
What about Golden Gate Park? That has
been and still is like a breeding and
proving ground for San Francisco. What's
it like? Do you still go down there?
Yeah. I was there last Sunday. We were going
to go today, but the weather gods pissed on
our hairdos, so we couldn't do that. Some-
times we move jump ramps out there and you
see these kids ollie a hundred feet and you're
just going, "Right!?"
New breed.
Fully new breed. "How long you been.
skating?" "A year." You're all, "Good." It's
crazy, because they don't realize that we
didn't have tricks like that back then. There
were no tricks. It was like, "Oh, 360°" or a
walk the dog or something like that.
Wheelies. Cruising. Getting gnarly, like Jay
Adams style. We used to have a ramp with
this one-foot wide extension in the middle.
It was a hilarious ramp. We used to fly off,
like ollies, and land back on the ramp, before
ollies were even around. We called them Jay
Adams Flyouts. I got home one day and I
learned backside airs on the bottom part of
the 4 by 8, with a mitten on, grabbing behind.
the foot. I skated until it got dark, until I
learned it. That was 9 years ago.
Do you think there's a difference in
attitudes between now and then.
It's changed. Big time. Back then there was
no such thing as an attitude. We didn't even
know what the word meant, we were so
young. Now kids are like, "I can do
streetplants, ho-hos, method airs and air-
walks and I'm good enough to be sponsored.
Gimme this, gimme that." It's the way they
ask, it's the attitude. It's not like before, "How
many 360°s can you do?" You'd just try with
your friends, try and break your record.
What's the most common question you
get from a kid who sees you skate if he
doesn't know you're Tommy Guerrero yet?
Sometimes, if they don't know me, they ask,
"Are you sponsored?" or "How high can you
SAN ERA
ollie?" The new thing now is to look like a
skater. It's like Airwalks and Rat Bones
jackets, the squeeb with the Vision
Streetwear and Jimmy'Z.
What's the squeeb?
The full squeeb, man. You've got the hack-
head, one-eyed pirate look. You know what
I'm saying? The hair over one eye and it's
always bleached.
What was the skater outfit back then, or
was there one?
Not even. It was bell bottom corduroys.
(laughs), and I used to wear Converse,
sometimes Nike and Adidas. Now, of course,
everyone's wearing them again, which is
totally strange. Full Chuck Taylors, that's what
I mainly skated in. Then Vans came out and
Adding a degree of difficulty, Tommy creates a new
twist to a tailtap at the Blood Banks.
I skated Vans. It was like jeans, Converse,
a t-shirt-not even a skate shirt, whatever
your mom bought you. Chewbaka t-shirt,
Princess Lea, y'know.
What have you been doing lately that you
enjoy the most?
Ollie to grab airs. They're fun. Ollies going
fast down hills. Gnarly downhill. We were
skating this one hill a while ago, that was like,
forget it. It was like not even skateable, right?
It's one of those hills that has a sign before
it that says HILL, so you know it's a steep
one. And you get on your board and you slide
every second, you know, because you'll get
going a hundred in a half a second. And you
just cruise. It's so rad just to stay on. And then
you see a hip and you get some speed and
you just, bap, and you land and you're going
too fast and you go AHHH! And you explode
on impact, arms flying this way, eyeballs that
way, ears this way. It's great.
Is it tough being a pro skater?
In its own way, yeah. But, of course, it's great.
Who else can wake up and go, "Oh, what
am I going to do today?" every single day?
"I think I'll go skate." It's something you love
to do anyway. There are certain things, like
kids bugging you for stuff. In the Velodrome
I was practicing before my run, I wanted to
keep people away and these kids kept yelling
my name. They wanted me to sign
autographs. I go, "Later, I'm practicing right
now." And the kid goes, "Who cares if you're
practicing, come here and sign this." And I
got upset, I got pissed. I'm like, "I care, you
know." And they don't even think about that.
They go to contests more to get autographs
and products than to watch the skating. It's
crazy. They don't even yell anymore. The
crowd is just so dull now, it sucks. I'm always
yelling my head off, because you see the
sickest things. How could you not? When
Dressen rides...it's sick.
The other day you were rampside watch-
ing Chris Miller....
Lee Ralph and Lance and Gonz and
everyone were slam dancing, literally, at the
bottom of the ramp while Chris was skating.
Fighting and dorking because it was so
crazy. The energy was just so high. Watching
him skate was almost better than sex.
You've travelled a lot recently. When did
the crush of travelling start?
The last two years. I hated it. I live in some-
one's hotel room, and wake up in the morning
and do a demo and then leave and find
another hotel. It's wrinkled clothes all of the
time, freaks, signing a million autographs,
throwing stuff. Total havoc every day,
somewhere in North Carolina or in the back
woods of somebody's duck shed or
some friends over there and there's some
killer skate spots. The only thing is you can't
skate in the city. They get crazy, the locals
freak. They hate it. They hate skaters.
Not even the cops?
No, just the locals themselves.
You want to show them respect.
Yeah, showing respect over there is not even
doing it.
The driveway sequence in Future Primitive
was one of the highlights. Is there a
technique involved skating driveways?
Yeah, it's fun. I like to hit the driveways.
People used to go down hills and just bomb
it. I like to hit things. You see a bush, ollie
it. Stairs, grind 'em. And the old man comes
out, "Ang ang ang ang." But that's the way
it is. Back and forth is the best. You hit a
driveway and do a bert and come down, go
across the street, slide, do like an ollie to
fakie, come back. Slide, roll, drop off. The
metal edge curbs, 50/50 slappies...
T.G. thrusts a burly frontside across the vertical at the Any incidents you can remember that you
mini: "Chin" ramp in Vancouver, B.C.
something. "I'm a rock and roll cowboy...
It's just crazy, man. I mean at first you're all,
"Yeah, I get to go..." The only thing good
about it is you get to see things and you get
to go places for free. But you're always on
a schedule and you always have to do
something. You only get to see some of it.
We were driving from North Carolina to South
Carolina on some freeway in the middle of
nowhere, fully 200 miles off. Rodney's
driving, it's fully pouring down rain and we're
going, "Right?" Full lightning storm, the
sky's purple, and it's like, "Where am I? How
did I get here?" Total crazy.
I went to Hawaii with you. Where else have
you been, exotic lands, something that
was a little bit more of an experience?
I went to Baltimore. The shop owners there
showed us a real great time and the city was
really cool. I had a good time there. I would've
never thought Baltimore, but it was really
cool. More like the City than anywhere else
I've been. I thought New York would be hap-
pening, but I met some really lame people.
What about Hawaii?
That was really killer. I like Hawaii. I have
figured you probably should have died?
Cars, man. Like cutting out in the street, you
hit a driveway and you're going fast and you
come down the hill and you cut out into-a
cross street is the worst, you know, like no
stop signs-and you look and it's like, full
slide. I came really close a couple of times.
Fully slide and jump off your board and
almost get hit and the car slams on the
brakes. It's a scary scene. And sometimes
your board gets eaten going underneath the
car. Buses, taxicabs, forget it. Just get out
of the way. They don't care at all, they'll just
mow you down. It's hairy. And rocks, cherry
pits, slugs. Do you ever hit those soft patches
of cement? That black asphalt stuff? You're
cruising and you feel your wheels hit it and
your body's still going and you're like, "What
happened?" Shoulder roll...hair don't.
my neck. It's pretty crazy. You ollie that kind
of stuff. And like manholes, they'll kill you
when you're going twenty down the hill.
There's one hill on the way to 17th Street.
The top of the sidewalk is about 8 feet and
then it goes downhill really steep. It's ▸
"I prefer to skate natural terrain." Tommy backs
up his words with an extended boardslide across
the backrest of a bus stop bench.