another story. Roger was at
the top of a mountain road
and he saw this yuppie in a
fully tricked-out racing BMW,
girlfriend beside him. He says,
"Skating is for kids. Grow up!"
Roger's all, "Put your
money where your mouth is!
A C-note for the first one to
the bottom.' The Yup, in an
effort to impress his girl, goes
"Sure." Without another word
Hickey rushes the hill and
proceeds to fly. The Yuppie
and Yuppette lift their jaws,
regain what little composure
they had and begin to drive
down. By this time Hickey is
out of site. Sliding turns and
holding on to his edge, Roger
whips in and out of each turn
as if it were his own. On a
long straight-away Roger
hears an engine. He then
goes into a high tech, highly
functional body position and
pulls away into the final turn.
Hickey does a four-wheel drift
with control and is standing at
the bottom of the hill with
board in hand when the BMW
pulls up a good twenty
seconds later.
Of course, sometimes
skate tales get blown out of
proportion with time. For
example, there was the Clam
Bowl, when Block, Kid C,
Zany, Slork and Hyper were
all raging so hard that a
neighbor called the Man. All
'cause her young daughter
became so overcome by view-
ing these skate hoods bustin'
out hard over-under airs. It
was Slork six feet in the air,
doing his famous one-foot
one-hand rocket air alley-oop,
while Hyper was slashing the
lip in a layback stylee! Or big
Kid C's nosewheelie on cop-
ing over the death box. Not to
mention Block and Zany's
non-stop heart drop frontside
540s to fakie reverts, side-by-
side. I think the young lady
finally collapsed after wit-
nessing Block's G-turn coping.
grind ollie 720° revert. Thus
the law came and arrested
these ballsy young hoods.
Or how about that time at
the Fruit Bowl when Wally
Inouye and Waldo Autry did
continous.double carves over
Christian Hosoi releases mid-spin and
freefalls back to earth after launching
out of the Vancouver snake run.
Sequence: M.Fo
68
the stairs for twenty-four hours
in order to prove a point. The
point? That it can be done.
Sometimes it takes balls
just to tell skate tales such
as these.... How about the
time at the Canyon Pool when
Flaco, Gringo and Arabi
started a session at 6 a.m.?
Beginning with 6' backside
ollies, drifting twelve blocks,
or frontside rock 'n roll slides
18 blocks to fakie. But by high
noon these tricks were obso-
lete! The sun was hot and so
were the skaters. After a
15-minute break for refueling
of Foster's food and funk, the
boyz were bumpin' to the
ghetto blaster's beat, doing
varial alley-oop reverts or one-
footed one-arm hoho plants
over the love seat. As the bass
got louder, so did the tricks.
Four skaters in the air at once,
one double 720°, another
switch stance 7' method,
another alley-ooping a rocket
at 12'-plus and the last
blasting a seventeen-foot front-
side two-handed one-foot lein
to tail revert! What a session.
Skateparks were the sites
of many well witnessed ses-
sions that included some of
the ballsiest skaters of the
day. Upland: Don Hoffman
once ollied from the 15-foot
bowl into the bowl at the end
of the pipe, then proceeded to
carve up past 12 o'clock, axle
stalling long enough to change
the flourescent light at the top,
dropped back in with burnt
out light in one hand and flew
out of the pipe at 11 o'clock,
not breaking a single bulb!
Big O: Steve Schneer did
the first frontside ho ho hand-
plant channel in the capsule.
into a hospital-revert. Then
there was Olson's seven-foot
two-handed-three-legged-
four-eyed frontside channel air
into a 5400 slide. There's
Potato's back office no-handed
boneless memorandom. Or
the 3 a.m. sessions with
Steve Olson and Todd Barnes
skatin' the %-pipe and grind-
ing the top lip-not to mention
their ollie pipe transfers from
one 3-pipe to the other one
and back again.
Steve Schneer is certainly no stranger
to a nasty vertical predicament such as
this. And, you get the feeling he'll pull
out of this dangling Indy to nosepick
with everything intact. Photo: C. Katz.