Frontside slide by Mark Vero, another uppity young street artist.
Express, one of the earliest skate shops in
the area."
Denver may have been considered off the
beaten skate path back in the mid to late
seventies when media coverage concen-
trated on coastal lines. Still, there were ap-
pearances by touring skaters that gave the
locals first hand glances. The Variflex tour,
featuring Eddie Elguera, Eric Grisham and
Steve Hirsch, came through with Duane
Peters in tow around 1978, and demoed at
the High Roller skate park in Boulder. "A cou-
ple of times at the Breckenridge (skateboard)
half-pipe," Jim recalls, "skaters from Califor-
nia would show up and do the first inverts
54
we'd ever seen, not even above coping, just
hand on transition. Concrete Curl skatepark
in Aurora had had some of the best snake
runs of any park and another park called
Spider was located in West Denver." Slalom
was a popular pastime for these mountain
boys. Races were held on parts of the closed
road over Vail Pass.
The height of the hype for the Denver area,
as with many other skate scenes, culminated
in a Hester Pro Series contest at High Roller
around 1979. Boulder, Colorado, is also home
of Kryptonics, wheel makers who command-
ed a dynasty of urethane for many years.
During the lean, mean years between 1980
and 1985, Denver's scene leveled off. "A lot
of street skating," replies Jim when asked
what kept the hard-cores going. "The parks
disappeared, but there were some great
spots; Mountain Bell banks, Paradise bowl,
Jamaica Bowl, a big ditch out by Arappaho
Lake, Cowboy ditch and the Castle Rock
ditches. There are a lot of big arid desert
ditches in the Colorado Springs area. One
place called the Federal Center has huge.
banks with perfect transitions, but it's a
federal offense to skate there."
"For awhile, a lot of people started mak-
ing half-pipes. It started with Brent's half-
pipe. Then there was a guy-his dad owned
the Concrete Curl- who had a huge ramp
out in Castle Rock called the Ark ramp. It had
12-foot transitions and about three feet of
vert. It was just ridiculous. That was around
'83. Chris and Doctor X used to rip it heavy.
Another big spot was Mike Saull's ramp. He
had one of the first half-pipes and was a good
skater as far back as '76. Paul's ramp has
been around for quite a few years and is
probably one of the best in Colorado to this
day. "Sometimes we would hit the downtown
parking garages. There was this guy nam-
ed Matt Lindstrom who used to go down and
shred those all the time. Another thing we
used to do was lay down on our boards with
the kicktail against our chest and do speed
runs at about 45 mph while holding on to the
bumper of this guy's truck. This was at at
place called Highland's Ranch where I used.
to live."
Highland's Ranch, pick-up trucks, speed
runs...you may get the impression that the
wild dogs of Denver skate around in cowboy
boots, but this isn't so, says Jim, who lives
in metropolitan Denver. "There are a lot of
ripping skaters here. It's the biggest skate
population in Denver since back in '77 when
the parks were open." When our traveling
vagabond and skate journalist, Billy
Runaway, stopped into town recently, he
found ample evidence to support Jim's claim.
After convincing several locals that he was
for real, Billy was soon conducting urethane
compatibility experiments on downtown ce-
ment formations. If Ryan Gibbs, Matt Gibbs,
Mark Alan, Scott Vero and Keith Wilson's
skating is any indication, then there is cer-
tainly no lack of talent on the part of this new
generation of Denverites.
Most of the skaters there are also ac-
complished snowboarders who hit the slopes
as soon as the first snow falls. "A lot of peo-
ple that snowboard, skate now and vice ver-
sa. I gave up skating a while back just to con-
centrate on snowboarding. Now I'm heavily
into skating again."
Denver is one of many landlocked skate
towns throughout the land, where the seed
of skating has been firmly planted, roots have
dug in, and vines have spread over the years.
It is a scene that has been at times dormant,
other times so far underground that "the hot
sessions were warming the rest of the house
from a mini-ramp in the cellar," as Jim
describes one winter in the Mile High city.
Obviously Denver has experienced dry sea-
sons, but now it's time for a full harvest.
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