62
Above: A man of spinal
fluidity, Jeff works out
In his own park. Photo
by Bill Thomas.
Right: Tex tweaks a
backside boneless
back in the days of
meager flatbottom.
Photo by Jeff Newton.
ATTIDUDES
see the Butthole
Surfers. We'd never
heard of them. 'We
heard this rad punk
band is going to be
playing. Let's go see
them."
We go there, we're
raging, and D.P. and
T.A. start the gnarliest
fight with the jock-
redneck who's runn-
ing the keg system-
'We'll take him out.
There are six kegs,
we'll take one with us.
There are enough of
us so we can just keep
punching and take
one out the door.'
They closed the
whole show down.
The Buttholes played
about two songs.
ROOKIE DAYS
Phillips: I didn't have a chip on my shoulder, but
I was like, 'Every ride I take I'm showing you how
rad I am.' I changed after I skated with Cooksie, D.P.,
Kiwi and the other guys on that tour. After that I w
I was
like, 'I'm rad but these guys are rad, too. You can
be cool and you don't have to be the best."
Johnson: Where I skated, if I was doing that kind
of stuff people would come along and lay me
straight. If I thought I was being bad, Dana Buck
and those guys would knock my ass down. You'd
be up on the lip and they'd loose-board your ass.
If they thought you were riding too much they'd kick
their board right into the bowl.
Phillips: We'd go to a pool and they'd say, 'Hey
man, who are you? Get out of here, you're not sup-
posed to be here.' I'd say, 'Hey, man, it's okay, I'm
with them. They'd go, 'Oh, yeah? Well if you want
to ride with us, you do grinds or out, until everyone
quits and we start the game over
These days the locals at my park will not even
come and help bail the pool. They won't even skate
a pool because it doesn't have perfect transitions
up to the lip. I'm giving away free skate time for
people who help build the park ramps, and after the
MoFo: Can you attribute a lot of the Texas attitude third day of those guys skating but not working I
to Jeff Newton?
go, 'Hey, man, are you guys going to work?' They
Johnson: Yeah. A lot of it was Zorlac inspired. go, 'We gotta work hard?' 'Yeah, you have to bust
Jeff ran that company and spawned
the inspiration to be hell-bent and not
care whether it was accepted or not.
Phillips: It's the term 'Skate Tough
or Go Home. That's it.
Johnson: Just do it. Don't bitch. If
you're going to high school and no one
there skates and everyone thinks
you're a fag for skating, well then your
high school sucks and you should
skate anyway. Don't conform to
anything. It was all about doing your
own thing and if nobody else grew to
it then too bad, you're a loner and you
do it yourself. It was an anarchy edge,
where you didn't really listen to what
was going down with the norm. You
just did your thing.
Phillips: Craig, Dan Wilkes and COUNT
went to separate schools and we were
best friends.
Gibson: We were 250 miles apart.
Phillips: Instead of going to my high
school reunion, I sessioned the ramp
with Dan and Craig and Gibson.
Johnson: Ugliness was happening.
The uglier and gnarlier, the more pus-
filled you were, the more you were
down with what was going on-the at-
titudes toward skating and music.
your ass to help build this ramp.' 'Oh, see you later
Zzzzz. Drive away on their mopeds. Would not help
build the pool. Would not lift one finger to help any
skate facility. They show up after you clean the ramp.
after you bail the pool-fairweather skaters.
Johnson: I remember getting a ride to the
Rathole when the pool was full of water. They're go-
ing, 'If you want to skate today you and you and
you-pointing to me, two of my friends and Jeff, the
grommets-if you guys want to skate this afternoon,
get down there and bail that water out. We got down
there and did it. Being let into their session was rad,
because these guys were ripping. A couple of them
would do rock and rolls. They're drinking beer,
they've got AC/DC on ten with the rad hot-
rod right next to the pool with chicks in it.
We're all, 'Oh wow, check this scene out.
Can we skate? Is it cool?" So we skate for
a little while and they're going, 'These lit-
tle kids are bugging us. Just like the kids
bug me now.
Phillips: Now you show up at a ramp and
all the little kids snake your ass. Back when
we were skating it was like, 'Hey man,
you're not riding here until you prove you
want to
The biggest question kids ask me is,
'How can I get sponsored?' I'm like, 'Shut
up and skate and have fun. That's how you
get sponsored. You don't worry about it.
It just happens.
Gibson: When we were skating that was
the furthest thing from our mind. We didn't
even think about that until one day someone asked
us about it.
KONA
Johnson: Kona was our connection in the
beginning.
Phillips: At that time I didn't even know about the
East Coast. I went to Kona and hooked up with
Murph. He was all, 'Yeah, Texas! I want to go man
And we're going, 'Look at Murph! He is so tattered,
man. This guy is definitely the same material. It was
rad to see that existing in some place we had never
even thought of before. They were just like us. They
didn't care. Gnarly and ugly.
Phillips: Everyone was from out of state, even
the Floridans, because no one lived in Jacksonville.
It was killer. It was the earliest summit. There were
two hotel rooms, and everyone stayed in those two
rooms. Pro, amateur and even close to being
hopefuls to be an amateur. Anyone in Texas.
Steve Caballero and Mike McGill were the top
two pros the first year at Kona, 1982. Second year
was Billy Ruff and Neil Blender. That was when I
turned amateur for G&S. Chris Miller and I were top
amateurs. Craig and Gibson weren't there that year,
but they were the next year when I turned pro. Eric
Nash was there. Tony Hawk was the new kid, like
Danny Way, looking to do all these new tricks. Billy
Beauregard, Baucom. Sean Petty was still around.
Monty Nolder was there.
Gibson: That's when Baucom beat Lance Moun-
tain. That was killer because someone beat a
Californian.
Johnson: That was when it wasn't cool to
skateboard. If you saw someone riding down the
street, you knew who he was. Those were some of
the best times. Some contests you go to now are
so uneventful you just want to be home. You don't
want to be there. You think, 'Look at this. This is
not why I skate, this is not why we're all at contests."
These kids want your shoelace. They don't want to
know who you are or what's up. They don't want
to know any history, they don't want to have any soul.
Gibson: They don't know anything about
skateboarding beyond the past two issues.
Johnson: You do meet some kids today who are
totally down and know all the history, but about one
out of fifteen at a big contest know what's going on.
THE RATHOLE AND OTHER POOLS
Phillips: Rathole was around forever. That was
the legendary grind-or-out pool that you heard about
at skateparks. We skated there forever until we were
locals. It was there for so long we blew it off. We
came back and skated it, and blew it off again, then
we came back and skated it again. Jeff Newton
painted it when Zorlac was happening, had a con-
test in it, and then someone decided to drive a crane
into it. They had to fill half the pool with dirt to drive
the crane out. The pool was crushed. We tried to
dig it out with shovels, but we gave up in two hours.
It was too hot. We thought the pool was gone, but
my friend Kevin Brown dug it out by himself in a
month, after five of us gave up. Continued on page 108)
The Rat Hole, punk
pillar of Texan skate
activity, gets worked by
Dan Wilkes, another
founding father of the
Lone Star aggro
attitude. Photo by
Jeff Newton.