S
ALMAN GAH
KRAMANUEL
ETERNAL
S
o tell us how you started
skateboarding.
These kids at my school skat-
ed, and I totally wanted to
skate, but we were kind of
poor, so I couldn't get a
skateboard until a year later.
How old were you?
I was in eighth grade. I was ten or nine, so just
got a deck and I started shredding on the curb cuts
out in front of my house.
When did you move to San Jose?
In 1981 or 1980. We were like eight years old.
Who were the first people you hooked up with?
First I used to skate with this kid, Jose, who lived
down the street. We skated everyday to those ditches
during that summer and then one day I was with this
dude, Brian, this real fat dude that's still our friend, and he
brought me over to Tom's house and that's when me and
Tom hooked up and skated the jump ramps
In those days, people used to give you hell for being a
little heavy. Did it affect you back then?
Yeah, I used to get pissed, but what could I do? I was
just a kid and I was overweight and I was skating
Whatever happened to your afro?
I cut it off. But anyway, one time I was at Tom's and Conti
was all, "Dude, you look like you lost weight," and I was
just like, "Rad! It felt good because I was skating so much.
You didn't have to work out or diet or nothing?
Not even. I fully just skated everyday.
While we were going to parties, you'd be out skating
Alpha Beta, doing lines.
When I first started skating. I totally sucked and
everyone was going off the jump ramps and I couldn't
grab my board because I was too fat, but then after
awhile, I learned some tricks. And then, from every-
one calling me fat, I just wanted to be so much
better. It pushed me to skate the whole time.
The summer of '87 was when skateboarding
really jumpy and everyone was doing it.
That was the raddest. Tom, Drucas, Sam,
Goodwin, Chris, George, Prosenko and
Youssefpour would come from Los Gatos
because we had that school where we just
set up jump ramps during the summer.
It was like our own skatepark.
Totally. I used to trip out because Pro-
senko and those guys were like our idols
back then and you just wanted them to
be stoked on you. But those were the
rad days because that's what pushed me
1993
HRASHER
SKATER
OF THE HEAR
to skate, those guys. I remember they used to skate
at Alpha Beta every night. The first time Caballero
came over to Chris' ramp, we were so stoked
Caballero was at our ramp just ruling.
Doing inverts on that little ramp. Everyone would try
to skate so good and I used to try bonelesses and
didn't even know how to do them, I'd just do them.
The whole ramp would move when you'd land them.
And I'd slide out and then everyone would be like,
"Safel" Like I had slid into home base or something.
I remember you'd do the same five tricks in a row and I
would name them off before you'd even do them.
That's because I read Cab's interview and it said, "I do a
trick until I get it wired," so I always wanted to get it wired. He
was so inspirational for us, especially me
Would you rather see skateboarding get out of the techni-
cal stuff and back into fat ollies and just big tricks?
I think there's room for it all. I don't care if people want to skate
technical or if they just want to do ollies, I think that everyone
should just be stoked on skating, which is a hard thing to come to
but it's a good goal to press towards
It seems like there's a big Christian movement in skating, do
you think that's going to be a big part of skateboarding?
I believe God really wants to minister to people and meet their
needs, and in skateboarding a lot of kids have come from dys
functional families or broken homes and they cling to skate-
boarding because it's something. They get to accomplish some-
thing everyday, they get to move forward and it's really rad, but
I think it stops at a certain point and that's where hopefully God
is going to meet them so I think there's going to be a big
revival type deal in skateboarding
How did you start skating switchstance?
I've always skated for the feeling, when you do a trick and
go, "Wow, that felt rad." I used to always skate switchstance
just to feel it. Before noses were even starting to lengthen!
used to try nollies and then when noses got langer and I
could really nollie, I started doing a lot of noilies and
learning all kinds of nollie tricks and skating backwards.
One time I hurt my ankle and couldn't ollie the regular
way so I had to try it the other way and I just kept
skating that way. One time I hurt my front ankle so
bad that for months I skated switchstance everyday
What do you think about videos?
I think videos are fake because I don't think that
people really skate like that. Every part of it is real to
a certain extent but for the most part, training to land
a trick in a video to impress someone is just fake.
What do you see in your future?
I know I'm going to be in skating a long time. I've
been put in skateboarding. I didn't choose, well,
yeah, I chose. God gave me a freedom to choose
and with that, he has blessed me.