BEYOND & BACK
The Life & Times of Ben Schroeder
THE DRIVING FORCE behind skateboarding
for me has been my dad's big brown van. Over
the years it has won notoriety as the Hell-Van.
We have nine people in my family, seven of
them kids, so we needed a big car. My dad had
faith in Dodge vans. We went through a few of
them when I was growing up. He'd always use
the same engine, though, just building it up a
little more every time we changed shells. He
put this two-tone, brown body on it when I was
in fifth grade that has lasted ever since. As
grew up, my three older brothers would bomb
Madison. That was the street going down the
hill we lived on. Our house was right at the top.
They had metal boards that they made in my
dad's machine shop. They would follow behind
each other in their vans and watch the speed-
ometer to see who went the fastest. They aver
aged just over forty mph. Nick went fifty down
it once. I'm not sure which van they clocked
him with, I got speed wobbles and slammed on
my first try from the top when I was six, scrap-
ing half my face off. An old lady honked at me
until I crawled to the side of the road.
My brother Alec built quarter-pipes and went
to the skateparks towards the end of the sev-
enties. Me and my twin little brothers could
only do fakies on the ramps, aiming for the
seams at the top. My mom and dad would take
the four of us out to the Wild Wild Wheels
Skatepark in the Hell Van, and Alec would
skate there. The rest of us would play minia-
tore golf next door. I rode Alec's board there a
few times when he took a break.
When I was in junior high school, Matthew,
Nathan and I started to skate the Upland
Pipeline. My mom would drive us out there on
Saturdays in the Hell-Van. One time when we
got there, a pro competition was going on in
the combination pool. Neil Blende: was
stalling Andrechts in the round pool for
four seconds, and Christian was grab-
bing his board frontside and doing
backflips (Miller flips) in
the square We
didn't read
I
magazines yet, and we were in awe.
got amped and went there however
I could after that. I dislocated my
shoulder doing a backside corner air
in the square when I was fifteen. The
Hell-Van was nowhere to be seen. I
couldn't skato for six months
My brother Alec got directions
from the Eagle Rock ramp crew, and
we built an 11' wide, 8' transition
halfpipe in our backyard. We learned
tricks on that but kept learning how
to go fast at the Pipeline on Satur
days. Lance Mountain came over and
put our ramp in a Ramp Locals article.
We got our first photos in the maga
zines. Then there was Phil's ramp in
Alhambra that had 9 transitions. Phil,
Lance Mountain, Spidey, Steve
Keenan, Jeff Grosso and Eric Nash
would all skate there. My friend Kevin
Foster would come pick me up, and
we would go out there and skate with the pros.
Kevin was a professional breakdancer. He was
In the Kool-Aid breakdance commercials doing
backflips off trees. He could do stalefish
frontside inverts, alley bop invert channels,
boneless ones to nose to fakie and many other
tricks from his planet. He would rock-n-roll out,
do a headspin on the platform, fall back onto
his board and rock-n-rol back in. Eric Dressen
got me on Dogtown after we skated the
Pipeline together. I then entered the regionals
and qualified to go to the national finals. From
what I saw, Jeff Phillips and Chris Miller were
going off the hardest. Not holding themselves
back. All or nothing. I wanted to skate ke
tham, so ended up slam
ming all of
the
time. (slammed my way to the finals and
placed third Jim Muir gave me a Dogtown
model, and Lance drew the graphics for it.
Then it started to get out-of-hand before
and after every event with Mike Crescini,
Todd Prince, Jeff Grosso, Eric Nash and Reese
Simpson. This messed with my skating and
stepped on some feet. A group of us followed
Steve Silician in an assault on an H-Street video
premiere, shooting skyrockets at the screen
and shouting verbal abuse the whole time.
Then there was the skatecamp at Santa Glace
where we got out of control. Some of us spent
the nights we were there being pursued by the
campus security, hiding and sleeping the
Hell-Van. Whenever we got chased, we would
meet at the van if we got away. Those were the
Hell-Van's glory days. It would move as many
twenty punks at a time. Mattbów,
Nathan and friends drove the
Hell-Van twenty-two bours
to the
Gotcha
Grind in
Seattle,
which had to be my favorite contest
experience. On Saturday, qualified
first, with Phillips in second, got my
photo on the cover of the local news-
paper doing a frontside invert, and
Social Distortion played in the arena,
using the edge of the ramp for a
stage. Before the show, I ran around
opening doors to let people in. The
skaters were allowed behind the band,
so everybody was doing stage dives.
Mike Crescini got dragged away,
I moved away and was travelling
abroad without the Hell-Van. Me and
Grosso flew ourselves out to the sum-
mer contest series in Europe. Alien
Losi won the first contest that was
held in England. Craig Johnson did 8
pogos. Walking back to the hotel afte
that night's big skateboard party.
group of us had a contest to see who
could ride a skateboard the farthest
without falling off. We could all only go
about five or ten feet. On my second
attempt, I went about fifteen feet
before going through a plate glass window. Graham
Stanners assisted me in taking my shirt off, wrapping it
around a big cut on my elbow and getting me a cab to
the hospital. Lcouldn't enter the rest of the contests in
the series, but won that one.
was living in San Jose apartment with Todd Prince
downstairs from Grosso and Ross Goodman in the
"Punk House We would skate on the 24" wide vert
ramp and high spine in the San Jose warehouse-rain
or shine. Just after my elbow healed, I slammed on the
spine ramp trying to show off to the Vests gang. "The
Vests ride. I could do footplants off the wall, but it
didn't work that time, so my arm snapped, the bones
popped out, and I was done skating for nine months. I
moved back down South where the HellVan was. All of
my sponsors cut off my checks except for John Lucero
Re used the handicapped sign for my graphics.
When I was able to skate again, he came up with the
men's bathroom sign which he put onto a skinnier shape
Clockwise from opposite top: After being being thrown from the back of a pick-up truck in
a crush, Ben poses in the hospital with a hala bolted into his head in four places to protect
his broken neck. Kevin Foster, stale frontal. Talkin' big, Ben soars a method over the Dam
Ramp in Sierra Madre. One of the lost real big vert contests was the Gotcha Grind in Seattle.
Landing in a grind up e oight foot wide 1, sixteen feet off the cement floor, is something that
few will ever consider, but Ben pulled it. The aftermath of the collision on "Blood Alley."