BARBEE
INTERVIEW BY CHRIS PASTRAS PHOTOS BY LUKE OGDEN
SMOOTH, STYLISH, SOLID AND SUPREME, Ray Barbee
reigns as king of flatland and technical skateboarding from
way back in the day. Credited with originating the ollie
blunt and other street combos, Ray tells about his life and
loves, including the music that comes from his soul.
SF is part of every skater's dreams. For Ray (above) it is a real-
ity on a healthy heelflip over a trash can. The whole curb may
be gone but the rail still awaits any comers-RB (above right),
frontside 50-50. A solo acoustic moment (far right) in a field.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in Daly City, and lived there till I was five,
and then we moved to San Jose until i was sixteen,
so I pretty much grew up in Northern California.
Is that where you started skating?
Yeah, San Jose, with all my buddies up the street.
We all pretty much stumbled across it together. One
dude Danny got a board from his parents, and then
that pretty much sparked it off for all of us. We saw
how much fun he was having, so we got boards
too, and then we just all started skating togeth-
er. And then Todd's parents were so cool that it
was like his parents were our parents, so it was
the house where all the dudes met up and hung
out. His parents let us build a quarter pipe that
we kept on the side of the house and pulled
out to the driveway, and then we all sessioned it.
It was like five feet high and eight feet wide.
Were you guys competitive with each other?
Yeah, I think we were competitive in a sense
like, "Yeah, man, I'm going to learn this before
you do." But I think it was in a cool way. It egged
us on, it made us push ourselves.
What else did you ride back then?
If we weren't skating the quarter pipe, we'd
just go street skate around. But street skating
back then was just emulating vert. If we couldn't