You've got quite a rep when it comes
to pipe skating. Why is that?
Probably just because we had the
advantage of Baldy right in our back
yard. My dad actually used to live in the
canyon right over from Baldy, not even
half a mile away. He tells me that he
used to fish in the pit there like in '50,
'52. Supposedly Pat Muckus found it in
'69 and skated it since then. That's the
guy who supposedly found Baldy and
made it known to the outside world.
Describe some pipe excursions.
We went to the desert pipes one time
with Doug Schneider and Blackhart and
Peralta, Greg Ayres, Cassimus, Kevin
Anderson and that Bongo guy, he was
hilarious. But anyway, I think the first
ones we rode were twenty-two feet,
they were in the middle of the desert,
hundreds of them, just lined up, like ten
rows of them, ten per row, so you'd just
go take your pick and here you go,
there's the first pipe, and there was like
a downhill section too that was pretty
steep, about maybe a twenty degree
angle. You'd be flying by the third sec-
tion, and it was like ten sections long.
and it kind of flattened out on the bot-
tom, and it was just out of control. To
me, it's like if you were out in Egypt or
something, and you first step on the
pyramids, it's like these pipes, because
they were in the middle of nowhere to
begin with, so you're just out in the
middle of bumfuck nowhere, and you
come up upon these circular structures,
92 T
they looked like little space deals or
whatever, so you'd go in, and it's maybe
115, baking in the desert in Arizona,
and you'd go inside the tunnels, which
are underground, except for the sec
tions on top, and it's twenty or thirty
degrees cooler in the pipe, especially if
you walk into the middle of it or some-
thing where it's darker, and it's just
weird. It's black as night on one end and
all light on the other side, and most of
the time you're dusty as hell, so your
griptape just gets wasted in about ten
rides. You breathe nothin' but dust, but
you're totally jonesing so hard to skate,
because all you're doing is just big ass
kickturns from ten or eleven o'clock.
Tell everybody what it's like doing a
kickturn over-vertical, where by the
laws of gravity you shouldn't even
be up there.
That's definitely true. And the thing is
if you've never really skated a pipe, it's a
total different pump than anything. So,
first off, you've got to make sure your
pump is right, and it's more like a big,
smooth, continuous pump. If you try to
pump it like a ramp, you'll definitely die,
because you'll go for the double pump,
and you'll get pitched, and you'll prob-
ably hit your head on the way down,
and then your board will go all the way
around 360, it'll roll over and then you
get hit in the head again. So, it takes a
lot to learn how to tuck and unweight,
and then got to use your pump to get
down to the other side, and when you
get that frontside feeling, it's better than a rollercoast-
er. It's not as good as skydiving, but that feeling of
falling down eleven o'clock frontside, just on your
board still, it's probably like riding a thirty-foot wave,
not that I've ever ridden a thirty-foot wave, it's a good
feeling, though, your stomach definitely drops like an
elevator, and you're just going, "God, I hope I hang
on," and hope that you don't get pitched to the flat,
because if you get pitched when you're like eighteen
feet up, it ain't no fun, I've seen that shit happen.
What's happening nowadays?
I've been behind the Orange Curtain a lot, skating
Kelly's, Chicken's and the Clover, a couple pools there,
and mostly a lot of pools in San Fernando with John,
Swope. There's a lot of pools by my house we've been
skating with like Peter King, 540, Dave Ruel, G-Man,
Mad Dog, Belmar, Chuck Hultz, Remy and Omar.
How do you hook up such big carve lines?
It's just years and years of practice. Just going in and
looking at a certain pool, you just picture it in your
head. Nowadays I go in the deep end, scope it all out,
sweep it all down, then just go for the big, mack, front-
side carve every time. It's really weird because people
nowadays can't even really carve without picking up
their front wheels, and the whole essence of speed is to
keep your front wheels down, so if you can keep your
front wheels down and carve everywhere, even if it's
just like a little speed carve to the shallow, you can get
it. It just depends. Some people have the pump and
some don't. Christian's got a phenomenal pump, Chris
Miller's got a good pump, Micke had a good pump,
they can get speed out of anywhere. Like today, Kale
Sandridge and Ricky Stiles, those two little guys can get
speed out of nowhere. Royce Nelson too, that guy is
just, "Boom! Where'd that come from?"
A pictorial sequence (opposite top) of a shallow line step
squash. This lien to tail at Kelly Belmar's better be a
make (left) or Salba is hurtin' for sure. Backside
click-out (below) at Baldy, Father and son
Jesse (below left) on patrol for more
spots. A rock solid Andrecht by
a rock solid skater, Salba
(opposite right) antes
up at Kelly's.
93.