EMB 1987
SAN JOSE 1990
BENICIA 1987
SKATECAMP 1988
ne of the first times I ever skated with
Wade outside a demo/contest atmos-
phere was when he first started riding for
Powell. Steve Sherman and I drove up to
his house to shoot video and went to some
of his spots with him. I remember one ledge
that was on the side of a LONG driveway.
It was one of those wide ledges that your
trucks barely clear when you slide it (it
was too rough to grind). You needed a
pretty high ollie up to it, then a steady
slide to the end-actually you had to
come off before the end or you'd wind up
in the bushes. The middle part was prob-
ably 6-8 feet off the ground. I tried it a
couple of times but I couldn't make it
through the middle without sketching
out. You just never knew if your board
was gonna stop and send you headfirst
off the side. Wade made it first try:
clean all the way through-only he had
to do it frontside. -Tony Hawk
have been pro on the same team, traveled around the
world, and skated a lot with Wade over the past six years
or so. Because of this I should be able to describe Wade fair-
ly-that is, if you actually give a fuck enough to read this. I
can tell you that if this article were about you, Wade would
never read it. He would be too busy with his wife,
dumptrucks, skating bowls better than anyone, Dwight
Yoakam, bulldozers, Kawasakis, digging ditches, welding flat
bars, frontside 360°s to fakie 50-50s on anything, cowboys,
being able to pump better than anyone, Jack and Cokes,
blunt fakies on four feet of vert as a set-up trick, Peterbilts,
total confidence in whatever he's doing, 50-foot frontside
boardslides, post hole diggers, rototillers, padless invert
fakies, backside noseblunt slides, "540's so what?," young
country, monkey wrenches, killing Burnside, backside
nosegrinds on Hubba eight years ago, 20-25 mph six-foot-
high 20-foot long backside airs into the nine-foot-deep
bowl at the bottom of North Vancouver skatepark in
Canada. All of this may not mean anything to you;
Wade's skating is hard to translate. If you ever get the
chance to skate with him or talk nonstop on a 20-hour
flight, you'll understand. -Dan Drehobl
MCGILL'S 1990
DANVILLE 1988