60 THRASHER
Clockwise from above:
Creative gap to wallride at a
spot so new, not even
Fernandez knows where it is.
Autopilot guides Rob G on a
blinding frontside bluntslide dur-
ing a rare Orange County night
session. Rob G locks in and
kicks back on a long 5-0 revert.
Did you fight back?
Naw. I ain't beating up on
Samoan dudes. Those dudes
are crazy.
When did you first meet
Long Beach Larry?
We go way back-at least
six years ago. He talked
too fast. My friend
Anthony Oglesby called
him Typewriter Larry
because when he talks it
sounds like a typewriter,
he talks so fast.
Did you ever invent your
own moves when you
were coming up?
My specialty was always
that I could ollie really well,
but I don't know about
inventing anything.
What about the Rob G
pop shove-it?
The one-footed pop shove-
t? Oh yeah. Well, I always used
to skate with that dude Brad
Hayes, and he had the best pop
shove-it in Orange County. So I
decided to bite his style and
take it to the next level.
Explain the technique to
those who are unfamiliar
with it.
You do a normal pop shove-it
but instead of catching it with
both feet, you catch it with just
your front foot. It kind of bones
out and your back foot trails
behind until you set it down.
That's probably one trick I
made popular in the Long
Beach area.
Talk about your ethnic
heritage. I know you had.
a Mexican flag on one of
your boards.
That was just a series of
boards that New Deal wanted
to do with the flags of the
world, and my name's Gonzalez
and my dad is Mexican, so they
gave me the Mexican flag. It's kind of funny
because some people think that I'm all hard-
core Mexican pride or something, and all the
kids in Mexico are calling New Deal for
demos, ke, "Yeah, send Rob G out, send Rob
G out." So I went and did demos in Cancun
with Danny Montoya. There were a lot of kids
who couldn't speak English and I'm supposed to
be this Mexican-American ambassador who's
coming from the US to do demos for my people,
and I can barely even speak Spanish. They were a
little bummed on that.
What was the demo like?
cone,
We were skating on a stage about as big
as my living room with a bank ramp,
and a piece of PVC pipe rolling around. It
was pretty mild. The kids were bummed on
me. I have the Mexican flag board and I
can't speak Spanish. I used to speak it a lot
when I was little because I lived with my
dad and used to go to Mexico with him to
see my grandma and all my cousins. But my
parents got divorced about ten years ago
and I went to live with my mom, so I got the
honky disease and lost my Spanish.
What happened to you at the Vans park
the other day?
Man, I got broke. I was messing around
on the quarterpipe trying to do a frontside
ollie and my front foot slipped off. I went
down on my side and blew my spleen out.
What's a spleen do?
It makes red blood cells. It helps with your
immune system or something. I guess you
can live without it-Bobby Puleo doesn't
have his anymore. But luckily mine stopped
bleeding so I got to keep it. I was in the hos-
pital for almost a week.
What did you think when you were
lying there on the floor?
I felt pretty stupid. I didn't want all the
mallrats on the top balcony to start laughing
at me. It felt like I got the wind knocked out
of me, but then I realized it wasn't that and I
went to the hospital.
Have all the skate spots in Long Beach
and Orange County been discovered?
I don't know about Orange County. I try
and avoid it. But in Long Beach there's still
secret stuff that people don't know about
that we skate on the down low. Plus,
they're always building new stuff. All the
big-name spots got blown out because of
the Long Beach trade show. Now everyone
knows the secrets.
How does community college differ
from high school?
Basically it's the same thing-13th grade. I
just go because it makes me feel like I'm
doing something with my life. I'll probably
transfer to a university and get more serious
about it after I'm done skating.
Which Fowler do you prefer, and why?
Probably Jerry. I see him around
Sometimes and he skates for the same
shop I do, so I've got to have that
team love.
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