OF
THE ENN ERA
In the shadow of the Vaillencourt fountain was
a set of bricks and ledges that was the early
1990s' skateboard field of dreams. Legends
were made and time moved on. Recently when
EMB bit the blade, we felt it only worthy of a look
back on the apex of modern skateboarding.
O Clockwise from above:
A piece of that will be worth
money someday. There's a rea-
son why it was called the Gonz.
Mark makes the original ollie
back in 1987. Henry Sanchez set
standards in the Plaza. Gap to
noseblunt slide. Kelch don't
give a fuck; his focused board
bears witness to the attitude
that made EMB famous.
Greg Carroll: The EMB crew got started in
the mid-'80s, starting off with a lot of the Daly
City heads and the THK guys, SPOP heads. The
list goes on and on and on. There were guys
who lived in the Sunset, guys from the
Richmond, and starting in '89 we started the
family pretty much. All right, Shelby Woods,
what does EMB stand for?
Shelby Woods: EMB is short for Embarcadero,
Embarcadero's Most Blunted, Every Man
Blunted, and all sorts of other shit. We just called
ourselves EMB for short.
GC: What is the best part of being a part of the
FMB
EMB generation?
SIA. The
SW: The best part is being down is history, man.
We made skateboarding what it is today. All the
technical shit came from there. That's where all
the tricks originated.
GC: What's the worst part about being a part of
the EMB
SW:
generation?
SW: The worst part is that I can't skate the shit
anymore. It's gone.
GC: Who are some of the first pros you can
remember coming down to Embarko?
SW: The first pros, back in the day, were like
Tommy Guerrero down there a couple times.
Ken McGuire, wallie guy.
GC: He rode up the stage, dude. Straight up it. I
saw him do that shit.
SW: Coco was sick back in the day. He wasn't
pro, but almost.
GC: I remember seeing Bryce Kanights. Mike
Archimedes was one of the only original CBS
dudes who was really down with
Embarcadero. He used to come down and
drink a party ball with us and fuckin' chill. Do
some slappies around the corners of the little
three. That shit was amazing.
SW: Yeah. Bryce, Shawn Martin, Jim Thiebaud,
Danny Sargent. Back in the day.
GC: What about some of the first rippers who
ever started coming up out of Embarcadero?
Who do you remember just ripping the most and
being the most influential of that generation?
SW: Danny Alvarez, Lucian, Chris Deleon, Ben
Medina, Shelby Woods, Mike Archimedes. Kelch,
Dinger, hella fools. All the young cats. Especially
Henry Sanchez and Mike Carroll. Mike Carroll
started hanging out, and Henry. Henry blew it up
though. He made up a lot of the tricks that came
out of there. He turned that shit around.
Lee Smith: He did tricks there five years ago
that
that people are just now learning. We can't forget
all the Oakland kids. Shamil, Ben, Mike York,
them fools.
GC: What about the younger generation of guys
who got hooked up?
Nick Tershay: They're all pro now. Mike York,
Lee, Marcus, Lavar, Karl.
GC: Lee, being that you were part of the younger
generation of the EMB crew, what was it like for
you growing up there?
LS: It was influential watching all the pros skate.
I was like the little man, looking up to everyone,
and I really respected everyone. It really pushed
me to try harder and push my limits.
GC: Do you look t these guys as family and role
models and people who'd help you out in life, or
are they people you just skated with?
LS: Definitely as a family. I was just telling Shelby
the other day that when I grew up I didn't have a
father figure. So when I came back from Detroit,
Karl Watson took me down to Embarcadero.
He's the one who introduced me to it. These guys
taught me about everything, man. From girls, to
growing up, to how to live. Skating and just in life
in general. They taught me a lot. I really looked
up to them. It was like a family. That's why it's
kind of sad to see it going its different ways. But
true families stick together.
SW: Oh, man, heads would be sleeping on the
wave, catching scabies, just to come to
Embarcadero. Embarcadero was like Hollywood,
man. People would come there with skate
dreams, just like people go to Hollywood with
acting dreams.
GC: If you went to Embarcadero and you skated,
you'd be in the limelight. If you could shine,
you'd shine, and if not, you'd get the boot out.
What about how when we first started going
down there, like the older CBS crew, and the
dudes from the magazines wouldn't really give us
respect,
and they'd say, "Ah, that's all you guys
skate every day, you're never gonna be shit," and
next thing you know, all the mags are like up on
Embarcadero's nuts.
SW: That's how it is. They talk down on shit, but
you can't stop progression.
NT: A lot of shit went down there, man. They
thought we were a bunch of slashers doing slap-
pies. But Embarcadero was a bunch of noseg-
rinds, and kickflips, and 360° flips.
GC: What are some of the crazy names, and how
did people get a nickname, and how come some
people never got a nickname?
SW: Nicknames came pretty much from blunted
cap sessions. The word T-dog. We used to call
people kooks before we called them T-dogs. If
you got a K, you were pretty much an idiot.
NT: It's so funny how far the word T-dog expanded.
SW: Jake Vogel wanted me to say that he origi-
nated the T-dog label.
GC: And the letter "T"-a lot of people don't
even realize what that stands for.
78 THRASHER
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