The irony is I'm the first person to admit my skating is mediocre at best; and that I'm fairly anonymous; washed up; at best just a fan of skateboarding.
I was lucky to have had these guys as childhood friends; to me they're simply kids I grew up skating with; more importantly they were/are good people. As far as speaking on their behalf, they were again childhood friends and I knew them very well, which is why I reference them when they're brought up on this board. (I can't recall a time where I've stated, "Speaking on behalf of..." but whatever.) I helped Van's family organize a skate jam we held yesterday; flew to Denver for his last skate jam; spent a lot of time with him on trips to LA in the late '90s. I've constantly fought to get him some posthumous coverage and in the last year of his life, I really tried to rebuild our friendship; we had lost contact for some years; I went to school and he moved to Frisco. Justin Case is one of my best friends. As far as name dropping, whatever. I'm too old for that shit and I'm not really conscious of it. This is after all the Internet and trying to impress people on here is a waste of time. I simply try to fight for people who I care about and respect. The reason I started posting on here was because this board turned up when I was doing a Justin Case google search -- checking up on what was out there on my old pal. I'm on here to keep up with the kids coming up in skating; but mainly because they're are a lot of "old timers" like myself who bring rad skaters like Mike Daher and Lennie Kirk up (bring those names up at a skatepark and you'll most likely get blank faces). Truth be told, I'm getting tired of this shit. I stick around because there are some awesome people with great posts who visit here regularly; but the intellectual level on here can get lower than 8th grade. I'm done for at least some time. It's not worth sifting through the shit to find gold.
-Ryan Leach