What happened to the kids you started skating with?

[Yonnycage]

One quit because he rolled his ankle too many times so started fishing nonstop

One took up selling hard drugs and is now an insurance salesman

One still collects boards but is too obsessed with Hondas

One quit because he's too huge, had a kid early, developed a crazy cocaine problem that ended up developing into narcolepsy

One's a cop in NYC but still rolls around hitting random spots

One sprays weeds in the Hamptons and has a gf addicted to vivanse so she's probably up his ass nonstop

One's killing it too hard at carpentry so he's busy with that and being rich

[disclosed]

i never really had a crew. everyone including me skated on and off. but we lived in a very small town so all uf us have skated with eachother at some point. but i dont think ever all at the same time.

one i havnt spoken to in 15 years. he plays drums in a hardcore band. i saw them 2 years ago. ran into his mom on the way to the gig who still remembered me somehow. she said he still got his board but he might skate like once a year. he moved to the city and is probably doing better than the rest of us.

another i skated with for a long time, but kinda on and off when we wern't writing graffiti. up untill maybe 6/7 years ago. he got a kid and spend all his time with his girl so i lost contact with him.
my brother works in the same field as him (painter) and sometimes works with him. so all my updates come from him. but he lost his girl. lost costudy of the child. got into alcohol and drugs even more than before. lost is house a fiew times. and aparently lost his teeth.
my brother did show me a clip of him skating a mini last summer. he still got it. hit him up to skate and he was down. but it never happened.

last one quit after breaking his ankle real bad. moved to another country. moved back a fiew years later. got a kid. broke up with his girl. we started skating a lot again around that time (this matches up with when i lost contact with the guy above). he got back with her again. got another kid. allways low on money. girl is burned out. he works multiple jobs and isn't allowed to leave much cause his girl makes him watch the kids whenever he's free. i see him maybe two or three times a year now.
really bummed these days he got a new group of friends through work who are leading him onto all these right wing talking points. especially since covid. but i cant bring myself to drop him out of my life yet. i try to reason with him.

thats the main guys for me.

I'm curious, did the friends who grew up and became successful (working for NASA, getting PHD's, becoming lawyers, etc..), live in a particular area, or grow up around the same time?

It seems like burnouts and imprisonment/deaths likely happened in America. I'm basing this off of nothing other than my predetermined bias about being an American myself.

i don't think thats only America. i'm European and my skate friends ended up better than most the people i grew up around. addiction, death, prison, prostitution, abuse. a lot of interesting stories, but not very fun ones.
i do definitly think enviorment is a key factor. i grew up in a small town. all social housing, surrounded by factories.

[vinithebr]

I only know about one, he quit skating early, joined the military, got married and has a kid
He used to be cool

[davy]

had two different crews. highschool and then the local park. i went to high school in a different town from my local park, which also has a park but ive always preferred my local since it was my first park ive ever been to.

it was the four of us skating after school. one stopped skating after moving to a different town with no parks, he mainly cruised on a longboard. the other one stopped skating when he did, which i always felt a little off with him since he was not really that great of an influence. lastly, my best friend at the time stopped after our freshman (grade 9) year. i taught him how to do some basic tricks, which he learned very quickly, and it seemed like he was going to get into skating as much as i did. he did a proper ollie in the first hour of me teaching him! going into our sophomore year (grade 10), we skated once and then he ghosted me. i think that it was my fault since i never hit him up to come to my local park since his parents never drove him anywhere. were sort of in touch now, mutual followers on IG, but that was honestly one of my favorite moments skating.

at my local park there was also four of us, and some that would join our crew for short periods of time, but they fell out of skating quick or moved away. one of them got into cars, got married and had 3 kids, then joined the military. another became homeless for a little then started getting on good terms with his mother. he eventually started living with her again and just works non stop. we both feel like we would have been a lot better at skating if he never fell off it after getting dumped by his ex girl. things happen though, not always for the best. he looks at skating as a waste of time, which is a shame because he was really good. the last one had a very big skating personality when i met him, but i feel like he would lie a lot about his injuries during skating and wouldn't want to try new things. kinda like he was scarred to fall or something. he was my best friend for a long time, but we only related in skating so when we tried doing new things together it wouldn't hit the same as skating. he also joined the military.

sorry for a wall of text, but this post was too fun to read to not make a response myself!

[bartlaser]

They all quit in high school and became townies.

[IUTSM]

USA/New England, was 18 in 2003.

6 people from the skating while growing up died from suicide and drugs, 2 were under 25, 1 under 30, the others 35 and under.

The other 2 who are alive don’t skate and just work their working class jobs, live in the same place as always.

Im pretty fortunate to be alive because i also had some close calls. Even more fortunate to love skating and to still be pushing. Meeting new people to skate with is dope as fuck too

Roll in Peace, y’all. Don’t ferget to tell ya homies u love them

[D10S]

most of them are on a regiment of rogaine, preparation H and viagra...

[astro]

one of them became a wrestler which is pretty cool, another one died....that sucked. most seem to be teetering between weekend warrior and *i used to skate*

[Plan9Customs]

I started in LeRoy Illinois (population 2000)in the early 80s. No one skated.
Mid 80s moved back to California and had a little crew so, 1 dead(suicide in h.s.), 1 went to prison, 1 owns a business and still skates and still rips, 1 in the hills growing weed, 1 has been working for DLX for 20 years.

[somethingmustbreaknow]

started around 2000 with couple of friends from school and the neighbourhood. from the original six guys core crew i am the only one who is still at it
1. stopped skating after learning basic ollie, manual stuff to play football ("succer"). he now owns and operates a gas station. doing well, no kids
2. stopped after 10 years or so due to chronic back pains coming from office work. he now works as a programmer in the car industry. landed our first kickflips down 2, 3, 4, 5 and six stairs together over the years.
3. stopped after 3-4 years. no real reason. lost interest, got more into going out and meeting girls and stuff. went to university, he is now in credit risk management for a big banking institute and has a kid. he always had good varial heelflips, like the only one in our crew who could do them consistently
4. same, stopped after 3-4 years. no real reason. went to university, he is a now a big tech software developer guy and has a kid
5. stopped skating after 10 years due to constantly rolling his ankle and because of his ankle gettign swollen after some light skating all the time. works in logistics now. no kids, got quite into fitness and his girlfriend is a fitness-tattoo model kind of girl.
from my later crew of five guys, where we went on trips, filming missions and so on, four still skate, and we skate regularly.

[BootsWithTheFerg]

Ones a mean junk man and the others marsh full of leeches cos playing as man

[Sleazy]

In high school we had 17 people in a 4 grade span who skated consistently. Answered to the best of my knowledge.

3 computer software 1 married no kids
3 music industry 1 married with kid I believe
1 film industry not married
1 property developer married with kid
1 banking married with kids
3 snowboard industry 1 with new baby not sure who married
1 history teacher not married
1 material designer not married
1 unknown
1 died in a small plane crash
1 industrial sales, me married w two children

7 kids out of 17 guys. Not exactly repopulating the earth.

Sounds like a solid, high functioning crew. Curious where this was? Was it a well know city. Some random town, etc

[Síota]

I had to look them up on Facebook, only one is still skating (no clue if he stopped and restarted thou).

The rest all quit and got huge like non where even remotely cubby as kids/teens. One posts not stop pictures of his cat, weed and prescription pills (like a hand full everyday). One other dude looks happily married, his little bro has kids and is into golf. The last is working at some brewery.

[pizzafliptofakie]

Me and my three other neighborhood friends all started the same summer and I think within two years I was the only one left. Two of them just sorta got bored of it and got into other things, and one of them fell in with some troublemaker kids and had a weird few years. From what I gather he still follows skateboarding through the lens of occasional viral Instagram reels.



That was a fun summer. We would have stick ollieing contests and primo tic tack races in the driveway, unburdened by the frivelous knowledge of wheelbase or rep. Those were the days.

[biggums mcgee]

Most quit by age 20

One has a PhD in philosophy & spends a lot of time volunteering for the communist party of America

One became a C list model

One moved to the Asheville area and started a family / self sustaining hobby farm

One died in a motorcycle accident a month after graduating high school

One went to college & didn't want to learn how to skate / didn't want to get hurt in the town's giant concrete park

Most did the get older/too into partying routine.

Second wave, one of them teaches kids how to skate as a side hustle in the Reno area. He's always sending me photos of spots he sees out there. Seems like that area has a lot of untapped potential

[truthislie]

Small town in Europe (15,000 people), I had 2 different crews (since I refused to stop when most of my first crew did), below are some that I´m still pretty close to and even call them my best friends. All in all it must have been around 20 people. No burn outs in any way that I can think of in both crews (thank god). Still cool how a lot of my friendships started with skateboarding.

- social worker, unmarried
- architect, unmarried
- doctor, married 3 kids
- engineer for a food company, married 1 kid
- online sales manager, 2 kids
- working in a landscaping company, unmarried
- owning a landscaping company (a different one), unmarried
- sales guy at a shop similar to homedepot, unmarried

I myself became a teacher and have a kid

However there was a crew in the same town in the late 90s/early 00s we were cool with, but they more or less only pretended to skate and pretty much exclusively got into drugs/heroin. I don´t know too much about these guys but I think and hope most of them got out of this shit.

[TwisT]

B- high school homie put in the most hours with. I think is married now, moved to the middle of no where to avoid vices. He never had a problem with them, but was supper paranoid based on family history. I think he’s a nurse. Doesn’t skate

J - moved to California, has a sick ramp. Live in a small house with too many roommates. Never see any clips.

M - rather drink and party, not at toxic levels, but definitely rather be more social. will skate if you beg. Same board for like over 5 years. Would probably skate more if I was close by.

T - too many small injures, not enough insurance. Struggling to stay well enough to work. Still wants to skate. For a minute he became the resident old head as he still skated spots in our home town. Every once in a while I’d run into a kid in the city and they’d tell me “T use to show me your instagram” which was pretty cool.

A - got an approached to model in the middle of a session. Got into a the car with a stranger. Disappeared for a while. Popped back up as a full fledged model. Feel off the map again, now is a teacher.

S - S was a close homie, and roommate who had issues but was still cool. Going back through a whole host of mental shit. He text me once about how messed up it was that I told him he fucked up by electively leaving his X to try new things, even do she held is reckless, impulsive ass down through all of college. (Something I said passively as a joke) I told him he was fucking fried, and he said that I wasn’t a real friend for supporting him, Drama, drama, drama, we cut each other off. He wasn’t really skating much anymore anyway. I’m still friends with his X. She’s a lawyer with a family.

R - skates not as much as I do, but harder than I do. He’s married and has a kid. Saw him last weekend. Home restoration team lead.

Me - I skate almost daily. Built my life around making skating accessible (live near skate park/spots). Married. Regular 9-5, 2 degrees, kid on the way. ^{fades aways while walking down dirt road}

I started skating by myself so these are really just close at the time,  friends I made along the way to adult hold

[GardenSkater77]

Expand Quote

In high school we had 17 people in a 4 grade span who skated consistently. Answered to the best of my knowledge.

3 computer software 1 married no kids
3 music industry 1 married with kid I believe
1 film industry not married
1 property developer married with kid
1 banking married with kids
3 snowboard industry 1 with new baby not sure who married
1 history teacher not married
1 material designer not married
1 unknown
1 died in a small plane crash
1 industrial sales, me married w two children

7 kids out of 17 guys. Not exactly repopulating the earth.

[close]

Sounds like a solid, high functioning crew. Curious where this was? Was it a well know city. Some random town, etc

Yes, I was lucky. We had 5-6 crews that had common spots. A 6 ft and 5 ft half pipe and a 40 ft long curb and a pool. I grew up in NJ suburbs. NJ in the 90s had a crew in every town. It was a glorious time.

[DISTANT RUMOURS]

- 1 big engineer at a software company 3 kids and still married (great guy, still RIPS)
- 1 died of breast cancer 3 years ago (no wife, no kids)
- 1 became a skateshopowner and has his own clothing company (also still rips > has a kid named Arto!)
- 1 invented those coins to put in shopping carts? Or at least he commecialised it. He was alien workshop flow, had videoparts in local videos, and he was the player of the crew. Got filthy rich, fat and bald. He lives the good life, chills on a yacht and goes to Formula 1 things (wife, two kids)
- 1 became a really big guy in the AI industry
- 1 was really good, started smoking weed ALL day. He became a guy that writes parking tickets
- 1 became addicted to booze, went to the US to drum in a metalband, failed and owns a metalbar now (divorced, 2 kids)
- 1 married a local singer and stayed at home, divorced. No job. 1 kid
- 2 became an architect (both have a wife and 2 kids)
- 1 became a graphic designer for prada, nike, etc.
- 1 became a recordlabel owner that put out noise records. Went broke > cleans houses for a living now. (Wife, 2 kids)

I'm a graphic designer for a really big company. And got a graphic design company of my own as well.

Pretty crazy to read this ... we kinda started the same and all went different routes.

[SelenaGlomez]

Reading through this last night brought about some nostalgic melancholic feelings, wishing y'all the best

[overwaxed]

I grew up in a tiny town in Virginia, but luckily there was a core of 5 skaters - it expanded and contracted a bit here and there, but the 5 of us were the OG's. I was the oldest by a year or so, and had the internet - early slap days and alt.skate-boarding connected me with folks who mailed me mix tapes of skate videos, and I had my finger on skateboarding the most. Anyways I left at 18 or so and moved to slightly bigger city, 2 of the skate homies followed suit. Sadly the two who didn't spiraled into addiction, and ultimately committed suicide. I eventually moved to NYC and now Chicago - I'm still tight with one of the homies, and sadly have had to cut contact with the other as he's deep into alcoholism and mental health issues he refuses to acknowledge. 2000-2004 was the peak of our little skate scene, and 3 of us (myself included) definitely had the raw talent to be great, but we had no resources / shitty spots / no one better than us to motivate us.

[mooraga]

The dude that teached me how to skate and was my buddy the first 3-4 years had to quit cause he got some weird knee problems, he was in pain after every session. He's an divorced architect that had two kids with a french bisexual girl that eventually left him for a girl....

Then most of my OG dudes quit skating and have low income jobs. There's only one still skating hard of all them.

[Kombuch-A-Holic]

Man, I could write a book on all the different groups I've been part of over the years—they all seem to end the same way. I'll just stick to the originals but change their names for privacy.

First, there's Mike, my next-door neighbor. We decided to become skateboarders together one day. He ended up taking the traditional path, working hard, starting a family, and doing the typical family things. No skating. Then there's my second skate friend, John. He was into skating too but got sidetracked by a girl, and they both ended up addicted to meth, which led to a lot of shady situations that nearly destroyed his life. Thankfully, in the last few years, he’s turned things around, found a great partner, earned his GED, and now works three jobs, seeming to really crush it.

Steve, John's former brother-in-law, was also one of my closest skate friends. We put in so much effort skating together, but he succumbed to the same fate. Influenced by his mother and sister, who have caused a lot of damage, he ended up losing control to drugs, cycling in and out of jail, and was recently arrested again for possessing a controlled substance in a school zone.

Our friend Rick ended up in prison for many years after nearly killing someone with a belt buckle. His life has been full of tragic events, and frankly, he's been a terrible father. Then there’s David, who became a recluse, likely due to meth addiction, lost all his teeth, and ended up marrying his cousin's ex-wife, raising his cousin’s kids. It’s a bizarre situation.

And then there’s Eric. His story mirrors the others with drugs and alcohol leading to multiple children being taken away by CPS.

All these devastating outcomes stemmed from their own actions, compounded by drug abuse, toxic relationships, and alcohol. It's clear there’s some deep psychological patterns here, likely tied back to their upbringing—many were abused as children, mimicking the destructive behaviors they saw at home.

I thought my childhood was messed up, but seeing this cycle continue is heartbreaking. It's tough watching people you grew up with making the local news for all the wrong reasons.

TLDR: None of them skate anymore. Their lives were derailed by drugs, alcohol, and toxic relationships.

[Dirty_Dan90]

One hitch hiked to California from Virginia and still lives there but doesn't skate, another one became a farmer and another one became a scientist. I may be the only one left of my crew from high school that still skates. They still the homies because they all used to download skate videos off Lime wire and throw me copies (Baker 3, Good and Evil, Thats Life)

[toe_knee]

They quit

[c-dock]

One of them works at a water treatment plant
One of them works for a landscaper
Another works for an environmental data company taking soil samples and shit
And his brother is a personal trainer

And although I'm the only one who still skates regularly they all still manage to get on the board frequently enough. Honestly we all turned out pretty decent compared to some of our peers. Seen a few skaters from my area go the Brian Wenning route

[c-dock]

when i look back, most kids i started with quit pretty quickly. growing up in the era of playstation/xbox made it easy for kids to quit only the real die hards stuck with it

I can vouch for this, being one of the kids who quit skating during the peak of the PSN/Xbox Live era. Thankfully one of my friends got me back into skating freshman year of HS and we still manage to skate together at least once a month, but some kids we went to school with definitely quit during that time and never got back into it

[Goggzy60]

Of my crew of 6 I guess we are a bit abnormal we all still skate but the guys who always hated skating parks are now the old guys showing the kids how to skate at the park and the me and Brian just skate what we can and when we can I’m the youngest at 31

[RoaryMcTwang]

I'm curious, did the friends who grew up and became successful (working for NASA, getting PHD's, becoming lawyers, etc..), live in a particular area, or grow up around the same time?

It seems like burnouts and imprisonment/deaths likely happened in America. I'm basing this off of nothing other than my predetermined bias about being an American myself.

Obviously our case (three university professors out of three skaters in our crew) is a ridiculous coincidence, but the surroundings definitely played a part, suburbs of Hamburg, Germany, pretty much the middle of the middle class, all safe and quiet and generally not crazy rich but affluent enough never to really have to worry about money, plus higher education in Germany is free so we all could just go to university and study what we were interested in.  We got it incredibly lucky. There were drugs etc around of course but it never really went much beyond weed and going to prison or dying young was pretty much unheard of.

[PapaSquat]

4 of us. 1 death (OD), 1 is a skate teacher and accountant, 1 had a recent DUI and no job last time we talked, and I still skate weekly but I'm underemployed af and jaded about skating these days. I haven't talked to those dudes since the funeral a couple years ago and I have no intention to. Good memories, but the glory days have long since past. We don't know each other anymore. Sorry I needed to vent