random greco story:
my girl and i were driving north on the 101 a few years back and i spot a nice looking cadillac with some really nice rims in the rear view mirror. very retro. the traffic in l.a. gets pretty horrific so most of the drive was slow as hell. as the car eventually pulls up on the right i recognize it is greco. he's driving alone with wild hair and without a shirt on a hot day. homeboy's blasting music and totally flipping out on the l.a. traffic. he passes me up and cuts me off as he moves into the far left lane (now to the left of me). i casually mention to my girl that it's a professional skateboarder whom i used to compete with in amateur contest. i let her know that he is more about antics and drama instead of cutting edge skateboarding (i say this to impress her, but she doesn't seem impressed). then, right there, after i mention this, and literally a few feet away from the 101 merging lane where the michael douglas character ditches the car and goes on a firing frenzy in the movie "falling down," it happens. jim starts flipping out yelling at the traffic and in between his lane and my lane a bike comes zooming by. at the same time, jim cuts right to get out of his lane and the bike t-bones into his car. this happens right to the left of me in very slow traffic. the bike rolls to the right and the bike dude's foot gets stuck on the peddle and the back wheel to the bike starts burning rubber under the dude's leg. jim then jumps out of his car in full panic. people get out to help the bike dude and jim begins to help. traffic lets up a little and my girl and i drive off.
therefore, although i hated on jim, i felt bad for him and i sincerely think he is a very emotional dude who does exactly what he feels is right. in this clip i don't see him any different. i think it's rad that house of hammers shows all the madness that goes into a trick. shit is hard to watch sometimes but it represents how difficult and dramatic i think skateboarding really is. i also have to give him props for delivering a video part for the deathwish video. anyhow, in j strickland's interview he gives props to jim's creativity and signals him out as the force behind deathwish. i think deathwish is a pretty kool and legit company (sure it has antics), but it has a lot of the lure and legendary skateboarding that baker once had. in fact, if strickland is correct, baker truly began loosing steam after "baker has a deathwish" (an epic classic) and jim and eric left the brand. maybe a coincidence, maybe not.