For 2 years in the mid 2010s, I managed the Vans park in Orange. Every year, around Pool Party time, all these washed up mother fuckers come from far and wide to drop the “don’t you know who I am?” act. I could go on for hours. Biggest dicks:
- PLG (no surprises there) - got mad that we were sold out of a certain style of knee pad and said we were making it hard for him to skate.
- Hosoi (again, no surprises) - acted like he forgot the park closed at 10 every night and would stay out there with his kids until 10:45 while everyone was clearly trying to go home.
- Bucky Lasek...there was a small crack in the coping and he said to me “I don’t know if you know this, but cracks aren’t good for skateboarding.”
- Jordan Richter - can’t remember exactly what he got mad about, but to his credit he actually ended up trying to apologize to me by giving me a set of those hammer in bolts.
- CJ Collins/his dad - in fairness to CJ he was like 12 at the time, but he stole an employees credit card and used it at a few different places, spit at employees, and was overall just a little shit. His dad is a Joe Rieder type, so again, hard to truly hold any of that against CJ.
But if you think pros can be jerks, try having to deal with people that are friends with/related to them. Moral of the story is don’t work at the skatepark for more than a few years.