Encounters with Pro Skaters

[pesto166]

the first pro i met when i was a kid was frank gerwer.  (i didn't know who he was at the time) i was at wallenburg high, and this dude (frank) came up to me all sketch and tried to sell me a used deck for 5 bucks, but i was like "fuck that," he's just gonna take my money and run.  Later on i realized who he was cuz he had a huge nose (no offense to him) and he looked like him. 

my friend was also skating at alameda park and he saw pancho moler and rob welsh. welsh was trying a varial flip over a can, and my friend tried doing it.  he got pissed and pushed my friend into the deep end.  (i know its bad ettiquete to try the same trick, but my friend was like 12 at the time)

how was the first time u met a pro? i'm sure most of them are cool, but were any of them dicks?

[Nancy Chin The Manicurist]

i'm pretty short, so meeting Daniel Castillo for the first time and seeing that i was a few inches taller than him was very very exciting for me.

[PhillyMetrospective1995]

Daniel Castillo is a cool dude.

I remember meeting Richard Mulder at UCLA in like early '96 (okay, so he was AM at the time). He was with Daniel's cousin who was filming him on the old John Wooden rail (he K-grinds it in Mouse). Richard was really cool. I was a penniless kid; he bought me a soda for showing him some skate spots on the campus. Definitely made my week. Thanks, Richard.

[Paper Crane]

i'm invisible to all pros. 

[Kill Whitey]

I saw Chris Roberts at The Counter, and we ate lunch. It was cool.

[DEDBBIS]

I saw Geoff Rowley and Ed Templeton scoping out a rail in Irvine. There aren't many skaters I feel like bothering so those are the only two I've talked to.

[toque]

Daniel Castillo is a cool dude.

I remember meeting Richard Mulder at UCLA in like early '96 (okay, so he was AM at the time). He was with Daniel's cousin who was filming him on the old John Wooden rail (he K-grinds it in Mouse). Richard was really cool. I was a penniless kid; he bought me a soda for showing him some skate spots on the campus. Definitely made my week. Thanks, Richard.

always hear only the best about richard mulder.  thanks for the story.  



One time I was supposed to get water for matix team at some signing and I came back with a bag full of water bottles and they totally all had water bottles already and danny brady said "do you have anything a bit...stronger?"  

I also stood behind mike rusczyk in line at safeway while he was buying wine.  

at the novato park once tony trujillo skated around a bit and then he would go out to the little benches and this girl would feed him french fries

[Lenny the Fatface]

I talked to Chris Roberts and Mike Mo about North Carolina skate spots.  I wanted to talk to Jesus Fernandez, but that nigga's english is weaker than I thought it was.  

I also saw Biebel, Castillo, Calloway and Eldridge (but didnt hold a conversation with them), everyone is shorter and skinnier in real life.

[danker]

I smoked hash with tom penny at macba the first time I was there. He was a really cool guy

[PhillyMetrospective1995]

Forks/Knives: Absolutely! Funny -- I met Daniel for the first time last month. I told him that story and he started laughing. He said something like, "Yeah, I can picture Richard doing that." Definitely stuck with me. Skateboarding was so much smaller then.

[ThatOneGuy]

I meet danny garcia, kelleen james, and bobby worrest, and some am i didnt recognize at an es contest.

Danny wasn't skating.
kelleen was trying to film a line.
Bobby skated the bowl for a few minutes then played SKATE with some kids outside the park.

They were all pretty cool guys.

[Blue Fescue]

I saw Jerry Hsu and clark Hassler at a strip club in Portland.  They were the only ones at the tipping bar.

[WonkaBar]

i saw pj ladd do a backside noseblunt making it look as easy as a noseslide. then i just kept walking

[WWD4D?]

I went to a party that Matt Ball threw like a week or two back. Well, actually, it was to celebrate this one chicks birthday but they had it at Matt Balls house. The first thing I saw when I walked in to the house was Matt and two dudes wrestling on his kitchen floor. Everyone had formed a circle around them and was watching them and cheering them on.
Baca showed up a little later on too. He showed up with some big black dude and spent most of the party making out with this one chick.

[DEDBBIS]

spent most of the party making out with this one chick.

[get some]

summer of '02, I had just moved out to San Diego from nowheresville, Illinois but I was in Costa Mesa with some friends the first weekend I moved out. We're out front of a Red Robin standing around when I see the cook come out and say "Hey Richard, let's go skate sometime this week" I turn around and there was Richard Mulder 5 feet away. That was my introduction to Southern California, skated with Smolik and some other peeps that summer. Good times, but socal is ultimately hot garbage

[ige]

I remember, back in 2003, Reynolds and Spanky came through my country for a day. It was so exciting! No pro had ever been to my country at that time, so the entire local skate community was going apeshit. When they finally arrived i remember seeing hords of kids attacking Reynolds, but Spanky was nowhere to be found. There was this kid next to me, with a trucker hat (backwards), shorter than me, standing and chilling. Little did i know, that was Spanky! So he autographed on this random piece of paper and drew over my shoe's Adio logo and wrote Emerica instead. Damn, that thing was great!

But yeah, recently there have been alot of European pros visiting my country. Probably because of cheap booze and cigarrettes. The most resent visitors were Wes Kremer and Dallas Rockvam and i'd say Marius Syvanen too, though he's from Finland.



If anyone even says shit about Enis's fakie tre, then i'm going to fucking punch you! That's not a yo flip, he's just soooo good at skateboarding, that he just floats above his board when he's doing tricks.

[McDuff]

there was an enjoi demo at sayreville park in nj. the park was packed so we went across the street to some ledge. we were pretty much done, sitting around and the enjoi dudes rolled up. clark and jose were the only ones skating it (clark does nosegrind 180, and jose does a smith in the enjoi vid). all of them were really cool especially caswell and tony manfre. we were trading stories about dumb shit weve done when we were stoned.

i used to see kerry, pete, kevin taylor and jimmy gorecki a bunch when i lived in philly. all super nice.

[jacquesknife]

Rodney Mullen, Rune Glifberg, Pat Ngoho = very cool

Chris Senn = rude

[Numeral]

Geoff and Ed i used to see them a lot, the last time right before i went to college, also Drew and some of the other pros who used to live in Huntington Beach.
The dudes who used to skate pier 7, The chief in SF, and Laban the juggler haha.

yeah most of them look different in person, like shorter and use huge boards that you wouldn't even think (Rowley always had a 8.25 board and he's like 5'7", Greco also uses a really wide board)

the one i spoke to the most i think was Rowley, mostly about skateboarding, volcom and soccer.

[Beer Keg Peg Leg]

I met Jack Curtin at a skatepark in Indonesia when I was in like 6th grade. He was cool, I let him watch me do a kickflip on flat yo wassup.

[Donkey Lips]

saw justin eldridge buying bud light once.  my friend who doesnt skate, saw him and said outlook "you see that dude? his eyes are way to close together. like some reverse fetal alcohol syndrome". eldridge turns around and stares straight at me.  sorry dude.

when i was a pup and appleyard was still an am, i saw him at a skatepark and he was giving away free birdhouse shit to everyone at the park.  he turns to me and was like "oh sorry you didnt get shit" and gave me some cds out of his car.  i promptly traded them to my friend for his gigantic birdhouse sticker that was like a fucking bed sheet, stuck it to my garage wall and my dad yelled at me for it.

[Sony MDR V2 Headphones]

I met Rob Welsh and Harold hunter and the rest of the 2004 Zoo Crew. Rob and Harold signed my dollar on both sides. I still have it, and it's one of my most cherished possessions.

Met Mike V twice. First time he was a dick, second time he was really cool. Levi Brown was there killing it when he was just on flow.

Met Steve Cab, Patrick Melcher, and Danny Gonzales in 07. They were all really nice. I asked Cab to sign this poster made out to "Cracked Out Clay" and he wrote "Stay Clean!" on it. COC was stoked.

[Beer Wizard]

The Girl/Chocolate dudes randomly showed up at the shop one day.  Mike Carroll, Rick Howard, Jeron Wilson, and Daniel Castillo.

[j....soy.....]

i met won ton animal chin....true story....

[east is in the house]

I used to take trips down to philly pretty frequently when I was younger, my friends and I didn't know much about spot searching back then and whenever we'd see people skating we'd ask them where we could find spots. Someone told us to head out to West Chester cause the University there had a bunch of dope shit. we go out there, skate around town and run into bam, his two buddys and bam's girl. they were pretty cool....bam told us everything in west chester had been a bust since the 90s and the only thing that was totally bust-free and worth it was back in philly, aka FDR. I never got them to sign anything...bam's really short, like 5 4" or something, and his bitch really isn't as hot as she looked in the cky videos.

[vegan*shawn]

First pro I remember meeting was Mike V when he was still am, he was at a am contest that had a pro demo in Dayton Ohio. He was skating out front of the place with a bunch of us kids, he was trying kickflip wall rides (this was 1986). Later on I meet Mark Heintzman (old Ohio pro for G&S) he was really nice, we where both wearing the same Airwalks, I remember asking him how he got his broken in and he said he let his friends skate them for a week. I also meet Chet Thomas when he rode for Powell, he was in Ohio visiting family and stopped by Sunsports skatepark in Columbus, he ended up knocking himself doing an air on the big ramp, it was scary but funny.
I have meet many pros and ams over the years, most are really chill nice guys.

[Beer Wizard]

If before they were pro counts.  Justin Brock, since before he was flow haha.

[rawbertson.]

one time i fucked popps in the ass while getting a bj from dylan rieder, then gave a reacharound to ricky oyola, and bobby puleo, then titty fucked alex olson, and jizzed on the gonz

[Binomial Nomenclature]

I met that dude^ when his Canadian hip hop tour came through Toronto.