All language subtitles for Dogtown.And.Z-Boys.2001.LIMITED.720p.BluRay.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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-Hear me out with my question first.
-Okay.

-That question sucked.
-Yeah, man!

l'm trying to explain this to you,
but you're not getting what l'm telling you.

-l don't like that question.
-That was good.

We weren't looking at this
as some kind of future.

There was no promise in it.
There was no nothing in it.

People were really living in the moment.

There were no goals.
There were no aspirations.

lt started here, in this area.

That's where it all started.

You know?
That was the beginning of the revolution.

We were all punk kids, man.
We were tough kids.

And we wanted to be something.

lt turned into, like,
a rock star thing, you know?

We were treated like kings
at places that we went to.

l was on summer vacation
for about 20 years.

It was cool to be in the magazines
and stuff, but, you know,

the bottom line was
all we wanted to do was skate.

Craig understood that, like,

children took the ruins of the 20th century
and made art out of it.

l was, like, 1 2 years old
and l'm reading these articles,

and you don't know where your place is
in the world yet.

And you read these words
and the things that he had to say

and the way he said them

and the photographs that accompanied them
and it was like,

"Wow, l'm really a part of something
incredible, something important."

In 1975, the second issue of
the recently reincarnated

SkateBoarder magazine would feature
"Aspects of the Downhill Slide,"

the first of what would become known
throughout the skateboarding world

as the "Dogtown" articles.

These feature articles chronicled
the adventures and exploits

of Dogtown's Z-Boys.

They were the badasses.
l mean, they were the freaks of the sport.

There was a scary thing about it, like,
"These guys will kick your ass."

They didn't seem like they were
a part of the rest of skateboarding.

lt seemed like they had
their own thing going on.

The Dogtown articles were
the brainchild of 26-year-old artist

and photojournalist Craig Stecyk.

Using a handful of pseudonyms,
Stecyk would conceive, write,

photograph and design the aesthetic

that would come to define
the Dogtown movement.

When we saw you guys in the magazines,
it was, like,

"This is full-on. They're living this."

No one skateboarded, no one rode a board,

no one was as aggressive
or as radical as they ever were.

The Zephyr team had guys
with all different styles,

and, really, it sparked a revolution.

I think the Zephyr team was straight-out

the most influential skateboard team
ever, ever to be assembled.

The Zephyr Skateboard Team
was comprised of 1 2 individuals

from an area in West Los Angeles
known as Dogtown.

They were Shogo Kubo, Bob Biniak,

Nathan Pratt, Stacy Peralta,

Jim Muir, Allen Sarlo,

Chris Cahill, Tony Alva,

Paul Constantineau, Jay Adams,

Peggy Oki and Wentzle Ruml.

There is a place
where America's manifest destiny

collides into the Pacific Ocean.

A place where the fabled Route 66,

the roadway of American dreams, terminates.

This is Dogtown.

There's an invisible line of demarcation

from the north side of Santa Monica
to the south side of Santa Monica.

You're looking at one side of town that
had trophy houses and lots of money.

And you're looking at the south side
that wasn't like that geographically.

It was actually a visible financial line,

where, if you lived above Wilshire,
you had money,

and, if you lived below Wilshire,
you wanted their money.

Dogtown was a territory encompassing
the three beach communities

of South Santa Monica,
Venice and Ocean Park.

This was the last great seaside slum.

This was not the beach
that people came to vacation at.

It was Dogtown, and Dogtown was

a place where you had to have
eyes in the back of your head.

lt was dirty. lt was filthy. lt was paradise.

Dogtown was a faded blip
on the radar screen of popular surfing,

a rundown coastal resort
inhabited by surfers

infamous for their aggressive localism
and outcast behavior.

Surfing in 1 972 or 1 971 was outcast, period.

Surfing was antisocial, generally-speaking,
in the world of things.

lt wasn't the thing you did to
build your self-esteem in society.

It was like... If you were a surfer,
it was like saying you were a dropout.

lt was not necessarily like it is today,

where you've got Kelly Slater
making millions of dollars.

In 1972, 23-year-old surfboard shaper
Jeff Ho,

24-year-old surfboard builder Skip Engblom

and 21-year-old artist Craig Stecyk
joined together to form

Jeff Ho and Zephyr Surfboard Productions.

In reaction to what they felt to be
the mundane world of commercial surfing,

the three scraped together
what little cash they had and set up shop

on the corner of Bay and Main Streets
in the heart of Dogtown.

They were dedicated to
being anti-mainstream,

and they were proud to be anti-mainstream.

I think that we probably started it because
there was nobody else building surfboards

of a certain type
that we kind of envisioned could be built.

They were a specialist surf shop.

lf you wanted the most high-performance
surfboard, this was the shop to come to.

It wasn't like you were going
into a standard surf shop

by any stretch of the imagination.

There was other surf shops,
but they didn't have

the "bad boy" image
as it came out of the whole P.O.P. culture.

They created a whole new identity,
a totally separate, unique identity

in terms of the kind of surfboards
that they made,

the color of the boards,
the way they were shaped,

what Jeff Ho was doing
was kind of revolutionary at the time.

He was exploring
all kinds of design concepts.

Jeff Ho was the most intense person
I've ever worked for

in any business environment my whole life.

Jeff was a madman.
l mean, Jeff would lose it.

He'd lose his temper.

He could just erupt on a moment's notice

and put you through just
the ultimate Chinese water torture

on any little thing.

Jeff Ho was recognized
throughout the coastal region

as an eccentric surfboard shaper

who pushed the boundaries
of conventional surfboard design.

The boards that were coming out of
the Jeff Ho Shop were a different design.

Constantly, Jeff would shape something,
develop it,

try it, and then go on to the next level.

l mean, he was, like, a guy
that was like Howard Hughes.

l mean, he'd make something
and actually fly it.

He was making it, and he was surfing it.

So, he was exploring it
as an engineer and a designer,

and also actually riding it.

We just wanted to create something

that was different than the other boards.

l was trying to develop something
that was new, unique and different.

Inspired by the wall art tradition
of local gangs

and the vivid colors
of the area's vibrant car culture,

Craig Stecyk airbrushed
the Zephyr surfboards

with a look reminiscent of
Dogtown's culturally mixed neighborhoods.

lt was to personalize stuff for the user,

to make something
that wasn't a mass-media,

garbagey piece ofjunk

that had been designed in some factory
for everybody else.

Because we came from
a little bit different environment.

lt was graffiti art. lt was full-blown,
you know, urban graffiti art on surfboards.

It was very much an identification
of an environment,

like where we live. "This is who we are."

Our history is based on lowriders
and hot rods and Latinas.

Like, l'd fantasize about chicks
with huge hair and lowriders.

You know what l'm saying?
Like, you know, little blond girls

named Buffy just weren't my scene.

So, therefore, that wasn't what we were at.

The average surf look at the time,
the aesthetic of surfing,

was very clean, very powder blue,
very beige,

you know, rainbows and sunsets
and sandy beaches kind of a look.

What we were doing was
"the debris meets the sea."

Using the shop as their front,
Jeff Ho and Skip Engblom

formed the Zephyr surf team,

a group made up of the best surfers
in the Dogtown area.

We were in the midst of rebar and concrete,
airbrush saying, "Go home."

lt was a statement saying,
"Nothing's gonna stop us,

"and we're gonna do
whatever the heck we want.

"And screw you if you don't like it.
We don't care."

And that was the attitude,
and that was the attitude in the water,

"We're here and look at us.
lf you don't like it, split."

We weren't really surfers
in a traditional sense.

You know, we're from Venice.

One mile south of the Zephyr shop,

lying directly on the border of
Venice and Santa Monica,

was Dogtown's epicenter,
the Pacific Ocean Park pier.

Around the turn of the century,
visionary land developer Abbot Kinney

set out to create a European-like community,

geared towards art, culture and amusement.

Kinney's dream would become Venice,
California, replete with canals, gondolas,

and a full-scale replica of the colonnaded
square of its Italian inspiration.

The coastal zone that ran from Venice
through Ocean Park and Santa Monica

became the home
to so many amusement park piers

that it earned the reputation
as the Coney Island of the West.

Eventually, only Pacific Ocean Park,
known to the locals as P.O.P.,

an amusement park
atop the old Lick Pier, remained.

They had this park with
all this celebration of humanity

and people having a good time,
and they're free,

and they're out in the ocean and,
you know, the ocean breeze.

And then, all of a sudden,

it turns into the worst nightmare
you've ever imagined.

The party ended in the mid-'60s.

The beachfront expanse running
from Venice through Santa Monica

had become run-down and seedy.

Attendance at the once-magnificent
Pacific Ocean Park plummeted,

and in 1967 it closed,

and soon thereafter became a no-man's-land.

A place where pyromaniacs, junkies,
artists and surfers

could excel in symbiotic disharmony.

lt was kind of like the circus had left town.
lt was a little scary for some people.

lt was like this dead Wonderland.

I mean, you know, you've got
this carcass of all these rides

that are rusted and falling apart.

And it's like, you can hear the voices
and the ghosts of the people

that were having so much fun there,
and kids like me that were making out

in the sky balls that were going across
at 1 3, you know.

It's like everything that
was wonderful and fantastic

suddenly has gone to death
in this decrepit way.

And everybody had to
live with that every day.

Burrowed deep within the derelict pier
and shielded from view was the cove,

a secret surfing spot wedged between
a jail cell of broken and decayed pilings.

This was the most dangerous place
l surfed in California. There's no question.

You're taking off basically in front of piers.
You're riding through piers.

There's wood floating around.
There's debris.

You could get impaled on, like, a fallen
roller coaster track or, like, a piling.

You knew if you made a mistake
that you were gonna pay in flesh.

l mean, you could easily hit your head
underwater, go unconscious and drown.

There was one piling in the beginning
that had fallen,

called the angle piling,
which you could go through it.

That was a tricky thing to do.

It was one takeoff spot,
and you had to be an aggressive,

"This is my wave. l'm going.
Don't cut me off,"

because, if you did get cut off,

you were in the pilings,
you broke your surfboard in half.

I'd never seen that many surfboards break
in my life.

Adorning the ruins surrounding the cove

were spray-painted signs,
warning intruders to keep out.

You didn't go near that place
if you didn't live there

or know the people,
because you were gonna get hurt.

That was an extremely heavy local spot.

There was a lot of fights.

You know, people would just physically
stop you and say, "You can't surf here."

lt wasn't that we didn't want
other people to surf the place,

but just that other people would come in
and do stupid things to jeopardize your life.

There's limited resources here, man.

There's 1 0 waves every 1 5 minutes,
and there ain't enough for you, pal.

You had to earn your rights
of passage on the land

by your actions on the land and in the water.

You had to go up on the pier
with a wrist rocket,

hang out and shoot Vals
that came out there, you know.

We would just fly things at
people that we didn't know.

They saw guys that came to the pier
that weren't from the area,

they threw down
pieces of concrete on them.

We'd start firing tiles at them.

All kinds of shit, you know?

People'd throw glass, rocks,

whatever you could get your hands on.

It was really kind of neat because
the water all around was, like, exploding,

as shit was flying at them.

lf they didn't want anybody else
surfing there,

nobody was going to surf there.
That's all there was to it.

Best thing I ever saw was
someone paddle out in the water

with the guy's carburetor
on top of his surfboard.

And goes, "Hey, does this belong to you?"
And dropped it in the water.

You weren't just gonna drive up,
pull your car up and go,

"Wow, what a nice left.
Look, the T's breaking. Let's go out."

You had to earn your way into that, man.

Working their way up through the rubble
and rebar of P.O.P.

was Dogtown's next generation,

a group of aggressive young surfers
who were all eager

to make their mark in hopes of
becoming part of the Zephyr team.

lt's almost like a Mafia, you know?
You get good enough surfing in the water,

and, all of a sudden,
you're a made man now.

And once you got on the Zephyr team,
you had entrée.

You're part of their group.

Getting sponsored by the Zephyr team
as a kid was nirvana.

lt was, like, "Yeah, man!

"They like my moves. They like my...
l'm doing it. l can do it. l'm doing it."

lf you were wearing
the navy blue Zephyr shirt,

you were the shit in the neighborhood.

When we were out here, it was reflecting
more the hardcore urban side of the fence.

You know, the Zephyr crew
was more street kids.

Most of us came from broken homes,
living with our mothers.

Jeff and Skip were like the parent symbol
in the equation.

Skip and Jeff really nurtured

the kind of discarded kids that
wouldn't have had a place to go.

The shop provided identity.

lt was more like a place
where you can go and hang out

and be in the Bay Street environment.

lt was much more like a clubhouse.

Everybody, like, had a little job.

You had to either fix dings
or sweep the floor

or, you know, roll joints for Jeff in the back.

You also knew that behind that door,

there was stuff going on
that no one talked about.

lt was lowbrow and wild and "screw you."

I think there was a lot of
family dysfunctionalism going on,

and l think some of that
came out aggressively

in their surfing and in their skating.

The Zephyr team, in a weird way, because
of the financial insecurity of the area,

people looked at this and went,
"Man, l got to make it now."

We were all hungry for recognition.

So we all put out maximum effort.
We all... That's all we did.

lt was a performance-based environment.

lt was a very, very demanding
group of people

because they knew what performance was.

lf you didn't come out and really perform,

l remember Jeffjust, like, leaving.

We worked. We...worked.

You know, creating new moves,
new this, new that.

Everybody brought something to the team.

Everybody did something different.

Everybody had a different style.

And that's what
the whole thing was all about.

The aggressive performance ethic
infused into these young skaters

by Jeff Ho and Skip Engblom

would eventually result in the undoing
of the entire Zephyr organization.

In the late '50s, skateboarding became

the popular after-surfing activity
of the Malibu beach crowd.

Early on, skateboards took their shape
in the form of small surfboards,

and the maneuvers performed on
the boards were strictly surfing-inspired.

Then, beginning in 1963,

skateboarding began to emerge as
an alternative sport for American teenagers.

California manufacturers,
such as Makaha, Hobie and Jack's,

began forming teams as skateboard
competitions began springing up.

Many of skateboarding's early champions,

skateboarders such as Danny Bearer,
Torger Johnson,

John Fries, Woody Woodward,

Bruce Logan, and the Hilton brothers,
Davie and Stevie,

were among the first
to give the sport a stylistic aesthetic.

For a brief, fleeting period,
skateboarding gained national popularity,

but this popularity would be short-lived.

Skateboarding crashed in 1965.

Virtually overnight,
the young sport disappeared.

Back then, if you skateboarded,

the first thing that came out of
someone's mouth is,

"lsn't that just like the Yo-Yo?
lsn't that the same thing as a Hula Hoop?"

By the early '70s, skateboarding was viewed
as just another passing kiddie fad,

and only the most hardcore
enthusiasts practiced it

as it became nearly impossible
to purchase a commercial skateboard.

lf you wanted a skateboard back then,
you had to go to the thrift store,

buy a pair of roller skates with clay wheels,
cut them in half...

Then, go out in your garage and try
and find an old drawer out of a dresser

that was a nice, half-inch or
three-quarter-inch oak, if you were lucky.

Or go down to the hardware store,
and we'd buy, like, a solid piece of oak

or maple or whatever.

Borrow a Skilsaw or band saw...

Make it like a surfboard shape, you know?

And whip it out.

We used to go to Sears,
like the sporting goods section of Sears,

and we'd go in with tools
with just our deck that we made custom,

and we'd put all the new parts
from the stock boards on the shelf.

-Right.
-One guy would be watching.

Two guys would be just taking all the parts.
And then we'd just cruise out of there.

Boards were equipped with clay wheels,
the pinnacle of Stone Age technology.

You had to worry about hitting rocks,
sliding out.

Any crack in the sidewalk is
a hazard to your health.

Or a pebble... You hit a pebble,
and the wheel would instantly lock up.

Your board would come to a screeching halt

and you'd fly and you'd smash cement.

In 1972, East Coast surfer Frank Nasworthy
came upon a great notion,

that the petroleum-based product urethane
might make a good substitute for clay.

So, he created Cadillac Wheels,

which would pave the way
for the coming skateboard revolution.

These urethane wheels would just...
It was almost like a 4-wheel drive now,

where the car would just grab the ground.

And you could really, really make hard turns.

lt was the whole beginning
of what skateboarding is today, period.

We were just getting into surfing then,

and you could only surf
in the morning around here

because it blows out,
the wind blows out the waves around 1 0:00.

So, you have the rest of the day
to do something, so we skateboarded.

We used to skateboard at this place
called Bicknell Hill.

I mean, it ran right down the street
from the Zephyr surf shop.

We started skating outside the shop
at first, 'cause we were all surf rats

and we were hanging around the shop,
and then they decided

to put this team together and
we all started skating on Bicknell Hill there.

And we were trying to get real low
and, you know,

we would, like, be looking at the surf
and riding this hill

and dropping in and sliding and doing
cutbacks, like we were riding a wave.

We'd work on our Berts, and then
we'd set up cones and do our slaloms.

And, you know, it was really fun
practicing on Bicknell together.

Surfing had everything to do
with everything,

and skating just kind of went along after,
when the waves weren't good.

That's when you skated.

Surfing was it, and skateboarding was

just an extension of our surfing.

l remember being in
the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium,

watching Hal Jepsen's surf film,
Super Session.

And a young Hawaiian surfer named
Larry Bertlemann came on the...

Larry Bertlemann was the fundamental
impact on the Z-Boys thing.

The Z-Boys thing was,
"Larry Bertlemann on concrete."

That's what we were all trying to do,

because Larry Bertlemann
just blew doors on everybody.

He, like, put his hands on the wave.

He was one of the first guys
that I remember doing that.

So we started copying that on the ground.

Larry Bertlemann exploded the status quo
of surfing upright

and redefined the idea
of what could be done on a surfboard.

When l saw Larry Bertlemann in a movie

do a cutback, I wanted to copy that

more than anything in life itself
on a skateboard.

lf l couldn't do it in the water,
l'll do it on a skateboard.

We were surfers, first and foremost.

And the low, pivotal style in surfing
is really functional.

It also has a beautiful aesthetic.

We used to call them, "Do a 'Bert."'

And we'd do that on the banks.
Even on the flat ground, we'd do it.

Five miles northeast of the Zephyr shop,

located in the elite neighborhood of
Pacific Palisades,

was Paul Revere Junior High School.

Three miles east of Paul Revere Junior High
was Kenter Canyon Elementary School.

Four miles east of Kenter
was Bellagio Elementary School.

Three miles south of Bellagio
was Brentwood Elementary.

And four miles further south of Brentwood
was Mar Vista Elementary.

These five schools were built
at the base of steep hillsides

or burrowed within deep canyons,

with walls of banked asphalt constructed
to level out the sprawling playgrounds.

I think skaters were significant
because they actually

took those environments
and they reworked them

and made them into something different,
that was more human, I think,

than what the architects
originally had planned.

That was where it started for us.
That was like our original skate park.

We would just ride bikes there,
with our skates on our handlebars.

Skate all day and break our boards,
and then ride back,

fix our boards and come back the next day.

These perfectly-tapered
waves of black asphalt

would allow for the virtual transmission
of surfing-born maneuvers to concrete.

We were surfing these asphalt waves.

That's what we were doing with the skating.
So we had a surf-skate style

because we had the waves to ride it on.

We were, like, riding really hard and low

and really doing a lot of sliding,
and, like, thrusting kind of moves.

We were always touching the pavement.

lt was all about feeling what you're doing.

Feeling your wheels grinding
and pivoting around your hands.

I just wanted to ride more banks,
go faster, do better turns.

We were totally emulating all of these surfers
that we idolized, on skateboards.

Instilled within all the Dogtown skaters
was a devotion to style.

Going big worked only as long
as you looked good doing it.

You could get all the maneuvers,

but having great style was
what you were really shooting for.

Style was, like, the most important thing.

Style was everything.

l think that was one thing that
really bound us all together, too,

was that we all possessed a surf style.

There was no one in our group
that wasn't fluent.

Individual style was
who you are as an individual.

Whatever flair that you were throwing in,

that's just an extension
of you as your personality.

And everybody's personality is different,
so everybody's style was different.

There were surfers with good style,

and there were surfers that we would call
"cockroach style," or no style, you know.

And if you had a bad style,
right there you had one mark against you.

'Cause you had to look at it.
You had to watch someone.

lf they were skating with a funky style,
they were stinking up the area. You know?

So, after a while,
"Hey, you can't watch that guy.

"He smells." You know?

l mean, the blues are three chords,
but every guy that plays the blues

plays the blues differently,
because that's their own style, right?

We weren't making money off of it,
we didn't think there was any future in it,

and we were doing it
because we loved doing it.

ln the '70s, California experienced
the worst drought on record,

and the city government wouldn't
allow you to water your lawn.

You weren't even allowed to serve water
at a restaurant.

And so, what happened is,
all these swimming pools,

which are abundant in Southern California,
were drying up.

California's drought served as a midwife
to the skateboard revolution,

as hundreds of pools
across the Los Angeles basin

were left empty and unused.

Once pool riding came in, you know,
that's like all that we wanted to do.

We were, like, the first people that
were riding these empty swimming pools,

and we had no idea what you could do.

l remember the first goal, the first day,
was to make it over the light.

That was the first accomplishment
in the pool,

was to "over the light" successfully.

From there, we started doing double carves
and hitting tile on both sides.

Our goal was to get to the lip
and to actually hit the lip of the pool, so...

lt was, like, completely foreign,
mentally and physically.

But the fact that we were surfers, we knew
which movements needed to be done.

We just didn't know
if they were possible yet.

Then it got to the point
where we were getting on one wheel.

All the other three wheels are
out of the pool.

That one wheel's on the coping
above the tile and flying back in.

We were definitely the first guys,
l mean, the whole Dogtown crew

to really take it to the top, to the lip,

and actually grind and pivot on the lip.

You have to understand that,
what they were doing on skateboards,

it just had never been done
anywhere else before.

There was just no such thing.

In a covert convergence,
skaters would come from miles around

to savor the fleeting,
illicit thrills of skateboarding inside

a recently-discovered backyard pool.

Once we found a couple of good spots,

we knew that
there was more of them available,

and we just kept scouring the neighborhood.

We did extensive searching,
looking for backyard pools.

We would drive up and down the alleys
in the Valley,

standing on the roofs of the cars.

Jay got on the top of my car,
and we're driving down alley after alley

in Beverly Hills,
and Jay is on the top of my car, going,

"No. No... Wait! Wait!" You know.

We'd go up and down the alleys
on our bicycles

and jump up and look over the fences.

We'd go up and down canyons, and take
vantage points, and we had binoculars.

We went to places where
the pool was completely filled in with dirt.

We dug out an entire swimming pool
so that we could skate it.

We would find some that were full of water,

but they had to be emptied
one way or another.

l mean, they just had to...

The water had to go and they had to be
ridden, man, you know what l mean?

At one point, we were so guerilla about it,

we had electric pool pumps,
gasoline-operated pool pumps,

hundreds of yards of drainage hose,

brooms, everything you needed.

There was plenty of times we found pools
and we'd throw the pump in there,

throw a wire over a wall, find a live socket.

Didn't know the house, didn't know
any of the neighbors, any of the people.

Water would be running out...

And we'd drain a 30,000-gallon
swimming pool in less than four hours.

Any house that was up for sale,
that had a pool,

nine times out of ten it was drained,
or maybe it had two feet of water in it.

We'd drain the rest out, and we'd skate
until the cops came, and then we'd split.

The tension was really high.

And you had to do what you had to do
here and now.

It didn't come later.

When you have an empty swimming pool
that you know might only be open

for a day, or a day and a half, and that's it,
you've got to skate it for as long as you can.

You had to almost, like,
time yourself to be in there,

trying to get there early in the morning,
trying to get a few runs,

and get out of there before the cops came,
you know?

lt was totally just illegal barging sessions.

And as soon as we heard either sirens,
screeching tires,

someone would yell the magic words, "Bail!"
and we were out of there.

You could definitely get arrested.

l mean, you could probably get charged
a lot of money,

because, let's face it, the pools weren't
the same after we got done with them.

My dad would have killed me, bro.

He would have killed me
if he had to pay that kind of money.

Part of it was the thrill of knowing
that the police could come anytime.

We got caught skating in the Canyon Pool,

and I was hiding up in the tree
looking down,

and there was cops below me looking for us.

And l was afraid l was gonna drop my
skateboard and nail them in the head.

And then l thought,
"God, l'm gonna be arrested for,

"you know, assault and battery."

lf we got caught at a location,

we'd go back the next day, and we would
figure out how to not get caught that way.

So, if they came in the front,
we'd post a lookout in the front.

lf they came in through the back,
we'd post a lookout in the front and back.

We'd go through the side yard, you know?

You got to understand, man,
this is concrete warfare we're talking about.

This is... You know, you might find a pool,

and it's here today, maybe gone tomorrow.

lf you're gonna ride it,
you'd better get on that shit.

I see there ain't nobody out there

that even wants to be a little bit mellow,
now is there?

Anybody wants to get mellow,
you can turn around

and get the...out of here, all right?

With the drought in full effect,
there was nothing to prevent

invading skaters from turning
someone's backyard paradise

into a riotous ensemble.

No pool was left untouched,
and any kid could be king for a day.

There'd be five or ten guys
really rocking and rolling in the bowl.

Each pushing each other's limits.
lt was an incredible scene.

You could feel the energy
coming out of the pool. It was intense.

Just to be there standing on the deck
was hardcore,

because you were privy to something

that you don't readily see anywhere else,
you know?

If you were in the pool, standing in there,
getting ready to take a run,

you were even badder.
But if you were an actual player,

you know, busting moves and
pushing the limits of the session going on,

you were a straight-out punk rock star.
l mean, big time.

We pushed each other all the time.

We pushed and praised.
You'd come off of a heavy grind,

and then all your bros are hooting.

We were getting each other's
adrenaline levels so high,

that's how the stuff evolved.

On any given day, anybody was the best.

It was almost like
a daily competition between all of us

to see who could pull off the hottest shit.

And then we'd look up into the shallow end
at each other and go, "Wow!"

When Tony Alva, or Stacy Peralta,
or Jay Adams, or Shogo, or Biniak, or Muir,

any of these guys steps into a pool,

it's like, even if they didn't know them,
as soon as these guys rode,

other people would just want to sit down
and watch and learn.

l mean, that's what it really was.
You talk about special.

So many other sports
are so derivative of something else.

Even what Michael Jordan does,
you know, other people play basketball,

and he took it to another level.

And skateboarding, in a very great sense,
comes from surfing.

But when Tony and Jay and Stacy
started doing it, it was like

it was coming from a whole new realm.

We really didn't know what was possible.

lt had never been done before.

l think that people sometimes think that

we were thinking about all this
when it was happening.

Nobody was thinking about it
when it was happening.

l think we talked about it afterwards,
after, like, actually trying these things,

-but it was pretty much spontaneous.
-There were no precedents.

They set precedents every single day
when they went out and rode.

We worked so hard to get those pools

that we didn't want
other people going there,

because we knew if we took other people,

they'd bring other people, and eventually,
the pool would be lost.

We'd just keep them really, like, low profile.

You know, we wouldn't let
anybody know about them.

It was almost like a local surf spot
where, you know, you're not coming in.

And if you came in without our permission,
you were gonna get whupped.

You didn't show up with somebody
at the pool.

You had to have a meeting
about that kind of shit.

You had to have a meeting,
and that had to be voted.

You could argue about it,
do whatever you want.

Bottom line was,
you didn't clear it with the crew,

and you brought someone to the pool,
you know what'd happen?

You couldn't skate the pool.

l'm not shitting you. Almost happened to me.

Let's hold it one second.

With the invention of the urethane wheel

and the ability to ride new terrain
came a groundswell of enthusiasm

as skateboarding once again began to grab
the attention of teens across the country.

Rumors of a national contest
began circulating,

prompting Ho and Engblom
to build and equip their team

with boards and a ragtag uniform.

We had these shirts, we had Levis,
and we had dark blue Vans.

And that was our uniform,
and everybody complied to that.

That's what we wore. That's just
what came up from the neighborhood.

Well, we all pretty much
had grown up together,

you know,
and we had all been riding together,

so there was a lot of camaraderie there.

And yet, at the same time,
there was a competitive drive.

You know, from that P.O.P. energy,
where everyone was riding each other.

lf you're not gonna do well,
you don't deserve to do this, right?

That's what made us, like,
a step above everybody,

is that we were used to
competing with each other.

One of Z-Boys was
always with one of Z-Boys.

And, like, we were so tightly knit as a group

that we sort of used
each other's different qualities

to come up with a style which, in the end,
ended up being unique, you know.

We each had our own style, but it was really
a combination of all of us flowing together.

And Skip and Jeff sort of
assessing our moves, and saying,

"Yeah, that looks good, man."

I remember Skipper coaching me
on how to hold my hands.

And that l was holding my hands wrong,
and that it looked bad, it was bad style.

The skateboard team was good

because it gave everybody
a sense of regimentation.

You know, something that you did from
3:00 till 5:00 every day or, you know...

You know, it's like daycare.

Skip would really hassle you
if you screwed up,

but, at the same time,
he would take your time

and give you the gentle pat on the back.
A little advice.

He kept us in line.
He wanted us to be radical.

He wanted us to be out there
in the limelight. He wanted us to be visible.

He wanted our moves to be recognized.
He wanted all of that stuff for us.

But what he didn't want was,
he didn't want us in jail,

he didn't want us getting
run over by the buses

when we were doing Berts
under the back wheels.

You know? But, at the same time,
he wanted us to be rad.

lf you looked at the story
of Peter Pan and The Lost Boys,

Pan took the children
and they defeated Captain Hook, right?

But in my world,
and in the world of the Zephyr shop,

l would be Captain Hook.

And we, essentially, defeated Pan,
and we've turned them all into pirates.

In 1975, Bahne skateboards, the leading
manufacturer of boards and wheels,

resurrected competition by spearheading

the first major skateboard contest
since the mid 1960s,

the Del Mar Nationals.

The competitive setup was
based on a classic '60s model.

A plywood ramp with a top coat of urethane
was built for slalom racing,

and a small wooden platform
was erected for freestyle.

Attention all skaters,
please report to the freestyle area.

All skaters to the freestyle area.

The dated contest format did not end there,

as many of the top competitors were
performing the upright maneuvers

made popular during
skateboarding's brief boom in the '60s.

We get to Del Mar and there's this
little freestyle area that's about 1 2 by 1 2,

with plywood and some urethane coating
on it or something.

And we're looking at each other, going,

"What the hell are
we supposed to do with this?"

Del Mar would be
the Zephyr team's first introduction

to the world of organized skateboarding.

Their unconventional skating
and disorderly presence

marked them as outsiders
right from the start.

lt was like a hockey team
going to a figure skating contest.

The difference between us and them
felt very real.

Inspired by Larry Bertlemann's low, pivotal
style and the vertical walls of pool riding,

the Z-Boys took skateboarding's
traditional upright approach

and drove it right into the ground.

They didn't like us from
the first part they saw us,

because, you know, we weren't
of the status quo, for what they were into.

People were just looking at us,
like, "Wow, what is this?

"I mean, these guys, man, Zephyr guys,
this isn't skateboarding."

And l remember me and Jay were, like,

"What are you talking about?
This is skateboarding, man.

"What the hell are you guys doing,
you know, nose wheelies and all that?"

We were the rock 'n' roll,
heavy metal of Dogtown.

We came prepared to kick these dudes' ass.

And we got inside their head instantly.
Man, I put on my best pimp gear,

walked up there, pushed these
moms and dads out of the way,

threw down our entry blanks
and asked for our trophies.

We had the ammo, and we knew we were
just gonna bust out and blow minds.

Our purpose was to go there
and shut these guys down.

Shut down Ty Page, shut down Paul Engh,
shut down Hester,

shut down Skoldberg. All those guys, dude.

The first skater from the Zephyr team
to enter the competition

was its youngest and most naturally gifted,

13-year-old Jay Adams,
whose explosive energy and bold moves

epitomized the Dogtown style.

Jay Adams went out
for his first freestyle routine,

the first guy they've seen
of our whole group...

...and we knew that they didn't know
what they were about to see.

And boom! Their world had changed.

It would never be the same
for skateboarding again.

He was doing tricks
he'd never even done before.

l remember Jay doing Berts off the side
of the platform. Remember that?

Off the platform, down onto the ground,

and hopping back up on the platform
and skating.

People were just flipping out.
They couldn't believe that.

And l remember just looking at him,
bugging out.

He was spinning nose 360s crouched on
his board. He'd never done that before!

Many of the competitors, accustomed to
the more upright classical form,

were not impressed.

They were unconventional, and they didn't
care if they were judged well, you know?

They were just there

to, you know, skate and get rowdy
and have fun.

Bruce Logan, Russ Howell and Ty Page,
these guys were great skaters.

But the skating maneuvers
were based on a '60s paradigm.

And we decided to do it
like surfers from the '70s.

They had never bent their knees and done,
like, a Bertlemann turn on their skateboards.

There was not a single soul
that was skating our style.

They were all riding around
like stick men, man,

and we were like slipping and sliding
and jamming, getting in every little pocket.

They didn't know how to judge it.

They didn't know how to put it in
their criteria and spit out a first place.

Some of the girls didn't like the fact
that l skated like a guy,

and so they protested me to the judges.

And one of the judges said that
l skated better than some of the guys!

Peggy Oki took first place
in the Women's Freestyle.

Jay Adams and Tony Alva took
3rd and 4th place, respectively,

in the Junior Men's Freestyle.

And Nathan Pratt took 4th place
in the Junior Men's Slalom.

The Zephyr team's infectious presence
and abundant talent pool whet the appetite

of the industry's most prominent
skateboard manufacturers.

All the other companies decided they needed
one of you guys to be on their team,

so they went after all you guys.

Six months after the Del Mar event,

Jeff Ho and Skip Engblom would lose
the very skateboard team

they'd worked so hard to build.

A year later,
because of mounting business problems,

they would close the Zephyr shop.
It would never again reopen for business.

Jeff Ho and Skip didn't have money
to try and compete

with people that were trying to buy us out,
you know?

And, you know, l think it's kind of sad
that we were bought out,

on one hand.
On the other hand, you know, it's like,

what does a kid do when you put
a candy bar in front of him?

That's sort of what was happening.

That was, you know,
a hard one for me to deal with.

Because I could see that
things were just gonna cave in.

lt was real easy for any company
to come along and just go, okay,

cherry pick what they needed.

There's no way that it could hang together.

There was no way that
the band could remain together.

lt had to go elsewhere,
because there was so much energy

inherent in what was going on,
it had to blow itself up and go out.

We all started to branch off
in different directions.

And we represented different companies
that were competing against each other.

What happened is, after Del Mar,
these contests started to pop up,

and every weekend
we'd be going to another contest.

And then, all of a sudden
we said, "Wait a minute.

"There's something more to this."

lt just became obvious that
something more was gonna happen here.

That it looked like skateboarding
was gonna get really popular.

By 1975, skateboarding was
on its way to a national comeback,

prompting Surfer magazine
to resurrect SkateBoarder,

which had had a brief run in the '60s.

The magazine's second issue would feature
Craig Stecyk's first Dogtown article,

his personal account of
the guerilla adventures of Dogtown's Z-Boys.

Stecyk's words and photographs
became the template

for the attitude and aesthetic
that would come to define

the culture of modern-day skateboarding.

Craig had a way of looking at a situation,
photographing it, writing about it,

and then giving it to kids
and sparking kids' imagination.

You know, some kid in Ohio
could look at this and go,

"Man, there's like a dream out there,
and I can have my own dream."

lt certainly was something that spoke to me,
and everybody in Washington.

That kind of Venice, Santa Monica,

vato, wild-style writing
that you guys would incorporate.

That was something, growing up
in Montana, that l just didn't know.

l didn't see it as
a "being Hispanic" thing at all.

l just thought that it was
this crazy style of art, you know?

Stecyk, of course, was the master of,
you know... He wrote a great story.

He was writing it in a way
that it was confrontational.

lt was like Hunter Thompson.
lt was like, "We're...with you.

"We like to...with you. And you know what?

"We're good at it! How's that?"

You're reading this 3,000 miles away,
in a town that has snow.

So, we're living through it vicariously.

And we would live for that magazine.
lt was our radio station.

'Cause you're not seeing
any of these people move.

You're just seeing
the photos in the magazines.

The photos really translated
the velocity of the move,

the way you guys were living.
They said way more than,

"Here's a guy on a skateboard."

They showed a lifestyle.
They showed an attitude.

They showed a code.

lt was aggressive and it was stylish.
lt wasn't mechanical.

You'd see a Dogtown article, with, like,
some, you know, torn-up pants, just ripping,

and you were just like, "l want that."

Dogtowners get to go to Hollywood parties
and they get to hang out with rock stars.

They break into people's backyards
and skate empty swimming pools.

l'm in! Sign me up!

Everyone was into the Dogtown thing,

'cause there was no other skateboard crew
that we saw in magazines doing that.

We mythologized you. We read so much
about it, and we talked about it so much,

while we were skating.

As hard as it might be for some people
to believe, in the '70s,

SkateBoarder magazine was
the biggest-selling magazine

in 1 978 for the entire Southland Corporation.

That's all 7-Elevens.
lt was the biggest-selling magazine they had.

There were a lot of opportunities
to make money.

With the Dogtown articles
came international recognition and fame.

For the first time in history, teenagers
were being offered huge sums of money

to compete in something
previously considered a rogue activity.

We were being paid to ride skateboards.

lmagine a kid today
being approached by Nike,

and Nike saying,
"We're gonna pay you $1 0,000

"to spray graffiti all over the city.

"We're gonna sponsor you to,
you know, spray paint graffiti."

That's what it was like in the '70s to get paid
to ride a skateboard. lt was crazy!

It seemed like free money, you know?

And it just happened that we were
in the right place at the right time,

and we were in the magazines and...

People are looking at these magazines,
you know?

And they're seeing us.

We were treated like kings
at places that we went to, you know?

lt was, like, just red carpets. Everywhere.

And the greatest thing about it is,
we were not the valedictorians of the school.

We were the guys that would have been
chosen last to succeed.

And for some reason, by doing something
that everyone said was a waste of time,

we ended up influencing kids
all around the world.

lt turned into, like, a rock star thing,
you know?

I mean, I went to London, England,
in 1976 or whatever,

they had a bowl named after me inside
an abandoned theater in London, England.

l was like, "Wait a second. This is crazy."

Tony was the first person we knew,
he was becoming famous.

And there were articles on him
in People magazine

and US magazine and Rolling Stone,

you know, and SkateBoarder,
he was the skateboarder of the year.

In 1977, Tony Alva was voted
skateboarder of the year

in SkateBoarder magazine's
first worldwide reader's poll.

Tony's first place, along with
four other places in the top 1 1 ,

thrust the Dogtown skaters
even further into the limelight,

prompting big offers
from deep-pocketed sponsors

eager to ride the sport's growing popularity.

There was only a few guys that were
really making some good money at it,

and Stacy being one of them. l mean, Stacy,

you know, he was making
some good money.

l started bringing home these checks.
And my parents were looking at this, going,

"What's going on here?
Where's this money coming from?"

Stacy was the most commercially successful
skateboarder in the world.

More of his model Warptail skateboards

were sold, I think,
than any skateboard ever produced.

Stacy, you know, handled himself
a little bit more mature than we did.

l got to give him, you know, credit for that,
because he represented himself

a little bit more professionally
than we did, l think, at that time.

He toured the world a lot.

l mean, every time you'd call Stacy's house,
oh, he's somewhere, Australia, England,

Germany, Japan.

l wanted to go out
and show the world skateboarding.

What is that?

lt's a skateboard. What does it look like?

-A skateboard.
-Pretty far out, huh?

I grew up in Santa Monica.

A lot of drugs ran through
the beach that I surfed at.

And l saw a lot of guys that l knew
were going to stay on the beach

for the rest of their lives.

And I wanted to get something out of this.
This was my ticket.

Finally, l was good at something in my life,
and l didn't want to let it go.

In 1979, Stacy Peralta would be
the second Dogtown skater

to win SkateBoarder magazine's
worldwide reader's poll.

He stopped skating professionally,
and then he hooked up with George Powell,

and they started Powell Peralta,
and he began the Bones Brigade.

And he picked all the talent, and
the few guys that he picked at the time

were just revolutionary.

It was just this amazing group of skaters

who were doing for skating
what the Zephyr team did in the '70s,

and he was the mastermind
behind the whole thing.

In a relationship
that would span three decades,

Peralta would hook up with Craig Stecyk
as his creative partner and early mentor.

Through a series of
pioneering skateboard videos,

Stecyk and Peralta showcased
the remarkable talents of the Bones Brigade

to skaters the world over.

They turned that into the biggest
skateboarding adventure ever.

I don't feel I came into my own
until I was behind the scenes.

That's when l flourished.

Although Peralta would become
the most financially successful skater

to emerge from Dogtown,

the two skaters
who best personified the Dogtown spirit,

and who won the most acclaim,
were Tony Alva and Jay Adams.

Jay and I, the thing that
we had so much in common

is that we were both completely out
of our mind, like, mischievous, you know?

We were all crazy, but Jay,
Jay could instigate some shit, man.

Man, Jay was nuts! He would be screaming
and making these goofy faces

at...old ladies on the bus.

Giving her a big rat face, and he's
right in there. Oh, man, it was unreal.

And it got to the point where
the bus wouldn't even pick us up!

-They wouldn't even stop.
-They'd accelerate,

'cause they didn't know whether
they were getting rocks

or they didn't know whether Jay was
gonna pull a wig off some lady's head.

They didn't know
what the hell was gonna happen.

Jay was from a broken home, too.

And he had a stepfather
in his life that treated him well

and really pushed him
both in surfing and skating,

and took us places to skate
and pushed in a loving way.

When you're six, seven years old,
you're not thinking "pro surfer" too hard,

but just be a surfer, be a kid, you know?

I didn't really think much about future.

-It just kind of came along, you know?
-Right.

And then, by the time I was 1 2 and 13,
it was kind of already set,

what l was gonna do,
you know what l mean?

l'd just be a skateboarder
and a surfer, you know?

You know what l mean?

Some kids are born and raised on,
like, Graham crackers and milk.

He was born and raised on
surfing and skateboarding, you know.

When God decided to create skateboarding,
he said, "Let there be Jay Adams."

Jay Adams was the most spontaneous
skater that you ever met.

Absolutely, incredibly gifted.

Jay was the most talented,
natural skateboarder, surfer, athlete...

He had an energy like no one l ever met.

There's nobody like him, as far as
"skater" is concerned. He's the original.

When he skateboarded,
you were watching something happen.

That's why Jay's so great, is 'cause
nothing's ever the same, before or since.

You know, Jay doesn't practice.
Jay doesn't redo it.

He doesn't do it twice. He doesn't do it
three times. He doesn't even do it one time.

He's over it before it happens.

He will be in the middle of a maneuver

and have the whole thing collapsing on him,

and somehow in the center of that disaster,

he will make something else
out of it completely, which becomes art.

Jay Adams' skating was
an athletic stream of consciousness.

Through a seemingly reckless approach,
he attempted a series of aerial maneuvers

that would presage what skaters
would be doing in years to come.

When skateboarding finally blew up
and people were able to make money,

he really didn't care.

Everybody cares about money
a little bit, just...

Things don't always work out how you kind
of wanted them to, you know what l mean?

He didn't give a shit about it, and l don't
think that's why he did it to begin with.

He never was interested
in any of the material rewards

that came from skateboarding.

l think that he just basically had
a total "f-you" approach

to the whole commercialism
of skateboarding.

lt was just fun.
You know, before it got too serious.

You know what I mean?
Like in the amateur contest days,

it was just kind of fun and stuff.

And then when it got to
the, like, pro pool-riding and stuff,

it just got too serious and...

What do you mean, "Too serious"?

Just guys didn't seem like
they were having as much fun.

lt was more of a job, and a lot of tension,
you know what l mean?

But when things got commercial,
l think it kind of freaked Jay out.

You know? There was responsibility.
You got to show up at a certain time.

You got to do a demo. You got to...
You got to fly here...

lf you had people coming to you,
promising you something,

making you sign contracts
when you're a minor,

you know, telling you what to do, telling
you where to go, telling you how to act...

Those people didn't care about Jay.

He would be so naive in dealing with
these people and these situations

that he would believe what they said.

People just wanted to have what he had.

You know, they just wanted a piece of him.

lt opened a lot of doors to do a lot of things
that l probably shouldn't have.

Like quitting school and buying weed
and partying, and just that kind of stuff.

But it also did good things, too,

like helped me pay the rent
for my mom and stuff like that.

-Do you have any regrets?
-Yeah, there's regrets,

like, just doing drugs and stuff like that.
You know?

Not skating as much as l should have,
partying too much.

You know, l missed a lot of good times

by doing things that
l shouldn't have been doing.

You know what l mean? Like, just going out,

getting drunk and partying,
and stuff like that.

You know? Where l could have done
a lot of other things.

Or the business side,
where l could have taken it more seriously

and marketed myself, or had someone

market myself differently,
you know what l mean?

Right.

So l guess that's some teeny regrets,
but nothing to cry about.

Right. You're stoked
about what happened, though.

Yeah.

l mean...

There's certain mistakes
that l'd like to change,

but l don't trip on it too hard,
you know what l mean?

Right. Do you want to say what they are?

-l kind ofjust did.
-Oh, okay. No, l... Okay.

Jay's probably lived
one of the hardest lives I know

for someone who's still alive,
you know? And...

You get one chance at doing this.

And if you miss it, you don't get it again.
And that's...

That's the hardest part of it.

That's the hardest part.
And it's hard for me to even see it,

because l see it in a guy like Jay Adams,
and l go,

"He should've had it all."

Jay should have had it all,
and it makes me so sad that he didn't.

Because he was...
He was better than all of us.

My father was like a really hardcore,
you know, real...

He was a pretty strict guy, you know,
and l think that a lot of the things,

a lot of the aggression that came out,
you know, when he communicated with me,

l kind of transferred that
to dealing with people and stuff, too.

Tony made it really known that, "Hey, man.

"l'm gonna be number one, and that's it."

Tony was Mick Jagger. He was the radical.

He was the front man. He was preening.
He was doing the show.

He was the Michael Jordan
of skateboarding back then.

And at the same time,
he was Dennis Rodman.

Tony had a real strong personality.

And when you hung around Tony, you were
pretty much hanging around the Tony Show.

Tony was probably the first person
who taught me what the word "ego" meant.

We all had big egos, but Tony's was
bigger than all of ours put together.

lf a person has a big ego,
they better be able to back it.

And, like, Tony could back his ego.

You don't achieve those levels of your art

unless you do have an ego.

Now Hackett said, when he
used to go to pools with you,

he said that you'd show up at the pool,
and you'd walk right up to everybody

sitting in, you know, the shallow end
and say, "That's it, guys. l'm here. Out."

No, not necessarily.
l might have done that a few times,

but usually l just let
my skating do the talking.

His timing and balance
and speed and agility

were far beyond everybody else's.

It was just a known fact.
When you saw Tony skate,

he was so far above everybody else.

His style, and the way he flowed,
and the lines that he drew,

he was just a little more advanced
than other guys at the time.

He could carve a pool
fluently and effortlessly.

And then, at the same time,

every turn was attacked
as though his life depended on it.

He was a really fierce competitor,
and Tony wanted the prize.

I've always wanted to be the best.
I've always been very competitive.

My goal was,
l wanted to be a world champion.

l wanted to be the best in the world.

In 1977, on ABC's Wide World of Sports,

Tony Alva became modern skateboarding's
first overall grand national champion.

At 1 9 years old, getting that title,

the men's overall world professional
skateboard champion,

that was a big thing for me.

You know, that was like
Muhammad Ali, you know,

kicking Joe Frazier's ass
or whatever, you know.

Six months after winning
the world championship,

Tony would shun the sponsorship world,

and in an unprecedented move, go it alone
and form his own skateboard company,

Alva Skates.

That was the turning point because
l'd done everything that l could do

-riding for other companies.
-Right.

And l was making them a lot of money
without even having a model.

ln that way, he was professional, and
he wanted money for everything that he did,

at some point, because he saw
he was getting exploited.

So, I started my own skateboard company
at 19 years of age.

l mean, l was pretty...self-centered
at the time, man.

My deal was, like,
"l'm gonna make some money.

"l'm gonna capitalize.
l'm gonna travel around the...world.

"l'm gonna get laid every...night,
you know?"

Like, you know,
l'm gonna do it all, right now.

When Tony Alva came out
with his first ad for his first company,

it was a complete revolution
in the skateboarding industry.

People were just up in arms.

Because here's this guy, standing just,
like, really tough, and it was...

All of a sudden, the advertisement
was no longer about skateboarding.

lt had nothing to do with the product.
lt was about attitude.

There's just no two ways about it.
Tony was a rock 'n' roll star.

He was so in love with the fame.

He was so in love with himself.

He could jump barrels,
he could race downhill,

he could do freestyle,
he could do street style,

he could ride vert.
He did it all better than anybody.

He was one of the pioneers
of the progression of skating.

I think that he really helped show
what was possible on a skateboard.

Tony Alva's an icon that

l could look up to
when l first got into the sport.

He is the most important skateboarder
of all time, in my opinion.

You could look at the photos,
you could look at the film,

you could look at the guy talking back then.

So far, since l was, like,
the innovator of vertical skating,

and l'm, like, the oldest one and l'm only 21 ,

we're saying that there's really no limit yet
to the, l think, "oldness" that you can be.

Tony is the Chuck Berry of skateboarding.
He developed a style of playing,

and Tony's gonna play that style
his whole life.

That's what he does,
and that's what he's always done,

and that's what he'll always do.

There's no way that you can really say that,
"He's over the hill," or anything,

until the guy just totally drops out
of the whole scene and isn't recognized

as a, you know, person of high esteem

in the world of professional skateboarding,
or whatever he's doing.

I mean, if there was
a skateboarding hall of fame,

l think Tony Alva is the first name
that should go down.

We lived...

We lived at a place called the Dogbowl.

We were there every day,
just about, skating all day.

In an ironic twist of fate,
it was on the grounds of a posh estate

in the affluent neighborhood
of North Santa Monica

where the Z-Boys came together
for their final sessions

in what they considered
to be their crown jewel.

There was a kid, Dino, that lived there.

He was dying of, like, brain cancer,
and he was a skateboard enthusiast.

You know, the kid's gonna die. He went
to his father and said, "Hey, listen, for me,

"empty the pool. Let my friends skate here."

The next day, he was there with the pump.

Two days later, we were in there skating.

Every afternoon, after surfing and hanging,

we would go to his house,
hang out with him, and just skate his pool.

At a place you cannot even imagine,
people can't imagine, the huge pool,

in a beautiful property,
you're allowed to skate it.

Dogbowl was the only place
where we could skate in peace.

That was like a skate park to us,
because the owner

would let us skate and watch us skate.

There was all these dogs
that lived around the pool,

and they would always hang out
and just stick their mugs

right in like Friedman's camera lens
or in like...

That's how it eventually
got called the Dogbowl.

The Dogbowl sessions were definitely
the heyday, like, for all of us.

Guys used to go there every day and
just skate, and skate, and skate all day long.

We perfected a lot of things

and had a lot of time to spend in one pool.

Almost the entire original team
would be at that pool in one day,

which was, like, kind of weird.

It's kind of like it was back
to the old Zephyr shop in a way.

'Cause you had this whole group of guys,
and it was in Santa Monica,

and it was the most incredible pool ever,
and you didn't want anyone else there.

The crew, like, in a way, probably
was not like that maybe ever before.

'Cause all of a sudden,
everyone is famous and they know it.

-But we're still pushing each other.
-But that's it.

You're pushing each other. No one else
is around. lt's just the original crew.

Eventually, we were hitting the top so hard,

and just grabbing the sides of our boards,
just the rail and stuff,

we started to pop out
and actually do aerials.

It just changed the whole ballgame.

That time, fall '77, is when
T.A. did the front side air in the pool.

I mean, everyone is there, and people were
doing little bits of aerials in different places.

But what Tony did one day, l think
it was in September, he goes up,

pulls the board up, turns in midair, comes
back down into the pool, and makes it.

lt was fucking unbelievable. lt's something
that you... lt could be described today,

but you just don't understand
because it's a given, and it's seen.

Now, other people have said that people
did aerials at other places, other times.

No one did it like Tony did,
and no one did it as well.

And no one did it with style for many years
to come, outside of that crew.

There are points of evolution in every sport
and every art form

that center around significant events
which define all that follows.

When the Z-Boys began skateboarding
inside empty swimming pools,

they destroyed the status quo and
challenged the idea of what was possible.

Tony Alva followed this line

when he propelled his body and board
above the coping and into the air

as aerial base maneuvers would become
the departure point for the next generation

of modern skateboarders.

Dogtown was the actual beginning
of all of vertical skateboarding

and modern skateboarding
as we know it today.

That was the beginning.

lf you look back, you don't see a skateboard
contest like you did in Del Mar today.

You don't see a flat ground, you know,
some guys doing 360s and pirouettes.

They're all doing it in pipes. And basically,
a half-pipe was what a swimming pool was,

but we just hadn't figured out how
to build a half-pipe back then yet,

so we had to empty swimming pools
and ride them.

There wouldn't be any X Games,
there wouldn't be any vert skating,

there wouldn't be anything at all
if it wasn't for most of the boys

that l skated with and competed against,
and that whole scene.

That's where it all started.

Craig Stecyk saw what we were
doing before anybody else did,

and he believed in it as a culture,

and he presented it as a culture.

People thought this was some, like,
stupid thing that little kids did.

Right? Craig Stecyk understood it
as more of an extension of society.

I think it was an act of significance.

l think you guys were doing
some profoundly different things.

And l think nobody appreciated that at
the time l got involved with dealing with it.

Skateboarding could have easily,
without Craig Stecyk,

become little league baseball.
lt would have just been a novelty.

But, you know, the way Craig presented it,
and the way he wrote about it,

l mean, it really brought it to another level,
and it gave it a significance.

The whole Dogtown thing said,
"lt isn't a ball-and-stick sport.

"lt isn't about winning or losing.
lt's about the process.

"lt's not about the ends.
lt's about the means."

You know what? This sport isn't
just a stepchild of another sport.

It's really, almost, an art form.

l think we were all looking for the best time.

The best ride. The best grind.

The best carve. You know?

The best barrel. Yeah.

Not to outdo each other,
but just to aim for the best, you know?

'Cause the feeling you got from that,
it's undescribable.

Finding an empty pool like that
was like finding a secret,

you know,
like a secret surf spot or something.

lt's like finding
the most beautiful virgin woman.

There was like a sensuous,
kind of like, exciting feel to it.

lt was like having, you know, sex.

l mean, that's what it was like.

So it was like,
every time we found a pool like that,

we had the experience that, you know,
here's somebody who's unridden.

l mean, l don't know how else to explain it.

I remember one time, Jay said,
"Come check this out."

And there was an alley right across
from his house on Highland,

and l went down there,
and l hear this, "Tink, tink, tink, tink."

l'm like, "What is that?"
And Jay's in hysterics.

He goes, "Just watch, man. Just watch."

All of a sudden, l see this cat come out
of this under car parking garage,

and it's got a 3-foot piece of string
tied to its tail with a tin can with rocks in it.

And l'm like, "You got to be shitting me!"

Back then, we weren't wearing
all these pads,

and if you take a look
at some of the still shots from back then,

you'll see that l'm on the wall
with nothing on.

l mean, if you fall then,
you're gonna get hurt.

We didn't care.
We just wanted to get radical.

Okay, really quickly.
lt was August, the dog days. lt was hot.

l was drunk.
l was drinking papaya juice and vodka.

l was sitting on a bus bench
in front of the store with Craig.

l went to Craig, "Hey, Craig, you know,
these are really the dog days,"

and he went,
"Yeah, this is really a dog town."

And l went, "Yeah, it is a dog town,"
and he went,

"'Cause you know, we live in Dogtown."

That's the truth. That's how it happened.
That's the story. Period.