“I can’t lag; I’ve got too much to do, like spend all my days and most of my nights skating the best skatepark in the world, Marina. Once the park closes for the night and everyone else splits, I turn on the lights for whatever bowl my friends and I want to skate—another perk of my dad’s job—and we roll long into the night in private sessions.”
Marina Skatepark is located on the outskirts of L.A., sandwiched between the on- and off-ramps of a freeway and a baseball diamond, and surrounded by potted trees from a nearby nursery. The fence is lined with eight-foot-high murals Pops has painted of all the top skaters. By night the place is totally dark except for whichever one bowl we light up. It’s like a stage at a rock concert, and we’re both the main act and the audience. We fire up fat joints and blast air, hooting each other on as we invent moves that nobody has seen before but that will soon become famous.
Marina is like home to a lot of kids, and I realize that many of them are there all the time because they don’t have much of a family to go home to. Sessions at Marina replace family time for many locals. I have a loving home, but that doesn’t matter. Marina is where my heart is, and these skaters, along with Pops and my mom, are my family. We love the place so much that sometimes Pops and I sleep there, smoking weed until we fall asleep in the back of his Volkswagen van. In the morning it’s up early to skate and start the process all over again.
Marina is not just everything to us; it’s big in its own right. Film crews arrive every other month, it seems, and the documentary Skateboard Madness is filmed there. Big punk bands play there as well, and Devo’s original “Freedom of Choice” music video stars Stacy Peralta, among others, skating at Marina. Commercials and educational movies are filmed there also, all using skateboarding to illustrate some moral about being a responsible young person and a good citizen. They never shoot a video on the dangers of drug abuse, but maybe they should, even though I suspect nobody would listen.
There are a lot of heavy drugs being used, but nobody considers pot a real drug. For skaters, weed is like the air we breathe. It makes sense to us to skate stoned, but not to some of the older guys—guys like Stacy Peralta. I know now, looking back from the year 2012, that he’s right when he says, “Why do you need to get high when you skate? Skating gets you high.”
One of Marina’s owners, Dennis Ogden, remembers how bad we were:
A LOT OF PEOPLE REEKED OF WEED WHEN THEY CAME TO THE ADMISSIONS AREA, AND IVAN AND CHRISTIAN HOSOI WERE SOME OF THE TOPS AMONG THEM. MY MOM IS KIND OF STRAITLACED, AND AT FIRST SHE’S AGHAST WHEN SHE SEES THE ENVIRONMENT THERE. BUT EVENTUALLY IT SEEMS NORMAL, EVEN TO HER. WITH KIDS LIKE CHRISTIAN, WEED IS JUST PART OF LIFE. HE’S BARELY IN HIS EARLY TEENS AND HIS DAD AND A LOT OF OTHER ADULTS DON’T SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH HIM SMOKING WEED. CHRISTIAN IS BECOMING THE BEST GUY WE HAVE EVER SEEN, SO WHAT CAN ANYONE SAY?
Despite all the weed, drugs aren’t the only important thing to me. My goal is to become like the big guys. Take Shogo Kubo, one of the great, now nearly forgotten skaters of his time. He’s Japanese like I am, and at first I pattern my entire style after him. He’s fast, fearless, and smooth. As I gain skills, Shogo, Jay, and some of my other heroes push me to leave the little bowls and skate the Upper Keyhole (nine-foot-deep pool with coping and tile) with them. All the big bowls look deep and dangerous to a little kid, but I finally suck up all my fear and follow them into their land of the giants.
The little bowls are four and six feet deep, while the Keyhole is nearly twice that. I’m used to the little bowls, where you have to pull off the wall super hard to not lock up on the lip. When I try skating that way in the Keyhole, it doesn’t work. At first I bottom-land, but after a few tries, I finally pull it. By the end of that first day I’m blasting two-feet-out airs, one-foot-out frontside airs, and hand-on-coping inverts. I’m in solid with the main guys now. Once I’ve tasted the big bowls, the little bowls aren’t interesting to me anymore. From now on, I’ll leave little bowls to little kids, or use them for warming up. I can’t wait to skate the big bowls in the big contests with the big boys.
THE BOYZ
Skateboarding is our art, and because I’ve grown up in an artist’s home, I can never be just another follow-the-leader skater. Everything, from the way we dress to the way we skate, bears our own original stamp. There’s never any discussion about school or where we’re going to work when we grow up. The present and the future are all about skating with our friends in Venice and at Marina. We can’t see it when we’re in the midst of things, but both places are on the leading edge in creating radical social change in youth culture. And leading that culture shift are TA and Jay.
Everything about TA is attitude, and we memorize his every move. He’s not your typical surf/stoner guy. He’s really smart, and he has a presence like nobody else, always doing his own thing in his own way. He’s one of the first pros with his own company, Alva Skateboards. Guys like TA and Jay are forging their own identity, something that will later translate to the identity of the thousands of kids around the world who look up to them. But nobody has any idea that they’re birthing a new culture right then and there. It’s always been a toss-up to me as to what is cooler, TA’s step-aside style, or Jay’s go-with-the-flow approach. These guys are my heroes, and even though they’re several years older than me, we have a lot in common. Since TA is fading from the scene, Jay and I hang out all the time.
Without even wanting to be, Jay’s at the forefront of the revolution. He’s a natural though reluctant leader: everybody wants to copy what he does. Since the beginning he’s been a naturally blond surfer dude who leads everyone in that style. Then one day he shows up with a Mohawk and everyone tries to copy that. Well, they can try, but there’s only one Jay Adams.
For a young skateboarder, hanging out with Jay is like a novice musician hanging out with Mick Jagger. He’s like the coolest guy ever, placed in a bullet-proof young-adult body. He’s mischievous, funny, and willing to try anything. I learn everything I need to from Jay; he’s a free-spirited, soulful skater, a legend in his own right. He’s never won a skate contest that I know of, but he’s still one of the most highly revered skaters of his day.
This one guy at Marina has a chip on his shoulder about Jay. He’s kind of a vato gang guy and a crackhead who’s extra spun cuz he also smokes PCP. The guy says every time he’s reminded of Jay, it makes him want to fight him. That’s a crackhead for you, right? One day TA’s had enough and he finally punches the guy, knocking him back over the bicycle rack. That’s the last we ever see of him.
The American hard-core punk scene is coming on strong in L.A. Skateboarding and punk together are a match made in heaven—or some might say hell. Black Flag plays a lot of our contests, and the Circle Jerks, Fear, and other famous punk groups rock Marina regularly. When live music isn’t being pumped in, we skate to recordings of the Meteors, the Ramones, the Cars, the B-52s, Devo, Selector, the Specials, Madness—all that. If you get a chance, check out some of the underground footage of us skating at that time. When you do, listen to what’s being played in the background; you’ll probably hear the Ramones singing, “I wanna be sedated,” which is ironic since, in fact, almost all of us were.
Tony Hawk isn’t from Marina, but he’s been there nearly from the beginning and will remain there all the way to the end. These are some of his early memories of our park:
THE FIRST TIME ANYONE EVER OFFERED ME WEED WAS AT MARINA SKATEPARK. I WAS ELEVEN YEARS OLD AND I QUICKLY TOLD THE GUY NO. HE LOOKED AT ME IN AMAZEMENT AND SAID, “WOW, A STRAIGHT SKATER.” NOT THAT THERE WASN’T WEED AT OTHER PARKS, BUT MARINA WAS A LOT MORE RUGGED.
I REMEMBER ONCE THAT THESE HORDES OF PUNKERS STARTED POURING INTO MARINA. THIS WAS LIKE ’79 OR ’80. I HAD SEEN PUNKS BEFORE, BUT THIS WAS A LEGIT CREW. I ASKED SOMEONE WHAT WAS HAPPENING AND THEY TOLD ME THAT THE CIRCLE JERKS WERE GOING TO PLAY. THAT NIGHT THE COVER FOR THE CIRCLE JERKS ALBUM, GROUP SEX, WAS SHOT THERE. THAT KIND OF THING NEVER HAPPENED AT THE OTHER PARKS. NO WAY! HONESTLY, MARINA WAS PRETTY INTIMIDATING IF YOU WEREN’T A LOCAL.
I’m twelve years old when I’m introduced to acid by two seventeen-year-old girls who work at Marina Skatepark. I’m at one of their houses, high as a kite. But I don’t remember seeing anyone’s face melting or having any hallucinations or out-of-body experiences. I’ve done acid hundreds of times since, and I never really do hallucinate. All I do is laugh, skate, and rage.
Every day’s an adventure at Marina. With all the punk bands playing there, a lot of punkers start hanging out. Punkers and skaters usually mix pretty well. The skate punk thing is starting to take off, so a lot of the time the two groups overlap: they’re the same people. But both punk and skateboarding are about aggression, and when a large crew of punkers get together, trouble’s gonna break out for sure.
One day these punk bands, the Circle Jerks and Fear, play. This big Indian guy has been hired for security. As big and tough as he is, even he can’t stop trouble from starting. One fight starts out small but escalates into a gang-style brawl that spills over into the parking lot—it’s basically the skinheads against the skaters. TA is standing next to the security guard, cuz they’re friends, when suddenly, out of nowhere, this kid runs up and socks the Indian guy. TA turns and socks the kid and begins pounding him against the trunk of a car. Meanwhile, this little skinhead comes up and just blindsides TA. He hits hard for a little guy, and TA spins around and slinks back inside the park. I follow him inside and by then his eye is swollen shut. I’m like, “Dang! You got rocked, bro!”
Everybody knows that skateboarding is rowdy, but no park is ever as rowdy as Marina. It erupts like this from time to time and that’s part of what we love about it. Once we even see this massive girl-fight that seems to last forever. I never had so much fun as a spectator!
As I’ve said, skateboarding is performance art to me, and while it’s about winning, I’m even more interested in expressing myself to the crowd. Doing big airs is my favorite expression, so getting higher and higher is just a natural progression for me. The more the crowd cheers, the higher I fly—simple as that. I feed off people’s responses, just as they feed off mine: by the end of the show they’re screaming and I’m flying. My reward comes in attracting the cutest-looking girls I can find, and lots of them. My strategy’s been working pretty well so far. It’s actually been working since the age of nine, when I made out with a girl of eleven at the Renaissance Faire, behind the archery area.
FIRST MAJOR CONTEST WIN AT THE MARINA DEL REY SKATEPARK GOLD CUP SERIES. TWELVE YEARS OLD. 1980. © GLEN E. FRIEDMAN
“DON’T GET CAUGHT, STUPID”
I’m always holding weed, but somehow I get busted only twice for minor possession. The first time I get picked up I’m in eighth grade. Some friends and I are cutting class and smoking a joint in the alley behind the school. Suddenly a pair of undercover cops spring from the bushes and order us to raise our hands. I comply, but I won’t toss the joint because it contains some really killer weed. One hand remains closed around it, hoping to protect it from inspection. No such luck: one of the cops is like, “Okay, what’s in your hand? Open it.” What can I do? I open it and show him the joint. He confiscates it and I’m thinking the hypocrite will probably smoke it later.
The cops handcuff my friends and me and drive us out in front of the school. When the car pulls up, everyone—including our teacher—races to the window and peers out at us. I’d wave, but I’ve got these metal bracelets on that keep my hands pretty still. So I just smile and shrug my shoulders at my classmates. The cop uncuffs the others right there and lets them go.
I’m not so lucky. Since I’m the one with the joint, one officer forces me back into the car and drives me to the station, where Pops is called. When he swings by to pick me up, he plays the game for the cops, saying something like, “I’m sorry, officer. I can assure you nothing like this will ever happen again.” He signs me out and we get into his car. On the way home, he chuckles and says, “Dude, why you gettin’ busted?” When I tell him about the undercover cops, he’s like, “Yeah, just don’t get caught, stupid.” At home we fire up a fat joint and life goes back to normal for a while.
A year later a friend and I are strolling through Veterans Park in Westwood with a chunk of hash that we’re about to smoke in a ceramic pipe of mine. Suddenly my friend says, “Dude, what are those people doing in the bushes over there?” As we jog away, knowing that whatever they’re doing could mean trouble for us, I throw the hash but hang on to the pipe. My friend’s following close behind, and for some reason he scoops up the hash again.
Then we hear, “Police! Hold it right there.” We turn and watch as two officers close the distance. “Are you guys doin’ drugs?” one asks. “No,” I respond, which isn’t exactly a lie, since we haven’t smoked anything yet. They tell us to raise our hands. Before we do, my friend, who looks about to cry, chucks the hash toward them, and it lands right at one cop’s feet. The cop picks it up and then notices that we haven’t followed orders. “Okay, hands on your head,” he says.
While they’re searching my friend, I toss the pipe into the bushes. One of the cops sees me do it and retrieves the pipe. He brings it over and says, “Is this yours?” When I deny it he hits me on the head with the pipe. Then he hits me in the ribs and asks again, “Is this your pipe?” Again I say no and he hits me in the ribs again and asks again if it’s my pipe. This could get old fast, so I say, “Yeah, I guess so.”
My friend’s crying as they shove us into the car. Me, I’m just chillin’, thinking that the car looks familiar as I check the side of the driver’s face and recognize the cop who busted me at school a year earlier. He looks in his rearview mirror and asks, “Didn’t I bust you once before?” Making my face blank, I answer, “I don’t know, dude.”
Now my friend is howling and pleading, “No, please—please don’t take me in.” I know this kid’s family, and they’re not gonna be happy. Me, I’m all good; I’m just gonna be told I’m a dummy for getting caught again, and then Pops and I are gonna spark up another fatty.
COMING OF AGE
I spend endless hours on my skateboard each day, and it pays off when I win the Gold Cup amateur series. I’m twelve years old and have beaten the top amateur skaters of all ages. I start the season slowly, in twenty-eighth place at Oasis. Then I move up to ninth at Big O, and at Colton I score sixth. I finally end up winning the contest and the entire series at my home park, Marina. I feel I’m improving so fast there’s nothing left to do but turn pro. I’m riding for the biggest skate company in the world as the top amateur of the prestigious Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade.
Top pro Stacy Peralta is retired by then, and co-owner of Powell-Peralta. After my Gold Cup victory I tell him of my plans to turn pro, but he says I need to wait a couple years. “A couple years!” I reply. “There’s no way I’m waiting that long.” To a twelve-year-old, two years is an eternity. I reason with Stacy, saying, “Look, I’m doing more advanced tricks than most of the pros; I can place in the pros right now.” When he doesn’t budge, I quit the team. Later, when Pops is asked why I left Powell-Peralta, he replies in his usual poetic fashion, “The bird has flown.” Problem is I didn’t fly into anything better for a long while.
LAKEWOOD SKATEPARK CIRCA 1981. (FRONT ROW: LEFT TO RIGHT) LESTER KASAI, LANCE MOUNTAIN, STEVE CABALLERO, BILLY RUFF, MICKE ALBA, TONY HAWK, MARK “GATOR” ROGOWSKI, AND ME. (BACK ROW: SECOND FROM RIGHT) STEVE KEENAN.
Once I leave Powell-Peralta, Denise Barter of Dogtown Skateboards asks me to ride for them. She sponsors Tony Hawk, Mark “Gator” Rogowski, and Mike Smith. My affirmative reply is instant. “Dogtown: the team that Shogo Kubo rode for! And I’ll get my own Dogtown Hosoi model!” “Yeah and I’ll turn you pro right away,” she says. Once I agree to ride for Dogtown, I have my graphics made up for my new model. Unfortunately, Dogtown goes out of business before my model ever gets released.
Stacy has this to say about my leaving his company:
IT WASN’T BECAUSE HE WAS TOO YOUNG; I WANTED ALL MY SKATERS TO BECOME THE BEST THEY COULD AS AMATEURS, SO WHEN THEY TURNED PRO, THEY WOULD IMMEDIATELY MAKE A SPLASH. BUT IT WORKED OUT: WHEN DOGTOWN WENT UNDER, I HIRED TONY HAWK. SO I LOST ONE GREAT SKATER AND REPLACED HIM WITH ANOTHER GREAT SKATER.
I was just starting to come into my own and get more vocal at the time. Prior to that, I was pretty quiet with people I didn’t know, as Stacy recalls:
WHEN CHRISTIAN WAS REALLY YOUNG, AROUND TEN OR ELEVEN, I DON’T RECALL EVER HEARING HIM SPEAK. I THINK AT ONE POINT I ACTUALLY WONDERED IF HE WAS MUTE. IT WASN’T UNTIL AFTER HE TURNED PRO THAT HE REALLY STARTED TO PROJECT, NOT JUST IN HIS SKATING, BUT WITH HIS PERSONALITY. I NEVER UNDERSTOOD HOW A KID SO QUIET COULD DEVELOP THIS ROCK-STAR PERSONA.
I don’t think Stacy understands me at all as I’m entering my teen years, even though he’s watched me skate since I was a little kid. He knows I’ve got the ability, but he’s seen me coming out of smoke-filled vans at the contests, hangin’ out with some of the wilder guys like Jay, TA, Duane Peters, and Ray “Bones” Rodriguez. It will take years for me to see Stacy as an individualist, with the courage to swim against the tide. As a kid, however, I’m too immature to understand. We simply look at guys who don’t smoke as barneys, kooks, straightedges—you know. My thinking is, You’re over there; we’re over here. That’s your scene; this is our scene. Later.
As I mentioned, whenever I skate an event I focus on the girls in the crowd. I can have a hot chick any time I want, but if I win the contest it’s a slam-dunk guarantee that I’ll get the best one of all, and sometimes more than one. I’m like a kid in a candy store with nobody guarding the register. I’m thirteen when I have sex for the first time. The girl is cool and she’s a virgin, like I am. But I don’t have to sneak around or anything to have sex. In fact, Pops drives me over to her house to pick her up and then drives us back home, where we do it in my own bedroom. I actually think Pops is kind of proud of me, like, Yeah, my kid’s becoming a man. Years later I hook up with that same girl again, and one day she calls to say I got her pregnant and she had an abortion. I ask if she needs any money and what her mom thinks. She says her mom just laughed. Exactly what I feel is lost to time, but the experience doesn’t cause me to slow down any.
Having sex makes you cool with your friends, but it’s like a powerful drug: I want more of it all the time. No wonder a popular expression links sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. They all tie together, since rock ’n’ roll (or punk) and drugs help get girls—the types of girls I want as I’m starting out, anyway. I’m just a kid, but I’ve developed this adult, rock-star lifestyle and high style. 