Drugs are skateboarding’s open secret, as I guess you’ve gathered by now, with tons of weed for daily use and acid and mushrooms for special occasions. Cocaine is around too, and big for those who can afford it. There’s even some heroin, but you don’t see that out in the open. I’m smoking about an ounce of weed a week and do acid, XTC (Ecstasy), or ’shrooms every other week or so. We travel from contest to contest, do a few practice runs, maybe score mushrooms or acid, and drop it for our entertainment at night.
OJ II AD. WAIKIKI BEACH. CIRCA 1985. COURTESY HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION AND SANTA CRUZ.
Skateboarding is my ticket into nearly every home, and one day I go visit my friend Vanessa Vadim. Vanessa’s a cool kid who just happens to be the daughter of Jane Fonda. Jane isn’t home, and Vanessa and I end up in her mom’s bedroom, where I spot a pair of fluorescent-orange high-top Reeboks in the closet. This is at a time when sneakers are pretty basic, mostly solid black or white. I try the high-tops on and they fit perfectly, and I’m like, “These are sick!” Vanessa tells me to keep them, so I wear Jane Fonda’s Reeboks all that day and into the night.
That same night Alan Losi, Micke Alba, Gator Rogowski, Eddie, Eddie’s best friend David Duncan, and I drive out to a famous ramp in the desert. We take mushrooms and skate the ramp late that night in pitch darkness, with no lights anywhere. Six of us are on the ramp, riding together, switching sides while skating blindly at high speed. This is insanity, but insanity’s our true drug of choice, and we’re just cracking up, laughing the whole time—me in those rad orange Reeboks.
I’ve taken my time starting coke, but I make up for lost time and soon find myself with more than I can handle. There’s a kid my age (who ends up doing a reality TV show) from Beverly Hills High. His dad’s a doctor with a cabinet containing a big cookie jar filled with the finest pure cocaine. The kid steals the key to his father’s cabinet, has a copy made, and puts the original key back. He then fills an economy-size aspirin bottle to the top with pure coke, calls me, and says, “Dude, I got the coke. Get some buds and let’s party.” I score an ounce of killer weed and we meet back at my house. My dad’s there, working on some art project while we kids break out the Deering two-gram scale and weigh the coke out, some to snort and some to sell. We take hits of coco puff (weed laced with coke) from the bong, do lines of coke, and amp up to party for the next few days.
By age fifteen I’m a famous skater and becoming well known in the L.A. club scene. My friends and I make money at the clubs by selling methaqualone, a powdered form of Quaalude that everyone eats and smokes. It’s the latest trend in the L.A. club scene. We also buy jars of stimulants known as pink hearts and 20-20s through ads in High Times magazine.
We sell the pills one at a time. Buck apiece! Another source of a good time and a little income is balloons that we fill with nitrous oxide and sell for three bucks (or two for five). (P.S. Just in case you were wondering, I do drugs with some really famous people who cannot be mentioned in this book. Have to respect their privacy.)
MAX PERLICH “MENTO” HAND-DRAWN GRAPHIC BY POPS. © IVAN HOSOI.
I hang out with a lot of major drug dealers. Naturally they always have the best coke and often the hottest girlfriends. When they’re not around, their girlfriends like to hang out with me, but I have enough integrity not to sleep with them, no matter how tempting it is. Still, I enjoy the expression on a dealer’s face when I tell him that I’ve done all the blow he gave to his girlfriend and didn’t sleep with her.
Ever since I was a child my mother has taught me to tell the truth, no matter what. “It will save you a lot of heartache,” she says. When I hook up with girls, I tell them honestly that I have no plans of settling down with them. I don’t want to have one single girlfriend. Telling the truth always opened the door for an open relationship.
I like my way of doing things. I meet a girl, hang out for a while, get what I want, and quickly move on to the next one. As touring skaters, we stop in towns all over the United States, Canada, and Europe. At each stop I write like sixty-five postcards to different girls I’ve gone out with and send them all out. I say the same thing each time. If I ever went out with you, you probably got a postcard that said, “See you soon. Love, Christian.” Forgive me. I’ve changed.
JIMMY JAM, ME, AND MAX PERLICH. NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTY. HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.
A GATOR IN FLORIDA
My first big paid trip as a pro skater is to Kona Skate Park in Florida. This is also my first time alone on a plane. As we fly over Alabama, we encounter a gnarly storm and the plane jumps around in the sky like a feather in a hurricane. The wing out my window is swaying three feet up and down, and I’m thinking that it’s gonna snap off any second. I’m thinking, If this plane crashes, I’m gonna die all alone. I look over and see that the flight attendant is reading calmly in her seat. When I express my concerns to her, she says, “Don’t worry. I’ve been in far worse; we’ll make it okay.” I suck it up and trust we really will be okay, though we end up dropping in for an emergency landing in Birmingham, Alabama. A few hours later we’re in Florida.
Once in Florida I find out that Gator is my roommate at the hotel. That’s cool with me. Gator, a close friend, is becoming famous as one of the best skaters in the world. Sadly, he will become more famous than ever after the brutal murder he commits several years later. Back then he’s just a great skater, into kooky teenaged pranks like we all were. At the hotel he decides we should throw everything from our room into the bathroom: dressers, beds, TV, everything. This is back before everything was all bolted down like it is now. You can thank guys like us for that. As we run around the hotel room, ollying off the walls, Gator starts breaking lightbulbs, lamps, and whatever else he can find. He’s wild and a little strange, but to me he’s just another typical crazy skateboarder.
These are the punk-rock days, and we’re all thrashers. We skate, do drugs, and mess with people. That’s what skateboarding is all about for us at the time. The owners of the hotel eventually bang on the door of our room, presumably alerted by our neighbors. After they look at the mess we’ve made, they say, “You guys are out of here.” They call the owner of the Kona Skate Park, where the contest is to be held. He storms over and demands, “What are you guys doing?” We answer, “Oh, we’re just messing around.” He wants to kick us out of the contest, but we’re a pretty big draw so he decides to let us compete. We offer him and the hotel owner a weak apology and are allowed to stay in the hotel and compete in the event.
We say we’re sorry, but we’re not sorry at all. Later that evening Mike Smith (another top pro) and I hit the mall. We’re not shopping; we’re just being our normal, rebel selves. My favorite look these days is double boxer shorts, one pair forward and one backward. That wouldn’t be weird enough, though, so Mike and I decide to wear nothing but bath towels to the mall. We get toothpaste, shaving cream, and anything we can find and lather it in our hair to make it all crazy and spiky. Florida is really conservative in 1982, and we’re at the mall, naked except for our towels, with our hair looking really crazy. Everybody does double takes; they look at us like we’re nuts as we blast through major department stores where people are trying on suits and ties while we hold our towels up with one hand. Soon we’ve got security guards bolting after us. We ditch them out a side door, get in the car, and peel out for the hotel.
I’m not sure, but I think I got fourth at that contest. I clearly remember one run where I slammed really hard doing a move called a sweeper. I still remember the pain of that fall, and that’s the reason I don’t do sweepers, even to this day.
You could say we were just being kids, but there’s something more to it. We’re beyond anyone’s rules and do whatever we want, whenever we want.
HUNTINGTON BEACH OP PRO SURF CONTE ST. INSIDE THE CAGE. © IVAN HOSOI.
DIFFERENT METHODS TO GET TO THE TOP. ME AND TONY HAWK. MID-’80S. © GRANT BRITTAIN.
“Skateboarding is my day job, but after dark I’m all about the clubs. I
’m only fifteen, but I attend young-adult nightclubs for ages eighteen and up more nights than not. Pops drops my friends and me off at whatever club we request, and I kick him back some buds by way of a thank-you. Then later—much later—I call him to swing by and pick us up. Since those clubs don’t serve alcohol, they stay open until 4:00 a.m. I often call him shortly after that, and he’s in a good mood when he gets there, laughing and joking with us before he drops my friends off. Pops is rad, more like a buddy or a cool older brother than a dad.”
Pops rarely gives advice directly. Rather, he asks me questions and tries to get me to think. Then he basically accepts whatever answer I give him. He has a type of wisdom, and when he does give advice it’s usually worth taking—things like, “Don’t let fame go to your head; just skate and do what you do.” When I start making money, he asks, “Do you wanna save it or spend it?” I tell him, “I’m gonna spend it all,” and he says, “All right, spend it all, but don’t wonder where it all went when it’s gone.” Money and fame are in endless supply. The train is just leaving the station, and I can’t see this trip ever ending.
PARTY GODS
Just traveling to Brazil can be risky, and that’s one reason I love it so much. I’m sixteen years old and my only regret is that I’ve missed Mardi Gras by returning home a week too early. I’ve heard that Mardi Gras began as a religious holiday, one where you get everything out of your system before denying yourself for the forty days leading up to Easter. It’s nice not being religious, because I never have to deny myself anything.
When I return to Brazil a few years later I’m with some of my friends, including this friend we call “Block,” Cesario Montano. He’s a talented photographer and artist, and even though he’s Catholic there are few restrictions in his life. He talks about that time:
WE CALL CHRISTIAN CHRIST AND I TAKE A CLASSIC PHOTO OF HIM IN FRONT OF THE CRISTO IN RIO. HE HAS HIS ARMS OUT, HOLDING A SKATEBOARD IN ONE HAND, LIKE HE DOES WHEN DOING A CHRIST AIR. IT SEEMS WE ALL HAD SOME RELIGIOUS TRAINING, BUT CHRISTIAN IS ONE OF MY FEW FRIENDS THAT I DON’T RECALL EVER SAYING ANYTHING ABOUT RELIGION OR GOD.
PHOTO SHOOT AT THE FOOT OF CRISTO IN RIO DE JANEIRO. © CESARIO “BLOCK” MONTANO.
© CESARIO “BLOCK” MONTANO.
© CESARIO “BLOCK” MONTANO.
We may have missed Mardi Gras that first visit, but that doesn’t stop us from partying like carnival is on—there’s live music day and night, and the parties in Brazil never stop. This is one place where I can get hot and cold anything—what I want, when I want it: great food, beautiful women, and all kinds of different drugs. There’s this one substance I don’t get the name of, but we whiff it off a handkerchief. It’s kind of like a nitrous high. I do coke constantly. Why not? Though super cheap, it’s of such good quality that I smuggle some back home in my pocket, just to show everybody. Because it looks like pink chips of abalone, I call it pink champagne. Of course, the way I show people back in L.A. is by using it with them, so it doesn’t last very long.
Everything about Brazil appeals to me. I especially love how Brazilians live life to the fullest. They party like skaters—actually, harder than most skaters I’ve ever known; they party like tomorrow will never come. The weather is perfect, as in Hawaii, and when I’m interviewed for Brazilian TV, I tell them I wish I could stay another week. Maybe it’s a good thing I can’t stay; the way I’m partying, I might not have survived carnival.
Brazil’s really wild, but there are other places in the world where a riot can break out just by someone giving out a few T-shirts to a crowd. Block recalls one such incident in the Dominican Republic:
THIS GUY HAD A GUN ON THE PLANE AND I ASKED HIM WHAT IT WAS FOR. HE SAID, “OH, I’M A BANK COURIER.” IT’S LIKE THREE IN THE MORNING WHEN WE LAND IN THIS SUGARCANE FIELD. IN THE AIRPORT, IMMIGRATION RECOGNIZES US AS PRO SKATEBOARDERS. WE ALL HAVE OUR SKATEBOARDS WITH US AND THEY TELL US TO SKATE, CUZ THEY’LL ALL BE WORKING WHEN WE PERFORM AT THE STADIUM ON THE COMING SUNDAY. WE’RE ALL SKATING ON THE FLOOR AND THE BENCHES, AND THEY’RE APPRECIATIVE, BUT THERE’S NOBODY THERE TO PICK US UP. THE GUY WITH THE GUN COMES OVER AND WE TELL HIM THE SITUATION. HE TELLS US TO FOLLOW HIM; WE PACK EVERYTHING INTO HIS CAR AND WE’RE OFF, DOWN THIS DIRT ROAD, WITHOUT A LIGHT ANYWHERE.
WE’RE GOING THROUGH THE GNARLIEST LITTLE SHANTYTOWNS WHEN THE GUY PULLS OVER AND TELLS CHRISTIAN AND ME, “HEY, FOLLOW ME IN HERE.” HE LEAVES THE OTHER SKATERS—SCOTT OSTER, ANDY HOWELL, BO IKEDA, SERGIE VENTURA—IN THE CAR. HE WANTS CHRISTIAN AND ME TO FOLLOW HIM INSIDE, BUT EVERYTHING FEELS KIND OF SKETCHY. INSIDE, HE POURS US SHOTS OF RUM; WE ALL TAKE A SHOT AND WE’RE OFF AGAIN. PRETTY SOON THE SHACKS AND DIRT ROADS GIVE WAY TO A CASINO AND LUXURY RESORT, AND THAT’S WHERE THEY PUT US UP.
The event goes well, with everyone a little more amped than usual as we skate. Then, when Block throws product like hats and T-shirts to the crowd, things begin to erupt. At first this is fun, but chaos soon breaks out and kids begin throwing chairs and knocking each other down. By the time security arrives and escorts us out of there, it’s turning into a riot. Once outside we run onto the bus and are driven off to safety. That was the first time we felt like true rock stars.
At this point I’ve been skating and smoking for half my life. I’m starting to win regularly, but I wonder how I’d do if I weren’t stoned. For the first time ever I decide to compete in an event without getting high. Ironically, the contest is at the Mile High Ramp in Tahoe. I don’t smoke and have one of my worst showings in a long time, taking eleventh place. Naturally I figure it’s because I didn’t smoke weed. I get high in the next contest and get first place. After that it’s first or second every time, and it seems obvious to me that I need weed to get into that zone.
It doesn’t occur to me that that’s an excuse I use so I can keep getting high. After all, if I had won at Tahoe, I might have had to quit smoking weed, which has become a psychological placebo that triggers me, sort of like morning coffee. I may not drink a whole cup of java, but after I take even a sip—bam! I’m up.
So is it the weed that empowers? No, says the adult in retrospect. Does it give me confidence at the time? Absolutely.
Meanwhile, my biggest rival, Tony Hawk, is on a surer, steadier path to the top and in some ways plays it safer: he doesn’t seem to have my need for weed to succeed. We’re both becoming famous, though, and with that come endorsements, which lead to money.
Everyone calls Tony Alva “Mad Dog” because of his aggressive style and his attitude. (These days, even he will tell you he was arrogant as a kid, and he got socked from time to time because of it.) My model with Sims helps me launch my pro career, but I’m starting to gain my own identity aside from the company. TA isn’t skating as much as he once did, and he hasn’t done contests in quite a while. He doesn’t need to; he’s a hero to the skate world—the legend credited with being the first to launch an aerial in a pool.
He drives down from L.A. and shows up at Del Mar Skate Ranch at a contest I’m in. He mentions that he’s bringing Alva Skateboards back and says, “Dude, you should ride for me.” This is a great opportunity to do something out of the box, so I quickly agree to be on the team, which consists of just the two of us. With that, I go from a big corporate company with a big warehouse, to Alva Skateboards, which is located in a garage. It isn’t exactly glamorous, but working closer to the source is more my style. I admire TA’s stylish skating, of course, but also his individuality and his confidence, something he later admits often crosses the line into ego. Some people don’t like him, but a lot more love him.
In the evenings TA and I hit the clubs, where I rage and he hammers out live music with a group he starts called the Scoundrels. We’re just out partying and raging in the clubs and on the streets of Hollywood and San Francisco like a couple of stoned-out dirty cowboys looking for a gunfight.
HOLLYWOOD TO THE MAX
Max Perlich isn’t a skate legend, but he can skate pretty well for an actor. I’ve known Max since we went to preschool togethe
r at Play Mountain Place, the private preschool and elementary school off La Cienega and Washington Boulevards where I climbed trees as a kid.
By his teens Max is coming on in the movies and getting big in the Hollywood club scene. He’s featured in such hits as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Can’t Buy Me Love, Drugstore Cowboy, and Blow. When we screech up to the clubs in his classic Lincoln Continental, everybody knows the party’s on. Some friends of ours run Osko’s, which is one of the biggest clubs in Hollywood at the time. Inside of Osko’s is a private club called Funky Reggae. Max and I are both several years under age, but we stroll right in as the doorman unhooks the velvet rope and waves us through. It’s like that at every club—just breezing past material girls and wannabe actors and even some celebrities, to the front of the line. For us it’s red-carpet treatment all the way! One night I carry one of my Hosoi neon-pink Alva Fish boards to the owner of the club because he digs skateboarding. This greases the wheels further, and through him we meet all the bouncers. These guys also work as the bouncers of other clubs in L.A., and because we know them we never get hit for IDs anywhere.
Max is a blast to hang out with, but he sure takes a lot of heat from everyone. I mean, we all love the guy, but he can really get under your skin. He’ll be saying something and you’ll tell him to stop. He doesn’t stop, but keeps it up and starts saying, “Okay, hit me if you don’t like it. Hit me. Hit me.” Nobody wants to hit him, but he keeps at it until somebody finally does hit him. Then he says, astounded, “Why did you hit me?” When they answer, “You asked me to,” he replies, “Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d do it.” Then it starts up all over again.
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