Prior to this time, I rarely ventured beyond L.A. unless I was traveling to a demo or a contest. At the time Huntington Beach was nothing more than a freeway sign I passed on my way to someplace else. Now, though, it quickly begins to feel like home, and the Orange County vibe there is new and appealing.
Chicken has a successful screen-printing business, knows business generally, and has a lot of good ideas. We get along great and I’ve been contemplating a new venture anyway, so I mention, “Hey, why don’t we start a company together?” He agrees enthusiastically.
We knock around some ideas for a skateboarding company and fix on the name Milk Skateboard Goods (MSG). The name, which has no relation to anything in skateboarding, is intentionally bland, and that’s exactly why we like it. All the artists and hard-core skaters think it’s sick, but the public probably thinks it’s kind of weird. Anyway, we run with it. Problem is that the pie is shrinking in the skate industry and the economy in general has fallen on increasingly hard times.
We have a silent partner in Milk who received a big settlement after his parents died in a plane crash in Orange County. He seems cool for a while, but he doesn’t want to follow our direction. After a while, he splits from us to do his own thing. Another company down the drain.
Starting a skateboarding company is tough, even in the best of times. Now we have two strikes against us—the country is in bad shape financially, and skating has a bad name. Skaters are wearing baggy pants that few parents like, and with street skating blowing up, skaters are out all night carving up the streets, grinding handrails, curbs, and any other pieces of private property worth skating. Being an underground sport makes it popular with the rebels we gravitate toward, but it also makes it challenging to sell products to the people with the money, the parents.
While the skate industry is dying, the party scene seems to get bigger. By the time I move to Huntington Beach the place is one big raging party. Eddie is living at Chicken’s too, and he’s started his own company, called Public Skates. He’s working hard, and his boards are starting to sell well. Chicken and I decide to start another venture, a skate company called Focus Skateboards, and we encourage him to join forces. Eddie wants to keep Public Skates going, but I say, “No, you’ve gotta get rid of it and concentrate 100 percent on Focus with us.” He’s uncertain of what to do when the phone rings for Public Skates and I answer it saying, “Focus Skateboards.” I look at Eddie and start laughing. He’s in and we’re doing Focus! I thought I was doing him a favor, but it didn’t turn out that way.
I move into Chicken’s house in October of ’93. At first it’s Chicken, Eddie, and me living there and running the company. When our friend Dave Duncan shows up a bit later, he joins the company and sleeps on the couch. We all know the cliché about not doing business with your friends, and that’s one of the reasons we want to do it: to prove everyone wrong. We also know there’s a great opportunity to do something different and grow a major company from nothing.
I’m the company’s biggest asset, with my name and record of wins, but I’m also about to become the biggest obstacle to our success. We all want to run a serious business while having fun and keeping a foot in our fantasy rock-star world. Soon, though, everyone is butting heads. Duncan and Eddie, who are best friends, threaten to fight each other nearly every day. They’ve never even argued before, and now they can’t be in the same room together. Every time Duncan tells Eddie to do something, Eddie, being one of the partners, feels that he’s being disrespected.
The word focus is popular with skaters and can be interpreted a number of ways. Of course, there’s the original meaning of the word (“the center of interest or activity”). While that word as our company name works on its own, to us the meaning goes deeper than that. When skaters get bummed on tricks they don’t make, they sometimes stomp a foot through the center of the deck. That’s called “focusing” your board. Then there are the initials of the company, FSU, which means “Focus Skateboards Unlimited” and, well, you know.
Where it was once crowds of screaming fans in bleachers, now it’s hard-core skaters in somebody’s backyard. Street is really coming on strong, as I explained in an earlier chapter, and that’s what we focus Focus Skateboards on. We sponsor tons of hot street skaters and hire one of the best, the legendary Mark “Gonz” Gonzales, to draw our graphics. If you don’t know about Gonz, he’s basically responsible for morphing freestyle into street skating. His ollie at the Embarcadero in San Francisco was so amazing that the site of his accomplishment is forever known as Gonz Gap. In December 2011, TransWorld Skateboarding magazine voted him the most influential skateboarder of all time. With all we have going for us at Focus, we’re prepared to launch something huge, relevant, and cool. And I’ve got just the thing to fuel this next phase of creativity.
(LEFT TO RIGHT) BACKYARD POOL WITH JOEY TRAN, ERIC “LIL MAN” GARBER, ME, AND JOHN SWOPE. © CESARIO “BLOCK” MONTANO.
In Hollywood not everyone uses meth, mostly because they can afford coke. Meth is cheap—“the poor man’s coke,” they call it. Since not everyone in Orange County is wealthy, a lot of people there do meth. Meth makes me more amped than ever to skate pools and ramps for hours on end. I’ve skated on PCP, on acid, and once on mushrooms in the dark. Skating on crystal meth is just a step up from normal skating, like comparing smoking a joint to smoking a cigarette. No big deal, at least not at first. Like all drugs, though, this one eats you slowly from the inside. Then, when you’re feeling comfortable, it lets you have it.
I never really get into meth until I move to Orange County. Eddie is into it early on, though. He went on a tour with MTV and he’s gathered three thousand names and addresses from kids who have signed their release forms. He sees an opportunity to use that list to help our business. This is before e-mail, so he begins the task of hand-writing all these kids about the new company, Focus Skateboards. The way he tells it, a friend comes by and says, “Here, you need some of this to help you.” At first Eddie’s like, “No, I don’t do that stuff.” Then the guy says, “Look, it’ll speed you up so you can finish your work in no time.” Eddie finally tries it, and he’s suddenly in a good mood while he writes all these letters and mails ’em without breaking a sweat.
Eddie calls me one day to say he has some octane that he wants me to try. I’m always up for a new rush, so I ask, “What’s octane?” even though I kinda know he means meth. Meth is taking over the streets of Huntington Beach, and skaters are right in the crosshairs of the epidemic. I buy some of it, try it, and do just a few lines here and there, maybe once or twice a day. It’s really no big deal. Soon, though, I start wanting it all the time.
A guy we know makes bongs from ornate cognac bottles and uses them to smoke meth from. While meth is highly addictive, the drug itself is only part of the problem. The ritual is the other main component that hooks you. It doesn’t matter if you’re cutting holes in bottles or blowing glass pipes with propane torches, using Pyrex glass tubing or incense tubes from the liquor store—it’s all part of the ritual that fuels you to want more and more. I like smoking from cognac bottles and ornate pipes, but at this early stage I can skip the ritual; it doesn’t make that much difference to me how I do it.
I stay up for days at a time now, and once I even attempted staying up for a week. I go and go and go and then just pass out for an hour or two, then sleep for maybe eight to ten hours after crashing. First thing I do when I wake up is take another hit of meth, and it’s go time again. I’ll be at some girl’s place where I have a comfy, cozy little den. There I can eat, smoke, get it on, shower, and begin another two-day experience.
Pretty soon I’m doing Focus part-time and crystal meth full-time. My days are spent partying and my nights cruising the clubs for chicks. We’re up all night, every night. But work goes on. When the guys drag in to Focus at ten or eleven, I complain that they need to be at work by eight thirty or nine at the latest. (I’m so amped that I’m always the early bird.) I explain that they have to b
e there early because the East Coast is three hours ahead of us and we’re starting to get some accounts there.
I try and they try, but nothing really changes. It’s difficult to see your own hypocrisy when you’re in the middle of it. Imagine, me telling them to be responsible! Worse than that is what’s happening to our friendship. When we began Focus Skateboards it was one big happy family and we had a blast. We skated together and partied together and the business ran pretty smoothly. Those days are gone.
There are some big investors and buyers looking at our company, and that puts a lot of pressure on me from my partners to clean up. But who are they to tell me how to live? As far as I’m concerned, they need a little straightening up themselves. It seems that once the first profits roll into the company, the fun rolls out, and we begin arguing a lot. When we speak to each other now, it’s mostly loudly and aggressively, and mostly about business.
Eddie’s met a girl that he’s really into. I don’t remember this, but he tells me that one night I take his car without telling him. Now he’s stranded with this girl he likes, and when I return he says, “That wasn’t too cool to take my car; you should’ve asked me.” Apparently I reply by saying, “F--k you, Eddie.” That’s something I never said to him or any of my close friends in anger before. He’s pissed, of course, and he says, “F--k you,” back to me. Finally I throw him his keys.
Eddie drives me home and is so disgusted that he walks away from the business for a few days, to cool off. When he returns, I’m living at the warehouse with a bunch of whacked-out guys and chicks, and the place is just a mess. Everything we’ve worked to build at Focus has disappeared, but all I’m thinking about is where to score more dope and what new chick I can hook up with.
Chicken remains the cool one, always listening, never yelling or saying much at all. He must be frustrated, though, with our dysfunctional ways. He owns a third of the company before Duncan invests. After that Chicken says he’ll settle for 10 percent, so Eddie, Duncan, and I can basically split the company three ways. Chicken’s screen-printing business is doing well and he doesn’t need the headaches. The rest of us continue arguing over anything and everything.
With nobody able to slow me down, my drug use does nothing but escalate. Occasionally I think about getting clean, but I enjoy the party lifestyle, the drugs, and the girls too much to give them up. Other than attracting new investment money, there isn’t much incentive to clean up. There aren’t many big contests to train for, and the whole skateboard industry is pretty much in the tank. I have no sponsors left, but I never quit believing that I’ll soon be back.
I’m what you might call a functioning addict—in other words, I’m holding it together pretty well, considering. I don’t impress the venture capitalists, though. Apparently there really are some money people serious about buying our company, but they all want more involvement on my part, which isn’t going to happen in my condition. When I don’t respond to my partners’ pleas for rehabilitation, they try an intervention. What a well-intended joke!
Max Perlich drives down to Chicken’s from L.A. and joins Chicken, Eddie, and Duncan, who are all waiting for me at the Focus office when I walk in. I suspect what it’s about as soon as I sense their mood. They sit me down nicely and start lecturing me on my problem. I don’t take it well. “Who are you guys to tell me what to do?” I demand. “Just because you aren’t doing meth every day…Look, I don’t have sores all over my body; I can still skate. I’m okay. Leave me alone and take care of your own problems!”
The intervention is a complete failure, isolating me further from my friends. If I’m a functioning addict, apparently I’m not functioning all that well.
BARCELONA, SPAIN. © MORIZEN FOCHE.
“Ironically, one of the things that holds me together when I’m on meth is one of my original vices, girls. Because I want to be with them all the time, I keep myself well groomed. Sex and drugs are all I think about. I’m out nightly at every club, still riding on my past reputation and remaining on every VIP list. I’m still the life of the party and remain goal-oriented in that regard. My primary goal has shifted, though, from being the best skater I can be, to figuring out what girl to connect with. That works well on speed because a meth user’s senses are on high alert, almost like in the movie The Matrix.”
Partying is now my main occupation, and I often bring the party to the office. We have an upstairs room for smoking weed, but I don’t limit it to just that.
ARTISTIC REBEL OR LOST CAUSE?
The intervention attempt confirms that I’m a nightmare to my partners. How can they operate a company with me always MIA? Still, if they want me, this is who I am. Take it or leave it. Besides, my outlaw image has sold in the past and probably will again. Maybe things aren’t perfect, but these guys should be stoked owning a company with such vast potential. If we can hang on, we’ll become the next Quiksilver.
I direct them to do their jobs and leave me alone, so I can get out in front of the public and do my job, which is to represent Focus by skating. But they know and I know that I’m not making many public appearances anymore, and I’m not skating nearly as much as I used to. My Bruce Lee ambitions have evaporated in a drug delusion. I’m still young, but where’s my drive to be the best and to break old records? If I set any record now, it’s for getting the least amount of sleep in history.
I barely sleep at all, moving from one high to another in the hope that the next hit will be the one that gets me there, and things will be like they were at first. I keep chasing the sensation of that first high—doing it, doing it, doing it—while pushing the limits of life. Yet nothing I try or accomplish has any lasting satisfaction to it.
Meth delivers its strongest effect when smoked, but I’m not totally into that yet. I love the way a big hit makes me feel, but the people I see smoking meth do nothing but that. No matter how high I get, I still want to go out and do something fun. Most of my friends who smoke can’t leave the house because they know they’ll get busted if they try to smoke meth in the open. But I can snort meth anywhere, even right in my car, and I’ve learned to love the feeling it brings. Oddly enough, I’m even kind of addicted to the burn. Little by little, though, I’m starting to crave the better high that smoking it offers and to appreciate the ritual that I described earlier.
I cast a blind eye at guys who smoke, though a part of me still thinks, Man, you never even look outside, and you haven’t taken a shower in how many days? I ask one of them if he ever thinks of chicks. He halfheartedly replies, “Yeah, bring ’em here.” I say, “Okay, but they’re not gonna want to hang out with you, the way you’re looking.”
It’s like anything else, though: eventually you become who you hang out with. Despite my friends’ precautionary example, I start smoking meth more and more until that’s the only way I use that drug. I mean, if you’re going to do something, do it right, right? I’ve always hung out with everybody, from skaters to street thugs to movie stars to businesspeople. Once I start smoking meth full-on, my associates are limited to convicts and drug addicts. Everyone else is pushed aside, traded in like a used car for my next high.
Life remains manageable, barely, until I begin getting busted. The first bust is for possession of a pipe with about ten bucks’ worth of meth in it. The next time, I’m caught with some pills somebody gave me. These are both mere misdemeanors and can be dealt with by attending a few classes. Once I finish those I should be done with my legal hassles. Turns out to be wishful thinking, because I’m busted a third time. Now I find myself in water above my head.
I call Block and a few other friends to see if I can scavenge some money for a lawyer. I’m hoping I can get everything dismissed outright. Block and Scott Oster both put up some cash, but Block is pissed at me for my drug addict ways and insists I pay him back. I promise I will.
The lawyer I line up is a character with a big cowboy hat. He seems to know everybody in the Westminster Police Station, where he takes up my case with the authoritie
s. He comes back and says, “Look, you’re going to have to do a little jail time. What you’ve done would normally get you six to nine months, but I got you fifty days. The good news is you’ll only have to do thirty of them.”
© GRANT BRITTAIN.
CHICKEN’S POOL IN HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA. BACKSIDE OLLIE. MID-’90S. © GRANT BRITTAIN.
Somehow I can’t share his enthusiasm. Jail time? I don’t think so. But with my dad in Hawaii and my mom on the East Coast, for the first time in my life I feel truly alone. With nowhere else to go I head totally underground, ignoring a scheduled court appearance and causing the issuance of a bench warrant for my arrest.
The word on the streets—my new hangout now that I’m moving from place to place, couch surfing around—is that David Hackett is looking for me. He’s a great friend, but I know what he wants: he’s found sobriety and hopes to get me to one of his meetings. I guess that’s good for him, but me, go to meetings? Yeah, right! I’d love to see Hackett, but please, spare me the sermon. Getting used to being on the run, I learn how to slip through the cracks. Although David tries to find me seven or eight times, I’m always gone before he arrives.
Where I once loved being the center of attention, now I avoid the public eye entirely. I really don’t want to get locked up. Some of my other friends are more successful at finding me than Hackett was. My friend and team rider Sergie Ventura was on crack for a while. When he cleans up, he finds me at this house where I’m staying. Sergie’s an amazing skater and a nice kid who was always at the top of his class in school. He comes from a good family. But drugs don’t care about your accomplishments, where you’re from, or your family background.
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