Hosoi

by Christian Hosoi

  “We settle down in Huntington Beach, where Jen has been living. Life for me now consists of family, church, skating, and catching up with friends. I finally get another shot at fatherhood and have another son. I plan to do better this time. Classic was born to Jen in 2006, and Endless two years later. Rhythm is eight by the time I get out; we share our time with him and his mom, Kim.”

  Some years ago, I was on MySpace when a girl wrote to say that her boyfriend, James, was my son. She said he was going through difficult times and thought that I was the only person who could get through to him. She sent me his phone number and I called him immediately. Right away, Jennifer mentioned that we should have him flown to our house. He agreed to that and we picked him up at the airport. It was mind-boggling, like looking into a mirror—the rings on his fingers, the hat, the necklaces. Without ever knowing me, he had all the same mannerisms, characteristics, and style. That first night we were together we caught up and spoke about his life and mine, up to that point. I showed him my Rising Son documentary. After that, I shared my relationship with the Lord with him. He opened his heart, just as I had mine, and invited Jesus in. He moved in with us and lived with us for about four months. During that time, a strong relationship was built between him and the rest of our family. We have a strong father-son bond, and I’m so thankful that God has allowed me this blessing. He’s a great kid and I love seeing him whenever I can. I’ve missed out on so much with my two eldest boys by not being there over the years. I love and cherish them now.

  I’ve been with so many women that I’m not sure how many I’ve gotten pregnant and how many abortions I’m responsible for. Three or four for sure. Society acts like it’s no big deal, but it always leaves me cold.

  My last three kids all have the first name Christian. It’s not some George Foreman thing; I just want them to always know that they’re Christians. I mean, who knows how long I’ll be around; tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone. I want them to have every possible spiritual marker in their lives—to realize that their parents want them to stay the course and finish the race. This is a personal message from us to them.

  Our kids are all called by their middle name, and they all have a Hawaiian name as well. My grandmother is Hawaiian, and she chooses the Hawaiian names. Rhythm is Christian Rhythm Kealii Hosoi. Kealii means “royal blood” in Hawaiian. Classic is Christian Classic Kamea Hosoi. Kamea means “one and only” in Hawaiian. Then there’s Endless Kealoha Hosoi. Kealoha is a highly revered name in Hawaii, with some great surfers bearing it. Kealoha means “love” in Hawaiian, so his name is Endless Love.

  All my kids skate, and I love to cheer them and the other kids on from the sidelines. Classic is really into skating, Rhythm enjoys it but is more into supercross, and even Endless (at two) shows a lot of interest in getting on a board. James is a musician. I don’t push them into anything, but I tell them, “Some pros don’t start skating until they’re seventeen; you’ve still got time.” I’m rollin’ the dice that one of them will be a pro skateboarder.

  THE HOSOI FAMILY: JENNIFER, CLASSIC, ENDLESS, ME, RHYTHM AND JAMES. HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.

  My family is one of my greatest accomplishments, intimately linked with my faith. The way I love my wife, with great depth and commitment, reflects how much I love God. And I love her so much. Life is all about dying to self and giving to God. I’ve experienced the truth in what the apostle Paul says in Philippians 1:21: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” It’s really strange how so many people want to go to heaven but act like there’s no such place. Jesus said, “Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17:33). It’s as simple as that. The coolest thing is that when you give your life to Jesus, he gives it back to you—not all broken like it was, but restored, like some old car with new paint, newly upholstered seats, rebuilt engine, everything replaced, until it’s better than new. Of course we can mess it all up again, if we don’t do the homework, research, and maintenance.

  MOM, I WILL SEE YOU AGAIN. I LOVE YOU TOO MUCH! HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.

  STANDING ON THE WORD. HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.

  REENTRY

  Within days of being back on the mainland, I see many of my old friends. I haven’t seen my main rival, Tony Hawk, since I did that demo with him in Japan years earlier. I finally run into him in 2004 at the X Games, the event I once worked so hard to avoid. I thank him for his donation and the letters he wrote to the court on my behalf, and I congratulate him on all of his accomplishments. I studied the magazines while I was in prison, keeping up on him and everyone else in skating, and I’m truly proud of him for what he’s done for skateboarding.

  It’s my first year at the X Games—I’m watching, not skating—and my old friend and team rider Danny Way takes out the gold. The ramps are many times higher than when I last competed, and on Danny’s winning run he tips his hat to me by doing the world’s highest Christ Air to date. Danny is one of those skaters who come along once in a lifetime—both stylish and athletic. He recently reminded me that he first saw me skate back at the Del Mar Skate Ranch when I was battling it out with Tony Hawk and he was around eight or nine years old.

  Danny says I met him at the time, but I don’t recall that. He was just another stoked grom—a kid—getting stickers from the older guys. By the age of ten, however, he rode for my team. He had made a big impression on our mutual friend and my team manager at the time, Dennis Martinez. Dennis saw Danny skating in Mission Beach and signed him up immediately for Team Hosoi.

  Danny talks about those early days:

  THE FIRST FREE BOARD I EVER GOT WAS THROUGH HOSOI. GETTING A BOX AT MY HOUSE FOR FREE WAS SUCH A BIG DEAL TO A LITTLE KID. MY FIRST SKATE TRIP WAS ALSO WITH THE HOSOI TEAM. MY MOM DROPPED ME OFF AND I WAS SUDDENLY BEING PICKED UP BY HOSOI TEAM MANAGER DENNIS MARTINEZ. I WENT ON TOUR WITH ALL THESE GNARLY GUYS. I HAD BEEN HIRED AS A STREET SKATER, BUT I WAS ALSO A VERT SKATER. CHRISTIAN SAW ME RIDE A RAMP ONE DAY AND HE WAS SURPRISED. HE DIDN’T KNOW I COULD SKATE VERT.

  DANNY WAY AND ME AT HIS MEGARAMP IN KAUAI. © RAYIBE.

  DANNY WAY AND ME AT THE WOODWARD MEGARAMP OPENING. © THEO HAND.

  It’s like that joke about the pope being Catholic when you ask if Danny skates vert. We soon find out that he rips at all types of skating and he gets better and better, really fast. When Dennis got lost in his addictions and became ineffective as team manager, there was nobody there to keep Danny going. He moved on, and our team lost an amazing skater. That sucked for Hosoi Skateboards.

  By the time Danny was fourteen years old, we met up in competition, and he was already a threat in street and vert. In one event at a high-air contest he flew higher than I did. But, typical of Danny’s humility, he makes an excuse for me, saying that I wasn’t really on my game that day and that’s why he beat me. I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure: I don’t want a rematch with a guy who jumps the Great Wall of China just for fun! That and other legendary achievements on a skateboard put him in a class all his own.

  It’s a great privilege to have helped give Danny his start. Even though I wasn’t much of a role model, I supported him when he was a kid. He’d seen all sorts of drug and alcohol abuse as a kid and wanted nothing to do with any of it. I respected that, and if someone was doing drugs anywhere near him, I’d tell them to leave him alone. They always did, and look at the results!

  Danny Way’s shoe company, DC, is a really big help; they give me all the skate shoes I want. Quiksilver’s Mark Oblow and Black Label’s John Lucero are also there for me. Now I’m covered for shoes, clothing, and boards, but I have no income. Things are getting tight when all of a sudden I land a paid sponsorship from Vans. Next I set up sponsorships with Quiksilver and with Nixon Watches.

  I’m just as stoked on skating as ever and get on a board whenever I can. Between church, work, and family, I don’t have much time to skate. I wish I still had the spring and resilience of my teens and early twenties. Still, the enjoyment
and gratification of being able to continue with a career in a sport I love outweighs all the accolades and highest achievements from back in the day. It’s also cool: skating keeps me connected to the youth, and that’s right where I can be an effective role model and mentor.

  RONNIE FEIST, JAY ADAMS, AND ME. HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.

  CLASSIC AND ME. HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.

  X TO THE FIFTEENTH POWER

  It’s been fifteen years since the X Games began, and they’ve become one of the biggest events in sports. I’ve been a commentator for a while, but never a competitor. That changes when I enter the Grand Masters division in 2009. For those who have difficulties relaxing the night before a big event, try watching Cars 2 for the thousandth time. I’m sitting in the front room with my wife as our kids run in and out, Classic crawling all over us, bringing little presents and asking Daddy and Mommy to pick him up.

  A lot of things have changed in skating since I first began thirty-five years ago, but standing on that ramp at the X Games, ready to drop in, I feel exactly the same as I did that first time I stood on a ramp and looked down. Whether it’s being televised live on ESPN for six million viewers, or watched by six skaters in a backyard pool, it’s still the same. I drop in, and above the crowd all I can hear is my son Classic screaming, “Go Daddy! Go Daddy, go!” I launch a frontside air and am intoxicated with adrenaline as I pull my routine. Since I’m not high on any other substances, my reflexes are great, making up for my advanced years. I’m eighteen again and moving fast. Dave Duncan is announcing over Classic’s screaming, but my focus is on the board as I do a grind over the big gap, then some back-to-back airs. The next thing I know I’m standing on the stage and hearing, “Christian Hosoi has just won gold!” The crowd is calling my name, cheering for me. Many of them know what I’ve been through. My phone blows up with text messages and my e-mail inbox overflows with love from some of the world’s top skaters, including Danny Way and many others who know me. The feeling on that stage is beyond what I’ve felt at winning any other event, because my faith, wife, and kids are all present.

  CLASSIC. HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.

  ME AND ENDLESS. HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.

  ME WARMING UP BEFORE THE 2009 X GAMES. © RAY “MRZ” ZIMMERMAN.

  TRANSFORMERS

  As I mentioned earlier, one skater who took a radical left turn into drugs is my old team manager, Dennis Martinez. Dennis has long since retired from skateboarding and is now a frontline warrior in the fight against drugs. In 1977 he was the World Freestyle Champion; then, like me, he disappeared after meth got the best of him. He did something few live to tell about, surviving a twenty-year meth addiction, sixteen of them on the needle. He went from paying cash for new cars and anything else he wanted to living beneath a freeway bridge. He’s such an amazing and giving guy now that it’s hard to imagine this, but he got so bad he would hold people up at gunpoint and play Russian roulette, just for the rush of it. Today he’s running a rehab facility called the Training Center in San Diego, where he works with convicts with addiction problems and tries to orient them back into society.

  One of the world’s first pro skateboarders, Bruce Logan, also fell to a meth addiction, his lasting forty years. Like Dennis, Bruce ended up living beneath a bridge. I had the privilege of praying with Bruce and watching him accept Christ a few years ago while filming the movie D.O.P.E. (Death or Prison Eventually). The movie stars Bruce, Dennis, Jay, and me and is all about our rise, fall, and redemption.

  Redemption has come to some other friends as well. Eddie and Duncan came to visit me in jail. There we spoke through the thick glass that’s used to separate inmates from the people outside. I confirmed Eddie’s suspicion that I’d died—not in the physical way, of course—when I said, “Christian Hosoi’s dead, and he’s never coming back.” They understood that I was speaking in spiritual terms.

  JAY “ALABAMY” HAIZLIP, TONY “MAD DOG” ALVA, AND ME. HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.

  They’re still among my closest friends today, and at their core they’re tenderhearted guys. They’ve made up since their fallout at Focus years ago, and now they occasionally attend the Sanctuary—the church in Huntington Beach where, since 2004, I’ve served as the outreach pastor. At the end of one service, when I first spot them there, I scurry over and put a hand on each of them, telling them I’ve been waiting for this moment. Little by little I watch their lives change.

  Eddie was born in Peru, and when someone says they’re going down there to build ramps for poor kids in the inner city, he volunteers to go with them. They visit the most dangerous parts of the country, building skate ramps for the poorest of the poor, working with fellow hard-core Christians. According to Eddie, “Those guys don’t care if they die in service for the Lord; they know where they’re going.” Eddie helps lots of kids’ lives, and he continues making great progress personally.

  Jay Adams has been on quite a journey. Tattooed on the back of his neck is 100% SKATEBOARDER. He’s that and a whole lot more. He’s always been radical, but now that can work in his favor. What he suggested in his letters to me years ago has come to pass, and we’ve done outreaches to kids together. Jay isn’t always perfect in his walk, but when he’s going strong, it’s an amazing testimony to God’s power.

  Of all the salvation stories I’ve witnessed, one of my favorites is that of my childhood friend Aaron Murray. To this day Aaron is one of the most radical guys I’ve ever met, and I’m amazed and thankful that he’s lived to tell the story. Our lives were bound together from those early days when we’d reach for something above us in the trees, to the opening of the skateparks, to our involvement with drugs (me) and alcohol (him). We’ve done it all together.

  I haven’t seen him for a while, and when I do, I see a desperate, unchecked addictive personality holding him down. He has drug problems like we all did, but I know that alcohol is his main thing and that it’s finally getting the best of him. When he drinks, you can be pretty certain he’ll start a fight. He tries and tries to quit drinking, but he just can’t stop on his own. Even back in the day we’d all tell him he shouldn’t drink. He’d manage to give it up and wouldn’t drink for like a month or so. The next thing you knew, though, he’d be drunk or in a fight and blacking out on the way home from a party.

  Pastor Jay, the lead pastor at the Sanctuary, remembers seeing Aaron out in front of the church looking like he’d just been beaten up. Jay says that Aaron appeared so angry and wasted that he could have been arrested just for the way he looked. He was still drunk from the night before. Still, he agreed to come inside. I’m not sure if he got much from that first service, but he continued coming each week after that, and it’s evident that changes began happening in his life.

  A few months pass and we’re doing a group baptism in a park. It’s in a horse trough in Huntington Beach. I ask Aaron to ride along with me to the baptism. He doesn’t say much on the way there, and once we arrive, he sits quietly, watching and listening. After we baptize the last person I turn around and there’s Aaron, standing in the water—pants, shoes, and all. I’m like, “Whoa, bro—what are you doin’?” He says, “I wanna get baptized.” I say, “Okay, why don’t you take your shirt and shoes off?” His answer reminds me of something Peter the apostle might have said: “Nope, I want it all; I want everything baptized.” This dude is serious, and I gladly baptize him. He comes up from the water and we’re both crying and hugging each other.

  He doesn’t change completely overnight, but something good is born in his heart that day. At this point, 2012, his entire life is different. He’s been attending church and been sober for five years now. His wife, Marissa, has a similar background, and now she’s right there with him.

  The Murrays have two sons, a six-year-old and a three-and-a-half-year-old, along with Aaron’s two teenage stepsons. Their kids are a little older than ours, but they all love hanging out and playing together. His family recently moved to our town, and now we all hang together all the time. Aa
ron’s an extreme guy, very passionate and emotional. When he reads the scripture he really looks into it and wants to squeeze all he can from it. Given his experience, he has a unique gift: he can present the gospel to people from a life of experience and a place of total surrender, describing a life that was radical and fragmented but is now committed, solid, and whole. I believe he’s going to be used powerfully in the coming years. He and his wife are taking college Bible classes and are getting excellent grades. They also serve at the church. They’re definitely committed.

  I’m a Christian, but make no mistake: I’m not religious. To me religion is a program, comparable to the regimen of those old teams of skateboarders in the ’70s, performing the same tricks in the same uniforms. That approach may work for some people, but I want nothing to do with it. I understand why it’s so repellent to most skateboarders and anyone else who is used to being hard-core and doing things their own way. While many skaters are lost, I think it’s the responsibility of those of us who know the truth to reach out and preach the gospel and love them.

  HOSOI FAMILY COLLECTION.

  © MELINDA KIM.

  “Some people call Pastor Jay Haizlip “Alabama Jay” or simply “Alabamy.” Because Jay’s from Alabama, the nickname makes sense, but pastor? Nobody would ever have expected a druggie with his past to lead a church, unless maybe it was some whacked-out congregation that did drugs and partied all night. But Jay is the senior pastor of the Sanctuary, a thriving church in Huntington Beach with a vibrant mixture of skaters, punkers, street people, and drug addicts, most of whom have cleaned up, but some of whom are still in transition. Not only is Jay an awesome pastor, he’s one of the most dedicated and radical men of God I’ve ever seen.”