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Hard Times with Jay Adams

This is an amazing interview with a legendary skater who paved the road for modern day skateboarding. He was a part of the legendary Zephyr surf and skate team, and lived and grew up in Venice Beach, CA (dogtown). Adams was a teenager in the 70′s and skated alongside Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva.

“Jay Adams may not have been the world’s best skater but he was the man, the real deal, the original, the first. He is the archetype of our shared heritage.” – Stacy Peralta

“Jay was a natural. He would do things that you would think incomprehensible,” says Jeff Ho, owner of the legendary Zephyr surf shop. “He would do things that would look like they were going to be a disaster, and he would turn it into artwork. He would fucking flow.”

Adams was skating before there were professional riders. There was no money to be made, and everyone skated for the love of it. “For me, skateboarding started in 1965 so by the time the Dogtown era came around I’d already been skating for 10 years. When I started it was clay wheels and mostly home made decks. We were just trying to copy surfing. Everything about skateboarding had to do with surfing. It was all about fun and a way to surf when the waves were shitty.” said Adams.

The things Adams would do had not been done yet. He was an innovator of the sport, a pioneer. “Watching him skate was something new every second, he was ‘skate and destroy’ personified.” said Peralta. It was well known that Adams did not much enjoy the competition, he skated and surfed for the love of it. He was there when they first learned to carve a wall in a pool, when they figured out they could hit the ledge, and when the learned to drop into the bowls. Skateboarding was rebellious, aggressive, and free.

Adams later got tied up with drugs and partying. “Well, using drugs has wasted a lot of years, but you gotta understand when I grew up, in the ’60s and ’70s and even the ’80s, everybody I knew used some sort of drugs. And most of the people I knew and hung around never let them get outta hand. We partied, we surfed and we skated, and it didn’t seem to be a problem. But later in life, drugs finally took their toll and got to the point where they were a very big problem.” Things quickly went from good to bad. “I was thinking man, all I do is sell drugs and do dope and been to jail a couple times. And I’m pretty much a menace at this time in my life.” Jay Adams was addicted to meth, and was in and out of the legal system. He was charged for murder and assault following a gay bashing he instigated in Los Angeles, and landed himself in prison again after being caught as the connect for a buyer and seller trying get crystal meth from California to Hawaii.

He has been through a lot of shit throughout his life, but is now living clean and sober (and is a reborn christian). He is still surfing and skating. Understandably, Adams is thankful to be alive and still doing these things in his 50′s. We recently got the chance to meet and bomb a hill a few times with Jay. It was incredible day, we had a blast. My mind is still blown. “This is my first time bombing hills in about 30 years” said Adams. “Can’t wait to bomb some real hills, Sunday was just a taste.” said Adams.

Well, the man that started it all isn’t done yet, so why do I always hear people telling me they’re too old to skate? Anyway,  meeting Jay Adams Sunday was one of the coolest things that has happened to me in a while. To capitalize on his presence we had Dave Hackett there as well as a plethora of other well known riders who had been in the skate game almost from the beginning, Jay Adams paved the way for everyone though. Because of him they knew carving in a bowl and hitting the coping was possible. He showed them the possibilities on a skateboard. Skateboarding rules! Thanks Jay for everything you have done for the sport! You are a legend, a hero and a skater for life. – Leecifer

Resources

Words from the mouth of Stacy Peralta- http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/peralta/thrasher.html

2001 Jay Adams interview: http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/jayadams/2001.html

http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/jayadams/law.html

Reprinted from Thrasher Magazine- http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/jayadams/

Freeway Series Renegade Roller Derby

Stepping into the arena, both teams doing warm up laps around the track and the spectators find their seat on the floor or on fold up chairs they brought.  Blue tape marked the track, but this is renegade roller derby. There aren’t really too many rules for the players to abide by and skaters often find themselves outside the blue tape. Spectators even find themselves in the crash zone some times.

I always seem to forget just how intense the matches are but after the first few minutes of big hits, pile ups, seeing girls get tripped kneed and elbowed I was quickly reminded.

The brutal pile ups are broken up by people known as the brawl breakers. Although I saw spectators and even a camera man breaking up the fights. (I watched as with his free hand he tried to pull one girl off the other and holding the camera in the other hand as it snapped away.)

The medics had their work cut out for them for the night and the fans got a great show. Both teams skated hard from the beginning until the end. The game ended with the Orange County Outlaws beating the Los Angeles Renegade Rollergirls with a score of 84-45.

The game has strategy and various moves maneuvers and strategy go into the game. There are two girls in front at the start line (one from each team) wearing a line on their helmets. They are known as he pace person. Then there are two girls in the back wearing stars on their helmets (also one from each team.) They are known as the jammers. Then everyone else is blockers (blocker 1, blocker 2, blocker 3). Every time the jammer (star on helmet) passes the pace setter (line on helmet) the team scores three points.

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California Slide Jam

The California Slide Jam hill looked fun and promising until the cops showed up before we even had a chance to start. With the first hill busted and no planned backup hill we relied on local Drew Edwards and his extensive local hill research to take us to a new hill. “It’s with in skating distance, it’s really close.” We skating for around 10 minutes with the sun blazing and walked up this hill until we got to the next spot. My armpits and back already soaked in sweat from my backpack and the intense sun rays beating down upon me. (I would have rather had brought my car as the day progressively got hotter and hotter.)

The 2nd hill was a private road (according to the residents) that had a few houses off of it and Drew’s friend lived in one of those houses. We weren’t even there 5 minutes before we were told that it was private property and we had to leave. 5 minutes after that a different neighbor told us that we were unwanted and they were going to call the cops. “We are supposed to tell them that you know someone who lives here.” With that Drew pushed hard and fast to see if his buddy was home. He wasn’t so we moved on to the next hill

We were skating to the 3rd hill and it was all uphill and it did not seem very close. Ali Mehreban and I decided to turn around, go all the way back to the 1st hill to grab the car and see if we could beat everyone there. We skated for awhile, in fact the car was much farther than I had remembered. We finally made it to the car. We found another skater waiting to try to find where the hill had been moved to. He followed us and we easily caught back up to everyone skating to the next spot. Kids begged for rides and tried grabbing onto the car to let us pull them to the next hill. We left most of them in our dust.

We finally made it to what would be our final destination in our journey around some of the hills of Fallbrook. The ramp was put out and the competition was underway before people even knew it. Judging was done by Max Capps, Ali Mehraban and Michael Hinze.

There were lots of kids shredding it up and most of the kids who were hitting the ramp were also attempting 180′s and we even saw some 360 attempts. Although no 360′s were landed plenty of 180′s and a few no comply’s were landed. Not to mention all the different variations of slides. There were attempts at techsliding, we saw some hard wheel sliding and every variation of stand up slide I know of. We skated until the cops came to tell us they got another call and we couldn’t skateboard anymore in Fallbrook that day. “This is my second time talking to you guys and now you’re wasting my time” said the cop. “We won’t skateboard anymore but would it be alright if we finished our bar-b-que” asked Brett Ciabattini.

We ate hot dogs, did the podium. Passed out some shwag and everyone left. It ended up being a somewhat successful day and everyone had a good time. – Leecifer Eisler

Podium

1st- Wyatt Gibbs

2nd- Phillip “Swagmaster” Crow

3rd- Tyler Hampson

4th- Daniel Luna

5th- Jimmy Riha

Top Grom

Sam Damashek

 

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