And Here We Go!

The first ramp we built had it's limitations but it's where we set the ground work of the years to come. Paul lived one the street directly below our street and in perfect alignment with our house so he had a perfect view of the first ramp.  I remember him telling me one day that he was hanging out in his front yard and he could see us riding the ramp.  He saw the usual kickturns and fakies and such but then he saw something he had never seen before.  I started doing these mid-ramp hand plants and Paul saw us flying above the railing with one hand down.  "WTF, I have to get up there".  I don't even know what board I was riding at the time, but with my no name board, my vinyl ski gloves and my Hockey helmet I hit it.  I would shoot down the starting ramp, grab the inside of my board with my left hand, plant my right hand on the deck of the ramp and shoot my board up into the air, swing it around and land it and roll out.  You can see the ramp in the previous pictures, not much to look at but very capable of technical tricks.  Paul was the most radical skater on our ramp and at the time so he was always pushing the boundries.  There was this bench holding up the ramp in the middle and it stuck out to the left side.  One day we were skating and Paul started riding up the ramp half way and then grinding off the side of the ramp onto the edge of the bench and flying off the side. We were stoked.  We would see this stuff in the mags but never in real life.  The handplants and the backside grinds made our ramp a certifiable mark in So. City Skating history.
      In terms of a timeline this next ramp is out of sequence but I had to throw it in for the shear magnitude of its size and what it took to make it.  One summer back in the early 80's I took a trip to Indiana to visit my ex and stayed there for two weeks.  I brought my two pairs of parachute pants, my checkered pull over Tee Shirts and my Vans. I also brought my board, so I was ready to skate but was severely let down. This is the mid-west and it is flat, not a hill, bank or slope of any kind in sight.  What to do? Build a ramp!  My ex had this huge back yard with nothing in it.  This was the perfect spot to make my mark in the Mid-West.  I didn't have any money to buy the wood and neither did the family that I was staying with but we did have knowledge of some local construction sites with tons of wood laying out on pallets.  We had a station wagon to our disposal and in the dark of the night we gathered up enough 2x6s, 2x4s, and sheets of ply to construct the half pipe.  How do kids build ramps with no money? How do Graffiti Artist make their mark on today's urban landscape with no money? And how did street artist like Keith Harring, Basquiat, and Twist make their mark?  At first we all had to take something that wasn't ours whether it was materials to build with, paint to spray with or a wall to scribe on we all created a foundation of youthful angst and expressionism.  The ramp went up in no time and soon I was doing drop-ins and gathering more scars to come home with.  I was the only one to skate the ramp at the time so it seemed it's purpose was to fill our time for my two weeks there and not really to skate it.  I did have fun building it and later I was told the some local kids bought the ramp, disassembled it and moved it on.  All that was left was the mark in the faded grass and scraps of wood lying around the yard.
       I had owned many boards since I started skating and we also made alot of boards as we were growing up.  Right now I own about 32 boards and they are all hanging up for display in my kids playroom.  I have a wide range from a Banana Board, Plastic and wood Makaha boards, Stacey Peralta's G&S WarpTail, to a Steve Caballero board given to me from his own collection, and many more. I own and have owned boards buy Duane Peters, Neil Blender, Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero and by manufactures such as Santa Cruz, Sims, Gorden and Smith, Makaha and others.

to be continued.....