A group of us got together today at Tony’s warehouse to begin signing the Bones Brigade decks for the BB Experience. The decks turned out better than we had expected, they look amazing and we had a blast signing, razzing each other and laughing! It was a super fun day. Rodney and Tommy will join for their signatures soon!

I’m March of this year Mike McGill held a grand opening for his new skate shop in Encinitas Ca. He announced the event weeks in advance and invited a handful of Bones Brigade members to attend and sign autographs. What Mike nor anyone else expected was that thousands of fans would show up to celebrate the event. There was a line outside Mike’s store that seemed a mile long and that line never abated the entire day. People came for autographs, selfies with the guys and just to spend time with the group. Mike’s event and the incredible response to it got us to thinking that we need to put together something to celebrate the Bones Brigade and our fans and this how and why the Bones Brigade Experience was born. This is our first one, we are not outsourcing this, we are putting it together ourselves and we’re thinking it may become an annual event perhaps in unique locations around the world. But this is the very first one and we are all excited to present it to any and all of you who may have an interest in attending. See you there!

Go to BBEXP.ORG for more info…

…photos to go with the story.

I had an unusual thing happen when I was 21; it was 1979 and I was competing in the Lakewood Pro Halfpipe Contest. Six months prior to this event, I had taken a class in Transcendental Meditation and consequently had been meditating twice daily. I was beginning to feel the calming effects of the practice and was in a pretty relaxed state of mind by the day of the event. It was in the finals, in the middle of my second run that I had an experience I can only describe as perhaps mystical. Time suddenly stopped. Everything inside and around me came to a complete standstill and I was suddenly watching myself skate back and forth throughout the halfpipe. I could actually see three tricks ahead and somehow those tricks had already been completed, like I’d already done them, even though I hadn’t. And as I performed each of these tricks, I just watched them happen in what seemed like slow motion, one after the other. Everything was perfect and everything moved in this beautiful and precise manner, as if I had nothing to do with the action, other than witnessing it. The feeling was magical. I felt that if I actually engaged my mind that I would interfere with the incredible orchestration that was taking place. It would take years for me to realize that time hadn’t stopped, obviously, because time is only a concept, even Einstein said it’s an illusion. What stopped was the movement of my mind, and with my mind becoming still I was able to become the observer and watch as the continuous present moment unfolded, trick after trick without any seeming effort on my part. I finished my run, energized like never before and knew that what just happened was so unique and special, and something I was possibly never going to experience again.

My VW Squareback story many of you asked for; at age 14 I gave up my paper route for a food prep job at Archie’s Sandwich Shop in Culver City. The owner Reggie said; “It’s 3 hours a day, 5 days a week after school. If you get the job done in 1 hour I’ll still pay you for 3.” What a great first boss! I earned $23.00 a week; I banked $20.00 and spent $3.00. At age 16 I had $800.00 and coincidentally my aunt Pattie was selling her beige Squareback, the exact car I wanted, so I cut her a check and she handed me the keys. Little did that car know it’s life was about to begin. My mom sewed up paisley curtains and my friend Kevin Farlee helped me install a stereo, an 8 track player and Aloha surf racks. That car not only became my faithful companion but a companion to so many other surfers and skaters like Jay, Tony, Biniak, Muir, Constantineau, Hoffman and Stecyk. It transported us to the pools spread all over LA, to the banked playgrounds and even the Del Mar Contest. My VW ran like a strong pack of horses owned by a bunch of outlaws. It outflanked cops, security guards and angry pool owners. It jammed down narrow alleys and over rough terrain and even survived Jay Adams hanging out the window cursing and insulting everyone within range. My car became as important as our boards because without it there would’ve been no transportation to these amazing places. I eventually sold it to Kevin’s girlfriend who drove it for many more years until she sold it. Where is it today? I don’t know but I sometimes wonder if it misses its great outlaw days.

The best way to silence the “inner-critic “ is to go out and do the very thing it’s been telling you that you cannot do! Keep chasing the dream…

I never had the slightest inkling I would make skate videos and then go on to make films. In 1983 I was living in Hollywood and my neighbor and friend was D.David Morin, former editor of Skateboarder Mag. He had just graduated from film school and was now a budding film maker and actor. He came to me one day and said, “My partner Dan and I think we can make a skate video featuring the Bones Brigade for 5k.” It was an offer George and I couldn’t refuse. Plans were quickly drawn up to begin shooting the Bones Brigade Video Show. But days before our first shoot, D.David auditioned for and landed an acting role in a major TV commercial making him unavailable. He told me I’d be in good hands with Dan, but Dan and I didn’t quite click. I wanted him to shoot the angles Stecyk had established with his classic DT photos but Dan saw it differently. So after day one I made the decision to take the video on myself. Being smart enough to know that I knew nothing about film making but dumb enough to do it anyway, I rented a 3/4 inch video camera and began shooting. In 8 months I’d amassed hours of footage. Then knowing even less about editing but naive enough to proceed, I rented a portable Sony editing system and parked it on my kitchen table where it remained for the next five months. I spent hours hunched over the material, logging it into notebooks and slowly piecing it together, then showing it to George and Stecyk for guidance. As it turns out, it was my deep understanding of skateboarding, the rhythm and flow of it that allowed me to overcome my lack of film making skills. Skateboarding itself guided the process and showed me how to make that first video and then the others that followed, and really all of my films. I don’t know what I have learned in life that is not the direct result of my intimate relationship with skateboarding.

A few followers recently reacted to a line in one of my posts regarding Jay, Tony and I “building our careers.” It wasn’t necessarily building as it was finding the sweet spot and staying there. Before the Zephyr skate team existed we were members of the Zephyr surf team, competing in local surf contests as the junior members and operating under the influence of the elder members; Ronnie Jay, Bill Urbany, Wayne Saunders, Wayne Inouye and others. They were our role models as were the great Hawaiian and Australian surfers; BK, Bertleman, Lopez, Reno, Terry Fitz, etc. At that time the holy grail that all surfers were chasing was how to earn a living surfing so that we could surf all day and avoid conventional jobs. Jay and Tony spent quality time on the North Shore trying to make that happen. But when the urethane wheel appeared and skateboarding blew up, the opportunities that came to us through skating dwarfed what surfing offered, so we came to it with the same desire to make our living riding skateboards all day and night and not have to “work.” Alva didn’t win the world championships and start Alva Skates while sitting peacefully in the Lotus position, he made these things happen with intention so he could support his love of skating and surfing. Same with me, it was a dream come true to be paid to ride my skateboard because it allowed me to skate all day, every day. Jay himself told me he wanted to be involved with a skate company and have his own team. It was the dream we were all after. Who wants to work when you can skate or surf all day? So if you can find a way to get paid to do what you love doing, then you’ve found the holy grail, at least the holy grail we were all searching for….as for Tony and I, we’re still living that dream that began when we were both 16.

August of 76. We have just learned “one-wheelers” where three wheels have lost contact with the pool and only one remains rolling on the coping’s edge before you turn 180 and drop back down. Bob Biniak and I are in the shallow end of the Devonshire pool watching Alva hit back to back one wheelers. Tony’s riding a Logan Earth Ski, Road Riders and very loose Bennett Trucks and at one point his one wheel rolls across the coping but then rolls up and over and out onto the flat of the pool’s deck. His body is now completely hung over the deep end while his one wheel is far behind him rolling over the pool’s deck and somehow Tony manages to pull his single wheel back from that position and roll it back over the top of the coping and into the pool. What he’s pulled off is the single most insane thing Bob and I have ever witnessed in a pool. It’s so shocking that Bob looks at me with his mouth agape as if he’s seen a ghost. I will never forget his reaction nor will I ever forget what I saw Tony do. If Tony had failed to pull his wheel back in, his back truck would’ve caught and hooked on the coping and he would’ve been thrown to the bottom and broken his neck because of the forward placement and momentum of his body. He was at that moment vulnerable to pool skating’s most dangerous fall. It was a stunning thing to witness and just as soon as Bob and I recovered, Bob turned to me and said quietly, “don’t let him know you saw that otherwise we’ll never hear the end of it on the drive home.”……..photos Pat Darrin.