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‘Dogtown’ moves It's been 35 years since I saw Skip Engblom, whom I grew up with in Hollywood. His family moved to Santa Monica in 1958, and by the late '60s, "Skipper" had become a surfer of note through Jeff Ho's Zephyr Surfboards.
"Outlaw" skaters had the
Documentary gives origins of skateboarding
moves that led to today's
aerial extremesBy Tim Ryan
tryan@starbulletin.comI was envious of his fame and beach lifestyle, so in 1968, when he took off on a wave in front of me at Malibu, I ran him over.
I never met surfer and surfboard shaper Ho, but in the '60s I peeked into his brick shop in "south" Santa Monica. The wiry, wide-eyed Ho acted way too strange for me to talk to him, and the place was always filled with grungy surf rats.
These guys -- Tony "Mad Dog" Alva, Jay Adams, Shogo Kubo, Bob Biniak, Jim "Red Dog" Muir, Wentzle Ruml IV, Paul Constantineau, Wes "Bull Dog" Humpston, Arthur Lake, Stacy Peralta, "Baby" Paul Cullen, Marty Grimes, John Palfreyman, Nathan Pratt, Allen Sarlo, Chris Cahill, C.R. Stecyk III, Billy Yuron, Dexter Greene, Steven Piccolo, Chris Dawson, Jose Gallon, Gary Rosa, Ray Flores, Glen E. Friedman -- were the notorious Z-Boys, or Zephyr Surf Team, misfits and outcasts, most from broken homes.
"We were from Venice," said Engblom, 54, during an interview in Honokaa where he visits annually to build custom skateboards. "Venice was dirty, it was filthy, it was paradise."
One hot summer day, while sitting in front of Ho's shop, Engblom told a companion, "This place really is Dogtown."
The name stuck. The area and the guys who ruled here in the late '60s and '70s, first as the Zephyr Surf Team, then its skateboard team, is featured in an award-winning documentary, "Dogtown and Z-Boys," directed by Peralta, produced by Agi Orsi and narrated by Sean Penn. The film will be shown by the Hawai'i International Film Festival at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at Signature Dole Cannery.
The film's as much about characters -- three Z-Boys live on Oahu -- as skateboarding and surfing. "Dogtown" is a subculture that few in SoCal knew or cared about, though the crew was largely responsible for modern skateboarding's development.
"People don't really know the history of skateboarding," said Engblom, who lives in Brentwood. "What we did was start vertical skating, the whole aerial thing that ultimately led to events like the 'X Games.'"
Skateboarding has become a part of American culture, "but when we were doing it, it was completely an outlaw situation," Engblom said. Skaters like Alva and Adams wouldn't hesitate to skateboard back and forth down a busy street cutting off cars, whistling at girls and staring down pedestrians who failed to avoid them.
The Z-Boys coveted smooth asphalt. They started applying surfing techniques to concrete, riding low to the ground with their arms outstretched for balance, skating so hard that the homemade boards frequently broke, Engblom said.
The invention of urethane wheels broadened interest in the sport. By then the Dogtown kids' skating approach was far more evolved than anyone else's. "Before us, few people ever thought to skate anything but pavement. We searched out dry pools in Brentwood, Malibu, Bel Air to skate in."
They looked in real estate listings to find unoccupied homes. Some guys staked out a fireman's house to learn his schedule, Engblom said. "When he left one night for his 24-hour shift, they used gas-powered pumps to drain his pool, then returned the next morning to skate it."
Adams and Shogo Kubo, another Z-Boy living in Hawaii, paid $40 to a pilot for a one-hour ride. "We were supposed to be listening to this guy's pitch for flying lessons, but we spent the whole time looking for pools," Adams says.
Kubo, born in Kagoshima City, Japan, joined the Z-Boys after the group saw him skate. "I lived just with my father," says Kubo, 42, who works for an importer-exporter. "I think we all needed attention, and Jeff and Skip gave us that. We hung out every day together."
Ho and Engblom formed their partnership in 1968. Ho was a surfboard shaper living in the back of his 1948 Chevy panel truck; Engblom was a surfer who'd traveled to avoid the draft. They didn't want to rely on anyone else, so they designed, manufactured and sold their own boards, created their own clothing line and produced their own ads and promo films.
Ho, who still shapes surfboards on Oahu's North Shore, tried to provide a sense of family in his shop that he'd found at the beach as "a quiet, dorky little Chinese kid who never played sports until I found surfing. I saw other kids, growing up the same way, so I told them to try surfing ... make something of yourself."
As skateboarding's popularity increased, the junior surf team -- Alva, Adams, Kubo, and Peralta -- evolved into the Zephyr Competition Skate Team, a 12-member group of the best skaters in Dogtown. Ho gave them dark blue team T-shirts, and eventually Vans gave them dark blue shoes. "Having colors made them feel a part of something," Ho said.
Adams, 41, has a bit of a rasp when he talks, remnants of the party life and drug and alcohol abuse. He is the one Z-Boy who many believe never capitalized on his potential.
"Jay was awesome," Engblom said. "He skated with aggression, talent and disregard for what others were doing. Skateboarding's Mozart and Hendrix.
"Jay would do things that would look like they were going to be a disaster, and he would turn it into artwork," Ho said. "He would flow."
Adams says he made "decent money for about a year." But the fast lane led him into drugs and alcohol, and eventually arrests for assault and drug use in California and Hawaii, where he's lived since 1988.
A few years ago, he was convicted for terroristic threatening during a domestic dispute. While on probation in 1999, he was arrested for narcotics possession, receiving a 2 1/2 year sentence. He expects to be released in November.
"Dogtown's" rawest scene is an interview with a drugged-out, exhausted Adams interspersed with footage of him as a young skater. "I look drugged out because I was coming off a three-year drug binge and a three-day all-nighter. That's not life anymore."
On the back of his neck in dark blue ink, is a small tattoo, "100% SKATEBOARDER 4 LIFE."
"Real life has become a movie in 'Dogtown,'" Engblom says. "No one in this film tried to look f-----g good or tried to save their own face. It's honest. That's Dogtown."
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Not being much of an extreme sports enthusiast, I at least came away from seeing "Dogtown & Z-Boys" with a great appreciation for the ragtag origins and artistry of skateboarding, as well as the visceral thrill of seeing surfing and skateboarding on the big screen. Documentary offers
colorful view of origins
of skateboardingGary C.W. Chun
gchun@starbulletin.comThis rich documentary is more than just a parade of iconic shots of athletes in motion, but an engaging history of the sport, filled with a mix of colorful personalities; a vibrant presentation with terrific use of period rock music. And while the images are formatted for television, the music combined with the kinetic quick cuts and camera moves on historical photographs all make for a better theatrical experience.
Through the use of extensive archival photos and home movies, "Dogtown & Z-Boys" ably documents the start of a sports revolution through a gathering of rough-and-tumble kids at a surf shop in a rundown California beach town, basically punks who bring an aggressive street sense to what was once a benign side activity of '50s Malibu surf boys.
Rated PG-13 "Dogtown & Z-Boys"
Admission: $7 general, $6 for HIFF Ohana members
Showing: 6:30 p.m. Sunday as part of the Hawai'i International Film Festival's Spring Festival at Signature Dole Cannery
With help and guidance from shop owners Jeff Ho and Skip Engblom, their Z-Boys (the Zephyr team from West L.A.) were the true freaks of this evolving sport, the most aggressive and radical of pioneers very much "into their own thing." And the street sport would blow up nationwide, thanks to enthusiastic chronicler and part-philosopher Craig Stecyk, who documented their skills in the popular SkateBoarding magazine.
The sport blossomed when skateboarding got its second wind in 1972, when urethane wheels were introduced, allowing for more fluid motion. While it was obvious that the old-school surfers would transfer their wave-riding skills to the asphalt, it was the Z-Boys who -- having been inspired by seeing what Hawaii surfer Larry Bertlemann could do in a movie called "SuperSession" -- would bring a new style to the sport, riding low on the board, pivoting and putting a hand to the ground to help steer.
The California drought of 1976-77 would also become a major factor in the development of the sport, as water rationing resulted in dry or unused pools, perfect for the guerrilla Z-Boys to use -- that is, until the cops came.
Here, skateboarders would become hard core, pushing each other to bust even more radical maneuvers, finally ending with the first airborne moves done by the group's top dog, Tony Alva.
Described as both "the Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman of boarding," Alva was the sport's first overall grand champion at age 19. His rock star-type story is just one of several intriguing tales -- from the continued commercial success of Alva and film director Stacy Peralta after the breakup of the Z-Boys, to the cautionary tale of how the sport's progenitor Jay Adams burned out his natural gifts through a life of drugs and excessive partying.
Not surprisingly, "Dogtown & Z-Boys" at times romanticizes their past. But it sure makes a good case that it deserves treatment as grand as any other sports documentary ever made.
Tomorrow at the film festival at Signature Dole Cannery Theatres (reviews in tomorrow's Weekend section): On screen tomorrow
"The Cat's Meow" (USA, 2001): William Randolph Hearst brought some of the century's best-known personalities aboard his yacht in November of 1924, which led to a still-unsolved, hushed-up killing; 6:30 p.m.
"Take Care of My Cat" (South Korea, 2001): Three women search for their place in the world in this film; 8:45 p.m.
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