WEST SEATTLE, Washington, June 08, 2010 (WSFB) – If you Google “Northwest longboard scene” today you get quite a few web sites to check out. Back in 2000 you were lucky to have consistent access to a computer, let alone the Internet. And if you did have a computer and the Internet you were probably stealing music off of Napster and watching porn, and not necessarily searching for fellow people that shared the interest of riding down a steep ass hill on a longboard skateboard.
And if you did happen to have a computer, and Internet access, and you did try to find fellow longboarders online you were probably mostly out of luck. Back then you either knew people that rode or you didn’t. Nobody readily advertised their favorite spots on the Internet or attempted to meet up with other people in the community via forums. It wasn’t out of greed or secrecy, the forums just didn’t exist to the extent they do today. In a way the longboard scene back then was similar to the snowboard scene of the early 90’s; if you saw someone else riding the same day you were you were stoked and probably went up and talked to them about it.
The locations these guys rode varied. There was Freemont, Wallingford, Maple Valley, Covington and Kent. The University of Washington campus was a great place to ride as well, and in fact serves as a pretty popular spot today, especially the Red Square Garage and parts of the Burke Gilman Trail. However, when you watch these videos keep an eye out for footage of these guys riding down the backside of campus on the Pend Oreille Road with cars coming up the hill. Sickness.
The crew varied from day to day with the exception of two; Brad Baker and Szabolcs Zsabo. Bradley was the old man (all of 24 or 25) and Szabolcs was the kid. Bradley taught Szabolcs the basics – be smooth, have style and push it. Szabolcs took it to the next level, especially technically. Szabolcs was as smooth as anyone I’ve ever seen on a longboard but he incorporated all kinds of skateboard style. This wasn’t the helmet wearing / extreme speed longboarding that is gaining popularity today, their style drew from surfing and skateboarding. But don’t get me wrong, hills were almost always a part of the mix.
What resulted was two videos for two concept companies that were basically the brain child of Brad Baker; Island Hopper Longboards and Locust Skates.
Island Hopper never really took off, but it was the start of Baker making custom, high quality Longboards and Szabolcs riding them. It was an idea somewhat ahead of it’s time (Sector 9 recently released a longboard dubbed the “Island Hopper”), but an effort that ultimately turned into something better. The video we made during this time was titled Dark Alley.
After Island Hopper came Brad’s attempt at higher quality boards via Inertia, then Locus Skates. Inertia was a stepping stone (on a side note there is a company today out of Portland called Inertia Longboards). Locust Skates actually ended up creating some great hand crafted longboards for a few years. They were hand manufactured in West Seattle and some were sold in stores such as Alki Bike and Board. This was at about the same time as other longboard companies were finding success, initially. It was a great idea, but honestly a little ahead of it’s time. If they were manufactured and sold today, it would likely be more successful due to the amount of riders out there currently.
It was hard to film everything that went down those days though as every one seemed to be just naturally going off in a different directions. Also, they weren’t necessarily pandering to the camera but instead allowing themselves to be filmed doing what they would be doing anyway. Plus, as nowhere near as talented on a skateboard as these guys, it was even harder for me to skate along or ride in the back of the truck with out falling over and busting my head. Basically what that meant was that everyone shared camera duty.
But again, the skating would have happened if it was being filmed or not, and that was the beauty of it. It’s maybe not the most extreme footage you’ve ever seen by any means, but the rawness of it is what keeps it relevant. It’s pretty hard to find much film from 10 years ago where people were riding longboards, at least outside of Southern California.
Today you see people riding Longboard’s down Alki all day long, sites like Northwestlongboarding.com bring longboarders together throughout the PNW region, and videos of longboarders and events from the last few years are all over Youtube.
What follows is just a small slice of the Northwest longboard scene back in 2000-2001.
Hope you enjoy.
EZB
Dark Alley & The Swarm from EZB on Vimeo.
