HISTORY OF SKATE SHOES - PT 1

Who were your idols?
Most of my first idols were the slalom, freestyle, and downhill skaters who were part of the La Costa scene. Henry Hester, Tommy Ryan, Bobby Piercy, Torger Johnson, Bob Skoldberg, Kim Cespedes, Ellen O'Neal, Steve Cathey, Greg Taie, Steve Sherman and the many others who were part of that scene. I also admired the unique talents of the Dogtowners, especially Tony Alva, Steve Picolo, Jay Adams, Shogo Kubo, Paul Constantineau, Stacy Peralta and Paul Hoffman.

Coolest skate shoes of all time?
Definitely Vans. You could customize the colors to make them your own, and they held up really well. Converse became popular later on but I never felt that they were built well enough.

Sneaker anecdotes?
One of the biggest demands on skate shoes while doing downhill or slalom at La Costa was being able to stop at the bottom of the hill. We had to put our foot down to stop at the bottom of the hill, which really took a toll on the bottom of the shoe. I went through a lot of shoes due to that alone. Skating vertical in skate parks, ramps, and backyard pools really tore up the tops of shoes, but it took a while for the shoe manufacturers to design better protection for that.

Who were your favorites to photograph?
There were two factors that made photographing skaters more fun: because they were unique with their style and tricks, and because they were unpredictable which made photographing them much more difficult. I can't name them all here, but some of my favorites were Mark ‘Gator’ Rogowski, Tony Alva, Steve and Mickey Alba, Dave and Paul Hackett, Darrell Miller, Jay Smith, Dave Andrecht, Jay Adams, Shogo Kubo, Steve Schneer, Brad Bowman, Alan Gelfand, Mike McGill, Christian Hosoi, Jeff Phillips and Lance Mountain.

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