Hosoi paroled and shredding

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version2
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Re: Oh

Post by version2 »

Hank Snow wrote:Hey Version2 Weren't the Meat Puppetts from Phoenix. I grew up in Phoenix and listened to them, and knew they played around town a lot. In fact when I was there visiting last year, I swear to god one of the Meat Puppets was shot at the down town post office. check out

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbe ... emID=17729

I see the connection you all were making and I wasn't complainging about the post, just asking.
Now that you mention it, I think they were from Phoenix. Sorry if I came across as defensive, but not everyone here was quite as welcoming as you.
I was one of the kids I knew growing up who liked his parents country records too. Funny how a lot of those artists who were considered so uncool then are now considered the inspiration for a lot of new music.

Lefty
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Post by Lefty »

Yeah they were, and the only Cropduster album is Strange Sort Of Prayer. It is still one of my favorite albums- especially Justin's picking and steel guitar (the first time he ever played it). The guy is an amazing musician, and the Rockabilly he does now is great as well.
Sounds like we may have some sort of common ground after all-
Remember Patch?
Paul Micah and Slop?
Man-those were the days

sean
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Post by sean »

Nuisance was a great band. Did Cropduster just have the one album (A Strange Sorta Prayer)?

Lefty
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Post by Lefty »

'Round 91 or so, this garage band started to gain some steam around here. They were called Nuisance and they were great. We used to watch them practice all the time and play at all the local venues. They went to school with us (Sonoma State University) and so, A little scene grew up around them- only drawback was the other garage band they always played with- Green Day (Oh well, they brought the girls). Anyway, they were beyond classification, but I liked them...had a little twang to them and I was raised listening to my old man play pedal steel (started in the sixties with a guy who was asked to play for Spade Cooley before "the night")so I could get into that. Still the shows were crawling with punks because that was the kind of kids that went to these venues.
One night I hear this gal say "complete Uncle Tupelo rip-off". Now, I wouldn't be that harsh...but the influence is obvious. Got no Depression and that was that. Nuisance turned into Cropduster, which was more country and less punk, and I went with it. Again- the similairity with Anodyne and SV is pretty obvious
Anyway-punk isn't really a brand, or a band (and it ain't no 12 year old in a Hot Topic belt), it's a sentiment, which I think is apparent on all the albums Jay has made (hee hee - now we are on a first name basis)
Hell-"This machine kills Fascists" was pretty damn punk rock for it's time as well

Hank Snow
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Post by Hank Snow »

I have always been a huge music fan, and incredibly eclectic in my tastes. I was heavily into punk/new wave in the late 70s early 80s, but also love Zeppelin and Floyd just as much as the Clash and Ramones and Buzzcocks. I loved my dad's classic country stuff as well as his big band records from the 40s. I liked a lot of soul and motown and Funk stuff, just everything. I have a major music addiction.

I really loved the Black Crowes when they came out, thought they were a reincarnation of Sticky Fingers Era Stones, just loved them. Went and saw them in about 92 or so and The Jayhawks opened for them. this was my introduction to the "alt-country" or "americana" or whatever this is music. I was blown away. They were the best I had ever heard. i bought Hollywood Townhall and it remains one of my absolute favorite albums. A few years later I saw them on David Letterman performing Blue, and bought TGG the next day, then drove later that week 5 hours to St Louis to see them at Mississippi Nights. It was an incredible show. For one of the Encores Gary Louris came out wearing a Wilco shirt. I had only vaguely heard of them before, but thought if Gary likes them then I should check it out. Only later did I realize that Wilco and the Jayhawks were touring together after the STL show, that would have been great to see.

From there i started checking out Wilco and Son Volt, then traced it back to Tupelo. Later I picked up on a lot of the others like BottleRockets, WhiskeyTown Old 97s, etc. But Wilco, SV, UT and Jayhawks remain my faves.

Lawrence Fan
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Post by Lawrence Fan »

version2 wrote:Well Hank, growing up as a kid, Hosoi was one of my idols and I listened to a lot of punk rock. The first alt country band I was into was a group that wasn't really alt-country- they were more punk that was influenced by country called the Meat Puppets. I liked them a lot and they got me into more country sounding music and then along came another band that was at first more punk and then later got defined as being alt-country called Uncle Tupelo. Jay used to be in Uncle Tupelo and I think a lot of people came to know his music via the same or similar routes as I did.
I've often wondered about that. I came to Jay due to geography. I wonder what percentage of UT etc. fans knew of UT before there was a Son Volt or a Wilco?

Can't say I was ever a punk fan. Dig the image, but can't name any influential punk bands that I know a song of, except for maybe the Sex Pistols. Unlike hip hop, which I'm not a fan of nor do I want anything to do with the image.

I was a big fan of U2 and REM before it was "cool" to like them, but I stayed a fan and never really kept abreast with the underground/College radio music scene. That was about as close as I got. As for the skater I'd never heard of him until this post. Can't say I know any others, except for the guy with the video game named after him. Chalk that up to midwestern upbringing.

What I find extremely cool is the number of paths people have taken to hook up with UT and its various incarnations.

Lefty
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Post by Lefty »

OK OK- read the other page where you yelled at me. I always thought Alva was a cocky SOB but I apologize for making gross generalizations about you.I cant stand him but thats that. I'll go ponder why you don't think the Master of Disaster was better and you can go think I'm a jerk...we're even
If you liked Dogtown- get your hands on "Fruit of the Vine" and "Chlorine"...much better skating sans the "I'm old school" sentimentallity that Peralta brought to Dogtown (which was really annoying in the Jay Adams part)
Anyway- I have a damn Alva bolted to the wall as well (Bill Danforth model), I don't know what you mean by "best look", but that's your red wagon I guess
Cheers

Hank Snow
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Oh

Post by Hank Snow »

I think Tony Alva is the best so I must have got that from the Dog Town video? What kind of bullshit is that? The Dog Town video was cool, but it was just a bio of the skaters I have liked for 25 years.

I was into Tony Alva and thought he was the best in the late 70s, just as I was into punk in the late 70s. I just think he was the best and most out there skater, most style, best moves, best look. Maybe the word I am looking for is "Favorite". They were all incredibly fucking awesome, those skaters in the late 70s/early 80s, but Alva was always my favorite. I even had that cheetah skin board of his, wish I still had it today. Probably saying any of those early guys is better than the others is like the whole Jay/Jeff argument. They are all awesome, they have different styles that appeal to different people for different reasons.

But Alva WAS the best.

Hey Version2 Weren't the Meat Puppetts from Phoenix. I grew up in Phoenix and listened to them, and knew they played around town a lot. In fact when I was there visiting last year, I swear to god one of the Meat Puppets was shot at the down town post office. check out

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbe ... emID=17729

I see the connection you all were making and I wasn't complainging about the post, just asking. It is weird, I love punk just as much as anyone, and back when I was 15 or 16 and most into it, I still enjoyed listening to my dad's classic country that he would play, and never thought of combining the two. ONly years later in the 90s when I came across Wilco and Son Volt, and then when back and traced their UT roots, did I realize others like both as well.

Anyway Alva was the best, Hosoi and everyone else was incredible.

saratoga jay
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Post by saratoga jay »

oh Lefty, like any of us care what the hell you think about what we think.

Lefty
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Post by Lefty »

Tony Alva is the biggest kook to ever ride a board- put down the remote...turn off the "Dogtown" video. The only person who thinks that Tony Alva is the greatest is Tony Alva...at least the only person that skates.
Punk rock is the avenue many of us came to UT from, and I don't think Jay would argue that. Forgive us if the demon rears it's head every now and then

version2
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Post by version2 »

Well Hank, growing up as a kid, Hosoi was one of my idols and I listened to a lot of punk rock. The first alt country band I was into was a group that wasn't really alt-country- they were more punk that was influenced by country called the Meat Puppets. I liked them a lot and they got me into more country sounding music and then along came another band that was at first more punk and then later got defined as being alt-country called Uncle Tupelo. Jay used to be in Uncle Tupelo and I think a lot of people came to know his music via the same or similar routes as I did.

Hank Snow
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TA

Post by Hank Snow »

Actually he Wasn't the greatest skater ever, that title easily belongs to Tony Alva.

Furthermore, just out of curiosity, what the hell does this have to do with Jay Farrar, or music at all?

Lefty
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Post by Lefty »

Yeah Yeah- free Hosoi
When we wanted to skate and were in Jr. High, he was skating.
When we wanted to skate and were in High School- he was skating (and making $350K a year), or doing drugs (OK, so were we).
When we wanted to skate and instead had to study for finals in college, he was skating.
When we went to graduate school and got jobs, or married, he was selling drugs because know one wanted to pay him to skate anymore.
Sure, he was the greatest ever...well him and Gator (look where he is- life sentence) but he got to do what we wanted to do AND GOT PAID...unreal.
Well, I guess I don't think he's a hero- I'm a little emberassed that skaters have waited patiently for his release and championed his cause, because he abandoned the sport, in my opinion, for dealing something as trailer trash as Meth-Amphetamine...and didn't have the sense to not take it on an airplane! I'm glad he's out, I saw him skate a bunch and he was inspiring (inspired me to really hurt myself...inspired me to buy pads etc.), but I hope this new found religion keeps his ass out of trouble. How is it that he went to jail and Duane Peters has not? Now there is an American Icon-The Master Of Disaster

Image

loosestring
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Post by loosestring »

that's a sad story man. i remember when i was a teenager and he was at the top of his game. he was one of those guys that i watched in awe and could only wish to be like talentwise. i hope he keeps it on the straight n narrow this time around. he's awesome.

version2
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Hosoi paroled and shredding

Post by version2 »

Just got out a week and a half ago. Great article fron SI, but it is long *ADD DIsclaimer*:

Sports Illustrated article:

Skate and Destroy
By Karl Taro Greenfeld

Pray with me," Christ says.

He puts his right hand against his side of the bulletproof glass and I place my left palm on my side, and we pray. He thanks the Lord for another day and asks that I be enabled to put down on paper the life he has led and the things he has done so as to edify those who will read about him. He also asks that he be allowed to continue to serve God and to lift up those in situations like the one he finds himself in -- those who have come to such a purgatory and are now seeking salvation. And then Christ nods, hangs up the phone, turns away and walks back into the San Bernardino (Calif.) Central Detention Center, where he was serving 10 years for possession of 1.5 pounds of crystal methamphetamine with intent to distribute.

Christ is the nickname of Christian Rosha Hosoi, 35, one of the greatest skateboarders in the history of the sport. He has not stood on a board in more than four years.

Christian was up a tree. The six-year-old had climbed far up a tree, and no one on the school staff could coax him down. He was just sitting there, bare legs dangling from a narrow branch. "And you know how delicate eucalyptus trees can be," a teacher was telling his father, Ivan (Pops) Hosoi, over the phone. "One wrong move and the branch could snap...."

But Pops wasn't concerned. He knew there was nothing to worry about as long as his boy wasn't spooked. And Christian, surprisingly well-coordinated for a six-year-old, was never afraid. He had been climbing almost as soon as he could walk, and he'd often get other boys in his kindergarten class in West Los Angeles to follow him up a tempting trunk, but the other boys would quickly give up, too weak to gain much purchase. By then Christian would already be two stories up, and rising. His classmates would gather at the base of the tree to gawk, and then the teachers would come running.

When the teachers would call Pops, he would already have smoked his first joint of the day, and he'd just sigh and say, "Lady, look -- if the kid ain't scared, he ain't in any kind of trouble." Sometimes, though, the teachers would be so freaked out from watching Christian swing from one branch to another that they would insist that Pops retrieve his kid. (Christian's parents had separated when he was two.) Pops would then have to slip on some flip-flops, start up his '59 Volkswagen bus, drive to the school and get Christian to come down.

But Christian never wanted to come down. When the boy was 12, in 1979, Pops, an unsuccessful painter who had assisted Sam Francis and Ron Davis, among other artists, took a job managing a skatepark in part because he marveled at his son's unique ability to stay aloft on a skateboard. Pops let his son skate the park all day, and very quickly even the top skaters took note of this kid with long, black hair who was already going higher than any of them. "Christian was this teeny little kid who just had it," recalls Stacy Peralta, a skateboard pioneer, director of the documentary Dogtown and Z-boys, and screenwriter of the upcoming Heath Ledger and Johnny Knoxville film, Lords of Dogtown. "He had impeccable form even when he was 10 years old, just beautiful to watch. It's weird to see a kid at that age with that understanding of how to move his body through space."

The first photo of Christian published was in Skateboarder in 1980. It shows him blasting a frontside aerial out of a pool. His arms are extended up and back, like a ballerina's in midleap. He stares impassively at the camera, lips clenched. Nearly everyone who was skating then recalls that photo. Something about it -- the eerie lighting, the fact that some kid no one had ever heard of was blasting huge air (and looked like he never wanted to come down) -- made it memorable. "The first time I ever heard of Christian Hosoi was that photo," says Tony Hawk, an amateur skateboader at the time. "My friends and I thought he was a girl, but we were like, Who is this girl? She rips!"

Christian would soon be anointed the second coming of skateboarding. L.A. natives Peralta, Jay Adams, Tony Alva and Shogo Kubo had established vertical skateboarding -- in which the athlete rode the vertical walls of pools and halfpipes -- as a sport in Venice, a.k.a. Dogtown, in the 1970s (the region and era so lovingly documented in Peralta's films), but the sport went through a painful contraction in the late '70s and early '80s. It was the half-Japanese Christian Hosoi, sometimes just called Christ, who resurrected and then transformed the sport into the aerial spectacle it would become. He was joined by several other notable athletes: Steve Caballero, Lester Kasai, Lance Mountain, Mark (Gator) Ragowski and the one who would become the most famous of all, Hawk, a weed-thin trick machine. "We invented going out of the pool and doing aerials," says Peralta, "but for guys like Christian and Tony, the swimming pool walls were no longer for riding. They were for launching." If Christian hadn't squandered his great gifts, it is very likely that you and your kids would be watching him blast huge air every year at the X Games and that video game on your PlayStation would be called Christian Hosoi's Underground. "Dude," says Dave Duncan, a professional skater and X Games announcer, "as far as I'm concerned, every dollar that Tony Hawk has made is really Christian's money."

Christian's arrival on the scene coincided with the decision by a few of the sport's primary movers to market it as an outlaw pursuit. It's hard to remember a time when skateboarding was ever anything but a counterculture activity, but during the 1970s boom skateboards were sold primarily in sporting goods stores, next to the fishing rods and lawn darts. But as skateparks shut down because of high insurance premiums and low turnout, Powell&Peralta, the skateboard company run by Peralta and aerospace engineer George Powell, and Independent Trucks (trucks are the plates and axles that connect the wheels to the board, or deck) were among those industry leaders who redefined skating as a beyond-the-pale activity for rebellious kids.

Thrasher magazine started up in 1981 and portrayed skating as an almost nihilistic activity. Thrasher, Powell&Peralta and other skate companies began holding contests such as Terror at Tahoe and Shut Up and Skate at backyard ramps from California to Connecticut. "It was just a bunch of kids rolling up in a van and ripping some ramp in the middle of nowhere," says Peralta. "We knew skating had to become a more underground activity to survive, that mystique was good for the sport."

The credo of those still skating in 1982 was summed up by a sticker that began appearing on decks nationwide: skate and destroy. "We just wanted to be outlaws," says Fausto Vitello, founder of Independent Trucks and Thrasher. "The mainstream thing hadn't worked, so we just terrorized. That was how we saw we could promote the sport."

Skateboarding, second perhaps only to hip-hop, was the greatest influence on American youth culture of the late 20th century. There is no sport as inextricably linked with America's alternative subculture. Seminal punk-rock pioneers like Black Flag's Henry Rollins and Suicidal Tendencies's Mike Muir (brother of Dogtown Skates owner Jim Muir) were serious skaters, as were members of the Beastie Boys, The Germs and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Even the sport's graphics, which came out of the gang graffiti endemic to Venice in the early 1980s, became the jumping-off point for a visual style later co-opted by MTV and mainstream magazines. Any number of sartorial trends, from hoodie sweatshirts to baggy pants to fat-soled sneakers, also came out of Southern California's skateboard community.

By 1982 the sport was synonymous with outlaw cool at precisely the moment when its athletes, taking advantage of huge improvements in equipment -- uniform deck sizes, hard plastic knee pads, flat-bottom ramps -- were pushing the sport into far more complex and radical endeavors. The skater was emerging as a cultural antihero, and there was no one better suited to that role than Christian Hosoi.

Throughout the early 1980s, starting when he was 13, Christian dominated amateur skateboarding contests. "Christian was the best pool skater I have ever seen," says Adams. "He could make any trick look really easy or really critical." During outlaw pool sessions, when Alva or Adams or another of the former Z-boys -- skaters associated in the late '70s with the surfboard and deck manufacturer Zephyr -- would man the backyard gate of a drained swimming pool, very often the only grommet (young skater) they let in was Christian. The genealogy of skating, in the minds of purists, went from Alva to Adams to Hosoi, like some alternative culture Ruth to DiMaggio to Mantle.

Christian's repertoire already included bigger, higher, smoother versions of every aerial move in the sport. His first sponsorship deal was with Powell&Peralta in 1979, when he was 12; a year later he left them for Dogtown Skates. "I was a professional skater by the time I was 14," Christian says. "I was already on the covers of mags and stuff. When I went to school, everyone knew who I was. I already had a couple of thousand dollars a month coming in. I could do anything I wanted."

Simon Elbling, a former Venice skater who is now a sunglass distributor for Black Flies in Honolulu, recalls sitting in his 10th-grade class in Venice and seeing Christian outside, holding two skateboards and a bag of weed. "He was jumping up and down, showing me the baggie. He'd be like, 'Let's go to the beach!' I'd be like, 'Don't you have school?' and he'd be all, 'I'm finished with school.'"

A typical day for Christian entailed riding his skateboard to the Venice Beach boardwalk. He'd lie on the beach with a bikini-clad girl or two and soak up some sun and some weed. Sometimes he'd skate, and sometimes he wouldn't, but whenever he was on the ramp at Venice a buzz passed through the crowd. Watching him launch aerials was breathtaking. His deep tan, black hair, high cheekbones, long nose and strong jawline made him look like an updated version of those faces carved into Mayan stelae.

"Christian was so fluid," says Hawk. "Everything he did, he did it with his own signature." That signature was a combination of power, balance and grace -- it takes amazing strength and coordination to control a skateboard and your body as you are hurtling six feet above an empty swimming pool. Built low to the ground, with exceptionally strong thighs, chest and upper arms, Christian might have been a good shortstop or soccer midfielder, but it was his exceptional sense of balance that allowed him to pull off aerials that left other skaters shaking their heads. "He made skateboarding an art," says Cesario Montaño, a photographer and fellow skater.

The only thing Christian lacked was a foil, a rival who could push him to a new level. Finally, in the mid-'80s, that skater emerged: Hawk. He had started appearing in the magazines around the same time that Christian had, but he'd been dismissed by hard-core skaters as a lanky circus freak who did innumerable flip tricks -- turning the board over in his hands during aerials -- but lacked Christian's style, power and charisma. However, by the mid-'80s, Hawk began winning major contests, especially at the notoriously difficult skatepark in Upland, Calif., and the skate world had to take him seriously.

Christian and Hawk were as different as two boys could be and still share a passion for skating. In pools and halfpipes, their wildly divergent styles made them natural antagonists. "Christian was the air, the showman," says Hawk. "I was the technician. I could go high, but I couldn't do it consistently. I always wished I could go as big as he did."

The two skaters came to represent divergent cultural strains in the sport. "There was starting to be a division between the hard-core punk skater and the skatepark skater," says Vitello. "Because Tony's dad was always around, Tony had the reputation of being a goody-goody guy, while everyone else was getting stoned all the time." Consider, for example, the precontest ritual of the two skaters: Frank Hawk would have his son doing calisthenics in the parking lot, while Pops and Christian would alternate sucking pure air from an oxygen tank and taking bong hits. (Pops was smoking marijuana with his only son from the time Christian was 10.)

In a sport where the badder you were, the more highly you were regarded, Christian's popularity was enhanced by having Hawk as a rival. The two of them would engage in an epic battle through the '80s for contest titles, sponsorship deals and fame, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars while traveling around the world.

It is 11:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning in Kahala, Oahu. It's flat off Diamond Head, no waves, so seven surfers (and skaters) are hanging out in a shabby living room, flopped on sofas that smell like wet dogs. The blinds are drawn. Spread out on the cracked, glass-top coffee table are a few skate and surf magazines, empty beer bottles, dirty coffee mugs, a bong and a ziplock baggie of red-haired buds. Elbling, an old friend of Christian's from back in Venice, has already rolled and smoked five blunts. Every few minutes, preposterously-proportioned women in tiny Lycra bikinis wander in from the bedroom and sit down on the sofas. They cross their legs and wait to become the center of attention. When they realize they can't compete with the skate videos the guys are watching, they push themselves off the couches and leave.

At first we are watching recent videos, compendiums of street-skating tricks or pool sessions somewhere in California, New Jersey or Virginia. The rhythm of these tapes resembles that of pornography: quick shots of skater after skater doing sick trick after sick trick. Money shot after money shot.

"Yeah. Yeah! Stop it. Dude! Stop it right there. Dude, rewind that."

"That's sick."

"And he lands a fakie! No way."

"Backside! Oh, s---!"

After about 20 minutes, and another two blunts, Elbling slips in a 1991 video of Christian and Hawaiian legend Kali Selfridge skating in a pool not far from this house. The tempo is different from the earlier footage. Instead of ruthlessly editing each run down to one trick, the director let this session play out in real time. The skaters and surfers watching this video -- most of whom first met Christian in Santa Monica or here in Hawaii -- stare at the screen in reverential silence. Christian's run is the fluid opposite of the jerky contemporary pool sessions we had been viewing. Though his tricks are not as complex as those of some of the modern pool skaters, his style transcends eras and technical virtuosity. He puts his moves together with such flow it is as if his run was choreographed. "He was just so beautiful to watch," says former pro Grant Fukuda, shaking his head. "There will never be another skater like him. He had it all, the best moves and the most incredible lifestyle."

Christian was famous for enjoying the considerable perquisites of being the best in a sport that defined counter-culture cool. He changed sponsors several times before finally starting his own company, Hosoi Skates, in 1985. (His logo, his name over a rising sun, winked at his Japanese heritage.) That year he was making, by his own estimate, a few thousand dollars a month on the sale of decks alone. He also had endorsement deals with Jimmy Z, Oakley and Swatch; Converse put out a poster of him with Magic Johnson. Perhaps the steadiest money Christian made came from traveling around the world giving demonstrations -- to promote a local skate shop or company -- for up to $5,000 per day. He appeared in Coke and Pepsi commercials, in music videos for the Beastie Boys and in the skate-sploitation movie Thrashin'.

With his $350,000 annual income -- when the average NBA salary was $300,000 -- Christian bought a Mustang, a Harley-Davidson, a tricked-out Jeep and a McLaren sports car, all before he had a driver's license. He hung out with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys, Ice-T and the actors River Phoenix and David Arquette. "I was just a teenager, but I was living the full rock-star life," says Christian. "I could have anything I wanted, do whatever I wanted. Girls. Cars. Clubs. Drugs."

Louanna Rawls, the daughter of soul singer Lou Rawls, met him in an L.A. club in 1987. She didn't know who Christian was, but "when he walked into the room, the room stopped, and it had nothing to do with skateboarding. He was a hot, charismatic guy." That evening marked the start of their 3 1/2-year relationship, during which they would live together in a house in Echo Park formerly owned by W.C. Fields, where Christian had a wooden halfpipe constructed in the backyard.

He would fly a half-dozen skaters with him to Hawaii or Rio and pick up every check that came near him. "We would go out to get sushi and there would be this posse of 15 boys around us," Rawls says, "and Christian would pay for everyone." Once, after a demo in Hawaii, Christian stopped his white Lincoln Town Car -- he always rented a white Lincoln Town Car when he was on the road -- and asked a bunch of young skaters if he was going to see them later that evening at a nightclub. "We were like these little groms and we didn't have any money and I told him that," says Fukuda, who would later skate for Hosoi Skates. "And then on the down-low, so nobody would see it, he gave me a bunch of twenties so I could buy beer and food for all us kids who didn't have any money."

Even as Christian reigned as the preeminent skateboarder in the industry, a revolution was unfolding on California streets in the late '80s. Young skaters, frustrated by the lack of skateparks and unable to get access to abandoned swimming pools, began to exploit the terrain they found on the streets. They began to incorporate almost every feature of the urban environment -- handrails, steps, pylons, loading docks, park benches -- into what was called street skating. By the early '90s the magazines and videos devoted most of their coverage to these young skaters, and the prize money for vert contests virtually disappeared. Christian and Hawk, the two most famous vert skaters, could still pick up small demo fees and sponsorship deals, but they quickly saw their lifestyle go from rock-star level to what Hawk calls "just eking it out. In the early '90s I spent a week in Dallas doing three demos a day at Six Flags for $100 per day. That could be discouraging if you're used to making thousands for one appearance."

Christian claims to have been undeterred by the revolution that toppled him. "I've never been someone who dwells on the past," he says. "I could skate anywhere. If street skating was it, then I could skate on the street." But the new players in the industry, companies like World Industries or H-Street, were not about to pay some aging pool skater to do a signature model. In 1991 Rawls dumped him, and as his sponsorship money dried up, Christian was forced to move out of the Echo Park house. He moved in with his mom, making the drive home in his silver McLaren.

Christian had always been a spendthrift, and Pops, who made most of Christian's business decisions, did not take a long view when it came to managing his son's money. (Hawk's father, Frank, on the other hand, prudently guided Tony's affairs and insisted that Tony invest some of his substantial earnings.) "Most corporates would have paperwork," Pops explains, "but we weren't into that. We didn't have contracts. We didn't want to create this paperwork-lawyer thing. This is a sport that's done underground." Typical of Pops's management style was his one-sentence explanation to Peralta for Christian's decision to leave Powell&Peralta in the early '80s: "The bird has flown." By the early '90s Christian was down to making a few thousand dollars a month, mostly from international demos.

"It killed him," says Montaño. "He was such the Man, and it was hard for him to admit he wasn't anymore."

Skateboarders have always been exposed to underground -- and illegal -- temptations. Whether Christian's downward spiral was exacerbated by drugs is impossible to determine. He insists that it wasn't drug abuse that destroyed his career but dumb luck, a couple of bad business calls, a few rash decisions. Perhaps there is some truth in this, but it is certain that when Christian began using large amounts of hard drugs in the early '90s, in particular crystal meth, the act of defying gravity, in a halfpipe or in life, no longer seemed so effortless.

In 1993 Christian moved again, this time to Orange County, closer to the clubs and drugs he craved, and farther away from skating. "He could have progressed as a street skater," says Montaño. "He was doing handrails, stairs, but it killed him so bad being out of the magazines. Then he moved out of the neighborhood, and we couldn't keep tabs on him. If we had known he wasn't skating, we would have killed him."

Christian acknowledges that his drug use accelerated in 1995, when he went from snorting speed to smoking it. "Coke was out, speed was in," he says. "I was partying and going to clubs, doing a bunch of meth and Ecstasy. I was flying, and you know I was never afraid of flying high."

He grew a ponytail, stopped shaving, got a few more piercings. He recalls that this was the first time in his life that he had to pay for a pair of shoes: steel-toed biker boots. Before that, he had always been paid to wear one or another company's sneakers.

One afternoon in '95 Christian was pulled over in his McLaren for a traffic violation and police found a meth pipe in his glove compartment. He was arrested and charged with possession of drug paraphernalia. Friends bailed him out. Facing a possible 30-day jail sentence if convicted, Christian didn't show up for his hearing. "Christian was scared to death of going to jail," says Montaña. The judge issued a bench warrant for Christian's arrest; he then faced a potential nine-month sentence.

Christian now entered what he calls his "outlaw phase," during which he went from being an underground hero to living underground. As a wanted criminal he couldn't skate at contests for fear of being arrested. He would still occasionally do demos outside the U.S., particularly in Japan, where vert skating was still popular and where Christian was assured a steady supply of good shabu, as speed is called in Japan.

Without professional skating, there was no longer any reason for Christian to get off the pipe. "He would have four strippers come over, party with them and do more speed," says skateboarder Tony Converse. "And before we knew it, that scene extinguished what Christian Hosoi had been."

Tony Hawk lounges by a kidney-shaped pool in the backyard of his five-bedroom home in Encinitas, Calif. This pool is full of water, and two of his sons are jumping in and out of the heated, chlorinated soup. Behind us, on the other side of the guesthouse, is where the 36-year-old Hawk hopes to build another pool. This one will never hold water, though -- it will be his private skatepark. Inside the house and parked in his driveway are other manifestations of no-worries wealth: a giant plasma TV, Italian furniture, Lexuses and SUVs. Hawk is as humble as any superstar athlete you will meet, and as he plays lifeguard on this April morning, he says Christian should also be enjoying this lifestyle. "We were all so young, making a lot of money, being rock stars.... You don't think it's going to end. But when the sport took a dip, a lot of guys couldn't handle it. I didn't fall into the trap of celebrity and partying and burning out, so when things turned back around, I was one of the only guys from that generation still skating hard."

Hawk's reversal of fortune can be traced to a programming decision made nine years ago by ESPN, which was looking to tap into the thriving alternative sports market. The networks had noticed that the skateboarding demographic was the audience every company from Mountain Dew to Nike was looking to reach. In 1995, in an effort to tap into this elusive market, producer Ron Semiao created the Extreme Games -- a showcase of alternative sports: BMX, inline skating, rock climbing and, centrally, skateboarding. Most skaters ridiculed the Extreme Games concept as yet another lame attempt by the mainstream to cash in on skating, and said that ESPN's decision to prominently feature vertical skating instead of street skating proved just how whack these so-called Extreme Games would be. Yet vert skating, ESPN correctly predicted, was more telegenic than street skating, and easier for nonskaters to understand. Anyone who had watched Olympic gymnastics or figure skating could appreciate the aerial tricks of the best vert skaters.

ESPN needed personalities to sell the X Games, as the Extreme Games soon came to be called, and very quickly singled out Tony Hawk and Christian Hosoi as the main characters in the "drama" of vert skating. A crew was dispatched to collect footage of Hawk and Hosoi, interviews were conducted and then long profiles of each athlete were aired repeatedly on ESPN to hype the first X Games, in Newport, R.I. Both skaters had, of course, agreed to compete in Newport, and both were eager to revisit their rivalry. It had been a long time since anyone had cared this much about vert skating.

"We knew this was going to be big for all of us," says Hawk. "It was televised, so even if the actual competition was going to be lame, there was huge prize money and exposure. But then Christian said he wasn't going to go."

Christian didn't explain why he wasn't going to Newport, but he had a very good reason for skipping the event: He knew that bounty hunters were on his trail, and had he shown up in Newport, he would have been arrested.

"Christian should have been the rock star of the X Games," says Duncan. "If he had been there, he would have become a media star and been making millions of dollars today."

The games made Hawk a household name -- announcers called him the "Michael Jordan of skateboarding" -- and a mini-industry. His skateboard and gear company posted revenues of more than $50 million a year throughout the late '90s, his autobiography became a bestseller and Tony Hawk Underground was one of the top-selling video games of 2003. "Christian should have been there," Hawk says, shaking his head and helping his son Spencer out of the pool. "He would have been the star of the X Games, and he could have ridden this wave with me."

A pound and a half of crystal meth looks like a slice of greasy Lucite the size of a paperback novel. Christian picked up the slab and weighed it in his hand as the dealer said, "Haul it to Hawaii for me, bro -- a little aloha from the mainland." It was January 2000, and Christian had been thinking about heading back to Honolulu. For several months his friends had been telling him, "Dude, you don't look so good," and he had convinced himself that it would be easier to get off speed in Hawaii, away from all the negative influences in Orange County. He could carry this package to Hawaii, and with his cut could afford to chill out for a few months. Who knows? Maybe he would even start skating seriously again, see if the Japanese were interested in flying him over for some demos. Never mind, for a moment, the logic of trying to sober up just after delivering enough speed to wire all of Oahu. It never crossed his mind that maybe he was finally flying too high.

If you had been on that United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu on Jan. 26, 2000, you would have been praying that this gaunt, unshaven, pock-marked, wide-eyed Asian-American walking down the aisle with a skateboard in his hand wasn't seated next to you. His cheekbones, always starkly defined, now seemed to be on the verge of pushing through sallow skin, and his cheeks were flecked with scabs from picking at himself during long meth jags. Christian had smoked a few pipes of speed on the way to the airport, and when he got on the plane, he locked himself in the bathroom and snorted another line. He waved away the flight attendant when she offered him the in-flight meal.

When the plane touched down, Christian practically sprinted to baggage claim and then ground his teeth as he waited for his bags to come tumbling down the chute. As he absentmindedly picked at his face, Christian reminisced about climbing tall trees when he was a kid. That had been liberating, he recalled wistfully. You're up there, nothing in the world to be afraid of because it's just you and the tree, your weight on the branch, and you can feel, almost instinctively, whether a branch can support you, and as you step out --

"Excuse me, sir, where did you fly in from today?" A stout man in a blue T-shirt and tan slacks interrupted Christian's reverie. "What do you do for a living? May I see your ticket? Can you hear me or what?"

"I left my ticket on the plane," Christian told the plainclothes officer.

"I.D.?"

"Sorry," Christian said, "I don't have to show you that. And I have to go now."

"Without your bags?"

Christian shrugged.

"You are being detained," the officer said. He put a heavy hand on Christian's shoulder and led him to a barren security office on the airport's lower level, where Christian was seated on a bench next to a desk on which someone had left a Styrofoam takeout box with chicken bones and some unfinished potato salad. A few other agents gathered as the arresting officer began to search Christian, who was still holding his skateboard and wearing his new signature-line shoes. (He had just signed a deal with a distributor in Japan.) The agent found the meth in Christian's hipsack and held it up to the light, letting it hang in the baggie like a prize fish he had caught. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in?"

Christian Hosoi was finally coming down. He pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was 32 years old.

To see Christian in prison, I have to drive east from Dogtown through downtown Los Angeles, then West Covina, Azusa, Palmdale and Upland, past dozens of Del Tacos and strip malls and long-closed skateparks to a desolate exit where the only hint that you are near a jail is the sudden riot of signage offering bail-bond services. At the reception window I fill out a visit request form for booking number 0402301190. Then I pass through a metal detector and wait in a large room lined on three sides by plexiglass, with partitions that divide the perimeter into semiprivate cubicles, like open-air confessionals. A chubby mother in a Simpsons T-shirt tells her two rambunctious boys to keep quiet. Two men with shorn heads are warily looking around. Finally, a line of orange-jumpsuit-clad men file into the room -- on the opposite side of the glass -- and sit down. Visitors scurry from booth to booth until they find whom they've come to see, then both visitor and prisoner pick up the intercom phones and start talking.

Christian is one of the last prisoners to sit down. His thick black hair has thinned and his face is fleshier than it was in the '80s. He has put on weight in prison, and with his dark hair and complexion he looks like yet another Mexican father doomed to catch only glimpses from behind bulletproof glass of his children growing up. At 36 he is more than a decade removed from his athletic prime. Though he totes a Bible and launches into long discourses on how he's blessed to be doing God's will, and says that he has no regrets because this was the path that put him in touch with Jesus, there is a weariness in his eyes.

He insists he never thinks about whether it should be him sitting by that pool in Encinitas, banking those fat video-game royalties. "I don't dwell on the past," he says. "That was Tony's journey, and God bless him. This is the path the Lord has set me on, and I am grateful that I will be able to use my name and my skating as my key." [Because of good behavior, he could be released in early June.] He says that when he gets out, he will use his skating to preach the word of God. "I can't wait to skate again. Kids will see me, and I can represent Christ. I want to acknowledge him in everything I do."

Christian Hosoi will skate again. Within a few days of being released, one of his friends will take him to a pool or a ramp or a skatepark. (A group of fellow skaters in Santa Ana has already built a 40-foot-wide halfpipe in preparation for the resurrection of Christ.) He will be tentative at first as he becomes reacclimated to the feel of the grip tape under his sneakers, the urethane wheels rumbling over wood or concrete, the way his body feels as it moves through the transition to vertical. Whenever he skates, wherever he skates, word will spread and a crowd will gather. Fathers and mothers will explain to their children, and older siblings will tell younger brothers and sisters who this is. And Christian, inspired by the crowd, and still a showman, will push himself. And after a few runs, a few carves and then grinds and then rock-and-rolls, he will once again launch aerials off of a ramp or out of a pool. He will again take flight.

And then, he insists, he will gather the children around him and tell them about Christ -- Jesus Christ -- and he will start his parable by talking about a boy who was not afraid to go too high.

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