I know who I am, but I don’t know who I would be without skateboarding. I can say for a fact that growing up being a part of the Venice skate culture in the 70’s was my gateway into the social hardcore scene. My skating roots were very localized and homegrown – back in the day, we had certain artists who would hand-draw all of the graphics, way before silkscreening on boards, and if you were not from Venice, you could’t get a deck. Things changed once skating started to boom, but then in the 80’s it died and went underground. As it started to reemerge, taking shape was a skateboarding monopoly, where only a certain few controlled the whole industry. Then came Steve Rocco, who flipped skating on it’s head when he started his skate company World Industries. For a certain time I think he became the most hated human in the skate industry, because he did not play by his rules. Steve made up his rules as he went along, in a way the motto of his company was “uncontrolled chaos breeds controlled constructive madness!” I could tell you his whole story, but that wouldn’t be fun, because I’m sure the documentary The Man Who Souled The World would do a better job than I could. I will say that I respect him because of his courage to start something new, when everyone said he couldn’t do it, that’s pretty D.I.Y. Check out this killer film, The Man Who Souled The World, below– it has some awesome skating in it, so get gassed!
