JOSH STEWART: I feel like every video has a part that
when you watch it the first time, that has the hardest
hit, the best song, the most flashy editing, whatever.
Ricky's was that part of "The Eastern Exposure
Three" that did that.
His was like the single.
You could have released that, and it would have sold the
whole video.
Ricky has captured that blue collar street skating vibe
that I think everybody on the East Coast not just identified
with, but it just empowered everybody.
JACK SABBACK: To me, the Rick part is the
"Eastern Exposure" part.
Even a Girl video, where the dudes are so sick, but they're
skating in like Vancouver.
And then you see Rick, and he's mashing around the
streets, riding up people's houses.
And it was just really interesting.
Plus, it was in black and white.
And then that Metallica song, you would get so psyched.
I would skate around my home, some little southern town, and
I would just skate around thinking I was in the big
city, skating through traffic and shit.
FRANKIE: When you're a kid, you're like, oh, shit.
You want to go to Philly.
And you would go to Philly, and you would see it in
person, because that's what he did every day.
He skated like that every day.
RICKY OYLOA: You can go right down there to the Underground.
That was such a sick spot.
Look how smooth it is.
It was always fun.
And then you got a little downhill.
You get to blaze down this thing.
And just recently, that dude bore through that.
That thing's huge.
I always dreamt you could do a blunt slide and
just, err, the fakie.
But I'm a pussy.
I thought of this shit, but I never did it.
I just ollied over it.
DAN WOLFE: I think it was the start of my career.
And it wasn't necessarily the start of his career, because
he was already skating so good for so long.
But I think it was the first time that a lot of people saw
how good he was.
I think since I live in Philly I got the most footage of
Rick, and he was super motivated.
So it became clear pretty early on that he was going to
have [INAUDIBLE].
He had already been in that one "Spitfire" video.
And a lot of people, I think, had a clue that he was sick.
There just wasn't a lot of footage in
that "Spitfire" video.
I don't think they saw the full scope of Rick.
I think maybe that's what that video part did, was just show
how he really skated and all the things he skated, I guess.
RICKY OYLOA: All that other stuff is over there.
But they changed all this.
The gold railings are different.
-People were excited about, we'll do the "Streets" videos,
and they all said it was the "Eastern Exposure" videos.
And everyone in all of skating, probably all over the
world watched those videos.
RICKY OYLOA: Honestly, I think that's first and only time
that's ever happened, where the East Coast setting the
pace from the West Coast, especially the West Coast
versus all over the world.
I don't think that's ever happened.
We had bigger wheels.
We just skated a different way.
Like I said, we weren't just skating to a place.
It's such a basic thought.
I still don't get it.
But we skated everything that was in our way.
And because there was things like, we had tons of bump over
bars in Philadelphia.
We had a joke that if you go to North Philly, which is
really gnarly, these dudes were shooting each other.
So every new day, some new fucking cripple has to build a
new bump over bar.
And it just so happened that we could skate it.
There was always new shit to find, always.
It was just a joke as far as that type of an obstacle goes.
[SAXOPHONE MUSIC]
DAN WOLFE: Nowadays, it seems that a lot of the times the
skater expects the filmer to do everything.
Take me to the spot.
Fix it for me.
And then I'll think of a trick.
I feel like I just want to film the skaters.
The creative person, they should take you where they
want to go and do the tricks they want to do.
And Ricky was like, I never had to do anything except just
concentrate on keeping up with him and trying to film it,
because he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
That was kinda cool.
Yeah, I was tired.
But it was fun.
When I'm having fun filming, I feel like the footage is going
to be better, because it doesn't feel like work.
It's fun.
RICKY OYLOA: My name's Ricky Oyloa.
I'm going to beat this goddamn street cleaner.
City Hall seems to be a new hot spot, since
LOVE park is banned.
God!
I see a little [INAUDIBLE], I forget to talk and stuff.
It's a little weird, I want to be able to do it, though.
It's pretty rad.
It's got a lot of wall.
A lot of fucking shit!
All right, Dan.
Today sucks.
This dude's an asshole in front of me.
I'm gonna go by him.
I have love for Dan, for sure.
I really do.
But we were all drunk one day, and he--
Reese's.
If he could skate like anybody, he
would skate like Reese.
They were really close, and they got
closer during filming.
So they wanted to go to California.
And that's how that all started.
They got opportunities.
I was going to be on Zoo forever.
I would have dealt with the struggles.
I'm pretty stubborn.
But I got Matt and Serge.
Serge was actually on before Matt.
Matt rode for Adrenaline.
So then I got him on Zoo.
They didn't show respect to Matt and Serge.
They did to me, but not to Matt and Serge.
I always thought that they just never thought that I
would ever leave, because I did a lot for Zoo.
When all those New York dudes were all quitting to ride for
other shit before they could come back, I did a lot for--
Robby Gangemi did a lot for Zoo, too.
He was getting kind of bummed at Zoo for not being able to
do it for them.
They were awesome, dudes.
It was time to move on.
Then came Illuminati.
This one in particular is my Tony Hawk signature, which is,
fuck, I'm never going to get rid of this thing.
This is such an incredible thing right here.
I was like, look man, we're going to leave.
They've been talking about a second brand.
So give us a second brand and let me, Matt, and Serge, the
Philly clique do our thing, because we're
getting shit done.
Eli had this idea of Illuminati that he was so
psyched on.
They were all so psyched on it.
They thought it was going to be the next Alien Workshop.
And so we got into it, started getting all these books,
masks, starting collecting books left and right.
I was like, dude, people are going to ask us questions.
We're doing demos.
People are going to ask me questions.
I gotta know something about this stuff.
So we all dived into it.
For the first six months of the eight months it was
around, it was a sticker, basically.
We still rode Zoo boards.
We were getting psyched-- stickers.
That's all we had.
Then they were like, we can't do Illuminati, because there's
a naming rights problem in the Midwest.
So you can never really do clothing or
anything like that.
So poof, it was done.
I rode for Nicotine.
I was going to do a First Division Wheels
with Mike at ECU.
So we basically were going to do our own board company that
was going to be mine but ours, but realistically, Mike's,
because he's the money guy.
And we would get percentage off.
So we just moved camp over there.
I was on my way to Australia for my first visit.
And I basically said to Matt and Serge that they could come
up with a name for Silver Star.
And I was there for I don't know how long it was there,
the beginning, first week or two.
And I get this call at 5:00 in the morning Australian time.
I'm sleeping and I'm like, it's Mike.
He's about to do ads.
We need a name right then, right now
for our board company.
And it's like, really?
These dudes can't give you a goddamn name?
They couldn't come up with something?
And I'd been reading these books.
And I was like, look man, I like this name.
I said dude, Alister Crowley, he used to refer to Illuminati
as the order of the Silver Star.
I'm like, I think Silver Star is a rad name.
We got people involved.
We had a vert skater, Jesse Fritsch.
And we had First Division Wheels that had Donny Barley,
Brian Anderson--
rad, rad shit going on.
It was like Jamie started Zero and Ed started Toy Machine.
This was like Silver Star and First Division.
I had my own stuff.
I was really East Coast.
I quit Spitfire to ride for Nicotine
because it was East Coast.
And I started to want to create our own type of things,
like I've always wanted to have my own deluxe out east.
In the background, I only had percentage of profit, so it
wasn't my company.
I didn't think that this dude was going to have a problem
gambling, lose it all.
And it just goes gone.
And I was sitting there with no names, nothing.
DAN WOLFE: I totally got it, because I felt the same way.
California was always like this.
That's where H-Street started.
That's what you kind of think as a kid.
And then the first couple times I went out to Southern
California, I was like, this sucks.
I'm just sitting in a car all day.
It was frustrating.
I felt like I'd get so much more done on the East Coast.
I think Rick knew that because he had already been to
California a bunch.
I think he wanted to make a place for future generations
that felt the same way-- didn't have to travel to
California to make it.
RICKY OYLOA: And then when Silver Star was done, I talked
to a couple brands to do Silver Star through them.
As a matter of fact, Dan Wolfe called me to
do it out of Giant.
They only wanted K.T., myself, and Jake Rupp.
That means I would have had to say, fuck you to Matt, Serge,
Jesse, Andrew, Greg Harris, all these dudes, let alone all
the capital dudes that were going to get fucked out.
So I couldn't do it.
And I was mad at fucking Dan, because Dan
knew me well enough.
How dare he ask me that?
I might regret it now, to tell you the truth, because these
dudes were not really skating.
They weren't really part of the mission
that I was truly on.
So that ended a chapter that could've changed my whole
future life of skating.
-You said in an interview once that if you weren't riding for
Zoo, that you'd want to ride for either Plan B or
Consolidated.
RICKY OYLOA: Consolidated--
I was friends with Karma and Jesse and those dudes.
And I always related to myself to those guys,
for whatever reason.
And Plan B is just Plan B.
Mike Carroll, I mean, Jesus, Rick Howard.
I don't skate nothing like those, but they were always
some of my favorite skaters.
I have a lot of different favorite skaters
for different reasons.