JOSH KALIS: My pops was moving from
Michigan to Dallas, Texas.
And they didn't want me to be part of the move, because I
was a bit of a troublemaker.
So him and my mom, who lived in New York at the time, sent
me to skateboard camp at Woodward.
And it was there that I met Tony Mag and filmed a couple
things while at Woodward.
And then he was like, hey, we're going to
put you on H Street.
And that was it.
Dude, I was super psyched.
I was hyped to get on, but at the same time it was like all
my favorite skaters, Mike Carroll and Sean Sheffey and
Sal Barbier and all the illest dudes rode for H Street.
And they all left right as I got on.
So I was kind of like, well.
I didn't really give a shit, man.
I was getting free H Street boards.
That was tight.
At some point, my mom moved from New York to Philly.
And when I would visit her, I would go skate the city.
And this was before me and Stevie really--
we were just little skater dudes.
STEVIE WILLIAMS: Oh, man.
The first time I met Josh, I was with my cousin Russell and
my man Terrence.
And we were skating this skate spot called Rat Curves.
And Bam Margera and Mike Maldonado used to skate for H
Street back in the day.
They showed up.
It was like Mike, Bam, Bam's brother, Bam's dad, and Josh.
And they introduced us, like, oh, this is Josh.
He's from outside of Philly.
He skates for H Street.
We were like, what?
That's dope.
And he was good.
But I never really tripped off of it until he came to LOVE
and started skating.
And that's when I seen him skate.
I was like, damn, that dude is sick.
And for some reason me and him just hit it off.
I was good and he was good, but I never even heard of him
before, though.
I was probably like 11 years old.
JOSH KALIS: What would you call this?
MALE SPEAKER: A shrine.
JOSH KALIS: Shrine?
My LOVE shrine?
Does it look like a shrine?
It does, huh?
Damn.
I wasn't really going for the shrine look.
We skated together all the time.
And we just clicked at LOVE.
STEVIE WILLIAMS: Coming downtown, I was looking
forward to seeing Josh.
That made me want to get sponsored.
And he was already sponsored, so he would just give us
boards, wheels.
And one day we were skating, and I learned kickflip
noseslides.
And then he learned kickflip noseslides.
Then he learned kickflip noseslides and
ollie heel flip it.
He had every trick.
He could do everything.
RICKY OYOLA: I don't know how Josh came.
I don't know if it was a relative, or--
but yeah, he came.
And he was really good, man.
He was really good.
I wish dudes like that would skate our way, too.
There still wasn't anybody who was exploring the city like we
always did.
JOSH KALIS: Top of the food chain in Philly was Ricky.
I was definitely hierarchy shit.
Because Ricky had rules where you couldn't film unless you
were pushing switch switch.
Like if you're doing switch mongo, you ain't fucking
filming it at LOVE.
That's when Ricky and those dudes ran LOVE.
And they had their rules.
And they had their whole thing.
You know what I'm saying?
At the time, the very first "TransWorld" article on
Philadelphia was there then.
And a few of us shot some stuff.
And it was told, don't use that shit.
DGK didn't exist for a while.
And then he turned that other side of LOVE park into DGK,
the Dirty Ghetto Kids.
And it was because of that.
STEVIE WILLIAMS: At that time, there was
two different cliques.
It was our clique, the DGK clique, and then it was Ricky
Oyola and all of those dudes.
RICKY OYOLA: I don't think a lot of those dudes, the DGK
dudes, I don't think they liked the fact that Matt and I
were the ones who were most known and Philadelphia was
kind of ours.
We created that.
You know what I mean?
So it was kind of ours in such a way.
STEVIE WILLIAMS: Whoever came to Philly was supposed to hang
with Ricky and Matt and all of them dudes.
And, see, Fred Gall, when he came, he didn't come
and hang with us.
He went to hang with Ricky.
And Josh was never their dude.
Josh was like--
he took to us.
So every time he came to the city, he came over and
chilled with us.
MALE SPEAKER: [BEATBOXING].
STEVIE WILLIAMS: He always had the swag, but he wasn't the
white dude that tried to act black.
He was just the white dude with swag.
Everybody liked him, from white people to black people.
The girls loved him.
He was Josh.
Everybody knew he had value.
No matter what city he was in, he brought value to that city.
At the end of the day, he was taking all their shine.
And Ricky was supposed to be the king of Philly.
And you got all of these dudes following his lead and shit.
And then here come Josh that's like, I'm not
following your lead.
I'm actually rocking with the ghetto kids.
And they definitely didn't like that shit.
JOSH KALIS: Me and Ricky got along pretty good until he
thought I fucked his ex-chick.
And then that started up a whole fucking shit storm of
beef between me and Ricky.
And that carried to San Francisco.
It carried all over the place.
We had crazy beef.
RICKY OYOLA: Yeah, yeah.
There were some issues and stuff like that, some just
stupid shit that went down.
STEVIE WILLIAMS: I think just that situation was easier for
Ricky to say, fuck you, Josh.
Get out of my city.
And Josh left.
It wasn't like, we going to retaliate.
Josh just left.
And I was like, damn.
There go our town hero, our dude to get our free boards.
It was over.
JOSH KALIS: Rumors were I wasn't allowed there.
And I went back on that Invisible tour and was like,
hey, bro, here I am.
And Ricky was like, you know what, you're going
to be pro, I'm pro.
We shouldn't just fucking be at each other's
throat every time.
So just respect.
If I'm here, don't be here.
If you're here, I ain't coming in.
And we just kind of rode it out like that for a while,
until when I moved back to Philly then we squashed it.
And Ricky found out I didn't fuck the chick and apologized.
And it was all good.
RICKY OYOLA: Look, I'm older now.
And I just thought back.
It was always kind of like this fake beef.
Because it really wasn't any beef.
There wasn't any.
We're two different people.
I'm from the woods.
They're from the city.
Skating was something we had in common.
But we didn't skate the same way.
And LOVE park was their playground that hooked them
up, got them on DC.
And look where they're at now.
Just his tre flips--
tre flips are my favorite trick.
And he's seriously got tops.
He's got one of the best ones ever, to tell you the truth.
Stevie's got it also.
Stevie's got a great switch flip.
He's just really good.
Josh's style is what I like more than anything.
His big spins and tail slides--
I wish I could do that shit.
I mean, I don't want to spend two years
trying to do it once.
That's going to be a shitty two years of my skating.
I might do it.
But that's no fun.