RAY BARBEE: I mean, to me, honestly, I always looked at
punk as more of a way of thinking, if you will.
It's kind of more that part of you that's just like, man, I
want to do this.
This is the norm?
I want to do that!
If there's a heavy metal show and then they book a jazz band
in there, that's punk.
PATRICK O'DELL: Hi, welcome back.
This episode is about Ray Barbee, who was actually the
first pro board I ever had.
I think, to me, he looked different.
He just looks cool when he skates.
And even back then, those old videos, I remember when Ban
This came out, seeing his skating, and he would do a
bunch of no complies and then a kick flip.
And I'd think, like, wow!
I can't believe he can do all those tricks in a row.
It doesn't take him 10 tries to do each trick or whatever.
And I sat down with Ray, and I asked him a little bit about
filming for those old Powell videos.
He's a really awesome skater.
And this is it.
The Ray Barbee episode.
MALE SPEAKER 1: How long have you been skating?
RAY BARBEE: Six years.
MALE SPEAKER 1: When did you start?
RAY BARBEE: Six years ago.
When I first got into skateboarding, again, it was
in between sixth and seventh grade.
And I had a friend named Danny that I always hung out with.
We rode bikes together all summer.
And for his birthday he got a skateboard.
And it was just like, whoa!
It made such an impression on me.
And he was riding that, and I was riding my bike, and I was
like, man, I want to get a skateboard.
He was like, well, my dad used to skate.
Let me see if he has his old skateboard out in the garage.
So, sure enough, we went in the garage and found it.
It was a Sims wood kick.
It was like a '70s board.
There was a group of guys that were like, what did you guys
do over the summer?
And we were like, dude, we skateboarded.
They were like, you skateboard?
We skateboard, too.
Come hang out with us.
One of the guys, he had a quarter pipe.
We started off there just learning tricks, like be in a
line in the garage, hit it, come back, get in line, and
then do that.
Because of the ramps then, it was a lot of the vert pros
that I would hear about.
We knew that there was Caballero in San Jose.
And these were all the guys that we were like, whoa, we
want to be like--
we want to rip like they do, kind of thing, you know?
And it was crazy, because back then, it was so different.
Nowadays kids are like, give me a board, give
me a sticker, whatever.
We were just like, whoa.
We didn't want to bug him.
We were like, whoa!
We didn't want to say nothing to him.
We were just like, let him do this thing.
PATRICK O'DELL: Was Public Domain the first
video you were in?
RAY BARBEE: That was the first video, yeah.
Well, you know what?
I was in Sick Boys, but Public Domain was definitely the
first featured thing of me, for sure.
Yeah, it was called the Rubber Boys, that segment.
And it was Steve Saiz, Chet Thomas, and Eric
Sanderson and myself.
Because of, for us, street was being so new,
the list was blank.
So for us, it was really exciting because it was like,
whoa, we can just make up tricks.
So we had a lot of fun just kind of stumbling across
things and making up tricks.
And I think a lot of the stuff that we stumbled on were
things that people had never seen.
Because street skating, I almost liken it to underground
hip-hop or Indy music, where it's like it's own culture.
It's doing things, but it takes something
to bring it to light.
But once that one thing gets brought to light, people think
that that's the first time.
But it was happening for so long in the--
whatever you want to say.
In its little culture and in its little scene.
It'd been going on for years, but it was just a matter of it
getting surfaced out.
And that's when people always link it to that, but it was
going on for a while.
PATRICK O'DELL: And what was the process for filming then?
It was just sort of like one day just skating around?
RAY BARBEE: Three days total was that whole--
all that footage was three days.
And it's funny because Stacy wanted it to
look like one day.
So I remember, we'd skate--
get going at 7:00 in the morning, be done
at 8:00 at or whatever.
And he'd want us to put on the same clothes the next day.
And we did that for three days straight.
Yeah, the same Levi's, and the same shirt, and the same
shoes, maybe switch out the socks.
PATRICK O'DELL: So then the next video is Ban This?
RAY BARBEE: Ban This was right after Public Domain, yeah.
PATRICK O'DELL: And I remember in that one
you had lots of lines.
It would be like seven tricks in a row.
RAY BARBEE: Yeah.
That was the first one with my own part.
PATRICK O'DELL: When you decided what spots you were
going to go to, did you decide?
Or did Stacy decide?
RAY BARBEE: That's what was cool for me.
A lot of those spots were like the first time
I ever skated them.
Because we'd just get with Stacy and Stacy would just
drive around and be like, you want to skate that?
And I'd be like, cool.
PATRICK O'DELL: It looked like some of the video was looking
for scenery and not so much like--
RAY BARBEE: It was before the days of where you'd find spots
and film one thing.
Back then, it was more like let's just capture the feel of
what it's like to just go skating, go skating out in--
so I could tell definitely around Ban This time, Stacy
was getting more of an idea of what he wanted to do visually.
So he would take me to spots, and I would be like, OK, you
just want we to skate on the ground right here?
And he's like, yeah.
I'm like, OK.
PATRICK O'DELL: Did you feel like then a part was about,
like you said, expressing skating?
Or did you ever feel--
RAY BARBEE: It's hard to say because it's always easy to
see what it grew into, and then look back, and then try
to think did you feel like you wished it would
have been like this?
But it was way before any of that.
So it was what it was.
It was just being created.
So there was no--
the only goal was let's just be on our boards.
And, OK, you're documenting it.
But to me, the whole video thing was so new.
I didn't know what was going to come of any of this.
For street skating, back then, there weren't too many parts.
Again, it was such new terrain, new area.
I mean, I dig where it is now.
There's a place for all of it.
Because of the growth of it, the reality is the way
skateboarding got pushed, it just got to a place to where
you can't do that in three days.
There's just no way to physically pull that off.
It takes a long time because of where it's got pushed.
So that's great.
Because everything's got to get pushed, man.
You can't stay still.
Everything's got to keep moving
and growing and growing.