FRANKIE: Actually, one of the first times I ever watched
Rick skate in person, it was like some
skate contest in Jersey.
And the Real and Stereo guys came to town.
And it was Pastras.
And I think Lavar McBride rode for that time.
And they're all like, oh, shit, that's Rick?
The time that he really made a name for himself, there wasn't
an internet like there is now.
And there wasn't tons of skateboard media.
So for him to have that kind of impact at that time, it
says a lot.
ROGER BROWNE: Ricky, his career exploded when he went
out to some NSAM contests down in Southern California.
I forgot where, exactly.
They only heard of Ricky.
They may have seen his e-video.
And they saw him live.
And he was just blowing minds.
He was skating faster than everybody.
And he'd have a different approach to hitting
obstacles and stuff.
And he was a presence, too.
A lot of these guys who he was skating with were like
California, and kind of chill guys.
And he was this intense East Coast guy.
RICKY OYOLA: This is a very recognizable board for a lot
of people for a certain time period.
And this, right here, this True East, that was my saying.
When Ryan Hickey had a stereo ad, and it said something
about East Coast.
I don't know what the hell it really said, exactly.
Stereo East, I think, is what it said.
And that's what made me like, well, what is that?
I mean, that's like the West Coast companies trying to take
the East Coast flavor.
Stereo was the culprit of doing that a lot, man.
So I called up Rodney.
And I fucking was bitching.
I was so mad.
And I said True East.
And then from that, then they started this whole slogan.
And now they still run with it.
Zoo York still runs with True East.
It's fucking crazy.
Zoo was their next shut, you know what I mean?
Jeff Pine, Peter Bestey, Mike Hernandez.
You've got Hamilton was a part of it.
I was routing Zoo when they were on their second concave.
The boards were brand new and still soft, like I could only
ride a board for a couple hours.
They were so bad, you know what I mean?
But this is Chapman just learning how to do shit.
It's their second one.
Chapman makes amazing boards, but at that time--
I mean, this was the beginning days of Zoo.
Me being a part of Zoo York make me cool, realistically.
We'd go to New York, be cool for a while, come back to
Philly and be cool in our way.
When I was on Zoo is when they were struggling.
They didn't have any money.
It took me a while to get any money from them.
And then when I got money, it was always broken down in
different little checks.
But we still believed in it.
Zoo was the best company.
The best.
I did a lot of stuff myself.
We had our own filmers, photographers.
We had own city that no one really knew about--
was hearing about, but it was because of our mouths.
We were bringing it to the world.
Mike Missouri, fucking holding up.
People thought that was a board graphic.
We had board stickers at Sub Zero that people used to
fucking call from all over the world
wanting to buy this board.
And basically what it was, it was a sticker--
a full board sticker that we used to put
on all of our boards.
Do you have the original Sub Zero?
-Yeah.
RICKY OYOLA: Is one the best shot wheels that came out,
especially--
it came out, do you know what I mean?
It came out.
There was no marketing.
I think that's what ruins a lot of these new videos.
Skating is so incredible, but if you blow it out like
insane, the expectation level is too high, way too high.
Sub Zeros in '94--
we were on a mission just to skate.
Serge was from Reading.
These two came from Philly.
Matt was one of the three different Pittsburgh clicks
that came from Pittsburgh.
We were always together.
And whenever we woke up, we skated everywhere--
deep into the middle of the night.
And it was exciting every single day
because Philly was untapped.
It wasn't like most cities everywhere else that
was just blown out.
We used to love the fact that we had one of the best
one-block radius of spots in the world, let alone the
frickin' States.
Between the municipal building, City Hall, and LOVE
Park, it was just amazing.
My dream my whole life of skating was to do a line from
before City Hall, ollie off that into the street, ollie up
those stairs, do a line in there, then hit the stairs,
and then into LOVE Park, and then through LOVE Park, and
then to Wawa.
One time I shroomed out with Roger at nighttime.
And I did the line through here and ollied off that and
over there at least 30 times.
I mean, I threw up over there because
I was just so exhausted.
I tried it so many times.
I mean, I could have toned things down and could have
made it, but that's not what I wanted to do.
This is like where you warmed up and played skate a lot of
times, before you went to LOVE Park or what not.
Then all levels, going up and down stairs
started getting in.
But you always just go to LOVE Park.
Man, we own this place.
That's why it was so much fun to kick people out, say, fuck
you, you're not coming here.
Dude, don't take photos here.
Fuck you.
You know what I mean?
And all of those homeless people, and the fucking drug
addicts, and all those fucking dudes.
I smoked weed with them every day.
I used to bring a blunt.
Ever since '93 started, when I started smoking blunts, I'd
come up here with one every day and I would burn up with a
group of dudes all the time.
DAN WOLFE: When I started filming, I had heard that the
people skating down at LOVE Park that were really good
were like Ricky, and Fred Gall, and Matt Reason.
And then I would go down to LOVE filming random ledge
tricks here and there, and then Ricky or Matt was like,
hey, you should come down next weekend and film this.
And then it just kind of went from there.
RICKY OYOLA: We were great material for him.
He's a filmer.
He needed to film good shit, and we were doing good shit.
And he was psyched on it.
I'm not going to say there's a proper way to skate it, just
get the fuck out of people's way.
But the way it was--
that was like the starting point over there.
Back there was the starting point, and the flow of traffic
always went this way.
DAMIAN SMITH: LOVE Park was somewhere that was a pretty
scary place at this time.
And I was young and nervous to go to LOVE Park.
And Rick stopped me and explained to me the direction
of LOVE Park skating and how I was messing up the flow.
DAN WOLFE: Ricky was kind of like the Mayor of LOVE.
He didn't want problems at the place he loved to skate at.
I only ever saw him in that one site--
the famous one from the Sub Zero video.
And I always felt kind of bad after the fact that it sort of
made him look like a demon, when, in fact, he was being
totally cool.
Like, that guy was a fucking crackhead.
He was in LOVE Park and he was a total dickhead, trying to
fuck with little kids.
And Rick tried to kick him out a couple times, like, hey,
man, you need to leave.
Quit fucking around.
And then the guy just tried to step to him once, and he got
his ass kicked.
And a lot of the kids skating there were just
that, they were kids.
And he was like a man, so he's obviously going to
stand up to this dude.
RICKY OYOLA: We always go to LOVE Park, but LOVE Park
didn't breed how we skated.
And that's mostly because we skated wherever we went.
I mean, I didn't even have a license.
I didn't have a car.
Everywhere I went, I skated.
DAN WOLFE: Like when I first started, I was
just a LOVE Park guy.
I just skated LOVE Park all day with whoever was there.
And then they put me on Sub Zero--
Rick put me on Sub Zero because I was most likely to
follow in their philosophy.
It definitely has something to do with
skating in the streets.
You knew where certain bumps were, where the manhole cover
was, so it was something that you would always try to
incorporate on your route.
It's not just pushing, you were doing tricks and
incorporating natural obstacles into your course.
RICKY OYOLA: We're just lucky.
I've been to many cities, and not every city's laid out like
Philly or New York.
Everything was skateable.
You walk out your door, and this is what we skated.
All we had to think about was like, all right, I've got to
skate that stoop because I pass it every fucking day and
we hit it every day.
Now we just have to incorporate it
into filming it.
And this line right here, this is seriously--
you can see how shaky fucking Dan Wolfe is.
This is one of the fucking quintessential lines that
broke his ass in the middle of the street.
And if you ever heard the audio, when he comes around
that corner after this nose grind, he's like, whoa,
because we didn't stop.
We just kept on going.
Right there.
Like, he's bumming right here.
And he's like, fuck.
He definitely thought it was over right there.
DAN WOLFE: It was kind of like a routine where we'd meet at
Sub Zero, skate up to Love.
That was like, I don't know, about 15 blocks.
And by the time you did that, everyone was warmed up.
So if there was something to film about, he'd do that.
Or if not, you'd just break out from there.
There was always a mission.
There was always something that someone wanted to get.
RICKY OYOLA: We created Philadelphia-style skating,
which was skating through the streets.
But we were probably the only group that actually did that,
and skated everything in the city.
And we had so much more drive.
And we really thought we were doing something different.
We had more drive than most people.
-Did you guys have the thing, like, a lot of the people
switch initially pushed mongo.
RICKY OYOLA: Yeah.
If you see on our credits, it says no piss pedaling.
Yeah.
We have rules in here that people don't like that either.
But, you know what I mean?
I hate when people do a trick-- like say they do a
backside tailside to fakie and do it.
And then they go about two feet then they turn around,
and then they go do another trick on the bench.
It's like, why'd you do it to fakie if that's what your
intention was?
Why?
Just, why?
I don't get it.
So we were always like, what the fuck?
That looks so gay to do that.
And piss pedaling was another one, and I forget.
I think there's three rules or two rules that pop up.
-Because there's some pros-- wait, Costin switched mongos.
RICKY OYOLA: No.
He's terrible, too.
Carol is the only dude who, I think, is one of the best
dudes who that can push mongo.
It looked better that way.
But it's few and far between.
It's too hard, man.
Too hard.
Why bother, anyways?