Latest / Laguna Talks / VIC Skimboard Contest

Transcript

VIC Skimboard Contest · Laguna Talks

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: And it's all related, right, It is all related. These things,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: everything is interconnected, and it's something that we all need
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: to remember. And I just want to say this, folks,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: as I always do at this time. You know, the
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: sole and vitality of communities is often measured by how
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: we treat our creatives. And so if you know people
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: who are artists, musicians, craftsmen, writers, performers of all stripes,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: just please let them know that you appreciate what they do,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and if you're able to help them economically. You know,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: this is an expensive place to live, and our creatives
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: are the ones who bring a lot of soul and
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: interest to our community, so please thank them. So anyways,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: George dubin Art Matters, stay tuned for mister Billy Freed.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: He's coming up next and we'll see you next week.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Cheers by famous goats like Michael Angelo, Monet, Picasso, and
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Norman Rockwell plus more. Magically come to life nightly the
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: pageant at the Irvine Bowl Thrilling. All money is raised
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  Speaker 2: at the exclusive ending night greatest party of all time
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: will benefit this nonprofit organization and its future arts programming.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: And I'm Janis Murray for News on One O four
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: seven KXFM, and now here's Dave Janis once again.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: We have a nice afternoon of weather across Laguna Beach.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Sunshine in control, a nice little breeze seventy five of
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  Speaker 3: the beach, seventy eight the hilltop of the canyon, seventy
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: six Tonight, partly cloudy, sky sixty six for the overnight
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  Speaker 3: low Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, some early clouds, the marine layers
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  Speaker 3: very shallow. Otherwise, sunshine and seventy seven each day. I
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: think the humidity starts to come back a little bit
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  Speaker 3: on us Thursday and Friday. Sunset now seven thirty three.
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  Speaker 3: That's my forecast. I'm meteorologist A Murray. Tune in turn
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: on KXFM one O four seven. Lagoon is com.
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: H A. I can pay the dawn with the sunrise.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: I will shaker for you. I can touch a cold
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: day with spring time. I will shaker for you.
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: When the day is done and you've been on your rod,
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: you can on me.
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: Like the tree. I can be a kiss when you're lonely.
• 3:38
  Speaker 6: I wish I.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: Good for you.
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  Speaker 7: I can be a slide for your memories.
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: I wish I good for you when the day is gone.
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: But you've been on the road.
• 4:10
  Speaker 6: You le.
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  Speaker 7: Like a tree.
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: You can lead.
• 4:41
  Speaker 7: On the bay, Lead on on the bay, sleep on bay.
• 4:57
  Speaker 7: Just un the tree on.
• 5:18
  Speaker 8: And it's two o'clock here at kx FM, Laguna Beach,
• 5:22
  Speaker 8: and that means it's time for Laguna Talks, following up
• 5:24
  Speaker 8: on George Duben's art Matters. I'm your host, Billy Freed.
• 5:27
  Speaker 8: Let's get right to it. We have Text Haines in
• 5:29
  Speaker 8: the house, Charles tux Haines, founder and still running Victoria's Skinboards,
• 5:35
  Speaker 8: along with one of the great skin boarders of our era,
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  Speaker 8: the Worm.
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  Speaker 9: Hey, hey, you guys.
• 5:41
  Speaker 8: Do wait, there we go. Now, there we go.
• 5:44
  Speaker 9: Hey boys, how are we doing?
• 5:45
  Speaker 8: Yeah, we're here. We're here to talk about the most
• 5:48
  Speaker 8: prestigious skinboarding contest in the world that's coming up this Saturday,
• 5:52
  Speaker 8: the VIC. It's official. It's happening, right.
• 5:55
  Speaker 6: It's on.
• 5:56
  Speaker 8: Yeah, and watching that a little closer on these headphones.
• 6:02
  Speaker 8: It's up to you, but keep those mics close. What
• 6:05
  Speaker 8: year is this now? Texts?
• 6:07
  Speaker 6: This is our forty ninth year. It would have been fifty,
• 6:08
  Speaker 6: but we passed one for COVID, so we're.
• 6:11
  Speaker 8: Forty nine years. You're almost as old as the Brooks contest.
• 6:16
  Speaker 6: I think they got me by ten years.
• 6:17
  Speaker 8: Ten years amazing, what a run.
• 6:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah, we're I almost figured we're twenty five years behind surfing,
• 6:24
  Speaker 6: so we're getting there.
• 6:25
  Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I got to say, you know, people
• 6:28
  Speaker 8: talk about Laguna Beach as being kind of one of
• 6:31
  Speaker 8: the epicenters of the surf culture and action sports for
• 6:34
  Speaker 8: that matter, because we have so much great mountain biking
• 6:37
  Speaker 8: and skateboarding and all of that. But skimboarding really was
• 6:41
  Speaker 8: birthed here. Is that fairly accurate renaissance here?
• 6:46
  Speaker 6: The birth's been around for a long long time.
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  Speaker 8: And where do we think historians.
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  Speaker 6: Hawaiians get the first amount of credit? They made all
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: these wooden boards of every length, and they slid on
• 6:56
  Speaker 6: everything from grass to big waves to sand on the shore.
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  Speaker 8: Okay, they didn't have skateboards at the time.
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  Speaker 6: I don't think so.
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  Speaker 9: Yeah I could have.
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  Speaker 8: So this was the end of yep, this was their
• 7:05
  Speaker 8: land based activity.
• 7:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah, they were in the sports big time.
• 7:08
  Speaker 8: But you grew up. You were just telling me before
• 7:11
  Speaker 8: we came on the show in Alta, Dina, but was
• 7:13
  Speaker 8: coming down here in the summer.
• 7:15
  Speaker 6: I'm an Altadena boy. I lost my family home, my
• 7:19
  Speaker 6: dad's office, my dad's parents house, and everything else went
• 7:22
  Speaker 6: up in that fire. In the fire, so most of
• 7:24
  Speaker 6: my roots of or now ashes on the ground up there.
• 7:27
  Speaker 8: But were they still in your families?
• 7:29
  Speaker 6: No, we'd sold them a long time ago. They passed
• 7:32
  Speaker 6: away a while back. But we would go from Altadena
• 7:35
  Speaker 6: to Santa and Nofrey to surf just about every other
• 7:37
  Speaker 6: weekend because both my mom and dad had been surfing
• 7:40
  Speaker 6: when they grew up.
• 7:41
  Speaker 8: And how did they come about?
• 7:43
  Speaker 6: Well, my mom was born and raised in Hawaii. Her
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: great grandfather was a sea captain with mats and lines,
• 7:49
  Speaker 6: so she grew up with him as her babysitter now
• 7:52
  Speaker 6: and then, and learned how to swear like a sailor,
• 7:54
  Speaker 6: which was got her in trouble once or twice. Yeah,
• 7:57
  Speaker 6: if you've ever heard of sailors swear, it's a whole
• 7:59
  Speaker 6: lot worse than anybody else.
• 8:03
  Speaker 8: Wow. She was sort of a feminist of her.
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  Speaker 6: She was very small stature, but a really big soul personality.
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  Speaker 6: She was a waif at the al Riga Canoe Club
• 8:15
  Speaker 6: when her father would hang out there, and she would
• 8:18
  Speaker 6: go out surfing every other day with Dukanmoku oh Man.
• 8:22
  Speaker 6: That's kind of my background. My dad had seen the
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  Speaker 6: duke in the nineteen thirty two Olympics in la and
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  Speaker 6: he saw him go into the clubhouse after the swim
• 8:32
  Speaker 6: meet and come back out with a surfboard under his
• 8:34
  Speaker 6: arm and throw it in the pool. So he was
• 8:36
  Speaker 6: a surf nut too, from.
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  Speaker 8: Yeah, age fourteen. So there was no way you were
• 8:39
  Speaker 8: getting away.
• 8:40
  Speaker 6: From And then eventually we started spending weekends in Laguna
• 8:44
  Speaker 6: to avoid all that driving. And that's when I saw
• 8:47
  Speaker 6: skinboarding when I was about eleven.
• 8:48
  Speaker 8: And in those days, obviously there was no freeways.
• 8:51
  Speaker 6: You drove freeways, Yeah, they were, they were pretty fast.
• 8:54
  Speaker 6: I have to go all the way over to the
• 8:55
  Speaker 6: Long Beach Freeway and up through Old Pasadena and then
• 8:59
  Speaker 6: that was the freeway. You had to go through city
• 9:01
  Speaker 6: streets that yeah, those days.
• 9:02
  Speaker 8: But now I remember somebody telling they had to come
• 9:05
  Speaker 8: down Harbor Boulevard, passed all the beanfields to get here.
• 9:07
  Speaker 8: But that was before that was before us. So so
• 9:13
  Speaker 8: eventually you said your parents bought a place here.
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah, they rented a little cottage on the stairs at
• 9:18
  Speaker 6: Victoria Beach with three other families, so we had it
• 9:21
  Speaker 6: every third weekend or something, and two gorgeous weeks in summer.
• 9:24
  Speaker 6: We had it all to ourselves and from just like today. Yeah,
• 9:28
  Speaker 6: like Altadena was so smoggy you could cut it with
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: a knife. Orange eyes, watering, stinging and hot. And you
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: come down here and you hit the canyon air and
• 9:37
  Speaker 6: you put the windows down and scream at the top
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  Speaker 6: of your long because it's felt so good.
• 9:41
  Speaker 9: I'm free.
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  Speaker 8: Ye what years were those?
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  Speaker 6: That would have been thirty two? I'm sorry. Sixty three
• 9:50
  Speaker 6: was the first year I remember staying in But.
• 9:53
  Speaker 8: The air was already that polluted.
• 9:54
  Speaker 6: No, Altadena was that way. Altadena was horrible before they
• 9:58
  Speaker 6: cleaned up the gasoline.
• 9:59
  Speaker 8: Yeah, something else, Yeah, a little aside. I used to
• 10:02
  Speaker 8: commute to downtown LA in the early eighties and I
• 10:05
  Speaker 8: had a Volkswagen square Back with no air conditioning, so
• 10:08
  Speaker 8: I used to wear swim goggles because keep my eyes
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  Speaker 8: from burning. My strange looks.
• 10:13
  Speaker 6: One of my favorite cars, square Back.
• 10:15
  Speaker 9: Squareback's a great rings.
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  Speaker 8: Yeah, sewing machine, steering, Yeah, I had one in Hawaii
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  Speaker 8: as a matter of fact, indestructible. Great all right anyway,
• 10:26
  Speaker 8: So yeah, and noisy and vibration. So how did you
• 10:32
  Speaker 8: then transition from surfings given boarding?
• 10:34
  Speaker 6: So eleven years old, first see it. You're growing up thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,
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  Speaker 6: still skinboarding all that time, and you get through college
• 10:42
  Speaker 6: and you're out of work and you didn't get your
• 10:44
  Speaker 6: first choice for careers, so you're doing odd jobs roofing
• 10:48
  Speaker 6: the parent's house or painting his parents' house, Peter Priedo's house,
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  Speaker 6: and eventually ended up at Rainbow Sandals, and we were
• 10:55
  Speaker 6: working there for a little while before we realized, you know,
• 10:58
  Speaker 6: we got to do this. But talking about this since
• 11:00
  Speaker 6: there were grams in the sand at Victoria, and we
• 11:03
  Speaker 6: just went out and bought two sheets of plywood and
• 11:05
  Speaker 6: a a few yards of fiberglass cloth at Crystal Liner
• 11:09
  Speaker 6: and went to his apartment in North Laguna and put
• 11:11
  Speaker 6: the newspaper down, you know, we were responsible, put some
• 11:14
  Speaker 6: bricks on the floor, and proceeded to pour resin and
• 11:17
  Speaker 6: spread it on these woodboards. We got out and it
• 11:20
  Speaker 6: took less than two seconds for the guy downstairs to
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  Speaker 6: come upstairs and say, oh my god, you're killing me.
• 11:27
  Speaker 6: So that was our first glassing experience, and we tried
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: next my parents' garage, wore out that welcome and lo
• 11:34
  Speaker 6: and behold a garage across the street that was abandoned
• 11:37
  Speaker 6: after a fire had burned the house down, the garage
• 11:39
  Speaker 6: was still there and the parents were so heartbroken they
• 11:42
  Speaker 6: had never rebuilt it. They'd lost their daughter in the fire.
• 11:45
  Speaker 6: So we got to rent this little garage for fifty
• 11:48
  Speaker 6: bucks a month for about a year and a half,
• 11:50
  Speaker 6: and that's where it was bursted. That's where we really
• 11:52
  Speaker 6: got sort of. It's not any.
• 11:54
  Speaker 9: Different, thank God for that.
• 11:56
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's all about garages.
• 11:57
  Speaker 8: Were you Yeah, same with the Apple computers of fact,
• 12:00
  Speaker 8: but were you?
• 12:02
  Speaker 6: Did you know, Hoby, It's funny. My closest connection was
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: David Khanamoku, one of the relatives of the Duke, who
• 12:10
  Speaker 6: happened to be living at Victoria Beach my age a
• 12:13
  Speaker 6: little younger with his mom who had remarried. And one
• 12:19
  Speaker 6: day he said to me. We'd gone surfing together a
• 12:22
  Speaker 6: lot at the ranch and done weird things together. But
• 12:24
  Speaker 6: he said, hey, you know, we ought to go out
• 12:26
  Speaker 6: to Clark Foam. I know Grebby, I know Flippy. Let's
• 12:28
  Speaker 6: just go out there and talk to him about some foam.
• 12:31
  Speaker 6: And that was the impetus for switching from wood to phone.
• 12:34
  Speaker 8: I've read about this with you, and I could only
• 12:37
  Speaker 8: think that's had to have been because of Hoby.
• 12:41
  Speaker 6: Toby was our first buyer. We walked in there with
• 12:44
  Speaker 6: our first boards and handed him to the Hoby shop
• 12:46
  Speaker 6: in Dana.
• 12:47
  Speaker 8: Was Dick Mets there at the time.
• 12:48
  Speaker 6: I don't, he was in and around all the time. Yeah,
• 12:51
  Speaker 6: of fact, but yeah, the smell of resin was really strong.
• 12:54
  Speaker 6: The shavings were on the floor. They took our first
• 12:58
  Speaker 6: four or five boards and said come back, we'll take
• 13:00
  Speaker 6: more when you're ready.
• 13:01
  Speaker 8: But you saw the writing on the wall with foam corps.
• 13:04
  Speaker 8: You saw this.
• 13:04
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah, you know you can make bigger boards, lighter, lighter,
• 13:08
  Speaker 6: and yeah, much much better distance.
• 13:11
  Speaker 8: Yeah, so that's revolutionary. I mean you deserve a place
• 13:16
  Speaker 8: in the Smithsonian.
• 13:16
  Speaker 6: Well, credit David for getting me out there and getting
• 13:19
  Speaker 6: me started. Yeah, he had a lot of bad things
• 13:21
  Speaker 6: about him. He was a bad guy. But look at this.
• 13:24
  Speaker 8: Yeah. Well you and you mentioned graduating from college and
• 13:28
  Speaker 8: not getting the dream job. But I did know that
• 13:30
  Speaker 8: you went to a rather an elite university called Stanford.
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: I did. I was one of those kids who got
• 13:35
  Speaker 6: in probably on my parents' coketails.
• 13:37
  Speaker 8: So you weren't just a deadbeat.
• 13:38
  Speaker 6: I tried not to be. Yeah, I did medice to matriculate.
• 13:41
  Speaker 8: Yeah, and what'd you study.
• 13:44
  Speaker 6: I was a biology may My dad was a doctor,
• 13:47
  Speaker 6: so that was about as close as I could get.
• 13:48
  Speaker 8: But the parents didn't put any real pressure on you
• 13:51
  Speaker 8: to pursue.
• 13:52
  Speaker 6: I felt it my whole life, but I knew right
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: away that I wasn't going to be that kind of
• 13:56
  Speaker 6: given your classmates around you are four point zero students
• 13:59
  Speaker 6: and you're a B student. You got to figure it
• 14:01
  Speaker 6: out over time. And then when you get to Stanford
• 14:03
  Speaker 6: and you meet some of these people that are so gifted,
• 14:05
  Speaker 6: you cannot believe it. One gal could memorize a chemistry
• 14:09
  Speaker 6: book just reading it once and was a champion swordsman too.
• 14:17
  Speaker 8: It's just like time.
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah, great school, best experiment. Yeah, really cool.
• 14:23
  Speaker 8: But you decided not to pursue medicine.
• 14:25
  Speaker 6: Or in for veterinary medicine. I'd worked in a few
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: animal clinics, one down here and one up there, and uh,
• 14:32
  Speaker 6: I lost my job and that kind of disencouraged me
• 14:35
  Speaker 6: from pursuing it any further. Plus, there's only twelve veterinary
• 14:38
  Speaker 6: schools in the United States back in those days, so
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: it's really hard to get in. Yeah, same sort of
• 14:43
  Speaker 6: problem with medical school. I just didn't realize that.
• 14:45
  Speaker 8: So you came home to Laguna culture.
• 14:49
  Speaker 6: Thought about dentistry for five minutes.
• 14:51
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I remember, if you fixed teeth, I'd be scared. Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker 8: You remember what Dick Met says to every graduating class
• 14:59
  Speaker 8: in Laguna Ho High School is one of our criteria
• 15:02
  Speaker 8: for what we wanted to pursue was never having to
• 15:04
  Speaker 8: wear shoes.
• 15:05
  Speaker 9: That's good, it's a beautiful thing.
• 15:07
  Speaker 8: Yeah, So that kind of was you. You turned to
• 15:11
  Speaker 8: this sport and you said, I'm going to make a
• 15:12
  Speaker 8: career out of this and make it go out, and
• 15:14
  Speaker 8: you probably weren't thinking long term.
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: You were just like, you know, the less you know,
• 15:17
  Speaker 6: the better I think at that point, and it was straightforward.
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: We talked Sparky down there and Rainbow Sandels into working
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: part time and that was just the door that we
• 15:27
  Speaker 6: could get still pay our bills and play around with
• 15:29
  Speaker 6: skinboards in between. Yeah, but that went on for about
• 15:33
  Speaker 6: a year or so. We kept it going.
• 15:35
  Speaker 8: But yeah, so pretty phenomenal to be independently owned, not
• 15:39
  Speaker 8: gobbled up by any big conglomerate's still doing it in
• 15:42
  Speaker 8: the canyon, making them in Laguna Beach. I mean, this
• 15:44
  Speaker 8: is an amazing story.
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: Text biology degree helped the survival of the fittest. Having
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: a niche that you exploit before anyone else does. That
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: was really obvious.
• 15:55
  Speaker 8: But was there ever any temptation to move manufacturing offshore.
• 15:59
  Speaker 6: We've done it. We've been poorted from China before and
• 16:02
  Speaker 6: that's not a good experience. No container loads would arrive
• 16:05
  Speaker 6: with a small flaw. You'd break the boards out of
• 16:09
  Speaker 6: the container and you pull them out of the box
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: and you'd set them down on the rack and they
• 16:12
  Speaker 6: were blue and you turn around and they were brown.
• 16:16
  Speaker 8: Really ten seconds, Oh my god.
• 16:18
  Speaker 6: Who color change the whole container load?
• 16:21
  Speaker 8: Yeah?
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, you learned that.
• 16:23
  Speaker 8: But quality control then is a big part of it.
• 16:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah. You got to have a relationship with your people.
• 16:28
  Speaker 6: You got to treat them right, and then you can
• 16:30
  Speaker 6: have long term relationships that really bear fruit. Most of
• 16:35
  Speaker 6: my workers were there for twenty years and.
• 16:36
  Speaker 8: That's great story West. Yeah. So how many employees do
• 16:40
  Speaker 8: you have today?
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: Probably about eight right now, okay for regular production and
• 16:44
  Speaker 6: the rest are yeah.
• 16:45
  Speaker 8: And stuff, and so give us a snapshot because we
• 16:48
  Speaker 8: want to get to the VIC. But like the last journey,
• 16:51
  Speaker 8: the journey from what was it seventy six when you technically.
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: Started seventy six.
• 16:56
  Speaker 8: So we're talking about your sixtieth anniversary, fiftieth.
• 16:59
  Speaker 6: Fiftieth, Yeah, this is a big year. Ye are you?
• 17:02
  Speaker 8: Are you trumpeting that?
• 17:03
  Speaker 6: Are?
• 17:03
  Speaker 8: We're making a big deal out of it.
• 17:05
  Speaker 6: That's not my style now And.
• 17:07
  Speaker 8: They're not going to be any banners at the VIC.
• 17:09
  Speaker 6: Fifty years hopefully not. No, I don't think so. This
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: is about the people, the community, A.
• 17:15
  Speaker 8: Humble guy, man. You don't like the spotlight, you.
• 17:17
  Speaker 6: No, don't need it. I'm actually quite anti social.
• 17:22
  Speaker 8: Well, so, fifty years of a journey, and I know you.
• 17:25
  Speaker 8: It hasn't always been roses. There's been ups and downs.
• 17:29
  Speaker 6: And that's the interesting part of my job is contractions.
• 17:34
  Speaker 6: We run into periods where the economy just goes for
• 17:38
  Speaker 6: four years in a row and you have to move
• 17:40
  Speaker 6: back into your parents' house or somebody to that effect,
• 17:42
  Speaker 6: or move out of some of your units and downsize,
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: and so.
• 17:44
  Speaker 8: You're really some huge impacted by the actual economy.
• 17:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the economy affects things, I think more than anything else.
• 17:50
  Speaker 6: You can be a really good businessmen, and.
• 17:53
  Speaker 8: These tariffs aren't aren't helping a lot of people crazy crazy,
• 17:57
  Speaker 8: But surfing has become such an international phenomenon, and it's cultural,
• 18:02
  Speaker 8: and then you know there's people want to look like
• 18:04
  Speaker 8: surfers and skimboarding. You know, I don't know that it
• 18:09
  Speaker 8: has the mass, but I don't know why, because when
• 18:11
  Speaker 8: I see skimboardings, I look at these guys and girls
• 18:15
  Speaker 8: as some of the best athletes I've ever seen.
• 18:19
  Speaker 6: A little bit of lunacy involved. It kind of pears
• 18:21
  Speaker 6: down them a population, you know, driving and driving into
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: a wave, breaking on the sand.
• 18:27
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean you have to have a sort of
• 18:29
  Speaker 8: a steep pitch where yeah, somewhat and and but aren't
• 18:32
  Speaker 8: isn't Aren't there waves like that all over the world places.
• 18:36
  Speaker 6: Mostly the whole East Coast is a really flat topography.
• 18:38
  Speaker 6: For a mile out to see.
• 18:40
  Speaker 8: It's four feet deep, so I really had more.
• 18:42
  Speaker 6: So it's a very different sport there. You run more
• 18:44
  Speaker 6: like a soccer player at ninety miles an hour, turn
• 18:47
  Speaker 6: off a little wave and get the most out of
• 18:49
  Speaker 6: it you can. And for most people who don't have surf,
• 18:52
  Speaker 6: that's God, that's just heaven to have someone to play with. Sure,
• 18:55
  Speaker 6: and it doesn't matter how big the waves are. So
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: in the old days it was flat beaches and just
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: running up and down the sand and doing spinners and stuff.
• 19:02
  Speaker 6: And for a large large pot of our population now
• 19:04
  Speaker 6: it's inland skimming on lakes and rivers and streams and
• 19:08
  Speaker 6: flooded lawns and stuff. And that's heaven too, mm hmm
• 19:11
  Speaker 6: given the heat wave.
• 19:12
  Speaker 8: Yeah, And do you sell to that market.
• 19:14
  Speaker 6: No, I don't particularly sell much that market, but it's
• 19:17
  Speaker 6: just a part of our sport. Likewise, wakesurfing is really
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: popular with it's very skimboard for all intents and purposes,
• 19:25
  Speaker 6: and a very deep, deep stern on the boat makes
• 19:28
  Speaker 6: a nice wake, right, So that's really popular.
• 19:31
  Speaker 8: What have been sort of the inflection points of big growth, Like,
• 19:36
  Speaker 8: have there been things you can point to that major sales?
• 19:39
  Speaker 6: Sore Covid was like a drug dealer's fantasy party. Everybody
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: came in with cash.
• 19:44
  Speaker 8: Wow.
• 19:44
  Speaker 6: For the best two years and probably two decades.
• 19:48
  Speaker 8: Even though people were told not to go to the beach, well, no,
• 19:51
  Speaker 8: I think they were after a little period.
• 19:53
  Speaker 6: Yeah, initialized that was fresh air and one of those
• 19:57
  Speaker 6: rare opportunities to not be in a crowd. That really
• 20:00
  Speaker 6: helped us. And all that cash, I mean, oh my god,
• 20:02
  Speaker 6: they gave away cash to everybody. The worst part was
• 20:06
  Speaker 6: the recession when team writers of mine were writing loans
• 20:12
  Speaker 6: for homes and then the whole economy collapsed. It was
• 20:15
  Speaker 6: insane that deregulated sow and nine and it fell by
• 20:22
  Speaker 6: seventy percent our sales maybe eighty for the next ten years.
• 20:24
  Speaker 6: It was just a mind.
• 20:26
  Speaker 8: But trid demographic is young primarily.
• 20:29
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's Laguna. Wow. And there's money here, there's there's
• 20:33
  Speaker 6: the art. Yeah, freedom of thinking, and it's just the
• 20:38
  Speaker 6: best possible place. It's got the right topography.
• 20:41
  Speaker 8: And is Laguna representing a major part of your overall sales?
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: No?
• 20:46
  Speaker 6: Small part?
• 20:46
  Speaker 8: Small part. Yeah, you're worldwide.
• 20:48
  Speaker 6: We're all up and down the coast, of course, in
• 20:50
  Speaker 6: the East coast.
• 20:51
  Speaker 8: And you shipped to Europe and South America.
• 20:53
  Speaker 6: A little bit. Yeah, wells do more. But the production
• 20:55
  Speaker 6: has sprung up in all those countries too, So okay,
• 20:58
  Speaker 6: they're doing really well.
• 20:59
  Speaker 8: But I figured what countries have really adapted to.
• 21:02
  Speaker 6: Brazil, Japan, Brazil and Mexico. Mexico's like the Dominican Republic
• 21:08
  Speaker 6: for baseball is to us. They send a skin boarder
• 21:11
  Speaker 6: tour insanely good.
• 21:13
  Speaker 8: Wow.
• 21:14
  Speaker 6: From total poverty and a piece of plywood, these kids
• 21:17
  Speaker 6: do whatever they on a huge wave.
• 21:19
  Speaker 8: Well, let's talk about what does it take to be
• 21:21
  Speaker 8: a good skin boarder besides Stone's girth.
• 21:26
  Speaker 9: Garth I would say the evolution. You know what Texas built,
• 21:31
  Speaker 9: and we're so lucky here in Ligna Beach, California. You know,
• 21:34
  Speaker 9: the evolution from text to Kurt Westguard to Hindi. But
• 21:39
  Speaker 9: if you grew up here that those were the neighborhood guys, right,
• 21:42
  Speaker 9: so you just like so you just falled in their footsteps.
• 21:46
  Speaker 9: But what happened over a ten twenty thirty year run
• 21:51
  Speaker 9: before we got kind of global was like it expanded, right,
• 21:56
  Speaker 9: so you know the United Skim Tour that ust to evolved,
• 22:00
  Speaker 9: but the nucleus was here, you know, with respect to
• 22:04
  Speaker 9: what was happening in Hawaii, with respect what was happening
• 22:08
  Speaker 9: on the East Coast h with Harry and what he
• 22:11
  Speaker 9: was doing over there on the East Coast Championships in
• 22:13
  Speaker 9: Dewey Beach. But there's so much different dynamics. So what
• 22:16
  Speaker 9: happens is these kids are like I always said, like,
• 22:20
  Speaker 9: you know, it's like a nerf ball. They grew up
• 22:22
  Speaker 9: and they go, hey, bro, you got a nerf you know,
• 22:24
  Speaker 9: you know, play catch the nerf and Laguna Beach a
• 22:27
  Speaker 9: skateboard was like the nerf right. So when I moved
• 22:31
  Speaker 9: here and I knew nothing in nineteen seventy nine, as
• 22:34
  Speaker 9: a nine year old ten year old, I was like,
• 22:36
  Speaker 9: I just was drawn to the sport as a coop
• 22:39
  Speaker 9: from out of town. Unfortunately I got drawn to it.
• 22:42
  Speaker 9: But the point is what I'm saying is Laguna Beach
• 22:45
  Speaker 9: has always been like the nucleus, the epicenter where the
• 22:48
  Speaker 9: north shore of skinboarding. Yes, from what techs built in
• 22:54
  Speaker 9: Victoria's skinboards, but it's the it's the riders, it's the community,
• 22:58
  Speaker 9: it's the aloha. And I always say this, if you
• 23:01
  Speaker 9: went to Pearl Street or Loganita to Thalia Street down
• 23:06
  Speaker 9: to eBay, the vibe might have changed with the people,
• 23:10
  Speaker 9: but the sport was always the same, right, So we
• 23:13
  Speaker 9: all kind of grew up in this essence of writing
• 23:16
  Speaker 9: these boards and then the foam course skinboarding it changed everything.
• 23:20
  Speaker 9: And for me, if I could say it was Chris
• 23:22
  Speaker 9: Anderson Action Now Magazine must have been in nineteen seventy
• 23:27
  Speaker 9: nine eighty front Side Slash down to eBay.
• 23:31
  Speaker 10: Or I'm sorry, Ninth Street and Sports Illustrated covered No, No,
• 23:35
  Speaker 10: that was Tom Traeger in nineteen eighty seven, but Action
• 23:39
  Speaker 10: now magazine, so the sport arrived right and.
• 23:43
  Speaker 9: We were Blue Carl. It wasn't until nineteen eighty five
• 23:45
  Speaker 9: that Surfer magazine did a feature on skinboard skinboarding and
• 23:50
  Speaker 9: the VIC and so very very humble beginnings. Texas always
• 23:56
  Speaker 9: said it's a big backyard barbecue that he's done. You know,
• 24:00
  Speaker 9: he started in nineteen seventy six. The contest started in
• 24:03
  Speaker 9: nineteen seventy seven. That's why this year is the forty
• 24:07
  Speaker 9: ninth annual. And it was all the guys that did
• 24:11
  Speaker 9: it back then, from texts and the pianos and the
• 24:14
  Speaker 9: West Guards and you can just go down the name
• 24:17
  Speaker 9: of the lines. And as it grew in popularity before
• 24:21
  Speaker 9: we had pro which text launched in nineteen eighty seven,
• 24:26
  Speaker 9: it just grew and it was just this nucleus of something.
• 24:29
  Speaker 9: So if you were here in town, you're very very
• 24:32
  Speaker 9: lucky to be part of it. And I was very
• 24:34
  Speaker 9: lucky to be part of that. And so we had
• 24:37
  Speaker 9: this very special coastline here in Laguna Beach from Aliso
• 24:42
  Speaker 9: even Arthelia Pearl Street. You just go down the line
• 24:46
  Speaker 9: and it's very special to be a skinboarder here in
• 24:49
  Speaker 9: Lagna Beach and everybody knows what it's to be a
• 24:51
  Speaker 9: part of it. So for me, Hindi, text West Guard,
• 24:56
  Speaker 9: they set the foundation and we all just kind of
• 24:59
  Speaker 9: chased it right, and that's how evolved in the Guru
• 25:03
  Speaker 9: and it just I mean, it's an amazing thing. So
• 25:06
  Speaker 9: to see where we are now, to see the United
• 25:09
  Speaker 9: Skim Tour having a competition in Portugal, I mean, we
• 25:13
  Speaker 9: go worldwide. You know, it's amazing to see how much
• 25:17
  Speaker 9: it's evolved and grown. The Brazilians they're at the top
• 25:20
  Speaker 9: of the charts. It's amazing. But Laguna, I'm biased. It's
• 25:25
  Speaker 9: always been a very special place from from Hindi to
• 25:28
  Speaker 9: Westy to Bill Brian to Blair Conkland. You know, it's
• 25:33
  Speaker 9: a very special place. And I'll say that we are
• 25:36
  Speaker 9: the birthplace of modern day skinboarding, not where invented. Texts
• 25:41
  Speaker 9: would never tell you this is where it started. He'll
• 25:43
  Speaker 9: always give credit to the Polynesians and they were on
• 25:46
  Speaker 9: tee leaves or somebody. But modern day skinboarding started here
• 25:50
  Speaker 9: around seventy six seventy seven and the advent of foam
• 25:55
  Speaker 9: skinboarding took it to the next level. So I followed
• 25:58
  Speaker 9: in those footsteps, looking for it to be part of it.
• 26:02
  Speaker 9: And that's where we are today. Here we are at
• 26:04
  Speaker 9: the forty ninth annual VIC World Championship of Skinboarding, and
• 26:08
  Speaker 9: it really is. I always say this, that's the Masters,
• 26:12
  Speaker 9: the US.
• 26:12
  Speaker 8: Open of Skinboarding this weekend. Yes, it is start up
• 26:18
  Speaker 8: Saturday at what time?
• 26:20
  Speaker 9: Well, we yeah, twenty seconds this Saturday. This Sunday, we
• 26:24
  Speaker 9: try to get the guys in the water, the pros
• 26:26
  Speaker 9: at eight in the morning, right, so get down there.
• 26:28
  Speaker 9: But it's a two day event. Saturday Sunday we do
• 26:32
  Speaker 9: all the events. The finals will wrap up on Sunday,
• 26:35
  Speaker 9: but show up on Saturday because that's when it starts.
• 26:38
  Speaker 9: And then on the day two we've got a lot
• 26:41
  Speaker 9: of more heats. It's tough because it's a pro am
• 26:44
  Speaker 9: give credit to VIC for doing this. They've never said
• 26:48
  Speaker 9: we're just gonna go amateur or we're just gonna go pro,
• 26:52
  Speaker 9: all inclusive, and of course the professional women are there
• 26:56
  Speaker 9: as well. We've got Amber in the studio right now
• 26:58
  Speaker 9: to talk about that. So it's really awesome because the
• 27:01
  Speaker 9: sport has evolved and it's grown, and so for two
• 27:04
  Speaker 9: days you're gonna see the pinnacle of the sport. Short
• 27:07
  Speaker 9: break action right there at the footsteps, and what's awesome
• 27:11
  Speaker 9: is you can engage with the athletes. You're right there
• 27:16
  Speaker 9: with them watching the announcers are giving a shout out.
• 27:20
  Speaker 9: So it's pretty special to see how far this sport
• 27:24
  Speaker 9: has grown from humble beginning. For what texted this at
• 27:27
  Speaker 9: Victoria's at Victoria Beach, then he went to Aliso and
• 27:32
  Speaker 9: here we are fourteen nine years later.
• 27:35
  Speaker 8: Amazing And you guys are going to live cast it
• 27:37
  Speaker 8: is that right? Will it be on YouTube.
• 27:39
  Speaker 9: Or yes, sir, there's a live feed, so we do
• 27:42
  Speaker 9: our best to give a feed for everyone to see
• 27:46
  Speaker 9: that can't be there, you know, you can log in
• 27:49
  Speaker 9: and see the live feed for the VIC. It's pretty
• 27:53
  Speaker 9: awesome to see that. George Bryan's going to help us
• 27:56
  Speaker 9: out this year. We've had a lot of people that
• 27:58
  Speaker 9: have helped us out. So, you know, being on the
• 28:00
  Speaker 9: beach is amazing. It's one thing, but if you can't
• 28:02
  Speaker 9: be there, you're in Australia, Japan, right, Brazil, Yeah, anywhere
• 28:07
  Speaker 9: in the world you can tune in and see the
• 28:10
  Speaker 9: VIC going down.
• 28:11
  Speaker 8: And not only that, we're going to send our very
• 28:13
  Speaker 8: own dag Wood over and he's going to be doing
• 28:15
  Speaker 8: some live feed as well. Here on the radio, BANDA
• 28:19
  Speaker 8: is going to be doing DAGs has said he signed
• 28:21
  Speaker 8: on and uh so.
• 28:22
  Speaker 9: We're gonna live ride live, yes.
• 28:25
  Speaker 8: The Lively Rides. Yeah, yeah, So we want to be involved.
• 28:28
  Speaker 8: We're co sponsoring the event. And you know what a
• 28:30
  Speaker 8: perfect venue for us to be promoting the VIC right
• 28:34
  Speaker 8: here at KXFM and Amber, Hi, good to be here.
• 28:39
  Speaker 8: You got got a lot of guys here talking a
• 28:41
  Speaker 8: loud Yes.
• 28:42
  Speaker 9: How many times? How many times World champ?
• 28:44
  Speaker 8: Right now?
• 28:45
  Speaker 11: I feel like it's been five times I won the VIC,
• 28:48
  Speaker 11: which is really sick.
• 28:49
  Speaker 9: Wow.
• 28:49
  Speaker 11: Worm always gets me hyped up. I feel like when
• 28:51
  Speaker 11: you hear his voice on the beach, that's when you know, like,
• 28:54
  Speaker 11: all right, let's go. It's eight o'clock as we're ready
• 28:56
  Speaker 11: to go. Yeah yeah, And I mean, like you said.
• 28:58
  Speaker 8: Doing the play by play, is that? Are you on that?
• 29:01
  Speaker 9: I'm always happy to participate, get involved. Morgan just is
• 29:04
  Speaker 9: going to be there, and yes, I'm very honored and
• 29:07
  Speaker 9: fortunate to be of call the VIC since got geez nineteen.
• 29:12
  Speaker 8: And are you going to compete?
• 29:14
  Speaker 9: Yeah? You know what, I shouldn't say that two days
• 29:18
  Speaker 9: ago I jumped on my skinboard. I went, I felt
• 29:20
  Speaker 9: like I could do it. But I'm in the fifteen
• 29:22
  Speaker 9: up now.
• 29:22
  Speaker 8: So yeah, well that's something that's so special having.
• 29:26
  Speaker 9: You never know, I might just I looked on the
• 29:28
  Speaker 9: registration today and there was only two people in the fifty.
• 29:32
  Speaker 9: I figured that they need a couple more guys to
• 29:34
  Speaker 9: at least make it up.
• 29:35
  Speaker 8: Where's no command?
• 29:37
  Speaker 9: Nick is around. God loved Nick, one of my heroes
• 29:41
  Speaker 9: and so talented. He's still playing music with him. When
• 29:44
  Speaker 9: you just play that gig no and we're going to
• 29:48
  Speaker 9: be for godess, you know. So Nick's still around. But
• 29:52
  Speaker 9: you know, as we I'm the youngster at fifty six.
• 29:56
  Speaker 9: As you get aged up sixty sixty plus.
• 29:59
  Speaker 8: Those fall hurt a little more.
• 30:00
  Speaker 9: Well, you know, it's harder. We need we need the
• 30:04
  Speaker 9: steep slope, yeah, and we need a little steep wave
• 30:07
  Speaker 9: so we don't have to run as hard. But with
• 30:10
  Speaker 9: all those guys, including cling Texts and West and stuff,
• 30:13
  Speaker 9: you know, you know, we excel when the waves gives
• 30:16
  Speaker 9: a little bit of an opportunity, but you just don't
• 30:19
  Speaker 9: hang off the board. I got awave on Sunday and
• 30:21
  Speaker 9: I was super stoked. Amber said, where do you see
• 30:24
  Speaker 9: the drone footage? And I went through, but there was
• 30:26
  Speaker 9: two ways I fell, stumbled, and then I got one.
• 30:30
  Speaker 9: So that's about the life of a skinboarder in your
• 30:33
  Speaker 9: mid fifties. Now, you know what, You never give.
• 30:35
  Speaker 8: Up, you never never stopped. Unbelievable ambers. How did you
• 30:38
  Speaker 8: get into the sport?
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: Wow?
• 30:40
  Speaker 11: I mean I feel like I got in pretty late actually,
• 30:43
  Speaker 11: So I was on that path of being like a
• 30:45
  Speaker 11: skateboarder from Florida and then I really fell into traditional
• 30:49
  Speaker 11: sports of really chasing the path of going into college
• 30:52
  Speaker 11: basketball and trying to like pursue that dream. But you know,
• 30:56
  Speaker 11: I kind of faced this you know, turning point when
• 30:59
  Speaker 11: I was choosing a college and doing all that you
• 31:02
  Speaker 11: know stuff in high school that I had a lot
• 31:04
  Speaker 11: of injuries in basketball and I really had to like
• 31:06
  Speaker 11: look at my future and say, like, is this a
• 31:09
  Speaker 11: sport that I want to choose to potentially end up
• 31:12
  Speaker 11: in you know, this city or that city, or play
• 31:15
  Speaker 11: for this team and that team. And I felt like
• 31:17
  Speaker 11: my heart really was just with the creativity of like
• 31:20
  Speaker 11: being on a board, and I just remembered like my
• 31:22
  Speaker 11: senior year, I had this great opportunity to be able
• 31:24
  Speaker 11: to go to college early based on you know, this
• 31:27
  Speaker 11: program involved in my grades and all this stuff. So
• 31:30
  Speaker 11: I really kind of had a head start of like
• 31:32
  Speaker 11: leaving high school in eleventh grade while all my rest
• 31:35
  Speaker 11: of my class was still going to high school. So
• 31:38
  Speaker 11: I had all this free time to finally, you know,
• 31:40
  Speaker 11: drive myself to the beach because I kind of grew
• 31:41
  Speaker 11: up a little inland in this town called Pombey, Florida.
• 31:43
  Speaker 11: It's actually near Cocoa Beach, in the same county as
• 31:46
  Speaker 11: you know, Kelly Slater and that whole stretch of beach
• 31:49
  Speaker 11: that kind of breeds a lot of you know, board
• 31:52
  Speaker 11: sports because we're we're hungry for more, Like we have
• 31:55
  Speaker 11: just enough to get us stoked, but we don't really
• 31:57
  Speaker 11: have like everything. And especially then I think a little bit.
• 32:01
  Speaker 11: Now there's more hype down there. They're building even a
• 32:03
  Speaker 11: wave park down there, like only like forty five minutes
• 32:05
  Speaker 11: from my hometown, which is really cool in Fellsmere, and
• 32:09
  Speaker 11: we we just have that fire because you just see
• 32:11
  Speaker 11: this industry like thriving and booming. You see Laguna Beach
• 32:14
  Speaker 11: over here. And I actually didn't even really know until
• 32:17
  Speaker 11: I graduated high school. I believe that skinboarding was taken
• 32:20
  Speaker 11: this seriously and that's what really like put the fire
• 32:23
  Speaker 11: underneath me. I was, you know, kind of starting to
• 32:25
  Speaker 11: compete as I was leaving high school and realizing like
• 32:28
  Speaker 11: I want to be on a board again. But like skateboarding,
• 32:31
  Speaker 11: you know that boat at like eighteen kind of is sailing,
• 32:34
  Speaker 11: you know when especially nowadays, your kids are getting into
• 32:37
  Speaker 11: it so young, it's just so painful, like on the
• 32:39
  Speaker 11: on the concrete and retrying to get you know, trying
• 32:42
  Speaker 11: to restart your going pro and ntsport at eighteen was
• 32:45
  Speaker 11: something else. But when I got on a skinboard, it
• 32:47
  Speaker 11: was like, I don't know, it's just this finesse of
• 32:49
  Speaker 11: skating on water almost and the fact that you can
• 32:52
  Speaker 11: combine like surfing and this feel of skating and almost snowboarding.
• 32:55
  Speaker 11: I don't know, it was just like you're hooked, you know,
• 32:58
  Speaker 11: And that kind of just drove me.
• 33:00
  Speaker 12: I'd be like, what is the sport?
• 33:01
  Speaker 11: Let me dive in and see Like coming from the
• 33:03
  Speaker 11: skate industry, even having a skateboard company when I was eighteen,
• 33:06
  Speaker 11: I sponsored some writers, some writers that are even pro today.
• 33:09
  Speaker 12: They were able to.
• 33:10
  Speaker 11: You know, it's really cool to be a part of
• 33:12
  Speaker 11: that that story as well, I just realized, like action
• 33:15
  Speaker 11: sports is just where my heart thrives and where my
• 33:18
  Speaker 11: creativity is. And I was like, well, maybe I can
• 33:21
  Speaker 11: really pursue this skinboarding thing for real and become a pro.
• 33:24
  Speaker 11: When I was, you know, just grinding to finish my
• 33:27
  Speaker 11: degree at UCF and working a full time job at
• 33:30
  Speaker 11: the same.
• 33:30
  Speaker 8: Time running the University of Central Florida, Yes it is, yeah.
• 33:33
  Speaker 11: And it's kind of in the middle of state, right,
• 33:35
  Speaker 11: so you kind of have to I just was constantly
• 33:39
  Speaker 11: with that fire, like I'm not where I want to be,
• 33:41
  Speaker 11: but I know I'm making steps to.
• 33:42
  Speaker 12: Where I need to be.
• 33:43
  Speaker 11: But it was it was always just like how can
• 33:45
  Speaker 11: I get to like where my heart is? And you know,
• 33:48
  Speaker 11: I'm always like this in these landlocked places, just trying
• 33:50
  Speaker 11: to you know, get the paper, you know, get the degree,
• 33:53
  Speaker 11: move on, know what I need to know. And really
• 33:56
  Speaker 11: I was stuck in this corporate vibe of you know,
• 33:58
  Speaker 11: I was running a radio shack back in the day.
• 34:01
  Speaker 12: Actually, look at you, I was running yeah, right, I
• 34:06
  Speaker 12: was running a store down there.
• 34:07
  Speaker 11: I was granted with radio store, a radio shack store,
• 34:11
  Speaker 11: like I was a radio shack.
• 34:12
  Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, kind of.
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 34:16
  Speaker 11: It was a great opportunity back in the day to
• 34:18
  Speaker 11: be able to be so young. I was only twenty
• 34:20
  Speaker 11: years old. Granted, with this store that was huge in
• 34:22
  Speaker 11: the market. You know, it was over a million dollar
• 34:24
  Speaker 11: store that I was having to manage and you know,
• 34:26
  Speaker 11: have these roles, and but what they didn't know, I
• 34:29
  Speaker 11: guess is they're building a monster because now I have
• 34:31
  Speaker 11: this store that I'm running the schedule, and I'm running
• 34:34
  Speaker 11: the show so I can kind of work the schedule
• 34:37
  Speaker 11: so I can get to my skim competition.
• 34:38
  Speaker 12: Yeah, so that was kind of what was brewing.
• 34:41
  Speaker 11: In the background, and that's what led me really on
• 34:43
  Speaker 11: this career path, is like I really wanted to get
• 34:45
  Speaker 11: out of that life of like being stuck within four
• 34:48
  Speaker 11: walls and you know, like that person that just sits
• 34:51
  Speaker 11: at their desks in dreams. That was kind of me
• 34:53
  Speaker 11: for a long time, and.
• 34:55
  Speaker 12: It was really cool to be able to see that.
• 34:57
  Speaker 11: When Instagram came out, I looked at it after graduating
• 34:59
  Speaker 11: CA and being like, you know, this is a huge
• 35:01
  Speaker 11: like opportunity to put in like my resume in a
• 35:04
  Speaker 11: creative way and really like showcase and marketing myself instead
• 35:08
  Speaker 11: of like little side jobs I was doing after running
• 35:11
  Speaker 11: my skateboard company and building other businesses and marketing them.
• 35:14
  Speaker 11: It's like, well, why am I not flooding this into myself?
• 35:17
  Speaker 11: So that's what led me to skinboarding. As in a
• 35:19
  Speaker 11: professional census. I left my corporate job, decided one day
• 35:23
  Speaker 11: to pitch to a sponsor that believed in me to
• 35:26
  Speaker 11: move to California and just up and leave everything I
• 35:29
  Speaker 11: had in Florida and just tell them like, hey, if
• 35:32
  Speaker 11: you put me out here in California, I promise you
• 35:34
  Speaker 11: that I will. I will do it bigger and better
• 35:37
  Speaker 11: than what you're seeing.
• 35:37
  Speaker 12: Me do in Florida.
• 35:38
  Speaker 11: And I will, I will just go all the way.
• 35:41
  Speaker 11: And they invested in me, and I'm still here ten
• 35:44
  Speaker 11: years later. This is like my ten year anniversary this
• 35:46
  Speaker 11: year of being in California, and it's kind of insane
• 35:49
  Speaker 11: because it just feels like, you know, there's always this
• 35:52
  Speaker 11: a dream you come out here. First time I stepped
• 35:55
  Speaker 11: foot in Laguna Beach, I just like looked up at
• 35:57
  Speaker 11: the cliffs and you know, Florida's completely and yeah, it's
• 36:02
  Speaker 11: just been like I feel like I've been like working
• 36:04
  Speaker 11: my butt off to just like you know, make a
• 36:06
  Speaker 11: living out there, and coming here it's just my eyes
• 36:09
  Speaker 11: just completely opened up in this whole new world.
• 36:12
  Speaker 8: And did you come straight to Laguna?
• 36:14
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 36:15
  Speaker 11: I found two girl skin boarders that are not some
• 36:18
  Speaker 11: of my really good friends now, and I found out
• 36:20
  Speaker 11: where they lived in a little apartment complex, and I said, hey,
• 36:23
  Speaker 11: I don't know anyone here, but if I just sign
• 36:27
  Speaker 11: a lease in this comp apartment complex where at least
• 36:29
  Speaker 11: I know these two girls I compete against around the world,
• 36:32
  Speaker 11: I'll be safe and I'll figure it out. And it
• 36:34
  Speaker 11: was literally just turning the key after signing the lease,
• 36:37
  Speaker 11: walking into an empty apartment having only what I had
• 36:40
  Speaker 11: that fit in my little scion XD walking everything in,
• 36:44
  Speaker 11: realizing I didn't have any silverware, and I mean I
• 36:46
  Speaker 11: didn't have anything to eat. I was just like, you
• 36:48
  Speaker 11: know what, this is what you wanted. Figure it out,
• 36:51
  Speaker 11: and I am so glad that I did it. I mean,
• 36:54
  Speaker 11: there was so many, you know, hardships along the way,
• 36:57
  Speaker 11: but I haven't grown. I've grown so much, just like
• 37:01
  Speaker 11: there's nothing that could have made me grow like that experience.
• 37:03
  Speaker 11: And yeah, you know, really trying to learn how to
• 37:05
  Speaker 11: just make what your dream work can come alive.
• 37:08
  Speaker 8: And what's your trajectory been in the last ten years?
• 37:11
  Speaker 8: With the sport. Besides, you're sitting here with two of
• 37:13
  Speaker 8: the ogs.
• 37:15
  Speaker 11: Man, It's I've just been so grateful to be a
• 37:18
  Speaker 11: part of just this, this whole movement. I feel like
• 37:21
  Speaker 11: in text, you know, being a part of the beginning
• 37:25
  Speaker 11: and worm even like all these people, that's just inspire me.
• 37:28
  Speaker 11: When I show up on the beach and I remember
• 37:30
  Speaker 11: just looking around like I don't even know how to
• 37:32
  Speaker 11: ride a West Coast waves and so I'm looking to
• 37:35
  Speaker 11: these guys and the girls that you know also like
• 37:38
  Speaker 11: grew the history of the women's side of the sport
• 37:40
  Speaker 11: that you know you're looking back on. And the VIC
• 37:42
  Speaker 11: was one of the it was the first of the
• 37:44
  Speaker 11: women's professional being here right here in Laguna Beach.
• 37:47
  Speaker 12: And it's just like it was so inspired.
• 37:48
  Speaker 11: To me, like Okay, like these people like are making
• 37:51
  Speaker 11: it happen, and this is where it's like living and thriving.
• 37:54
  Speaker 12: Like I got to figure it out.
• 37:56
  Speaker 8: I'm in the epicenter. This is where I need to be.
• 37:58
  Speaker 12: Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm.
• 38:01
  Speaker 8: But five time VIC winner.
• 38:03
  Speaker 12: I was crazy.
• 38:05
  Speaker 8: What a ride, unbelievable. What to talk about manifesting your dreams?
• 38:10
  Speaker 9: Right?
• 38:10
  Speaker 11: I just I just feel like if you just keep going,
• 38:13
  Speaker 11: you know, if this is where your passion lives and
• 38:15
  Speaker 11: your heart is, no matter how many times you get
• 38:18
  Speaker 11: put down, it's just part of the journey.
• 38:20
  Speaker 8: And you've got to be an inspiration for young young women,
• 38:23
  Speaker 8: I hope.
• 38:24
  Speaker 11: So you know, I really just want like when I
• 38:26
  Speaker 11: put like videos, I love to make videos. I kind
• 38:29
  Speaker 11: of like learned that along the side of becoming a
• 38:30
  Speaker 11: professional skinboard it went hand in hand of like becoming
• 38:33
  Speaker 11: a filmmaker essentially, and you know, self made filmmaker. I mean,
• 38:36
  Speaker 11: I have so much inspiration to like people that went
• 38:38
  Speaker 11: to school and real you know filmmakers out there. But
• 38:41
  Speaker 11: I really just was starting to tell my story to
• 38:44
  Speaker 11: show like other women around the world that like they're
• 38:47
  Speaker 11: not alone. And I created a brand around and in
• 38:49
  Speaker 11: a film called no One, because I really felt like
• 38:52
  Speaker 11: I was on those beaches in Florida and I would
• 38:54
  Speaker 11: look like left and right, and nobody would be out there,
• 38:56
  Speaker 11: and I was like, man, no one's doing this, But
• 38:59
  Speaker 11: is no one doing this? And then when you really
• 39:01
  Speaker 11: come out here and you start to tell your story,
• 39:05
  Speaker 11: these other girls and other people show up and they're like, hey,
• 39:07
  Speaker 11: like I'm experiencing this too, and that's where you really
• 39:10
  Speaker 11: start to feel like, holy crap, like you can really
• 39:13
  Speaker 11: get out of your own world and expand and just
• 39:15
  Speaker 11: see Like you don't even know who you're inspiring by
• 39:18
  Speaker 11: what you're putting out there in the world until it
• 39:20
  Speaker 11: hits you and they walk up on the beach one
• 39:22
  Speaker 11: day years later and they're like, Hey, how's it going.
• 39:25
  Speaker 11: My name so and so I've been watching your videos
• 39:27
  Speaker 11: and it's like, oh my gosh, like this this is.
• 39:29
  Speaker 12: What you do.
• 39:30
  Speaker 8: You're making an impact.
• 39:31
  Speaker 11: Yeah, you just kind of keep inspiring the community and
• 39:35
  Speaker 11: just keep everybody moving forward.
• 39:37
  Speaker 8: And you're you said ten years out here, I'm guessing
• 39:40
  Speaker 8: you're in your early thirties. Are you at your peak?
• 39:45
  Speaker 12: I feel like it's weird to say that.
• 39:48
  Speaker 11: When I was even in my mid twenties, I was like,
• 39:50
  Speaker 11: what would I be doing right now in my thirties
• 39:53
  Speaker 11: or even moving into my forties.
• 39:54
  Speaker 12: You're not going to be doing X, Y and Z.
• 39:57
  Speaker 11: And like, I wake up and I feel like the same,
• 40:00
  Speaker 11: Like I feel great, Like my body feels good, Like
• 40:03
  Speaker 11: I feel like I'm just looking to just do new
• 40:06
  Speaker 11: things all the time. You know, I feel like, Okay,
• 40:08
  Speaker 11: I have things that I crossed off my list, but
• 40:10
  Speaker 11: what's next? You know, it's and it's all They all
• 40:13
  Speaker 11: go hand in hand, the creativity of like creating videos
• 40:16
  Speaker 11: or making art in many different ways that other skinboarders
• 40:18
  Speaker 11: do too. Like a lot of us are just artists
• 40:20
  Speaker 11: in our own way, whether it's our expression on our
• 40:22
  Speaker 11: board or expression in another way. I feel like it's
• 40:25
  Speaker 11: just something that like everything I do when I travel,
• 40:29
  Speaker 11: even other skimmers around the world. Urban skinboard is, for instance,
• 40:32
  Speaker 11: skinboarding without water, skinboarding in crazy areas in like fountains
• 40:36
  Speaker 11: and stuff like friends of mine like Adrian Ros and stuff.
• 40:39
  Speaker 11: And the girls are getting into it too, like Shaway
• 40:41
  Speaker 11: Way in Mexico. We see like she's you know, does
• 40:44
  Speaker 11: the fountains over there in Mexico City, And like, you know,
• 40:47
  Speaker 11: all of us just inspiring each other to just be
• 40:50
  Speaker 11: creative and just you know, expand this sport because it's
• 40:53
  Speaker 11: that's the cool thing about not having a fin on
• 40:55
  Speaker 11: your board, right, It's just like the art of being
• 40:58
  Speaker 11: able to take it anywhere.
• 40:59
  Speaker 8: So that I know you mentioned there's a tour association
• 41:03
  Speaker 8: what's it called again, the United Skin Tour United Skin Tour.
• 41:06
  Speaker 8: How many events do they put on a year.
• 41:08
  Speaker 12: Right now, they have five events.
• 41:10
  Speaker 11: Unfortunately the sixth event was canceled just due to some
• 41:13
  Speaker 11: stuff that happened in Mexico, but usually it's about six events.
• 41:16
  Speaker 11: And this is the first year that the women's are
• 41:18
  Speaker 11: equal to the men as far as it stops. And
• 41:20
  Speaker 11: that's really what we're also working towards, Like on the
• 41:22
  Speaker 11: women's side is we're really just trying to show like
• 41:25
  Speaker 11: the women's competition now is just like it's becoming so intense,
• 41:28
  Speaker 11: and it's great because all these women are now inspiring
• 41:32
  Speaker 11: girls from a younger age to start younger and that's
• 41:34
  Speaker 11: just breeding this whole culture of like women just going
• 41:38
  Speaker 11: hard and it's crazy. We went we just got back
• 41:40
  Speaker 11: from Delaware one of the stops on the ust and
• 41:42
  Speaker 11: then this one's the next one, and you come off
• 41:45
  Speaker 11: that stop and you see the most amount of girls
• 41:47
  Speaker 11: you've ever seen on a beach, like ever in one
• 41:51
  Speaker 11: spot skinboarding, and you're just like, this is what we're
• 41:54
  Speaker 11: doing it for.
• 41:54
  Speaker 8: So you still feel like this is the salad. I mean,
• 41:57
  Speaker 8: the early days of this sport. There's still a lot
• 41:59
  Speaker 8: of room for growth one hundred percent.
• 42:01
  Speaker 11: I feel like we're just now starting almost a whole
• 42:03
  Speaker 11: new movement of like especially on the women's side, and
• 42:07
  Speaker 11: I feel like the men are really you know going
• 42:09
  Speaker 11: to this new generation is like hungry to not only
• 42:13
  Speaker 11: like you know, build on what is already there, but
• 42:16
  Speaker 11: do it in their own way.
• 42:17
  Speaker 12: I feel like that.
• 42:18
  Speaker 11: That's what I see out there is like social media,
• 42:20
  Speaker 11: there's so many things of like you know, you see
• 42:23
  Speaker 11: like good, bad and everything in between. But one thing
• 42:26
  Speaker 11: that is always, you know there is everybody can do
• 42:30
  Speaker 11: their own thing and express themselves in their own way,
• 42:33
  Speaker 11: and it gives them a platform to do that, and
• 42:34
  Speaker 11: it's it's breeding some really cool stuff.
• 42:37
  Speaker 8: Yeah, amazing. What's so what let's talk about prize money?
• 42:41
  Speaker 8: How much is it going to be awarded this year?
• 42:44
  Speaker 9: Well, it constantly evolved, right, so Text's done a great job.
• 42:48
  Speaker 9: One of the the awesome things that the Victoria the
• 42:51
  Speaker 9: VIC has done is they've welcome in donations, right, So
• 42:57
  Speaker 9: the pro purse evolves throughout the the tour based on
• 43:01
  Speaker 9: donations and contributions and sponsorship. But the good at being
• 43:06
  Speaker 9: the nucleus of what it's done is they bring in
• 43:09
  Speaker 9: the money. So I don't know what the total is
• 43:10
  Speaker 9: right now. Last time I checked it was about seventy
• 43:12
  Speaker 9: five hundred and growing, and you know it fluctuates, but
• 43:18
  Speaker 9: the fact that we're splitting the money up and everything.
• 43:21
  Speaker 9: Skinboard has always been like that.
• 43:23
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 43:23
  Speaker 9: You hate to say a little stepchild to like surfing
• 43:27
  Speaker 9: because it's tough to bring in the dollars. But I'm
• 43:29
  Speaker 9: sure Ambery would say this. For the ladies. You gotta
• 43:31
  Speaker 9: think about Ambracoddle, Sean Cobb and all the ladies that
• 43:34
  Speaker 9: grewed up. You got to think about Chris Henderson and
• 43:37
  Speaker 9: west Guard and Baker, all these guys that were longtime
• 43:41
  Speaker 9: champions that brought the money. In nineteen ninety four we
• 43:44
  Speaker 9: had a ten thousand dollars perse. I'll never forget that, hey,
• 43:48
  Speaker 9: because I might have done well that yet, but then
• 43:51
  Speaker 9: there was a little dip in the economy. So I
• 43:54
  Speaker 9: don't know where we're at right now. Tex should probably
• 43:56
  Speaker 9: say off the microphone. We're getting we close in eight, nine,
• 44:01
  Speaker 9: ten thousand.
• 44:01
  Speaker 6: Go on the website and make a donation and we'll
• 44:04
  Speaker 6: go direct to the propurse.
• 44:06
  Speaker 9: And that's what's great. So so you can make a
• 44:08
  Speaker 9: donation to support that that goes back to the grass roots.
• 44:12
  Speaker 9: That doesn't happen in surfing. That doesn't happen in other sports,
• 44:16
  Speaker 9: but in our sport, you can actually make a contribution. Hey,
• 44:19
  Speaker 9: I want to give one thousand, two grand, three hundred,
• 44:22
  Speaker 9: three thousand, five hundred bucks and it all goes back
• 44:25
  Speaker 9: to the sport to support the professional athletes and the
• 44:28
  Speaker 9: cause and the purse. So that's what's great. So it's growing,
• 44:33
  Speaker 9: it evolves, and we're doing an equal pay for the
• 44:37
  Speaker 9: women and the men, which is awesome. And it's amazing
• 44:41
  Speaker 9: to think where we are in the professional sport as
• 44:44
  Speaker 9: skim boarders in the Ust. You know, the Dewey Beach
• 44:49
  Speaker 9: just went down, you know, and those athletes, and they
• 44:52
  Speaker 9: are athletes are going to travel from Dewey and come
• 44:56
  Speaker 9: to the good They were in Portugal, yes, yeah, so
• 45:00
  Speaker 9: they were in Delaware before that. So these are professional
• 45:04
  Speaker 9: atlagh sure that are relying on their sponsorships and their
• 45:08
  Speaker 9: donations to travel to get around the globe and come
• 45:11
  Speaker 9: and compete. And so when they get reciprocated with the
• 45:15
  Speaker 9: money that's involved with the sponsorship, which you can you
• 45:18
  Speaker 9: can't think of enough all the sponsors that donate to
• 45:21
  Speaker 9: the skimboard competition, whether it be prizes and gifts and
• 45:26
  Speaker 9: all our cash. It's so huge. It's what's kept us
• 45:30
  Speaker 9: going all the way back to the eighties. That's been
• 45:33
  Speaker 9: the foundation of it. But now it has evolved and
• 45:36
  Speaker 9: there's money involved. We want Coca Cola, don't get me wrong.
• 45:39
  Speaker 9: Now we want blue chip. But it's very grassroots. But
• 45:43
  Speaker 9: you know what, at the same time, it's the epicenter
• 45:47
  Speaker 9: and the highest pinnacle of athletes you'll ever see doing
• 45:51
  Speaker 9: this on Let me ask you, guys, because first of all,
• 45:54
  Speaker 9: it is a great spectator sport.
• 45:55
  Speaker 8: It's up close. You mentioned, you know, you're hanging out
• 45:58
  Speaker 8: with the athletes on the sand and you get a
• 46:01
  Speaker 8: close up view of this artistry. But what are the
• 46:04
  Speaker 8: special skill sets as athletes that really are important to skinboarding.
• 46:11
  Speaker 9: I would just say that the athleticism, you know what,
• 46:15
  Speaker 9: And it's kind of different, you know, if you can
• 46:18
  Speaker 9: if you compare with just generalization from the East Coast
• 46:22
  Speaker 9: to the West coast, a flat beach, as Amber said,
• 46:25
  Speaker 9: growing up in Florida to California, there are two different things,
• 46:30
  Speaker 9: but at the same time, the same athleticsm is definitely involved.
• 46:35
  Speaker 9: But you gotta be athletic, you got to be quick
• 46:39
  Speaker 9: on your feet. You got most of our skateboarders include
• 46:44
  Speaker 9: our surfers.
• 46:45
  Speaker 8: Right yea. The surfers necessarily fast on.
• 46:49
  Speaker 9: Are there are a skateboarder. So what we see today,
• 46:53
  Speaker 9: I would say this, Billy, what we see today is
• 46:56
  Speaker 9: there's so much crossover now the skateboarders, the snowboard the skinboarders,
• 47:02
  Speaker 9: the surfers. It's all intertwined. And they could be really
• 47:07
  Speaker 9: good at their sport and surfing, and they could be
• 47:09
  Speaker 9: really good in their sport and skateboarding and they go, gosh,
• 47:12
  Speaker 9: I'm really good at skinboarding. And that's what we see now,
• 47:15
  Speaker 9: which is totally put us on a different trajectory for
• 47:18
  Speaker 9: the sport and appreciation because the sport is very technical now,
• 47:22
  Speaker 9: but the waves mother ocean dictates what we're doing. Some
• 47:26
  Speaker 9: days it's all wrap barrels, steep and deep. If you
• 47:30
  Speaker 9: go to the East coast, they get great ways, but
• 47:33
  Speaker 9: sometimes it's very technical. So what we see now is
• 47:36
  Speaker 9: that crossover which you've seen from the eighties and the
• 47:39
  Speaker 9: nineties and two thousands is skinboarding has evolved with a
• 47:43
  Speaker 9: major crossover of athletes. So snowboarders, skateboarders, surfers, skimmers, they're
• 47:49
  Speaker 9: all kind of intertwined into our professional sport.
• 47:52
  Speaker 8: You need it. I'm imagining Amber, you're pretty fast if
• 47:55
  Speaker 8: you played basketball.
• 47:56
  Speaker 11: Yeah, you know what's funny, Actually a lot of skinboarders
• 47:58
  Speaker 11: you meet, they've played soccer.
• 48:00
  Speaker 12: Soccer was actually my first sport.
• 48:02
  Speaker 11: Interesting and like Text was making a joke about like
• 48:05
  Speaker 11: the East Coast runners are like soccer players get chasing waves.
• 48:07
  Speaker 12: It's so true. It's like the most like on point things.
• 48:12
  Speaker 8: Based athletics plus ocean based.
• 48:14
  Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, it's just funny because you have to
• 48:16
  Speaker 11: run like the wind, you know, to catch a wave.
• 48:19
  Speaker 11: And the East coast and then, like Worm said, on
• 48:20
  Speaker 11: the West coast, you kind of need to depending on
• 48:22
  Speaker 11: the day, you kind of need to adapt and saw like,
• 48:24
  Speaker 11: you know, how are you going to attack it?
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 48:26
  Speaker 8: So for those of us who don't really know the
• 48:28
  Speaker 8: technical side of the sport, what will you be judging
• 48:31
  Speaker 8: in terms of, you know, when somebody is competing, what
• 48:35
  Speaker 8: are you looking for? Here comes Text. I want to
• 48:37
  Speaker 8: say we start on the new radio station here. We
• 48:40
  Speaker 8: eventually have remote mics so we can have four people,
• 48:43
  Speaker 8: but right now we have two. So Amber and Text
• 48:46
  Speaker 8: just switched.
• 48:47
  Speaker 6: Thanks to Amber, we take the words right out of
• 48:50
  Speaker 6: surfing back about twenty years ago, they had a description
• 48:53
  Speaker 6: of the largest wave ridden for the longest distance with
• 48:56
  Speaker 6: the most technical skill in style will get the highest score.
• 49:00
  Speaker 6: So a big wave, long ride, tons of control. You
• 49:03
  Speaker 6: have to complete the maneuver or you don't get over
• 49:05
  Speaker 6: a five. So if you fall off at the last second,
• 49:07
  Speaker 6: I don't care how good it is, it's a five.
• 49:10
  Speaker 8: Does a barrel get your extra points?
• 49:12
  Speaker 6: Barrel gets you huge points, especially one with a little
• 49:15
  Speaker 6: you know style in there. If you land it well
• 49:17
  Speaker 6: and you're in the bottom in that big room for
• 49:19
  Speaker 6: more than a millisecond, like two seconds or three seconds,
• 49:22
  Speaker 6: it's insane.
• 49:23
  Speaker 8: And what about if you end up landing on your
• 49:25
  Speaker 8: feet and you just kind of casually walk out off
• 49:28
  Speaker 8: the sand? Is that extra points that's happened?
• 49:30
  Speaker 6: But I don't think you'd get credit for that.
• 49:31
  Speaker 8: Okay, So I saw that. I watched the video of
• 49:34
  Speaker 8: last year's competition on like some of these guys people
• 49:37
  Speaker 8: just land right on.
• 49:37
  Speaker 9: The technical ability. What you see now is guys have
• 49:42
  Speaker 9: adapted back to that that skateboard and snowboard thing. So
• 49:45
  Speaker 9: now you see shovels on the way out to the wave. Yeah, yeah,
• 49:49
  Speaker 9: we might have done little three six or something. But
• 49:52
  Speaker 9: these technical riders are doing, whether it's East Coast, especially
• 49:56
  Speaker 9: at least so doing things in a very critical position.
• 50:00
  Speaker 9: And for the judges it is so hard for them
• 50:04
  Speaker 9: to you know, distinguish between a six point five or
• 50:08
  Speaker 9: a seven point zero or an eight point two whatever
• 50:10
  Speaker 9: they're doing, because it becomes so technical. To Texas point,
• 50:14
  Speaker 9: it's all about completion of the ride. It's always been
• 50:17
  Speaker 9: about getting the biggest wave in the most critical position
• 50:21
  Speaker 9: and executing the ride. As a long time announcer of
• 50:24
  Speaker 9: the contest, I always valued guys doing a completion of
• 50:29
  Speaker 9: the ride, and by meaning that coming up the slope
• 50:33
  Speaker 9: and literally standing on your board and finishing. Yeah you
• 50:37
  Speaker 9: can claim it, look at the judge and everything, but
• 50:40
  Speaker 9: now you're adding these little elements, these little you know,
• 50:43
  Speaker 9: pop shove its or you know, all the air, all
• 50:49
  Speaker 9: the air stuff. But at least on the West coast,
• 50:53
  Speaker 9: with no discrimination, it's all about the barrel. So if
• 50:56
  Speaker 9: you can if Aliso is firing, which we hope this
• 50:59
  Speaker 9: weekend it will, yes, it will be. It's about getting
• 51:02
  Speaker 9: the barrel always wins. That is that's from Jerry Lopez.
• 51:07
  Speaker 9: It pipeline YEP to tex and Kurt west Guard and
• 51:11
  Speaker 9: Handy at Aliso that it's what we all want to see.
• 51:14
  Speaker 8: And you mentioned Jerry Lopez. I can't help but think
• 51:16
  Speaker 8: of style too. Does somebody does that count? Somebody who?
• 51:20
  Speaker 6: That's huge factor. The judges want to be entertained. We
• 51:24
  Speaker 6: want to see something that surprises us, that's new, that's innovative,
• 51:27
  Speaker 6: that's clever, that shows style, so some thought something beyond
• 51:31
  Speaker 6: just surviving, you know, that big old wave. So there's
• 51:34
  Speaker 6: a lot of details and the judge has to look
• 51:36
  Speaker 6: at that and make it all in a split second decision.
• 51:39
  Speaker 8: So, and who are the judges this year?
• 51:41
  Speaker 6: Conley waere Keito Perry uh, Aaron Paluso, I'm sorry, not
• 51:45
  Speaker 6: Aaron p but aj Aaron john Aaron Johnson.
• 51:51
  Speaker 8: Okay, I'm assuming these are all veterans, these.
• 51:54
  Speaker 9: Lower professional skateboarders.
• 51:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah, all pretty much experience in the sport. They know
• 51:58
  Speaker 6: how hard, hard it is to do, and they're they're
• 51:59
  Speaker 6: good judges of it. So it's yeah, you have to
• 52:02
  Speaker 6: have five judges. You might you'll probably throw out the
• 52:04
  Speaker 6: high and the load judge every time to keep them
• 52:05
  Speaker 6: all honest, and we switch out judges for the amateurs.
• 52:09
  Speaker 6: We have a different set for them, it's a little
• 52:11
  Speaker 6: a little less intense, but it's.
• 52:12
  Speaker 8: A and it's a long two days for the for
• 52:15
  Speaker 8: the the public who wants to witness this. Any recommendations
• 52:19
  Speaker 8: on when to get there, how to park, and I
• 52:21
  Speaker 8: imagine it's going to get crowded.
• 52:22
  Speaker 6: Uh, ride the shuttle on really early. If you get
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: there before seven or eight, you'll probably find a spot
• 52:28
  Speaker 6: on the inland parking lot, which is a good, good
• 52:30
  Speaker 6: deal to get to. Just a tunnel under the highway
• 52:33
  Speaker 6: to get to the beach.
• 52:34
  Speaker 8: Sure, use a tunnel.
• 52:35
  Speaker 6: Use the tunnel. You've got a parking in Salt Creek.
• 52:37
  Speaker 6: People taking the shuttle up from down there, and yeah,
• 52:43
  Speaker 6: stay all day.
• 52:43
  Speaker 8: Are their food vendors strange?
• 52:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the best restaurant in town. It's right there on
• 52:47
  Speaker 6: the beach, that Lost Peer Cafe. You can't get any
• 52:50
  Speaker 6: closer to the water. And they did before that.
• 52:53
  Speaker 9: Oh well, the.
• 52:53
  Speaker 6: Lost Peer Cafe was preceded by the Dark Dangy with
• 53:01
  Speaker 6: an angry.
• 53:03
  Speaker 8: First help you, but you can't bring separate vendors in.
• 53:07
  Speaker 6: We could could sometimes, but you liked to, you know,
• 53:11
  Speaker 6: keep it simple. It's such a small beach this year too.
• 53:13
  Speaker 6: We don't have room for hardly anybody.
• 53:15
  Speaker 8: We've had this major swell all summer that's taken a
• 53:18
  Speaker 8: lot of sand off the beach.
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: Historical, We're good. We have a beach in the middle,
• 53:24
  Speaker 6: just big enough.
• 53:25
  Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, text, I got to ask you a question
• 53:27
  Speaker 8: that's been on my mind for a while. You're out
• 53:29
  Speaker 8: here on the West Coast. Your name is Charles Haynes.
• 53:32
  Speaker 8: How did you get the name? Texts?
• 53:35
  Speaker 6: Well, I was abducted. My dad was ordered by the
• 53:41
  Speaker 6: military to do some work in Fort Worth for the
• 53:44
  Speaker 6: military to pay him back for his medical education. So
• 53:47
  Speaker 6: he was there with our family and he was fixing
• 53:50
  Speaker 6: the thumbs on soldiers who forgot to lock the bolt
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: on the rifle. If you can imagine how much that
• 53:56
  Speaker 6: would hurt.
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: My mom gave birth to me there and two months
• 54:01
  Speaker 6: later the war ended in a career and we came
• 54:04
  Speaker 6: right back to the US. So you had They called
• 54:06
  Speaker 6: me little Texi in the womb, and that stuck because
• 54:08
  Speaker 6: Charles Stroy Hayes was kind of a big handle for me.
• 54:12
  Speaker 8: It's like when I was emailing you to get because
• 54:15
  Speaker 8: we had the Laugh Awards, the Lagun Achievement Festival, and
• 54:17
  Speaker 8: of course I want to just say we added skinboarding.
• 54:19
  Speaker 8: This year is only our second year. What a difference
• 54:22
  Speaker 8: it made. I got to say, we just had such
• 54:24
  Speaker 8: a youthful energy in that room.
• 54:26
  Speaker 6: It's good to hear.
• 54:27
  Speaker 8: It was really cool. And we added skateboarding and we're
• 54:30
  Speaker 8: like we were it was criminal that we didn't have
• 54:32
  Speaker 8: those categories the year before. But we're never going to
• 54:35
  Speaker 8: abandon that again because it's such a such a part
• 54:37
  Speaker 8: of the Laguna fabric.
• 54:38
  Speaker 6: That was a lot of fun.
• 54:39
  Speaker 8: Yeah, and uh worm, where did that come from?
• 54:44
  Speaker 9: Wow, that's a you know, that's a deep thing. But
• 54:47
  Speaker 9: you know, I will say it evolved at the VIC.
• 54:51
  Speaker 9: So Drew Steele, who was a singer of the surf
• 54:56
  Speaker 9: Punks back in the eighties. So when you filled out
• 54:59
  Speaker 9: your registration for him to sign up for the VIC
• 55:03
  Speaker 9: and this is me in about eighty five eighty six,
• 55:06
  Speaker 9: pre pro nickname if any, it was a slot. So
• 55:13
  Speaker 9: I wrote worm and this guy, God love him, Drew
• 55:17
  Speaker 9: Still he said, there goes. He kept saying the worm,
• 55:21
  Speaker 9: and it's the worm and here he goes the worm.
• 55:24
  Speaker 9: Well he helped me advance through some heats and the
• 55:29
  Speaker 9: only reason why I'm seeing with common sense now with
• 55:31
  Speaker 9: Nick Hernandez, who is a great skinboarder and one of
• 55:35
  Speaker 9: the pioneers of professional skinboarding right there with all the boys.
• 55:39
  Speaker 9: He didn't even know my name was Garth. So I
• 55:42
  Speaker 9: started playing the dig. No he didn't, and so he's like,
• 55:46
  Speaker 9: but he's like, say hello to the Worm, and I'm like,
• 55:48
  Speaker 9: what's with the I'm like, everyone calls me worm. But
• 55:52
  Speaker 9: so it all evolved. And going prior to that, my
• 55:55
  Speaker 9: older brother gave me the nickname because I might have
• 55:57
  Speaker 9: been in a keg party just right across the street
• 56:00
  Speaker 9: from KXFM studios right now at Oak Street, and I
• 56:04
  Speaker 9: was about in the eighth grade and I showed up
• 56:06
  Speaker 9: with you know, a red cup and they were pupping
• 56:09
  Speaker 9: the keg and I was told beat it, you little worm.
• 56:13
  Speaker 9: But it's wow. But evolved from that, but Drew Steele
• 56:19
  Speaker 9: at the Victoria competition put me on the map. From
• 56:23
  Speaker 9: it went from Garth to Worm and gosh, I'm I'm lucky.
• 56:28
  Speaker 9: It just stuck. I started working with texts and he
• 56:31
  Speaker 9: knew me as he didn't go his Garth even though
• 56:34
  Speaker 9: he did that. That's just how it evolved. The nicknames
• 56:38
  Speaker 9: in Laguna are synonymous with all of us. And I
• 56:41
  Speaker 9: was really stoked.
• 56:42
  Speaker 8: Yeah, Hamber, did you get a nickname yet?
• 56:45
  Speaker 9: No?
• 56:46
  Speaker 12: You know what's funny.
• 56:46
  Speaker 11: I came from a nickname in basketball, and my nickname
• 56:49
  Speaker 11: was Rabbit. Nobody even knew my name in high school.
• 56:51
  Speaker 11: And that's I think why I ended up taking my
• 56:53
  Speaker 11: real name so seriously, because I was like, no one
• 56:56
  Speaker 11: knows my name.
• 56:57
  Speaker 8: Wow, But was fun your speed?
• 57:00
  Speaker 11: It was because actually, specifically in seventh grade, I came
• 57:03
  Speaker 11: from I told you I played soccer. I never played
• 57:05
  Speaker 11: basketball before, but I just played in the streets and
• 57:07
  Speaker 11: so I was like traff of the basketball team. There's
• 57:09
  Speaker 11: no soccer team. And they were like, let's know this,
• 57:11
  Speaker 11: she can jump. I let's do this little girl up
• 57:13
  Speaker 11: for the jump ball, and just as a joke, and
• 57:14
  Speaker 11: then I won the jump ball, and so I was
• 57:16
  Speaker 11: like against like this girl that was really tall.
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: So they just.
• 57:19
  Speaker 11: Called me Rabbit because I had I guess I had
• 57:21
  Speaker 11: some upsack.
• 57:22
  Speaker 8: Then wow, okay, well but that one didn't stick. And
• 57:25
  Speaker 8: yet you're glad about it.
• 57:26
  Speaker 12: I think, yeah, you know what sometimes we know on
• 57:29
  Speaker 12: the air look out.
• 57:30
  Speaker 9: I had no idea the rabbit.
• 57:32
  Speaker 11: Yeah then I yeah, yeah, marketing degree.
• 57:36
  Speaker 9: Back for sure.
• 57:40
  Speaker 8: Yeah, that's right, you're going to be on the air. Okay,
• 57:44
  Speaker 8: So the VIC we just want to wrap it up
• 57:46
  Speaker 8: again this Saturday and Sunday. It is the forty ninth
• 57:49
  Speaker 8: year Amazing open to the public. It's going to be
• 57:53
  Speaker 8: from around eight am till what sundown five pm. Any
• 57:57
  Speaker 8: after parties that we should know about that, we're going
• 57:58
  Speaker 8: to be at.
• 57:59
  Speaker 9: The ranch right share and cancel.
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: I hate to tell you about too much money from us,
• 58:03
  Speaker 6: So we're going to do the awards right after the
• 58:05
  Speaker 6: contest right.
• 58:06
  Speaker 9: There on the right on the beach, so which is great.
• 58:08
  Speaker 9: That goes back to the backyard barbecue value of it.
• 58:11
  Speaker 9: Two full days of skinboarding action. We announce all the
• 58:16
  Speaker 9: winners right there, from the amateurs to the professionals.
• 58:19
  Speaker 8: On the beach.
• 58:20
  Speaker 9: We like to have the post concert or post contest party,
• 58:24
  Speaker 9: but you know, stick around two full days. So if
• 58:27
  Speaker 9: you come down on Saturday or Sunday, we're there from
• 58:30
  Speaker 9: eight am to about five pm to if not seven
• 58:35
  Speaker 9: pm if we're running behind, and it's it's two full
• 58:38
  Speaker 9: days of short break action at the world's only longest
• 58:42
  Speaker 9: and most prestigious skinboarding competition, the Victoria World Championships.
• 58:48
  Speaker 8: Right here, and we'll lost peer cafes stay open because
• 58:53
  Speaker 8: at least okay, because they do serve beer.
• 58:56
  Speaker 9: And we like that.
• 58:58
  Speaker 8: You just can't take it on the sand apparently. Yeah, well, gods,
• 59:04
  Speaker 8: thank you so much, real honor to have you here.
• 59:06
  Speaker 8: And we'll be sending as we said we'll be We'll
• 59:09
  Speaker 8: be broadcasting as much as we can live. We're going
• 59:12
  Speaker 8: to have cutbacks. You know, the jocks will be in
• 59:14
  Speaker 8: the room and they say, let's what's happening at the
• 59:16
  Speaker 8: VIC and uh so maybe we'll get you on on
• 59:20
  Speaker 8: the on the mic as well.
• 59:21
  Speaker 9: I just want to say thank you to k x
• 59:23
  Speaker 9: f N one O four point seven for being part
• 59:25
  Speaker 9: of the contest for many, many years. Thank you Billy
• 59:27
  Speaker 9: for taking it over. And you guys are supporting the contest.
• 59:30
  Speaker 9: This is what everything you guys do. And we're going
• 59:32
  Speaker 9: to beach. We reappreciate it.
• 59:33
  Speaker 8: Thank you worm. All right, we'll be back more music, everybody,
• 59:36
  Speaker 8: stick around.
• 59:45
  Speaker 11: K x r N LP Laguna Miguel Laguna Beach, k
• 59:49
  Speaker 11: x f M on one or four point k x
• 59:51
  Speaker 11: f M Radio dot org. This disclaimer is a statement
• 59:56
  Speaker 11: notifying listening audiences that any opinions expressed in our shows
• 59:59
  Speaker 11: or not rep