Episode 08: Surf 'n' Turf

Cambridge and was Seawan is a weirding way media podcast. What's a good job for? Cool? Look for? You need money?

Oh idea some tasty eggs, cool buzz and I'm fine. Thanks. PA's your bounder. Hello, and welcome to episode eight of Cambridge and was Shawn, a podcast where two weird guys talk about their weird interests. Speak for yourself product.

I'm excited about today's subject matter. It's a little bit out of left field in a way because of a variety of reasons that I'll not reveal yet. I agree. I'm stoked. That's appropriate.

I know, right, you like that I was planning. Harley sat down in the notes. My name's Ronnie or Skelevator if you know me on Instagram and YouTube, and I'm here with my pal Mark. I'm Mark Bagley, the host of Wickup Heavy Recollections of Horror, as well as the co host of This Dang Show, This Bodacious, Gnarly Episode rad It's gonna be stick, dude, It's gonna be totally sick. I was trying to think just now of some of the weird language in what I'm gonna be talking about, but I couldn't come up with it because it's just like so crazy sex change burial.

Yeah, there's a great clip I'm planning on using in here, please do. It's so good twank and dank, And we'll get to that when you talk about it. But yeah, there was one particular clip that I really enjoyed. There are a few moments anyways, we'll get into that. We'll get into all that.

Do you have any like corrections or amendments to last episode because I'm anal and I don't want to misrepresent the things that we're talking about or seem like I don't know what I'm talking about. Although I shouldn't really worry about that, because, as we've said, some of this stuff we might not nail down, yeah, the facts. But the mush and Milk episode of Little Rascals, oh yeah, that part where the kid says dank does take place in a classroom. I had watched bits and pieces of it before we recorded, and most of what I watched occurred around this long table where they're eating the mush and milk at this orphanage. But there is a scene in a classroom with this old guy asking them the questions and Spinky's kind of sitting right next to him helping him.

And I think that's why there's confusion about that amongst other people thinking it takes place in their regular classroom with missus crab Apple. And then shortly I think I was trying to find stuff on WC Fields for your part of that conversation. Just so happened that a picture popped up on my Google search of David Copperfield, which is the movie that I had just recently seen him in on TCM There You Go, where he plays Micawber in the nineteen thirty five version of David Copperfield, and I was like, oh, okay, yeah, I wouldn't have remembered that, And it's not an overtly comedic role or anything, and he's just kind of normal in it. I mean, that character kind of fits his character traits is definitely not comedic as comedic as other stuff.

It's not like the stuff like the dentist like you were talking about. And then the only other thing that I have, which is pretty cool, I'm gonna give a shout out to one of my online friends, Jeff Lamb, and I told him i'd be doing this, he posted recently on his Instagram page, a picture of a bunch of his serial mascot vinyl figures, and I was like, oh, hey, we talk about this on the latest episode of my other podcast, and he's like, oh, let me know when it comes out, and I said, I definitely will. So that all happened, and he was letting me know that he was listening and enjoying it. And then a little while later on Instagram he sent me a message with a picture attached, and he said, is this what you guys were talking about on your podcast.

It's a picture of a fruity pebble's box with a big add on the back for a crazy rock ball. Yeah. Inside this box one plastic rock ball and it has a picture and of course one of the pictures. And I love it when they do this as you know, actual size. Yeah, and there's a couple different colors.

There's like a brown one and a gray one, and I don't know if that's supposed to be the gray one or if there was a blue one as well. I said, holy shit, yes, that's it. So he mentioned that someone had posted it on one of the vintage toy pages on Facebook. Went over there. It's a private page, but it's run by the guy that does plaid stallions.

Oh. I think a lot of people know about if they're into any kind of vintage toys, they know lad stallions. And so I didn't join and hop into the conversation, but I probably will eventually. And then he came back and said there was a commercial for it too, So I went over to YouTube and watched the commercial, and like many things that I bring up on here, my memory wasn't quite bright. It's not a blowm old hollow figure.

It's a bouncy ball, so it's like a super ball, but since it has ridges and yeah, indentations and stuff, it bounces in all kinds of different directions. Yeah, I love it. I was like, oh my god, I can't believe you found me. That's so cool. So I don't know if my memory is just totally wrong or if at some point they made one that was like a hollow, bloom old version of that.

And then I had a thought, I'm like, wait a minute, because I had mentioned maybe I was confusing it with the inside of a golf ball. Oh yeah, right, And I thought, now I think I have one still in my drawer where I thought I had my Garfield pencil topper, which apparently I didn't. So I went and looked two days ago and there was the inside of the golf ball that I had. I've probably had it for forty five years. Incredible.

I was like, why did I save that? And I looked at it and I'm like, yeah, this looks like one of those balls on the package, not white as seriously indented. But even on that commercial, when I watched it, I was like, yeah, that looks like the inside of a golf ball number one. It's amazing that you have that still, Yeah, for all that years. But also one of the great things about the community of people that are interested in this weird shit is that they'll reach out, they'll they got the information, they'll let you know if they somehow find out that you're looking for it.

I love that, out of all the human beings on this planet, there's this small group of people interested in this weird stuff. They will find a way to connect if they know that you're interested. And that's amazing. I said, well, you solved the unsolvable one for me, because yeah, I was thinking I made that up whole cloth. So thanks Jeff and um.

The next step is finding one. I guess yeah, just keep searching for rock balls. For a hot minute. I thought, you know what, I'm gonna go on, I'm gonna find that inside of that golf ball, and it's not going to be the inside of the golf ball. It's gonna be the rock ball that I'm talking about.

Yeah, but no, it would be really interesting as if we found out that the rock balls were just repurposed insides of golf balls that they were just selling too kids. I thought that for a second, and I'm like, well, this thing doesn't really bounce very well. I mean it's old and really hard now and has some cracks in it. I had that thought and I bounced it and it just barely bounces down. I thought, yeah, they're taking the stuff that they used to make golf balls and repurposing them the rock ball conspiracy.

That's cool. That was a nice surprise. Do you good good? It's a pall in tight looks like a rock, It's like a ball. Please don't cereals rock one rock ball free and each specially mark box of post broody pebbles and cocoa pebbles.

Well, I don't really have any amendments or changes to my information from the last episode, but I do want to say that, folks, you gotta go watch WC. Fields movies. After we recorded that episode, I went and watched a few more things on YouTube, and I'm just like, this guy was way ahead of his time. I know we emphasized that a lot when I was talking about him. I just want to say it again, like WC.

Fields was is now, in my opinion, probably when the greatest comedic mind. Go watch that stuff. That brings us to today's episode, Mark, what is your first item to discuss? Well, it's more of a phase than a one particular item. And I know how it started because it started with a movie pretty well know when it ended in the last two terribly long, but it was a pretty deep pull for me.

Yeah, the summer of nineteen eighty two might possibly be the greatest summer in all of film history as far as I'm concerned. The thing, Blade Runner, et Poltergeist, just to name a few tons of horror movies. It's crazy when you go and look at the list of nineteen eighty two movies on Wikipedia, just scroll through the list of titles. Of course that's the whole year, but many of the biggest movies of my life and some of the biggest movies just as far as Box Office and all that came out that year, and the biggest flops that turned into beloved classics, like the Thing I Blade Runner. Yes, one movie that came out that ended up creating a huge stir was Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Oh yeah, you guys had shirt when he came in here, I was, I had just well not just I was thirteen when all of this stuff came out. So it's perfect age for most of those movies because they were PG and I could go seeum. This one obviously was not. I just remember the build up for it and the commercials and the promotion and the ads. It was sort of particular to California because it wasn't even going to be released anywhere else.

Oh until preview audiences were just going bananas for it. So I kind of vaguely remember this from me, maybe not when it came out, but not too long after that, like it rolled out across the country and just caused a massive stir in the culture, and surf culture became a big deal. Oh yeah, we're looking at that one and said good. And so those commercials and ads with Jeff Spiccoli with Sean penn As, Jeff Spiccoli really really put the wammy on me and brought that surf style to the forefront in my head. And of course, so I'm thirteen, I'm already shuffling off those childhood obsessions.

Comic books, action figures and things like that get put aside for surfing magazine, girls, movies, and apparel. Yeah, I mean it really comes down to that, that's really all that kids in the Central Valley could get. So just to dispel myths about California and we don't all live on the coast, we don't all have wonderful weather, we don't all serve or a skate, I know most people get that, but I also still kind of hear things like people think that California weather is just temperate all year long. We are looking at one hundred and twelve degrees today for the high Yes. I worked at Fresno State and every semester we get international students or people traveling from across the country to come to school at Fresno State, and I talk to them at events and I say, so, how do you like Fresnos so far?

And their first response always is, well, it's not quite what I expected of California. I do the whole dance and pony show, Dog and Pony show where I'm telling them, oh, well, you know, the ocean is only two and a half hours away. The mountains are only an hour and a half away. You know, you get it all. You just have to go there.

I was going to mention that, you know, we you and I live in the Central Valley of California, cradled between two huge mountain ranges. There are mountains here in California. Yep, Like you said, the coast is two hours away. Yeah, but it's also where many Fresnans and other people from the valley vacation a lot. Even when I was a kid, we would go stay with some family friends who had a house in Cayucas and always loved that.

I have relatives that always lived in the Newport Beach area, so those trips were always special and they kind of fueled this fast times came out in California. In July of eighty two, one of my elementary school friends had just moved to San Luis Obispo from here. I think he had moved there at the beginning of our seventh grade year, and I had gone off to private school at that point, so me and another one of his friends he wasn't really my friend, although I knew him pretty well. We went for a week and stayed at his house and San Louis and went to the beach every day. I was hoping on that trip that we were somehow going to be able to get into that movie.

We went and saw Et instead. I don't think his mom was up for taking three thirteen year old kids to go see Fast Times, just because of the ads and everything, checkerboard vans, all the surf stuff. So luckily because of the movie, probably and that zeitgeist of oh this is a thing. There was a surf shop in Fresno. At least one guess where it was located, folks.

It was located on Kings Canyon and Clovis Avenue, very near where I lived and where we did all of our shopping and most other things. The Sunnyside Surf Shop was over I believe, close to the Sunnyside Delhi, and there was a Basking and Robbins over there. Yeah, And so once I discovered that that was what I focused my energy on. Comic books were gone, action figures were gone, and it was all about I would say the biggies for me were Gordon and Smith or GNS, Town and Country. Oh yeah, Surf Designs and mister Zog's x Wax.

Absolutely a couple of those were cheeky little double entendres. Obviously, mister Zog's sex Wax the best, free your stick kind of pushing the envelope there. And I never dared get a shirt, although I wanted one badly because Spicoli where one in parts of that movie. One of the best parts of the movie actually, when they go to the to watch the should I just planked on the word they go to the hospital pulling the rannie right now, I know, I'm like, can't I think the autopsy? Gee will?

Yeah? I did buy cakes of flax though. That's so funny. I did too. What did do?

Just sit on it? It's so funny for us, like we're not I'm going out waxing up our surfboards and getting in the ocean. So it's just sitting on the shelf. And then in Fresno's Summers, a thing starts to slump down and get all melty. It smelled like coconut, which is one of my favorite smells.

I'm a coconut lover. I know that there are people out there who absolutely hate coconut, but I absolutely love coconut. I love it. I love the smell of coconut. They have.

There's other sense of sex, waxing and raspberry and stuff like that. I would buy cakes of that to have in my room, and stickers or the other thing. So it was clothes and stickers and accessories. I am a poser, or was the biggest poser. Wasn't the only one though, I Mean everybody was wearing surf stuff and skate stuff back then.

But I haven't surfed a second of my life. I've boogie boarded, and I've body surfed, and actually, on that trip to San Louis way back when we body surfed like all day long at avol Of Beach. His mom just dropped us off in the morning and would pick us up in the evening. Yeah, it was a blast. It's so much fun.

The shirts and shorts and clothes became like the thing. Town and Country was a bit cheeky too, because their logo was a flip flopped yep yin Yang symbol. When you flip flop the Yin yang symbol, it turns from ninety six to sixty nine, So you know, wink wink. I love those tnc shirts at the surfing Gorilla. What was the gorillas?

I don't know, but I just looked at a whole bunch of them because I was looking at the vintage stuff. I'm very tempted and probably will buy there. They have the one that just has the logo on the front and back, but I probably had like who knows how many tnc shirts, Gordon Smith shirts, what else? Trying to think like, I was never a Maui and Sons guy. I didn't like their logo design.

It was all aesthetics and the G and S logo was the like bubbly letters. Loved it. What about Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, I never got into their skate company, but you know a lot of the surf would wear that stuff, and those are pretty iconic. The said Jim Phillips. Oh yeah, that did the screaming hand.

It's interesting. There's a donut place in San Luis Obispo No in Pismo Beach Storry right now that we discovered on one of our trips a few years back that has a really cool logo, and I was like, oh, and it's not him, but it's his brother did all their logos and they're really super cool called Surfside Donuts, and their donuts are awesome too. Somber over in Pismo hit him up. The artist is Jimbo Phillips, the son of Jim Phillips. There was Surfer Magazine and there was Surfing Magazine, and I think I ended up getting a subscription to Surfing Magazine for some reason.

I had I preferred that one. I preferred one of them, and I can't really remember which one now, and I tried to look up old issues of it online just to see if any covers like or the logo struck my memory, but they didn't. Really, the only real reason to get the magazine was like for the ads and the pictures of girls. Definitely, yeah, yeah, see a new ad for GNS or whoever. Quicksilver was kind of up there more for their shorts and stuff.

When I was a kid growing up, I got my cousin who lived in Newport. I got a lot of his hand me downs, the old op corduroy shorts, so I had those when I was a kid, and I wasn't obsessed with sur stuff at that time, but I had that an OP or Hang ten. Thank you for reminding me of the op corduroy shorts. Man, Yeah, I had forgotten about those. I wonder if they're still making them.

I think you can still get them. They go in and out. Yeah, it was either Op or Hang ten were exclusively selling stuff through Walmart a while back, but they all have web stores now, and I want to say you can get the shorts. Quicksilver had very similar shorts to her, remember wearing those later on hang Tin with the two little feet. Ope was a very simple logo, but cool.

I love that stuff too. The colors, I mean, you're not even mentioning like the bright oh yeah, rescent colors that like that was such a big part of the attraction to me to those styles too. Were the bright colors. Oh yeah, Neon as, especially those Town and Country a lot later mid to late eighties. Yep, we're bathed in Neon colors.

Yeah, beautiful. We had a kid who I think was the grade above us, and so I was eighth and I think he was ninth grade, and he was from Hawaii and was a surfer and kind of look down a little. He was brave enough, and this was a private school to where I'm mister Zog's sex school. But I think he had he'd always wear something over it, I am happy to say, though. Oh well, I'll get into that later.

That'll be my second part, all right. Yeah, So Sunnyside surf shot up, which later morphed into either wavelengths or SPI and we'll get into all that too. But I think for a minute there on that corner just east of Clovis on Kings Canyon, it might have changed short lived. I think by like eighty six eighty seven, I was moving on to other things like more music and movies, stuff that would really last through most of college. Surf stuff didn't really continue on until fairly recently, which I will get into in the second part.

This stuff never really leaves us, right, I mean, it comes back because we see something and then we're like, oh that, and then we want to get back on the surfboard, so to speak, well for me, this skateboard, I just want to mention probably one of the reasons, although I think I would feel safer on a surfboard, I have horrible balance or I imagine I have world took me for ever to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels. Oh yeah, I don't know exactly how old I was, but the little, little, little little girl across the street from us where I used to live, I saw her, and I think she was three or something, scooting around without training wheels, and I was like, oh shit, man, I mean I went out and immediately took mine off and got motivated to do it.

I have an awful balance, which is one of the reasons I haven't tried to surf. Right, Falling into water doesn't scare me nearly as much as falling onto asphalt, which is why I don't skate either. Yeah, so that was my segue for you. Well that's a good segue, and it's funny because I think I just thought of this as we were talking. As you were talking, the name of this episode should probably be surf and Turf, because because your obsession was the was surfing and the ocean, and my obsession was very similar and very hot in the mid eighties, just like surfing was skateboarding, only tough guys know how to ride the hot ride straightboard.

Skating for me was something I definitely engaged in. I was never as good as my friends that were doing it, but I was trying, Like I was always out there trying, and I was pretty good at allying and riding. Street Street skating was my obsession I was. I felt like there was something really cool about just using what was in front of you. Also, I didn't have the means to be building skate ramps, even though I always wanted to do something like that.

And back then you could like be driving around the Central Valley and occasionally see a half pipe in somebody's backyard. That was a really remarkable era that was all about the street skating, and I got heavily into it. And it's funny, there's a lot of corals here. The same thing happened for me. It was like around maybe eighty four I started to I would say maybe closer to eighty five.

Eighty four was in my periphery, but I was still interested in toys and stuff, And around eighty five eighty six, especially eighty six for some reason, I have a lot of memories of getting really deep into it, almost immediately glommed onto the Bones Brigade team, the Lance Mountain Tommy Guerrero, Steve Cavallero, Tony Hawk, and Mike McGill and Rodney Mullen. Those guys were heroes to me. Other skaters outside of palper Alta were always cool too, but for some reason, for me, it was I was like a dedicated fan of Tommy Guerrero and Lance Mountain. And I think Lance Mountain for personality, but Tommy Guerrero for style. Future Primitive came out in eighty five.

That was the pal per Alta video that came out right before the Search for Animal Chin, which is the primary focus of what I want to talk about today. But I was introduced to Tommy Guerrero in Future Primitive and that's where I was like, oh man, that guy's great. Plus his board was super cool. It was like a flaming dagger, and I loved that design. In retrospect, I'm ninety five percent sure that I was more attracted to that board design because of Masters of a Universe in the Power Sword, and of course the skulls too, you know the bones T shirts I have.

I just my wife just got me one for Father's Day. I will still always love that design, and again in retrospect, i'm fairly competent. It's because of skeletor that I love that skull design popping out of the shirt. To make a long story short, I wanted to talk about just like you began your obsession with Fast Times at Ridgemont High with surfing, I really got in deep with skateboarding in eighty seven, when I was really getting out there and skating a lot, and The Search for Animal Chin came out. It was an epic event.

It incorporated the stuff that came before, which was just a straight ahead skate video, but it also had a plot. Right before that came out. In eighty six, the movie Stand By Me came out, and the movie Thrashing came out, and I just rewatched it again. I think I think I watched The Search for Animal Chin but once a year. For some reason, I just noticed it that they dig at Thrashing a little bit, because almost all of those guys showed up in that movie Thrashion.

I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it's not very good. It's pretty bad. It was right in the middle of the era of skateboarding becoming fashionable and what's his name, the guy from No Country for Old Men? And Goonies. Josh Brolin.

Josh Brolin, he's the lead in it. Mike McGill. I think it's Gil plays his stunt double, his skateboarding stunt double. You know, this movie comes out. It's a story.

It's like these kids on a search for this guy named Animal Channel. I mean, we can get into the problematic interpretations of Chinese culture in his movie. But when I saw the name and some of the images, I thought, oh, this is going to be bad. Yeah, it's nothing overtly negative. Yeah, you can tell that they're trying to I mean in a way, they're like, well, this hero is Chinese, and he's sort of like this symbol of inner peace and the ultimate skateboarder, and he's a mystery and all that stuff.

And I kind of thought, well, that's they're trying to honor this concept. But the movie didn't have to have the synthesizer. I'm doing air quotes right now, Chinese music. Yeah, they didn't have to go to embarrassing. And they'll all speak up on this too.

I mean it's it's embarrassing in retrospect the images of him. He's got the big Chinese hat on and the fu Manchu mustache and beard. But that's about as quote unquote bad as it gets. It could have been worse English, you know. Yeah, yeah, Mickey Rooney with him, but they didn't write Thank goodness.

Yeah, So it's accepted overtly stereo type because we never see him spoilers for anybody that was about to watch, you know, we never really there's a shadow of him at one point, and the missing posters or the missing image on the milk cartain and that's about it. Yeah. The music and the use of Kanji and stuff is you know, bordering on appropriation, but nothing really overtly, like you said, no one's no one's doing a Mickey Rooney, no one's speaking in English or anything like that. Thank goodness. You know, there are moments of that movie where you think, oh, they could go there, and they didn't.

Think goodness, it's coming out right around Big Trouble and Little China and stuff like that was showing up in our culture, and I guess the attempt at being inclusive is happening in a way for some reason in the eighties, our attempts at inclusivity just really ends up still kind of showing up as caricatures. They're little ham fisted, yes, exactly at the same time. The movie definitely, every time I watch it, it strikes a nostalgic chord for me. The clothing style is a very close cousin of surf style. The shirts and shorts, T shirts and shorts and torn T shirts and fluorescent colors, you know, bright colors, Neon colors.

Branding is huge vision streetwear power. Parral to skaters were wearing gns and wearing Tnc, and skaters were wearing op and all that stuff, and Vans and Converse and even Nike a little bit a lot of Nike's. Yeah, I got to get those high tops for your ankles. There's a couple of references to Air Jordan's in that movie. And the reason why I brought up stand by Me is like, there's this narrative of their search and right especially at the end, they're like sitting around the campfire, and the narrator is I think the narrator's Johnny rad at this point.

He's like the rock and roller guru that shows up mid movie. From mid movie on, he's the narrator if I remember correctly. Yeah, it is because I found that odd. I'm like, oh, we have a narrator now, Yeah, after his appearance, Yeah, you know, Johnny Rad's hilarious, so over the top. The movie Animal Chin planted a lot of seeds for me.

Right around that time, I was discovering not As Kappas and not as Kappas is my second favorite street skater, so it's Tommy Guerrero and not As Compass for me. So they were like my two favorite skaters. And not As Compass was in a way an edgier skater. He wasn't pell Peralta, but he shows up in that movie and the club. There's like a brief glimpse of him in the background as a kid getting into skating and knowing all these people.

I was like, oh my god, there's not us in there. With A big thing with not us is that you spell his first name backwards and it's satan Ah that was his given name, and it's I believe he's Norwegian or something like that. I feel like I could convene with my friends, my fellow skaters, we could talk about Animal Chin. Animal Chin was a source of inspiration for people who were building ramps, So that ramp at the end was this epic ramp with a secret passageway and double halfpipe. Pretty amazing.

That was pretty cool, I gotta say, for someone who was obsessed with fort building and cardboard box building stuff as a kid, moving into that looking at how creative people could be with skate ramps. That ramp in particular was phenomenal. And during that last segment you really get to see how good these guys are at their craft. There's a video that came out right before the pandemic of those guys all getting together and someone built a replica of the ramp. They all got together and they did the same moves.

You know, in their forties almost they're all a little bit older than me. Tony Hawk, who was the youngest from my reading on this then he is a little less than a year older than me. They did it again. It's awesome in their old age air quotes again, old age fifty something's pretty old. It's for skating, I know well, and so brick my neck on the table.

Oh my gosh. So I took up skating again about late twenty twelve, when I moved back to the Central Valley, I started skating again. I would go around under the parks. I remember that around two thirteen, late twenty thirteen, I had a hard fall and my wife was like, you shouldn't do that, Please don't do that. So I haven't not a skate betty.

She didn't go out there and sit and watch you. I was getting started when we were dating, and she's like, I don't know, dude. I was thirty eight getting back into skating and all that stuff. It was fun. And then I just, you know, had a couple of hard falls and had a hard time recovering.

Back when I was a kid, I would recover in a couple of days and never broke any bones, thank goodness. Knock on wood. The last fall, I was like, oh man, I may have broken something. I didn't go get it checked out, of course, Like an idiot, I look at a skateboard and I fall. So it's something that I've always wanted to take up, and I'm sure I could get the hang of it after about a year.

Yeah, every time I step on one, it basically just flies out from underneath my feet. My balance is just so I don't know if it's my actual balance or if it's a mind thing. Yeah, but just that what two inches off the ground and it feels like my center of gravity is at my knees. I just I'm like totally top heavy, and I just can't. I almost bought what are those the plastic ones?

Oh yeah, yeah, Penny, Yeah, they skateboards. When we would go into Wavelengths slash sbi out at River Park, I'd always look at those because I just love the colors of them. Yeah, just buy one, just to have one. And I kind of would try to push Cleo, you know, you're interested in skateboarding, might give me a reason to actually give it a shot. Our daughters get into it.

They've gotten it into it a couple of times, but they haven't stuck with it. I watched Search for Animal Chin this week, and I really enjoyed it. I think I didn't care too much or the Las Vegas stuff with Johnny Rad. Johnny Rad was probably a little long for me. Yeah it is.

Let me tell you guys something. First of all, one's more in the blended Animal Chin than the Red Man. Yeah. Most of the skate segments were really cool. Yeah.

That opening in Hawaii in the wallows, which I guess is a ditch, It looked like an aqueduct to me. It is an empty one obviously, but I was like, oh my god, I couldn't even imagine like walking down that thing. Yeah, a little so cool. I really appreciate skate culture. When they were in San Francisco, though, My old man comes out and I'm like, don't skate on the sidewalk around all those people, you guys.

I know. See that's the thing too. Like now i'd be shaking my fist, but back then, I was like, fuck yeah, get out there and just rip it up. It's funny because you were talking about how you transition from surf culture into music and stuff like that. The same thing happened to me, and it is partly the skate punk skate rock culture that got me to discover new bands, and I quickly moved from that into that, like from skating into music.

It was part of that rebellious thing skate and destroy, skate or die. Get out there and rip it up, even if the sign says no skateboarding allowed. That kind of punk ethos for an angry young man like me really made me happy. There was justification in us shaking fists, us as young people shaking fists at adults, as they're shaking fists back at us. Right now, I'm the adult shaking fist.

Like on campus where I work, I like, there's kids riding skateboards and scooters around me, and I'm always like, ah, they're gonna hit me one of these days. They're gonna break my ankle or something. Yeah. I actually had a story about that because, oh no, we went to your I don't know if it was an art show or if it was You're going away party when you were leaving for New York, when you had the space out buy It where Ron's shop used to be. Yeah, and we were out on the sidewalk and there was some dipshit doing tricks on a skateboard and he lost it and hit my car, and I was really fucking pissed off, and I wanted to punch him in the face because that's the kind of ship that has always bugged me.

I like the ethos of fuck you cops, Yeah, fuck you River Park employee or whoever it is. You know, Yeah, but you hit my car and there's gonna be a problem. Yeah yea. So it's like, yeah, I appreciate that, but just don't do it around personal property, yes, people or crowds. I know the feeling and it's funny.

Yeah, I look back at myself and I see myself and crazy teens that I see out there doing whatever they want, and I see myself in them. And at the same time, I have a perspective now, I don't want somebody's car to get dinged. Oh. I saw a kid. It was right in his skateboard.

He wrote it right in front of a car, and he like jumped off his skateboard and the skateboard got ran over by the car. And that kind of irresponsibility just irks me too. Same thing the other day I was going and somebody was coming up to a curb, an intersection curb and lost his and it went out in the street, and I'm like, dude, you're gonna your board's gonna get Why did you stop so short? And today that's like two hundred dollars. You know, back then it was like fifty dollars to have a full skateboard with all the parts and stuff and plastic rails and nose whatever.

But the boards now are so expensive, and that reminds me. I just on Thursday, this is right after you and I were chatting about the subject matter for today's episode. I was wasting some time after work, stopped by the skate shop in Sierra vistam All, which is pretty cool little skate shop, and they had these new black light color variants of the pala Peralta, the original palap Peralta board designs for that original team, and they are absolutely gorgeous. That's one hundred and twenty five dollars for the board alone today, that's one hundred and twenty five dollars at the shop. If you try and order it online, you got shipping.

On top of that, you've got you know, secondary sellers. They're already at the two hundred dollars mark. So the part of the respect that I feel like skaters today might consider having is just respect for the equipment, you know. But again, this is just like suddenly it's you know, you and me on the porch shaking our hands at this thing or fist at this thing that for some reason, when I was a kid, I was like, yeah, you know, break that board doing your thing. It's an affront to the consumer culture of skateboarding if you're getting out there and just ripping it apart.

Today, I'm like, that's one hundred twenty five dollars. Yeah, that's a beautiful screen print on there. Do you see how beautiful that is? Well, and a lot people do collect them and them and there have been boards, i mean Super seven releases, oh yeah, for sure, decks and a lot of other companies with special art on them from probably cause hell yeah, millions of other all these artists I mean, and a lot of those skaters are artists now. And Lance Mountain does art.

I don't know why I'm blinking out on other people, but oh yeah, not a Kapa Scott into graphic design for a while. And Tommy Guerrero's a really fantastic musician now. His albums are really good, sort of like spaghetti Western music, instrumental stuff. All those old guys are doing really cool stuff. Did you know that Super seven released Steve Caballero figure, Yes, vinyl figure, the drag vinyl figure.

Yeah, vinyl figure. I did not almost got it. I should have gotten it. It was really cool. It had a removable dragonhead, so it's a dragon body and then his head and then it came with They were really cool.

They released a few of them. That's cool. Every once in a while getting email from Super seven, they'll be like, send us your ideas. Yeah, you know what my idea was. What was your idea, Devo?

Oh yeah, it was already in the work. So well, that's the thing. You and I both have had ideas for them, and they've come to fruition. I told them pal Peralta. You told them Divo, and sure enough we got reaction figures.

And those pal Peralta reaction figures are really really cool because they're based on images. They don't look like the guys, but they look like human versions of their board design, their deck design, the artwork. That's a really brilliant concept. I also suggested that they would do the Melvin's and they have not done that yet, but for one of those things, the Melvin's will go what fuck you? They might be they like that shit, so maybe they'll be into it.

It was a fun video. I enjoyed watching it. Yeah, as I mentioned to you, I have watched some recently, and it's because of that coming back I extended my interest into the skate areas well. There are real cheesy moments in there. So folks, if you're listening to this and you haven't seen it yet, you're gonna watch it and be like, oh my gosh, that whole dialogue sequence is embarrassing, and well, they're kids, you know, and so you accept it in a way.

There are sequences where they're making fun of skape culture by making up terms jelly sex change, aial, throwing around dialogue that is influenced by the way skaters talk and making fun of it. So I'm assuming you're referring to when they're in Bakersfield. Yes, yeah, that kid on the porch is talking about ganking and skanking. Yeah, that was the clip I mentioned earlier that I'm definitely gonna use. We'll probably insert that right here.

I twanked my knee, both kneeds, your twink risk risk is dank twank and dank shoulders baguized. I can't even think of all the words that they use. But yeah, I'm glad you're going to insert that here because it's classic. It's a classic sequence, and to be honest, the acting quote unquote is kept to a minimum. The one that's so, that's good.

They have an interaction with Johnny rad and amongst themselves. They played to their strengths I think, and know when to move on. They're not trying to be actors. They're inserting little sections to move the story along to get to the next place to scathe. The opening with Garrett Graham, who I was absolutely surprised to see in this is kind of funny, and then he disappears, as I thought Graham's in this, He's probably gonna show up as the kind of like in Oh shoot, what am I thinking of?

Oh the Devo videos that they would release and they would have Rodney Router as like the evil executive. Johnny rad is still acting. That guy is an actual working actor. That's interesting. They do fine with that.

He's doing most of the talking in that scene, so it works okay. And then, like I said, when they're with each other, a lot of it has to do with editing and keeping it real short and sweet. Yes, like when they're doing their exercises in that motel room, it's great. It's great. Smith and one and two guys read out and it's so corny.

It's funny. I've watching movies with them and most of them are like, that was so embarrassing. I'm okay with it now, but that was we were so embarrassed that we did that. It's delightful. And there were like hardcore skaters that totally made fun of that.

Hel peralta lighthearted, fun approach to skating. I always felt like there needed to be a place for that, Like you can't just all be serious and like fuck you, agro agrow. There has to be a place for comedy and lightheartedness and good feeling. I've always felt like there has to be, even in my angriest state as a younger guy. Well, if you're not having fun, what's the point?

Funds should be fun. I mean you briefly talked about this the talking heads, toy review shows or movie review shows where people are just angry about what they watched or what they purchased, and doing reviews that are just based on the negative approach. If you don't have a full range of perspective, you can't. Really it's unrealistic. I always get put off by people who just talk negatively about stuff constantly.

Critique is one thing, but not accepting positivity just because you feel like there has to be a serious criticism of society, it seems joyless to me. Yeah, yeah, it's ridiculous. It doesn't. It's not realistic. It's just as bad as what you're critiquing.

Essentially, my second thing that I'm gonna talk about is sort of like how that branched off. My interest in skateboarding branched off into other parts of the culture. But Animal Chin is I always have fun memories of that movie and the feeling of skateboarding in the mid eighties. I'll always think of it fondly. It was a great time today.

So what's the next thing on your list? Mark? Well, it's kind of interesting how this came back. It's sort of replaced the same obsessions that I had as a kid when I moved into serf stuff because at the time I was collecting a lot of different toys and online I was a part of a number of different message boards that were devoted to toys, so some of it was vintage stuff like the Mego message board, Super Seven's message board, Kid Robot, all that stuff, collecting Vinyl to boys and these artists like Gary tech Sally and Gary Baseman, Tim Biscu designer Vinyl. I guess it is the term, and so I was really heavy into that, and I think I was reaching a burnout point.

And I don't even know what brought surf culture back into my mind, but I remember when it did happen. I thought, oh, this is what replaced all of that stuff when I was a kid, and I feel it replacing that I was conscious of it. I actively want to pursue the design aspect of this and the visual aspect. So I was trying to track down as many surf videos as I could. It slid into skate videos as well, so I know I watched I want to say, I watched a couple of the Bones Brigade videos, and then there was also a documentary about pal Peralta.

Yes, and that's a great documentary. Yeah, I watched the one about Gator. Oh. Yeah, that's hard, that's the difficult. Lunch was not as fun.

Yeah, it's that. It led me to looking for TNC and gns and all that stuff. And at that point, their online presence was more geared toward the boards, and I think there had been a long gap for them of people aren't really buying this stuff except maybe in surf shops. Right. I was like, there's a lack of this available.

And I found one website called the Last Wave. They had and I think they're based in San Louis. They had a bunch of even older things like from Hobie and oh, there's a couple of different h name surf companies, but the graphics were like more like fifties and sixties, And so I started looking at all that stuff and then finding out who the artists were and looking them up online, and then bought a couple of shirts with old graphics. They're not vintage shirts, but old graphics that those companies used back then. And then I found Birdwell Beach Bridges, Oh yeah, which I had never heard of before.

Really dug the little funny logo that they had of a surfboard and surf the font is great. Yeah, and so bought a shirt from them, and then was looking at their trunks to buy, but they were they're really expensive. They're like sixty to seventy something dollars a handmade in San Clemente, California, real heavy duty nylon and double stitch all that stuff. We went into the van story yesterday and swim trunks or eighty bucks. Yeah, you know.

So it's that's where we are. And checkerboard vans slip ons are sixty five for a pair, and I need a new pair. How much you smoke? This will be a little demonstration of that, Lisa, that was my skull. I'm so always unless you find them on clearance for forty five dollars, right, I mean right, that's always how I've gotten my van slip ons.

It's in clearance because I just Converse now they're up there in price to the Converse All Stars with Chuck Taylor's I passed on the trunks at the time. It became an all consuming interest again. And of course at this time we're going. I mean, we've always gone to the coast. We've always gone to the San Louis Epispo area, Pismo, Moral Bay.

My parents used to have a little mobile home in one of the parks, and Morro Bay they are surf towns. Oh yeah. We would go to the different surf shops in Saint Louis, of course, Wavelengths in Moral Bay and I would just horror through those shirts. Ended up looking up mister Zog's online. Oh yeah, bought a shirt, short sleeve T shirt, and then at some point in there watched Fast Times again.

I like, yeah, I gotta get that Spakoli shirt. Why do you shamelessly waste my time like this? I don't know, the long sleeve red shirt with the sex wax on the front and the star and the by and the back and did it's a little different than the movie version because in that the logo on the back is solid black and this one it's white and black. I have that and a bunch of other shirts from Wavelengths and this and that and everything else. It's tapered off again.

But anytime, and we haven't been of course, I think since before the pandemic. But I'm kind of looking forward to getting back over to the coast and yeah, checking out the wares because we don't have a Wavelengths here anymore, not anymore. Yeah, they closed a few years back. They had moved out to River Park and they were there for about eight years or something like that, and then maybe even longer. I'm not sure.

Oh yeah, way longer than that, because I was going over there before I even met Carlita. Oh okay, that was nineteen ninety nine. So the Wavelengths I used to go to was when they were by a Circuit City, and I think they started out as being called SBI Board Shop and then they turned into Wavelengths. I think that's how it goes. It's a combination of the two.

They're actually separate places. So SBI is like the skateboard shop, and Wavelengths is the surf stuff. My recollection is when they were by Circuit City on Seawan, Blaxton and Fresno, and it was a small shop, so I think they were just trying to figure out how they would label themselves as a board shop or as a surf clothing shop. That was late eighties, and you know, it's a really cool little corner and people would be skating on the parking lot and getting in trouble. And we were talking before we started recording today about how maybe Sunnyside Surf might be related to Wavelengths and SBI.

I think that shot turned into wavelength slash SBI at some point. I don't think it would be like partner drop or anything. I just when Sunnyside went out of business at some point, Wavelengths and or SBI came in and then either had a second shop up there or totally moved up there. I don't remember anything about that shop over there, because I used to go to the Tower records over there all the time. Yeah yeah, but I don't recall ever scene because it was probably just completely left my interest at that point.

I don't remember stepping foot into it until it was over in River Park. Oh yeah, well, I'm glad it still exists over in more Obey. For a while there and more Obey you could go to the Wavelengths so you could go to the skateboard History Museum. Yeah the museum, yep, but that's closed now unfortunately. But that was a really We went there once and I think we stayed there for a full hour and it's like the size of our like the size of a room essentially, But it was so cool to see all the history of skateboards and skate culture and all the different experiments that people had tried to make successful as far as skating goes.

And I've got a shirt from there. Yeah, I got a sticker bumper sticker still on the back of our truck, right next to Wake Up Heavy. The interest really, again was more focused on the esthetics of the designs. I did eventually get some Birdwell Beach bridges because they changed ownership and we're gonna change the design of the shorts a little bit and have all new item numbers and stuff. So they basically get a dead stock sale okay, where I think they were ten bucks.

Oh, I want to say, you gave your size, and I think you just got what they sent. So I got a pair and they're shorter than most swim trunks. See, they're not really super short like back when we were kids. Yeah, and I'm fine with that. And then they did it again, and I think at that point you could pick the style you wanted and the size.

You wouldn't get to pick the color or anything like that. I did it again and got another pair that are really long and really wide legged, and I just passed those off to my nephew because they're just so it's like we're a parachute bottom or something. Yeah. I think they're eighty something dollars at this point. They should last your lifetime if you can fit into them for the rest of your life, So that's true.

I didn't think I was going to be able to fit into the ones I had, but we went swimming last weekend and they fit. Fine. He's gonna kill you and he's gonna kill me. He's gonna killers might just be glad I had Boss D fluxes. But bron is gonna shit.

Make up your mind, dude, is you gonna shitter? Are you gonna kill us. Why are you gonna shit? Did it gonna kill us? Relax?

All right, well man, to tell us your a paramount got this ultimate set of tools. I can fix it. That's a good transition to the second part of mine. You know. I'm continuing to talk about skate culture a little bit here, but one of the things that really that I absolutely loved about skate culture and the mid to late eighties was Thrasher Magazine.

And I love the articles and all that stuff, but primarily it was about for me. It was in the ads. That's where I learned about Vision streetwear shoes, which I felt like were the coolest skate shoes ever, one of the greatest designs, speaking of Birdwell being a great logo design and all those other logos being cool. The Vision Street where one is very cool and a little bit edgier than Powell Peralta. And I also learned about skate punk and skate rock through Thrasher Magazine.

Discovered bands like JFA and The Faction. The Faction is the band that did the song Skate and Destroy, and then other bands like Suicidal Tendencies and those early Red Hot Chili Peppers albums and Butthole Surfers and the Misfits, and that whole punk and experimental punk and experimental rock edgier side would be I guess termed as what evolved into alternative rock. Later on, I guess became a more of a divided genre punk and alternative rock and metal, but back then it felt like they were all coming from the same place. You know. They would advertise shows where you could see ends that you would normally not see play together just because they would also be skaters there.

And I love that you could be into punk, you could be into metal, and you could be into weird shit like Butthole Surfers and be a skater and still feel like you're part of a family. And those advertisements are really what kind of made that reel. Is that they would advertised records by these different bands, And there were these compilation albums that Thrasher put out called Skate Rock, and the first three volumes you could order them. You can mail away and get them on cassette, and they were just like photocopied covers and they were so cool. I never mailed away anything, but I had a friend who had one, and Thrasher Magazine is how I really got immersed in the fashion of skating, and I found that coincides quite well with your surf fashion theme here.

Thrasher magazine started in nineteen eighty one. I didn't start reading those magazines until four eighty five. Eventually, around eighty six got a brief subscription to it. And there was a very natural transition for me from late eighties into early nineties alternative rock and grunge culture I feel like is directly stemmed from the skate rock and skate punk culture in a lot of ways. And to this day, about once a year, I'll go and I'll look up old skate ads in Thrasher magazines online.

There's tons and tons of images when you just do a Google image search of those advertisements, And like you said about Surfing magazine, like you can't, like if you look at a cover of it, it doesn't really grab your attention or remind you of a particular thing. Yeah, they're kind of all the same thing. Yeah, same thing with Rasher. Somebody's surfing, Yeah, somebody's skating. Same thing with Rasher.

Although there are a couple covers that stand out in my mind, but mainly those advertisements. It's kind of like with comic books. The advertisements were often repeated in each issue, and so they really are ingrained in my subconscious I can see the layout, you know, those skateboard shop advertisements. We could order a fully assembled board or you could order just the deck, and the way they were laid out on the page, combining Vision and Santa Cruz and Pala Peralta and all these different companies together on one page. You can look at the designs and dream about having your favorite design, and those ads really bring back memories for me.

It's funny how so often in Cambridge and with Sean here where it comes back to consumer culture and how the power of advertising really creates, interestingly enough fond memories for us. It was less about the articles more about the advertising For me and Thrasher, I think a lot of the advertising why it sticks out so much the repetitiveness of it. Like you say, every issue of a comic book or any genre related magazine is going to have You're going to see the same stuff over and over again, and then when you see a new ad, it's like, oh, well that's interesting, m but you probably didn't get most of the stuff that you saw advertised. Yeah, definitely, But you had a longing for it. I think that longing, or those things you saw advertise that you really were interested in, is what carries over to now.

Images of skaters with mohawks, with torn T shirts and wearing Converse All Stars, and I would long for that look. Seeing those Vision Streetwear shoes in the magazine, I was like, Oh my god, those shoes. They're unlike anything I've ever seen before. That has to be the coolest thing ever. And you put it in this category in your brain of like, I may never have this thing, And sure enough, a couple of weeks later, you're breaking into the Fresnel High campus to skate with your friends and you see other skaters out there wearing those Vision street Wear shoes with a mohawk and a torn T shirt and you're like, oh, damn it.

That's kind of magic. Really, you know. It teaches us to dream and to be imaginative and have goals and learn how to differentiate between realistic and unrealistic goals. And I think it's probably necessary. Even though people who might hate capitalism might argue otherwise our show wouldn't exist without all those fine, It's very true.

We probably wouldn't be who we are without all that stuff to dream about. Not only have we accomplished our topics for discussion, we've also talked about locations. Yeah, that's kind of cool. We didn't save locations to the end. They're immeshed in our subject matters for today, Mark, what do you have coming up for you?

Anything exciting? Hope to get Cleo on a recording of Wake Up Heavy soon here, since she's done with summer school and so look for that. Maybe around the time that this is out, there will be one or two of those available over at wake Up heavy dot com or where Ingwaymedia dot com. You and the family went to see Asteroid City. I'd be interested to hear what your perspectives are on that one.

No, we didn't go see it. It's gone from theaters. Oh you tried to go see it? No, Oh, I don't know what you're talking about. I think I misinterpreted the post.

Okay, we watched it last night? Oh you did. Yeah, so we may talk about that and some other West Anderson movies we'll see. Cool. I'd like to hear your perspectives on that one.

Yeah, our family is divided on what we like about it, but we don't like about Yeah, yeah, you know what one thing I wanted to mention. You're talking about music and all that, and I noticed a name in the Animal Chin credits. Dennis Dragon does the music, and he was one part of the Surf Punks. I don't know if you're familiar with them at all. I'm not familiar with him, but I'm familiar with the Surf Punks.

My sister and I had I think it was their second album when we were younger, probably around this time. That may have played a part in all this too, of my thing because that cover is just like Neon all over the place, checkerboard vans. Yes, So that combined with fast times or the two things that really struck meeting all the surfers. They forget about the tubes. I think I said music supervisor yeah in his credit, So that makes sense tracking down the music for the video.

He's also interestingly enough, see the brother of he's related to Captain and tanil Oh. That Dragon that's Darryl Dragon. Oh, this is Dennis Dragon. So that's weird. That's interesting.

I don't know if they're brothers or cousins or Darryl and Dennis Dragon are brothers fascinating connections right and also, folks, if you haven't seen an Animal Chin, the music is one of the most mysterious and strange aspects of that film. There are times where you would expect a certain kind of music with skate videos that you hear snippets of in the movie, but most of the time the music is like not what you would expect from a skate video. Sent the prog rock stuff. There's some tinny, jazzy things. It's like, it's really hard to pin down what they were trying to accomplish with the audio esthetic in that movie.

It's not I wouldn't say it's the best, but it's definitely unique. And it is on YouTube, as are a number of the Powell Peralta videos. Oh yeah, they're on there through the Powell Peralta site. That page. You can watch all their videos on their own page and you don't have to feel bad about it because they put them up exactly.

Yep. It's very cool. Yeah, So you could find me on YouTube under Skelevator. Try to put interesting things over there occasionally. Also, Toy Frenzy is on Thursday evenings.

They solely talked about toys almost ninety five percent of the time we talk about Masters of the Universe stuff. As Mark mentioned earlier. Definitely folks, go over and check out weird ingwaymedia dot com. Get out there and rip it up, tear it apart, skateboard, don't hurt yourself, go learn how to surf and watch Fast Times at Richmond High if you never have no shirt, no shoes nor that's right, and watch the Search for Animal Chin if you never have to. Both are classics, classic California movies, Twank and Dank.

Oh. We are going to be taking a hiatus, yes, so no September episode, but we will be back in October with something new and exciting for you all. That's right, Well, all right, Mark, this has been a pleasure. It's always fun talking to you. Yeah, and we'll see you all in October in the fall.

Until then, take it easy ohe bye. Yes, yeah, I'm registered in this class. This is us history. So you blow up right there, real there, come in. Oh please.

I gets so lonely when I hear that thirty times for a ring and all my kids are up here. Sorry I'm late. It's just like this new schedule is totally confusing. I know that dude, mister spiccling. Then they gave me here you're ripping the car?

Yeah, Bud, what's your problem? No problem at all. I think you know where the front office is, you, dick? What hanging out around the time with a bad boy crowd, going by the mall staircase where we're not allowed kicking flips? Papa wheelis when we're feeling on board.

Only tough guys know how to ride the hot ride scrapeboard word. Hi, I'm like to Steve Rule today. We're gonna do something that's my favorite show yet, skateboards. If you don't know about it, too bad, get the hell off the show now. Only cool guys.

If you don't know about skateboards, PiZZ stay Also, it'd be fun because they're fun. Let's take it out, Take it out, Cambridge. Emma Sean is a weirding Way media podcast