Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.MX

[ overlapping chatter ]

[ wheels rolling ]

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

[ music playing ]

- * Hey

- There's so much passion in this place.

There's so much beauty.

There's so much pain.

It's dark. It's light.

You know, there's a lot of places

that people don't fight for what they believe in.

People around here don't stand for that.

[ music playing ]

- This is my neighborhood.

This is my fucking little castle right here.

Every time I come here, I know everybody that's here.

Everyone says, "What's up?" Everyone's friends.

- We showed up to this, you know,

where it's still--

where the debris meets the sea.

- Venice Beach has always been about

a community of artists

and kind of like a big melting pot.

- There's nowhere else like this.

This town is so alive 24 hours a day.

- We don't slack off. We don't make excuses.

You could have all the tricks in the world,

but if you don't do 'em with style, it's just boring.

We don't do boring. This is Venice.

- Skateboarding is looked at as a toy for your kid. No.

This is something we live and we breathe,

and we're gonna do something dangerous with it.

[ music playing ]

- [ whooping ]

- You know Abbot Kinney? That guy that started Venice?

He wanted to do this wonderland like Venice,

this Venice, Italy, type of look with the canals.

NARRATOR: Abbot called it his Venice of America,

a place for people to come down, enjoy the beach,

the boardwalk, and see a show.

Most of the places he built are gone now,

but the stories about Abbot Kinney still live on,

because the Venice skaters are a lot like Abbot.

They're following their dreams, doing something new,

even if it is a little dangerous.

- Without the permits or the--

or I'd say, the "okay" from the city of Los Angeles,

he just started building it,

and this community started up here.

At one point, I heard

and read that the city came actually down here

with bulldozers to tear down

some of the piers and stuff they were building.

All the community people got in front of those bulldozers

and said, "No, you're not," and stopped 'em.

- When Abbot Kinney did it, it was rich.

Depression hit, it went ghetto.

The war came, the fifties. It was rich again.

The sixties came around, it was poor again.

Seventies, it was poor.

- Even though Venice was a ghetto at the time,

it felt like more of a family community,

because everybody was poor.

There was no, like, class division.

It was, like, you had your poor white family,

you had your poor black family,

you had your poor Mexican family,

and everybody knew each other,

and everybody knew each other's kids.

- We all lived together, you know,

Crips, Bloods, ESE's, skateboarders.

We were all considered family to each other.

- And--And our group, it was integrated.

We didn't care, you know.

It's like we hung out with everyone, didn't matter, so--

And it was the skateboarding that brought us together.

- Story goes there was a few of the guys

sitting out there, and they were commenting

how the town has really gone to crap.

And one of the old Z-Boys commented,

"Yeah, this town ain't fit for a dog."

And then, as they were saying that,

one of those guys go, "Yeah, this is a Dogtown!"

- You could probably make an argument

that some place in this general vicinity,

skateboarding as an activity originated

and was largely defined.

- Santa Monica, Malibu, Venice,

this is the area where skateboarding started.

All the best skaters come out of here,

and people might have been doing things other places,

but they definitely weren't getting the coverage,

and they weren't as gnarly as people were down here.

NARRATOR: In 1972, Skip Engblom and Jeff Ho

opened the Zephyr Surf Shop in Santa Monica.

The Zephyr Skateboard team,

also known as the Z-Boys, was born.

- It's like there was a chain of command, you know,

Skip Engblom, Nathan Pratt, Jeff Ho, Stecyk, you know,

those dudes were like the fathers of the neighborhood.

And then Jay Adams, Alva, all those homies,

they were like the sons of Dogtown.

Then, we from the eighties,

like, one time Jay told me-- he goes,

"You guys are like the bad stepsons,"

'cause we were raising hell on this beach.

- * Grind on

* 'Cause that feels great

* Grind it on

[ band playing ]

* Street shotgun

* Street shotgun

* Straight street...

[ overlapping chatter, yelling ]

[ band continues ]

- The realistic boundaries of what the mythical Dogtown is

basically straddles both Venice and Santa Monica.

And half the guys

on the original Zephyr team were from Venice,

and half of 'em were from Santa Monica.

- And we became, you know, the first group

of super skaters, you know, in the world.

And Tony and Jay and everybody showed that

you know, we can invent a new way of skateboarding

and can do something of our own.

[ music playing ]

- Jay Adams, Tony Alva, all them grew up watching surfers,

and they thought they were surfing on the sidewalk,

so when they went in the pool,

they were surfing--whoo-- grinding, and carving.

- You know, we used to sit at the bottom of the hill

watching Jay Adams and all those dudes

and Tony Alva bombing the hills down my street, you know?

Little did we know, you know, what legend we were watching.

- Dogtown, when I grew up in the seventies,

was one of the most influential areas in the whole world.

And to see what those guys were doing,

of radical skateboarding, it influenced us,

like that is skateboarding.

We want to ride pools. We want to go rip.

We want to have that lifestyle of surfing and skating,

just living it up, you know,

just being a teenager, and just loving your life.

- Kids who were born straight from a Dogtown boy

is an automatic Dogtown boy.

If I roll by you, and I go,

"Hey, what's up, homie? You're a Dogtown boy,"

that's a frickin' honor, man.

You know, it's the equivalent of being, like,

some senator or something dumb. Around here, it is.

And if you're considered a Dogtown boy,

you know, you made it.

- * Representin', representin', representin' *

* Representin' to bang

* Representin'...

- I've seen gangbangers start to skateboard

and give up gangbanging for skateboarding.

- When your house is falling apart

and your mom and dad, you know, are arguing all the time

the only place I would feel as comfortable,

in the water or going to a skateboard bank.

- I believe it was, like, in between 1970 and '71.

Uh, my brothers and my cousins...

they weren't the nicest people sometimes,

and I guess they were out there doing their thing.

And, uh, I guess one of 'em stole a car,

and, uh, in that back seat was a skateboard.

So when they got back to the house,

they were like, "Hey, you want this?"

And I was like, "Yeah, sure."

So I started skating with it,

and, uh, I was really stoked. I really liked it.

I was like, "Wow, this is fun."

- Me and Jesse, we grew up together in Venice,

and our older brothers were in the same gang,

and in order for us to stay away from that scene,

we started skateboarding and hung around the beach.

- From elementary school, that's all you were brought up around

was Dogtown and skating and surfing,

and "Back your neighborhood up."

That's just the way it was.

- We both come from dysfunctional families.

Jesse, I would say, had it a little tougher than me.

My mother passed away when I was 12,

and I never had my dad around,

so I was on my own with no parents at 12 already.

Jesse had to deal with his father and his mother still,

and there was issues with, uh, his siblings and whatever.

- I got two blood brothers from the same mother and father,

Monty and Albert. Albert passed away.

I got another brother, Monty.

He's on vacation for about another three months,

but he'll be back.

- First time I met Jesse Martinez,

I thought he was just some little gangbanger,

because I grew up hanging out with his older brother.

He was one of the shot-callers of the neighborhood.

- One thing I have learned from growing up

in a gang environment my whole entire life,

you know, you grow up in a house full of gang members

and you live in a ganged-out neighborhood,

there's a dang good chance

you're going to become a gang member.

I'm one of the fortunate. You know, I was asked.

I was asked to be in the gang when I was younger,

and I said no, and somebody said,

"Then go skate, white boy. Leave." And I did. Psshw.

[ music playing ]

NARRATOR: In the summer of 1978, a businessman named Dennis Ogden

built a skatepark in Marina Del Rey, California.

The Marina became a training ground

for the next generation of world-class skateboarders,

such as Pat Ngoho, Eric Dressen, and Christian Hosoi.

- When Marina Skatepark opened,

I was probably, like, 10 years old.

I remember me and my buddy Christian went there.

You know, we got exposed to a lot of heavyweight guys,

all the former Z-Boys, Dogtown team.

- Growing up in Venice Beach,

skating down to the beach at 9, 10 years old.

Then to see Marina Del Rey Skatepark built in 1978

and go "Wow, look at this in our own backyard."

[ music playing ]

- We were looking to do a skatepark in this area,

because it was such a hotbed of skating,

just like Venice still is these days.

And in those days, it was, uh, Dogtown skaters,

and the Zephyr team

were the most, uh, well known skaters in the world.

- A lot of those guys were-- were great mentors, you know.

On the outside, they looked radical and intimidating,

but really, they were super cool.

They were my big brothers. They raised me.

- Initially, when we first opened,

it was just packed, uh, every day,

and near the end, in the last, uh, year or so,

it seemed like there was more like 50 skaters.

- Nobody wants to pay to go skateboard at a place,

and that's one thing that kind of ruined it.

When you skateboard every day

and you skate, well, that's your life,

you know, it gets to be quite an expense.

- When the Marina Skatepark closed down,

the insurance on the skateparks went under,

so that's why all the parks started closing.

- Once they closed all those parks down,

there was really nowhere to go.

- So, the only way to--to skate some kind of transition

was to build your own ramps.

- Venice is such a cool scene,

especially back then in the eighties.

It wasn't such a tourist trap as it is now.

[ music playing ]

It was this eclectic mix of different types of people,

different culture, you know,

skateboarding, roller skating,

just all these-- these crazy worlds

all coming together.

- The eighties really defined

the do-it-yourself, individual, punk-rock attitude

that was fueled by the music,

that was fueled by the culture, the lifestyle.

And at the same time, respected by the traditions

of the guys who did it before us.

- When we were in high school,

Jesse would come to Venice High, be barefooted,

and just skate his ass off on the Venice High banks.

And I was like, "Jesse, what are you doing?" You know?

Jesse would be like, "I'm gonna be a pro skater."

And I was like, "There's no fucking money in that."

And he was like, "I don't care. I'm gonna be a pro skater."

- Back in the early eighties,

I was in Simi Valley visiting my grandma,

met these biker guys who had a ramp.

And so I go, "Wow, bitchin' ramp."

I really liked it, and I had fun on it.

I go, "Can I buy it from you or trade it from you?"

And he goes, "No."

Well, back then, I was kinda shady,

so I got up at 3:00 in the morning, got his ramp,

put it on my skateboard, rolled it home.

Called my buddy from Venice, said, "Come and get me."

He came and got me with his truck,

and we threw the ramp on the ground out there,

and it all began.

- I was skating a lot with Christian Hosoi.

And we were skating a lot of vert,

you know, wherever we could find, pools,

um, skating the skateparks. And then one day, he's like,

"Dude, we gotta go down to the beach.

They have a jump ramp."

It was cool, because you'd go there.

There'd be a thousand people watching you.

So one little jump ramp, and we'd be all hittin' it,

literally thousands of people there,

and it was just-- it was cool.

[ music playing ]

- I was going down the street one day,

and Jay Adams passed me, and he stopped,

and he goes, "Hey, you. You want to go skate?"

And I was like, "Of course." It was frickin' Jay Adams.

So he took me skating that day. I was fully inspired.

- You know, I was going down to, like, Playa Del Rey.

We had a couple backyard ramps down there at the beach,

and I took Jesse with me.

And Jesse was just 100% skateboarder at the time,

just so into it and totally-- just aggro on skating.

[ camera whirring ]

- I'm no pro. I just skate.

I don't know how I get the money.

Couple days later, Jay Adams saw me down here,

and he goes, "Hey, you want to ride--

You want to skate for Santa Monica Airlines?"

And I was like, "Whoa, really?" So I said, "Yeah."

And that was a complete turning point for my whole life.

- In the eighties, professional skateboarding

all of a sudden became really a viable job.

- Between 19 and 21, I turned pro.

I was old.

- I first met Jesse right here on this beach with Jay Adams.

He was doin'-- He was ridin' the walls

and doin' hand plants

before--I mean, before anyone I had ever seen do that.

- Jesse, Natas, Christian Hosoi

and a whole 'nother handful of guys from Frisco to Diego

started street skating.

- Street skating is basically just grab your board,

go out and do what you can where you can.

It was a natural progression. It just grew out of,

you know, "I want to do something different.

I can do this, but I can do that. Now add this to that."

[ music playing ]

- It wasn't, like, stop in one place

and try and do one trick 25 times.

It was just go out and hit everything

along your way on the street.

Grind a curb, hit a wall, you know, do a parking block,

you know, kickflip, something, keep going.

- Street skating was, like, starting to, you know,

come up and started to boom.

You know, Jesse was, like, at the forefront.

- He's the first guy I ever saw just, like, jam up walls and--

and he's, like, upside down on one hand,

flipping the board around on his feet and the--

Let go of the board, and then his feet

are just flipping the board around, and...

All this stuff, and I'm like,

"Is that where skateboarding is going?"

[ record needle scratches ]

- Wally Holiday, he was, like, one of the few

skatepark designers back there with concrete.

He was sitting there, and he's struggling on transitions,

and, "How are they ever--" He's sitting--

Then all of a sudden this kid comes out of nowhere,

It's Jesse. Just, like, goes straight up the wall,

kickflips, and comes down and skates off.

And Wally was like, "What do we need parks for?"

You know, it was like, "What is this?"

- I looked at magazines. I--

There wasn't a "How to Street Skate" issue.

So I just skated, and took my moves

off what they were doing and took it to the streets.

- He was always doing something new,

always challenging himself,

and never satisfied with his abilities.

He always wanted to improve his abilities

and do something more.

- The eighties, skateboarding

was all about Venice. You know,

we were in the magazines. We were the scene.

- Later in the eighties, oh, '85, '84,

everybody started becoming these,

you know, good amateur skateboarders.

And, you know, before you know it,

'85, '86 ran around,

and everybody was full-blown skate--

you know, pro legend skaters now.

- Jesse was exceptional.

He had dominated the amateur status for two years.

When Jessie became the hot commodity,

Stacy came and picked up Jessie and said,

"I am gonna give you a model..."

"but I invested in all these other riders,"

and he had Bones Brigade and all that.

And he put Jesse on Powell-Peralta.

He said, "You don't get a model for two years.

"We'll start designing your stuff,

but I am not gonna put it out."

He knew that if Jesse skated against those guys

that he'd been promoting his company with...

[ camera whirs ]

he would have won, beat all those guys in street,

so he kinda held him back.

- You could be the baddest skateboarder in the world,

but if you don't ride for a team

that's gonna get you out there and touring, shaking hands--

Powell just put my ass out there for weeks and months at a time,

touring all over the United States.

There isn't a state or town I pretty much ain't been to.

- Jesse was the hardest-working skateboarder in the eighties.

Jesse went on tour for six months.

Oh, he would tell me stories

where his ankles would be so swollen,

he had to stick both of his ankles

in a bucket of ice just to do a demo.

- I was a demo machine.

I lived and died for demos.

I loved it, and I got paid.

And, uh, Stacy, without him, I'd be, uh--

I'd be half the--the so-called skateboarder I am today.

NARRATOR: The Venice Pavilion was built in 1961

to be a community rec center.

It fell into disrepair, closed in '84,

but it was all the skaters had to keep skateboarding alive.

- Our area, Marina Skatepark,

that we all grew up around, was gone.

- The older guys like Jay Adams and those guys

were already skaters and well-known skateboarders.

They would build ramps and stuff down at the Pavilion.

NARRATOR: Instead of the pools and copings

of the Marina Skatepark,

now the skaters used handmade ramps

and the walls of the Pavilion for street skating.

- Everybody would go inside the Pavilion,

'cause the cops couldn't find you in there.

You could go behind these heavy big fire pits

and sit in there and sort of smoke some weed

and hang out, do whatever you wanted.

- I used to go down there and measure the walls,

and actually build ramps to fit the wall exactly perfect.

We would skate it on the weekends,

and then come Monday to skate or something,

and the cops would be cutting up our ramps with chain saws.

and then we'd have to go steal some wood, build it.

- We had, like, 10 different sites in the Pavilion

where we'd put these ramps up.

[ music playing ]

- We turned the beach into a skatepark.

- It wasn't the cookie-cutter perfect vert ramp.

You know, you had to make do with what you had.

- We all pushed each other to be the best that we could be.

- We were pushing the envelope in street skating.

We were--We were being creative with the Pavilion, with ramps

and quarter pipes and wall rides

and jump ramp to walls

and just really wanting to have a good time.

I think that was our whole goal

was to have a good time with all of our friends

down here at the beach like one big, you know, family,

and that's what skateboarding was all about.

- There was Mexicans. There was black kids.

There was white kids,

and, you know, everyone just kinda got along.

[ siren blares ]

[ music stops ]

- Hey, let's put 'em on the video. Why not?

[ music playing ]

- People that remember that Pavilion

remember it with kind of rose-colored glasses.

What they kind of forget about

is the fact that nobody was cleaning the place.

It wasn't just the skaters there.

You had drug addicts there,

you had homeless guys there,

and the place really stank.

- It was a real bad scene down there,

but we didn't give a shit, 'cause they were--

We'd skate by-- We knew the bums,

but they looked out for us. They were like, "Hey--"

You know, if some older drunk came and fucked with us,

they would be like, "Hey, don't fuck with them.

Those are the groms. Those are locals, you know?"

I didn't even recognize all the chaos.

I was just having fun, and I was--

But then, we were protected by our older brothers

and our older brothers--

or friends' older brothers and family.

You know what I mean?

NARRATOR: Growing up in a tough environment

makes you learn how to stand up for what you believe in

and demand respect.

- I think that we were just so close

to all the old Z-Boys in the seventies,

that we couldn't help but know where we came from

and be proud of it

and willing to almost do anything

to protect that neighborhood and the word "Dogtown."

- Bike companies came down, did a contest.

- When they had the contest and all the bikers came out,

it was too much for Jess.

He called up Stoney,

and that just started a whole mess, dude.

- It was like throwing a match on gas.

It turned into a huge fight. It was bad.

- A lot of bikes got stolen that day.

Like, 7 or 10 bikes got taken.

- We actually did more harm to ourselves than we did to them.

We just reinforced their thou-- the way they looked at us--

thugs, you know,

hardheaded kids, troublemakers.

NARRATOR: After the BMX rumble,

the city clamped down on skateboarders

and their activities at the beach.

- When I got back into town,

some of the local guys were like, "Hey, man,

they're building a ramp over at Joff's House."

And I was like, "What? No way!"

So shot over there as quick as I could.

- My parents had a real big front yard,

and I was kind of in a lot of trouble at the time, so, uh,

they figured, "Fuck, we might as well keep him here."

- Joff Drinkwater, when I was a little kid,

he built a ramp in his backyard, and it was called the VSA ramp.

That's where the VSA came from originally.

It was the Venice Skate Association.

They all had membership cards.

You had to be down to be able to skate.

- My friend Jimbo's the one who started the VSA.

I mean, I remember them saying, "VSA,"

and he spray-painted it on, uh--

My friend Joff Drinkwater had built

a half-pipe in front of his house.

[ music playing ]

- I'd heard about it. I found the spot,

and I walked in there, and it was just a heavy scene going on.

All these gnarly suicidal punk rockers were there.

There was some-- some Crips there.

There were some ESE's there.

What other skate scene has that? You know what I mean?

Multicultural, like, gangsters, and then skateboarders.

And not only were the skateboarders hard,

they were just as hard as the gangsters.

You know what I mean? That's what it was about.

- There was other kids that were privileged in Mar Vista

and other kids in Westchester

and in Santa Monica that had ramps,

but when Venice came, we'd go to skate,

they're like, "Nah,

those kids aren't coming in the yard."

'Cause we were rowdy. You could tell.

We were the fucking-- We were like wild mustangs

out of the fucking corral, right? When you let us out,

we're, "Rah!" We were loud.

Parents are like, "No, they're not coming in."

So we had our own ramp at that point,

so we did the same thing. We're like, "No,

if you're not VSA, you're not skating."

- Unfortunately the Powell tour came around,

I guess round two,

and I got sent back out on the road.

Came back two or three months later,

and then, uh, it was gone.

- The early nineties,

skateboarding died out in Venice.

There was nobody coming out of Venice that was skating.

Everything kind of just drifted

and got distant from this area.

- The rollerbladers showed up around 1990

and started thinking the spot right here by the wall

was their spot all of a sudden.

- rollerbladers were so organized,

because they had big corporate companies behind 'em.

- From 1994 to 1998,

we were strictly in-line skating,

street and vert.

- There was just bad blood between the rollerbladers

and skateboarders, who were led by Jesse...

[ laughs ]

...the Mess.

- Jesse Martinez, who I had many altercations with.

- It's not that we didn't like you.

We just didn't like you where you were taking over.

- This was their territory.

- The rollerbladers were outnumbering everybody,

and they'd brought down a jump ramp.

Well, they decided it was their beach,

and they weren't going to let us skate it.

- We're hopping over the fence and kicking 'em out.

- There was only a couple of us, and guess who came riding in?

[ music playing ]

- You know, Jesse felt that, you know, he had the allegiance

and had to protect, you know, his group.

- So Jesse made a swift point with his palm

into a professional rollerblader's face...

[ boom ]

and cemented the point into his cheek

that you don't come in here with a pompous attitude.

You show respect, you get respect.

- Nothing meant more than backing up the neighborhood,

and then I finally realized that,

in a way, you're not backing the neighborhood up.

You're hurting the neighborhood.

[ tires squeal ]

- There's Ger-I.

Doesn't know he's gonna get picked up

for fucking destroying the fucking lawn.

Gonna get arrested in about 10 minutes.

- He's just another example of all the guys in Venice.

Anything you want to do, you can do.

- We all liked him, you know, 'cause he was just so odd.

And then he started pulling people

out of the--that were drowning

out of the water over here in a few feet,

and then he was heroic.

- I know he's a better surfer than he is a skater,

and more importantly, you know,

he's an ex-lifeguard, CPR trained,

and that's a hell of a lot more important

than being a good surfer or skateboarder.

- Yeah, he's kinda like an Energizer bunny.

He just keeps going, Ger-I.

- [ singing hard rock ]

- Ger-I's got a lot of energy.

- I found out about the, um, demolition

of the Pavilion in 1988.

For about 10 years, you know, when I'd come home,

I would tell people, "It's gonna be torn down.

Let's get involved and have a skatepark built."

And most people would just tell me,

"You know, fuck you, Ger-I Lewis.

You don't know what you're talking about."

- Every subculture has its kind of Mecca, if you will,

and the pit was Mecca for skateboarding.

[ music playing ]

- The city government was really focused

on what to do with the Pavilion,

how to repair the parts of Ocean Front Walk

that were falling apart.

It was a nightmare, let me tell you.

- They're taking away, like, a landmark in skateboarding,

whether they recognize that or not, the city, or whoever.

- This is our world, our stomping ground,

and there's the people that want to tear it down right there.

[ music playing ]

- Ending of a chapter in skateboard history.

- Ger-I saw this for a long time,

and he went down there when it wasn't popular,

and he did it when nobody cared about it,

which you'd have to give him a lot of credit for.

- The RRM Group had a questionnaire

and a type of map, and the question was,

"What would you like to see here if you had your druthers?"

So, bam, I wrote "skateboard park," and I--

You've seen it where I drew-- and I drew an anarchy sign.

I kept the dream alive.

- I got a call from Ger-I-Lewis, and he said, "Melanie,

"I have a lot of stuff on my plate right now,

and I need some help making sure that we get this park."

That's how it started.

- I think one thing I saw about Ger-I is he didn't go away,

and he believed in a dream, and he made me believe in him,

because I think Ger-I didn't stop

when everybody else thought that it was a good time to give up.

- You know, you don't hold back,

so he just carries on that tradition.

- I recall we were actually out here,

down here at Venice Beach looking at some of the drawings.

And about three or four skateboarders came over

and said, "Hey, where's ours?"

I mean, they made an immediately compelling case.

We'd already gone out to bid, so the question became,

how do we find a way to accommodate these guys?

- "Oh, my God, is that gonna be the skatepark?"

Like, everybody kinda lost a little faith at that point,

except for Ger-I and Jesse.

- So we thought we had done really, really good work

by getting a small-- admittedly a small skatepark.

It was only at the grand opening of the whole shebang

that a few skaters said, "You know,

this isn't really gonna cut it."

- That's when I officially formed the VSA

as a viable, legitimate advocate for skateboarding.

In 2000, I met a dear, dear woman named--

Uh, Her name is Heidi, Heidi Lemmon.

- I had a booth at ASR. Uh, we're a nonprofit,

you know, to help people get skateparks.

I was manning the booth,

and this guy comes wandering down,

and it turned out to be Ger-I Lewis.

And he said, "I'm trying to get a skatepark in Venice."

And I was like, "Me, too!"

- And her organization,

Skate Parks Association USA, was just a perfect fit.

- Thank, uh, Ger-I Lewis, who took the VSA

and actually made it an association.

- Heidi, myself, and Scott Brown filed business papers,

so the city officially recognized us

as the group wanting a skatepark.

- And then because Ger-I had the skate shop here

and he was a longtime Venice skater, he knew everybody,

so when we came together with what I was working on

politically, and then it was like

he had a powerhouse of skaters. He knew everybody.

- We--We met.

He had contests and fundraisers

to, you know, get money and everything.

And, um, kind of rallied around that.

- Sign our petition to have a skatepark

put at beautiful Venice Beach.

Thank you very much.

- It's good, 'cause it's good for kids.

Give them more things to do.

Better than walking around, they can hang out in the park.

- For years and years, people have been skating here.

We came all this way from the East Coast,

been living here for, like, three years,

and now they tore everything down.

There's nothing here but skaters left.

If we ain't got nothing to skate,

we're just gonna start doing other shit,

and y'all don't want that.

- So it's about time skateboarders

got together and built a park.

I'd like to thank everybody for showing up

and showing their support for skateboarding in Venice.

- You know, the problem that happened down here

between the skaters and the bikers back then,

uh, I thought that pretty much killed it for all--all time.

- Any development that happens in this part of Venice

is subject not only to all the city process,

but the Coastal Commission also has to approve everything.

- We really thought it was just the end of the road for us.

- There'd be a lot of meetings.

Well, we found out one of the meetings

was being in San Diego, so Ger-I Lewis, Tod Gessel,

uh, he got a van. He had a van

and, uh, just stacked up everybody that--that was around

to go, you know, represent Venice at this meeting,

to show that we had, uh, solidarity

and more than just two or three guys.

Here we are as a van--

a bunch of us showing up and shocking them.

- And we had a strategy,

is we brought in a bunch of kids, you know,

young kids, saying why they wanted a skatepark.

Because, for one, you know, a bunch of old guys coming in

saying we wanted a skatepark wasn't gonna do it.

- And of course, it's a pretty motley crew of people, right?

Got in there, and, uh, Jesse got up and spoke,

and he's a--he's such a powerful speaker,

and he's so Jesse.

You know, everybody in there is so corporate, and, you know,

Jesse's just this, you know,

down-and-dirty skater from Venice,

and he got up there, and he talked.

- Yeah, hi. My name's Jesse Martinez.

I'm a lifelong resident, born and raised in Venice,

and I've been skateboarding for 31 years in that neighborhood.

And, uh, well, sometimes people lose sight of the skateboard.

It's not just a toy.

Most of my family are all gang members in Venice,

but just because I found a skateboard when I was five,

it broke the cycle of--

of that gang life that I was heading toward,

'cause I wanted to skateboard.

And now my son is a skateboarder, too.

But it--You know, sometimes it leads

to so much better things than me becoming a gang member.

Instead, I became

a professional skateboarder for eight years.

And now my son is, and I'm sure his son will be, too, now.

Unlike my older brother who is serving time in prison.

His son is in prison, too,

and I kind of feel I failed him

by not giving him a skateboard when he was younger

to pull him away from that general direction.

And I'd rather choose being a skateboarder

than a gang member any day of the week.

That's basically it. Thank you.

- They all--They applauded him and everything,

and I think it was unanimous

that they voted in favor of the skatepark.

- Any objection to a unanimous roll call?

Seeing none, the project is approved.

- [ cheering ]

- We got it.

- [ overlapping chatter ] - Yeah.

- Skatepark! - Triumph.

- Yeah.

- Got the skatepark. [ laughs ]

- Unbelievable. - That was beautiful.

- We just fuckin' made history. - Fuckin' sweet, dude.

Like, Venice has never had a skateboard park ever.

They made shit, dude. Like, we grew up

watching that shit in magazines and videos,

and now we're responsible for fucking making a skatepark

that's going to change lives, dude.

- We were so naïve back then and young,

that once it was approved, everyone thought that just--

it would just, you know, handle itself

and get done, I guess.

They just, like, I guess, in essence, appeased us

by approving it and hoped we'd go away.

- It was certainly a lot of bureaucratic resistance.

There's always bureaucratic resistance to a new idea.

- The City of Los Angeles

was really difficult to work with on this park.

[ on-screen ] It's all about politics

In the meantime, there's over 20 skateparks

built in Los Angeles that went in without any problems.

- Mayor Riordan, when he was the Mayor,

came down here and went to one of the workshops

planning the restoration of the beachfront.

Then he came back from this workshop about a half-hour later

and said to me, "Ruth, your job is harder than mine."

- I don't know that I've ever been to a meeting in Venice

that didn't have some level of chaos.

And the closer you get to the water,

it seems to be the more chaotic the meetings get,

so any meeting about anything

down on Venice Beach was chaotic.

- Everybody screaming what they want,

how the park should be.

[ crowd yelling ]

- There was some city people.

There was a guy from the Kings hockey team that was there,

and it was the funniest thing when he stood up

and suggested that they build a roller rink

for the rollerbladers and the skateboarders to, uh,

"do their thing in."

- Part of the plan was to be this combination

roller hockey rink and skatepark.

And at one point the Kings were involved

to pony up some dollars for that.

- We kinda looked at each other, like,

"Who's gonna stand up and answer this one?"

And it was only appropriate that Jesse stood up,

raised his hand, and said, "Uh, excuse me,

"but if you do that, there's gonna be a lot of problems,

"and you're gonna have fights,

"and you're gonna have to deal with it,

and it's not a very good idea."

- They were trying to build a hockey rink, right?

And we're like, "We don't fuckin' play hockey.

This is Venice, man."

- [ cheering ]

- Wintertime, ice hockey, summertime, roller hockey,

and they were gonna fund it,

and that was gonna be shoved down our throats.

- Eventually it died out.

The community wasn't all that jazzed about it.

- Pretty much, though, we were kind of the core

that just kept going to these endless city council meetings

and getting, like, turned away and coming back.

- The VSA pretty much pushed

every step it took to get this park,

from meetings, to learning, to lawyers,

to adapting to every new city guy

we had to deal with the last 23 years.

HEIDI: The money would come in for the park,

and then it would disappear.

It would get sent somewhere else,

and the park wouldn't get built.

- By the time we had agreed with them

that what we needed was a planning group of skaters

who would work with the city,

then reapportionment hit, and I got moved

out to the Valley, so I lost, uh, authority.

- Who do we need to talk to at the city,

to get on our side, to give us the correct information

to proceed forward to get a park built?

- Just seemed we were trying to so hard for so long

that, you know, it just seemed like a hopeless case.

- You have to be in the right place

at the right time with the right combination of people

and the right things happening. It's like--It's luck. Right?

- The real truth behind the whole thing is,

if you really want to bottom-line it,

how that park got made,

without, um, Bill Rosendahl, that park wouldn't exist.

- Here we go! - Yeah, Bill!

[ music playing ]

- At a certain point in my life,

I figure I'm gonna run for office

and see if I can make a difference

in the political process.

And I got elected. Got sworn in July 1 of 2005.

And as an elected official representing the Westside,

the first thing I said is, "Where are my skateboard parks?"

- You know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease,

and if you have a kid at your home saying, you know,

"I want a park. Where's my--

"Where's the park for me to skate?

You know, Unka Dunk, what are you doing?"

I think that that was, like, our little magical factor

that made the park happen right now.

- He was a skateboarder, and he lives in my house

with his father at this particular point in time.

And there was no place to skateboard,

so he built his own, uh, skateboard

right on our street.

He hammered things together, and made this kinds of stuff

and up--and all kinds of things that they make in skateboarding.

- So every day, we--we'd drag our ramps out from our yard

and bring 'hem out here into the street,

and we'd set 'em all up right here in the street.

And, of course, this poor lady would get angry with us

and come out and yell at us and--

- One night, I came home,

and the whole neighborhood was in an uproar.

"This is driving us nuts. How can this be?"

So then I said, "Oh, I'm gonna find out what's going on.

Why don't we have skateboard parks?"

And I found out there was one

that had been worked on for 8 to 10 years in Venice,

but it was languishing, and it was languishing,

because there wasn't the focus and the direction

and the support given from the elected official,

and they were out of money.

- Council Member Rosendahl's office

and Mike Bonin elevated this project

to, I believe, one of the highest priorities

for the district to happen,

and with that endorsement, it really picked up speed.

- So I said, "How much more money do you need?"

And they said, "A couple of million dollars."

- Now, the Damson Oil site actually had funds set aside

for something to build here.

- There used to be oil wells even where we are,

So there's a source of funds

from this oil well remediation fund

that's all unique to Venice Beach,

and the council office opened those funds up

to provide some funding for this project.

- Some money came from there,

but, uh, I think they needed more money,

and they said it came out of the general fund.

Um, I'm not exactly sure what that is,

but that's what I've been told.

- We have the Venice Property Surplus Fund,

which comes from developers that put money in it for projects,

and it was sitting there,

so I took the 2 million, I gave it to the city.

I said, "Now there's your money for the park.

Now stay focused, and get it done."

- Its one of the things in my life that's restored my--

it's so corny-- restored my belief in humanity.

- The fun for me was grabbing skateboarders

and saying, "Get in a room.

Figure out what you really want."

- You ask five people what they want in a skatepark,

you get 10 non-negotiable answers.

- Honestly, I think this park had five different plans,

five different stages that it went to to get to here.

- Jesse really, I think, made a point of bringing in

some of the--the heroes that came out of this neighborhood

as far as professional skateboarding goes

and really valued their opinions,

and I think part of that makes it the unique park it is.

- You can literally see how this park evolved

from this little flow-course nothing

to what it is now.

- And in fact, toward the end of the design,

Jesse had a really good idea to try and rework it

to get the snake run in that's in there now.

- You know, park designs depend on what's going on

within the sport at the moment the park is designed,

and the designs are unique to the communities

in which they're being built for.

- As far as transition and kind of like

what this--this neighborhood's known for, style and all that,

I mean, as far as the way it's laid out,

it's--it's a completely unique oasis unlike any other.

- Zach Wormhoudt, you know, and those guys--

incredible guys at California Skateparks,

they definitely bent over backwards, you know,

to change the small things that we requested

literally to--to the last minute of building this park.

- Construction for the park began on December 31, 2008.

- Hey, how are you? - It's time, my dear.

- All right. All right. - How are you?

- I'm Bill Rosendahl, the Council Member

that represents the 11th District.

- Just remember when it's up and running

and you guys are playing there,

that you started it by the first shovel.

- [ cheering]

- This is a wonderful moment,

that we will finally have a skateboard park

for the kids at Venice Beach.

- I hear the chain saw startin' up,

and I start watchin' these guys chop down the palm trees

at this lined-out perimeter they had.

And I went--I thought to myself, "Is it really true?

"Are they really starting to clear the way

for a skatepark in Venice?"

- And then, like, when they started digging

like, that was a big surprise. I couldn't believe it.

- Hey. Look! - Hi, Dan.

- They're tearing it all out.

- Once the concrete, you know, the rebar,

and they started digging,

it was an incredible feeling to know that all a decade

of pushing to get it built is really gonna happen.

And I'm not too old to skateboard still.

I-I'm gonna get a chance to enjoy it myself,

you know, and Jess as well.

- This is a reflection of us.

This is what we were able to accomplish

working our way through a system.

Not just getting this thing built,

but proving that you can go through channels

and do things in a correct manner.

if you're dogmatic enough, you can complete something.

So as a community, it should be

kind of like a shining touchstone

for people to be able to hold on to,

like this was something that they did.

- I believe this is gonna be

the one part of the snake run coming around.

You know, I'm not positive. And that's the smaller bowl,

and then over there's the bigger bowl,

which I am sure of.

- It's interesting. This used to be a tainted oil field

and is a property that--

you know, and it was a city yard,

and--and since, they've never been able

to figure out what to do with it,

so this is a productive use of this property,

which is extraordinarily encouraging.

NARRATOR: The park was finished in September

and opened October 3, 2009.

- The most expensive skatepark in the world, $3.5 million.

A lot of pride to be shown off that, you know,

we can do this, you know,

just a bunch of ragtag skateboarders.

Lo and behold, we got it done.

- It's really a tribute to

not so much to government

as to the dedication of people in the skating community

who were willing to work with government.

- Fact that we have a skatepark,

a skatepark that is right on the beach looking at the ocean,

that we play in every day is beyond me.

It's just the most special thing.

- We built the biggest and the best at Venice Beach,

uh, and that's happening.

It's probably the biggest attraction in Venice Beach now,

uh, in the last 10 years.

- For me, it's like-- it's, like--comes full circle.

- Finally we got a park, and I'm stoked.

- When I go look at that park right now,

when I went past there, I think--

I wanted to pinch myself,

like, is this really happening?

It was almost like a--just some crazy dream that you had.

- When you go out there, you literally get chills,

because you know what went down in this neighborhood

for the last 30 years

wasn't happening like that anywhere else in the world.

- Ah, opening day was just, uh, incredible.

There was a lot of uh, you know, pride.

[ overlapping chatter ]

[ cheering ]

- [ barking ]

- March!

Honor guard...

halt!

Right face.

- [ cheering ]

- Board!

Fire!

Ready. Aim.

Fire!

Aim. Fire!

- You know, someone came up to me, you know,

told me, "A long fight was a good fight."

For a long time, I thought that was--You know,

I thought I really knew the meaning of that sentence.

I'd say until last night,

when I was standing out here by myself,

looking out at the park done.

I was quite amazed and, uh, shocked

it being right in front of me finished

and the next day'd come, and this park would be opened.

And, uh, at that moment, I truly understood

what that guy told me, that a long fight was a good fight.

It made me extremely proud to stand there and look out

and go, "Yeah, we did it."

- Yeah, we did. - [ cheering ]

- But let me tell you something.

This didn't begin here or in 1986.

This began in the early seventies...

- That's right! Yeah!

- when our Dogtown fathers,

Skip Engblom, Jeff Ho, Stecyk, Nathan Pratt.

And let's not forget about the Zephyr Team.

They're the ones who made up this style of skating

and the attitude to go along with it.

And let's not forget the most important thing they created.

They created this thing called tradition,

and this tradition is Dogtown.

- That's right! - [ cheering ]

- And this park behind us

is a testament to what they started,

and this tradition will carry on

to the true fourth generation of Dogtown.

- Thank you! - Respect!

- As I step down from this competitive sport,

I will keep this park clean, safe

for all the kids to have somewhere to come

and not have to deal with all the B.S.

- Amen. - [ cheering ]

- For the next 50 years,

Dogtown!

- [ cheering, whooping ]

- Yeah, baby!

- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!

[ music playing ]

- My favorite thing of the day was Ray Flores

showed up in white shirt and a tie.

I've never seen him in anything other than a T-shirt.

- It's not even from a thrift store.

- And I said, "What are you doing?"

And he goes, "This is what it means to me.

This is how important it is to me."

- * No time to get hitched, man *

* Playing, so I switched names, swervin' in the 'burb *

* But damn it, watch me switch lanes *

* Nah, nah, they sittin' on 26 Mains *

* But, ah, Lord, that party got me hit, man *

* I got the product if you fiends need a hit, man *

* They need me like the bike need a kick stand *

- * Oh, let's go, let's go, let's go *

- * Just clap - [ clap ]

- The street section, I've already seen

some amazing skateboarding go down there.

[ music playing ]

CROWD: Oh!

- These kids have a place to go and rip any time of the day.

- Jesse came up with the idea for the snake run

when we were-- when we were designing it.

I personally thought

it was gonna be an old, you know, thing.

This is what we had in the seventies,

so I knew all the old guys would like it.

I didn't think any of the kids were gonna care for it,

so I was kind of against it.

I didn't think it was gonna be great.

I was wrong. I was totally wrong.

It is, by far,

the most popular part of the skatepark.

- The Venice Skatepark snake run

is one legitimate snake run,

and that's something that was really missing in L.A. County.

But that thing is special. That thing is special,

and it--and it rides like a true snake run.

But at the same time, you have this whole bowl,

this kind of, like, miniature pool

with metal coping at the end,

so you have--you have this basin to go do your rip shred,

but you have this whole trail

to set you up for speed beyond belief.

Like, you can go a hundred miles in there

if you know how to skateboard well.

- It's just fools you into thinking

that you can go as fast as you want,

and then, uh, next thing you know,

it rears its head out,

crushes you into one of the walls.

- Small bowl is a sleeper.

I call that the "sleeper bowl," 'cause looking at the layout

and--and watching the building process,

I thought that might be the worst thing in the park,

but in actuality,

it's one of the coolest things to skate.

- I can tell from a lot of guys

that I see skate that on a regular basis,

it, uh, has a lot of good flow to it.

It's really fun.

The extension on it's great.

The roll-in's great.

Uh, You see a lot of good skating

going down in that thing.

- The big bowl is pretty special.

I think it's a throwback

to the classic bowls of the seventies

from the skateparks back then.

There's no waterfall.

There is a slight gradation

on one of the shallower drop-ins.

I think it's got girth, which is a good thing.

You can half-pipe that bowl. You can carve it.

Whatever you got for that bowl, uh, you can do in there.

I think it's got a lot of big transition.

I'm glad that it's not below eight feet.

I'm glad that it's 9 1/2 feet.

It's--It's solid.

It's--It's a good staple for--

for the young generation to learn how to ride the bowls

the way the older generation has taught them.

- One of the things I like about Venice is it's a new spot,

and I'm really excited to go ride a new spot.

Not only that, but a world-class spot,

one that you can keep going back to and never get bored.

And find new speed lines, and ride with new people,

and just have a good time,

and that's--that's what skateboarding's about.

[ music playing ]

- Whoo!

[ music playing ]

- We never carry stuff on the beach,

'cause we're always dancing.

[ dispatch chatter ]

[ waves crashing ]

[ seabirds calling ]

- Hey, you guys got a permit?

What's up, man?

- Every day, you're down here doing this?

- Seven days a week.

Every--Every frick--

Ah, son of a bitch!

God, I hate these. But you know what?

They didn't hit the park,

but still, that is the park.

- So you gotta clean that off?

- Yeah, right now. - Every day?

- Every single day.

- And every day, what's going on?

- Every day, there's bullshit,

graffiti, trash, hobos, bums, you name it.

Every day.

But it's nothing different.

You know, it's just the beach.

It's always been like this.

You know, I knew it wasn't gonna change

because they put a skatepark here, you know?

This is gonna stay the same. This is L.A.'s backyard.

You know? Shit, you can't stop it. Ha.

Once we got the park,

the next day after the park opened, we went,

you know, "Hey, nobody's here to clean it,"

so we just started cleaning it.

You know, fall to it.

You had to clean it, you know?

Yeah, there we go.

Unfortunately I think I'm gonna have to bring

the pressure washer out for this one.

I'm sure when the kids who do this now,

when they get older,

they'll realize how stupid this shit is.

You know, when they get in their 30s

and they have kids and they have their own pad

and someone tags on it

and they have to go outside and fix their fence or,

you know, get the shit off their car or something,

they're--they're gonna understand that,

you know, "I was a dumb-ass," you know, back then. Heh.

- Right now, it's a little moist,

but it's actually kind of sticky at this point.

You know, Venice isn't known

for having anything really nice for very long.

If we had paint, it would be slick,

and people would-- would slide out.

There's a park in Australia that is right on the beach.

It's got graffiti on it.

And we just had a pro come back

from a contest over there, and he was like,

"It's a deathtrap." You know?

It's just too--It's too slick.

- We're proud of the Venice Skate Association

for one reason and one reason only.

We got this park made,

and we're out here every day cleaning it.

- I arrived here this morning at about 5 A.M.,

and, uh, close to 15, 20 tags were put in here.

They were all definitely of poor quality.

Some of the higher-up graffiti artists had told me

they consider what these guys do "trashfiti."

Like always, we set everything in motion.

I--I ran home, got on the phone,

started making phone calls,

started getting the gear together.

And, uh, I wasn't really too worried about the troops,

'cause I knew they would come.

As the day goes,

more and more people would show up and start helping.

And pretty much that's what happened.

You know, we had guys

who don't even help on a regular basis coming up,

asking, "How can we help? What do you need?"

Now, here it is, six, seven hours later,

and, uh, we're, like, 25 minutes away from calling it done.

And it sends a message, too, to them.

You know, I'm pretty sure they think they were funny,

whoever did that. Well, if you want to waste your paint,

come in here, and tag the whole park up,

you know, as long as nobody catches you

or nothing, go ahead, but guaranteed,

we are gonna show up that morning at 5:00,

and we are gonna clean it nonstop

until all the graffiti's gone.

- I'm Joe Connolly.

They call me the Graffiti Guerilla.

I've been removing graffiti and working with people

in the graffiti art movement for about 20 years

in the City of L.A.

You know, to have an area as big as this

with only just a little bit of graffiti on garbage cans,

it's--it's a goddamn miracle. It's--I mean, it's a miracle.

It's--somebody's paying attention.

- Whatever happens at night happens.

We just have to deal with it the next morning.

We can remove the graffiti,

you know, if-- if we get it early enough.

You know, we can keep the park clean,

no matter how dirty it gets,

no matter how much coffee is spilled

or drinks or beer in the morning or broken glass.

It's not really even a neighborhood thing now.

It's more like a skater thing.

It has really taken on a life of its own,

and I really appreciate everybody's effort to help,

'cause we can not do what we do without 'em.

- Really, the VSA isn't just a few faces.

There's numerous amounts of volunteers

that we have that help here every day.

They make up the VSA. It's about community, right?

- You know, when I see new kids around here, I greet them.

I welcome them to the park.

I let them know if there's a problem,

"You come see me personally."

When they're injured, I am Johnny-on-the-spot.

I'm here, you know, most days.

- Sometimes the little kids were just like--

They just need a helmet,

and you know they're gonna wear it,

so we'll just give it to them.

- 'Cause he has a bigger hat size than his dad.

Does that feel-- That's weird. Hold on.

- It's just giving back to the kids,

giving back to the community of Venice.

Yeah.

That's the reason why I'm doing it.

And I also get to skate this place, too.

- This was my opportunity to be a part

of something that I believe in.

It's good, because we care about the kids here.

We get to give them a lot of guidance here,

give them something positive to do

in--in a positive environment.

- Lance, Lauren, Primo, Blue,

I mean, they're here giving their own free time.

There's the table here for--

to put your board and tighten your trucks up.

There're tents here. There's first aid if they need--

anybody needs help, somebody gets hurt.

I mean, what other skateboard park has that?

Do you know one? I don't.

- The number one benefit

is that when your kids are hanging out here,

they are not hanging out on the street corner,

drinking a 40. That's a guarantee,

'cause they're not doing that here.

We don't allow people

who are, you know, drunk and stumbling off the boardwalk

to come and hang out in the park.

- You're on your way.

- This is for skating. That's what this park is for.

You know, it's supposed to be a safe place.

- Think the LAPD and the VSA have, uh, come a long way.

'Cause every, uh, spring when they come in

and introduce themselves,

and they--they talk about what their goal is

and the mission of the VSA, what they're doing out here.

We have a new set of Beach Officers

that are coming down here,

and they come in, introduce themselves.

Think the LAPD and the VSA

have, uh, come a long way

to--to work together and to tackle the issues

that they have over there at the--the skatepark.

- The Venice Park is still-- It's still a little bit--

There's a little bit of-- I don't want to say territorial,

but definitely local pride,

because the kids that are coming up here

and their parents that skated, they're really rippers.

I think more pro skaters come out of here than anywhere.

I'm used to seeing this level of skating.

It's like everybody I know can skate like that.

You know, I don't-- And then I travel, and I go,

"Wow, kids don't skate like this anywhere else."

So this is definitely the Dogtown guys

and the way they sort of mentor the kids up,

and it's very competitive. They're not slackers here.

They don't just hang out on a board,

They skate. You know, they really skate.

- We didn't have cookie-cutting homes, you know.

I didn't come from the Brady Brunch.

But it--But it doesn't mean I'm a bad person.

It doesn't mean that I'm not willing to help out.

You know what I mean? And have good ideas.

So when--when Jesse's out there doing stuff,

and he--it's from his heart, you know?

And--And the people in the VSA, it's from their heart.

- Venice Beach is a breeding ground

for innovative new tricks as well as--

Some of our kids today, they're skating just like adults would,

and they're learning twice as, three times as fast

because of all the knowledge

that's getting pumped out from video games

and also just having

guys of our time and younger teaching.

- Whoo!

- We've got a whole new crop coming up.

You know, we've got, uh, kids like Kiko and Asher.

Talking six, seven, and eight years old,

and they're blowing away

what we were doing, you know, back in the seventies.

- When I was, like, two, my dad tightened the wheels

so it wouldn't slid off. So I just stand on it.

- You got little kids like Kiko, just--He's up and coming.

You got kids like Asher.

There's Jamie Quaintance here,

whose dad was an old-school Venice local, you know?

Now his son has, like, kind of, taken over that,

you know, position, and they're out here ripping.

You know, they're out here representing

kind of a forgotten neighborhood.

- Yeah, I know almost everybody who's here

that's, like, good at skateboarding, pretty much.

Even the kids, you know, all the kids look up to me.

They all want-- "Oh, I did this trick.

I did that trick." And I'm like, "Yeah, man!"

You know, I encourage them as much as I can.

I love it. It's just I feel like a--a king here.

- [ cheering ]

- Ah, maybe a prince.

- Like, I've had some six-year olds

that just rip super, super hard, you know,

and they--they just get it.

I don't know what it is and why certain kids just--

You know, I guess it's all about the athleticism.

- My run is first that I, like, go right there.

First I go on that top thing,

and then I go around and round,

and then I go air on the front-side hip.

- Bingo! - [ cheering ]

- Mostly that's all I know.

- It takes a village to raise a child,

and so all these kids have been raised in our village,

- and you'll see 'em. - Ah, I love skating here.

I mean, you're on the beach. You're in paradise.

- The skatepark right here is pretty hectic.

A lot of people get hurt out here,

but a lot of people progress.

- When I was 11, my brother, he used to skate,

and I would sit around the park,

but finally my friend Ashley, she told me to get up and skate.

So, yeah, that's how I started skating, but I loved it.

- This skatepark really, like,

you know, changed my life around,

and I appreciate people here, the VSA members.

Um, Jesse, Blue, Tonan,

all those guys taught me how to skate.

I'm really appreciative to them.

- Kids of today are so lucky and fortunate

to not only have this as, like, their place to really flourish

and become some of the best skateboarders in the world,

but they also have the legacy of what came before them.

- My dad, growing up, was a skater.

He skated with Dogtown, and he was a shredder.

He grew up with Jay Adams

and Christian Hosoi and all them.

So, I mean, I've always been involved

in the skateboarding world forever.

Jesse Martinez is like my uncle, so...

I just-- It's always been in there,

so since I could crawl,

I was pushin' around on a skateboard.

This is my town.

Like, I could never do wrong here.

- My advice for a young skateboarder

who wants to go pro, you know,

you might want to find a company that's a little smaller,

that has somebody that really cares

about who you are as a person.

- Don't do it for the fame and fortune,

because if that's what you're looking for,

it's gonna be like water going through your hands.

- Get out there. Get out there everywhere you can go.

Everywhere.

Skate everything. Skate hard.

- You know, partly because of my son Julian

and my other son Christian,

I have a whole different outlook on this park...

and the legacy I'm gonna leave behind one day here.

I don't want to leave this legacy of...

ass-kicking pro skateboarder.

- To have this being here and now

for the next generation of kids,

it's beyond, you know, a dream come true for me.

- So, uh, Venice to me is right up--

right up there with some world-class spots now.

I mean, right on the beach,

and the whole town of--of Venice is just poppin' right there.

It's gonna be a hot spot.

Kids are gonna come

from all over the world to ride this park,

and it needs to really be, you know--

It's gonna make Venice another world-famous spot,

like it deserves to be.

I mean, the roots of skateboarding

are right there in Dogtown. There it is.

- Money, you won't be remembered for.

But to be a Dogtown Boy and a legendary Dogtown Boy,

you will be remembered forever,

and that's--that's more than money can ever give me.

And I'm just, uh--

Let's just say,

I'm more than proud to be called a Dogtown Boy.

[ music playing ]

- Big respect, and we owe it all to the O.G.s,

you know, that laid down the foundation.

And, you know, all I gotta say is, "Big up,"

and thank you very much!

- Wanting to-- to resurrect a place

where our children can grow up

and have a place where they can become

the best skateboarders in the world.

- Um, this is Jayce. He's two.

And this is Dez, and he's four.

Future Venice originals right here.

[ chuckles ]

- Being able to, uh, compete

and have, like, a place that they could call their own

and develop their skills, you know,

this is really gonna give a lot of opportunity

to those young kids.

- And this is our home away from home,

and, um, I'm pretty picky,

so this is definitely a great place to come to.

Trust me on that.

- Jesse's always done everything he can for skateboarding

and probably more than anybody else for this Venice Skatepark,

so he does it out of heart.

He's been a skateboarder his whole life.

And, uh, you know, most people, you'd say, like,

they'd do it for free if they didn't get paid,

but he is doing it for free and not getting paid,

so he's doing it out of his heart.

So why don't some of you guys start payin' him?

- I feel in a way, Dogtown will never die.

As long as we have the new generation coming up

and remembering where you're at, where you're from.

*