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[BIRDS CHIRPING]

LARRY: Venice is, do what you wanna do,

be who you wanna be.

JIMMY: Roller dancing is my escape.

It's a part of me.

SALLY: When we skate,

it's the only time when you're free.

DUVAL: Roller skating made Venice Beach what it is today.

A lot of people don't wanna give us that credit.

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

Welcome to Venice, California.

We're live at the beach.

LARRY: When we started skating,

we would have literally rolls and rolls of people just watching us skate.

It was something nobody had ever seen before.

They've seen people roller skate,

but they didn't see anybody dance.

We lived and breathed skating.

I mean, we slept with our skates on.

When I was just a little kid,

skating around with all these adults

and half-naked women, and it worked for me.

They called us "street skaters".

Meaning that we don't have any formal training.

Our practice is performing.

A lot of the technical skaters

that do, like, the competitions,

they have to do the axels and the lutzes.

Their moves are already pre-programmed,

and I don't like pre-programmed.

I like to have my shit organic and natural.

We would get out there, like, 12:00 in the daytime.

We'd leave at, like, 8:00 at night.

I used to get cramps at like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning from skating.

SALLY: You just had the most wonderful black culture

in all these different forms.

Everybody was there to skate.

Everybody was there to enjoy the music.

It was a black beach

which, you know, in a city, that never existed anywhere else.

I just loved it because it's where I felt like I belonged.

I couldn't really relate to a white beach scene.

I was about black urban culture,

but for once, not being confined to the ghetto.

We get to enjoy the beach.

We get to be in the sunshine, having fun.

It was pretty much black people from the inner city

who've come out to the beach.

And that's what was great about Venice Beach.

LARRY: There was a lot of songs that we skated to,

but our theme song was Prince's songKiss.

[ KISSPLAYING]

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

JIMMY: It was just like a party.

The more people that were there, the more hyped we got.

[CROWD CHEERING]

People were going,

"Wow, they're not just skating,

"their choreography is incredible.

"They're all in sync."

I really got a kick out of performing.

I hadn't been around this kind of atmosphere.

I hadn't had that kind of attention.

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

DUVAL: When we got 300,000 to 400,000 people on a weekend

coming down to Venice from all over the world,

we turned out to be Venice Beach celebrities.

MAD: All of a sudden, this phenomenon starts

picking up real fast.

LARRY: All of a sudden, Venice Beach was on the map.

We definitely were rock stars down there.

TERRELL: Our crowds, because of the music, because of the people,

they would literally sit there for hours.

But we're not asking you to put money in a bucket.

Maybe your phone number, but not money.

SALLY: The girls out here were practically groupies

that'd be like falling over themselves

wanting to get to the guys. [CHUCKLES]

[CROWD CHEERING]

About 10:00 to 5:00.

That's the best time.

[CHUCKLES]

DUVAL: The ambiance out there, the applause,

you know, the cheering out there.

The more we got, the better we became.

[CROWD CHEERING]

Everybody from around the world

come out there to see us.

Oh, we were rock gods.

We were the ones on Mt. Olympus.

TERRELL: Back in the day for blacks,

there were only certain places that you could live.

South Central, Watts, and so on.

It was very segregated.

So, this was the only beach area

where blacks and Mexicans were allowed to live.

LARRY: And this is the place, Oakwood,

that's where it all started out for me.

My roots.

Oakwood was different when I was a kid.

It's full of black families.

Black people have lived there since 1905.

In fact, the canals of Venice were built by black people.

TERRELL: No one really wanted to be in Venice.

It was the slum by the sea.

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

So, Venice, even though it was born out of segregation,

it would've never had the culture or the flavor that it has now.

It's an artist place where everybody can be free to do what they want.

It made Venice into a Beatnik,

kind of a Bohemian type of place.

It was the wild wild west.

You can be yourself, you can be crazy.

Whoo!

We got our own area.

It was this winding snake-like place,

but the concrete was smooth, it was level.

We could blast the music.

People could watch us from both sides.

And that became disco alley.

[CROWD APPLAUDING]

JIMMY: OG means you're original.

These are the people that started this,

the first ones that made it popular.

OG really means "Original Gangster".

Me, Sally, Larry,

Duval, Terrell, Mad.

We were a family.

TERRELL: Everybody has their own flow, their own style.

And that's what makes it hot.

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

My style is kind of a fusion of hip-hop,

skating and break dancing.

LARRY: Terrell's style, arrogant, show-off,

very good.

JIMMY: Terrell was somebody that was always an entertainer.

He's a great dancer.

He feeds off of attention.

You're smooth with him.

It'd feel like a part of your body, period.

JIMMY: Larry's style is a lot of movement with the skates

with crisscrossing of the wheels and really fancy feet.

TERRELL: Larry is the Swiss pocket knife of skaters.

He can do a little bit of everything.

You can be so graceful, and it's so much fun,

and it's just like sex on wheels.

It's freedom.

JIMMY: Sally was smooth.

She glides on her skates.

And she would get into her own world.

You would see her eyes would shut.

You would be like, "She's gone."

TERRELL: She's got the long legs,

booty sticking out.

She's graceful, elegant.

She's the Cadillac of us skaters.

My style, they called me "buck wild",

'cause I get really crazy on the skates.

I'm almost gonna fall,

and if I do fall,

I started learning how to actually make that into a move.

TERRELL: Jimmy's style is what we call "organized confusion".

He's the perfect skating tornado.

'Cause I do the crazy legs like no other.

I put my heart and soul into it.

JIMMY: Duval's style is out there.

He was different.

TERRELL: And he wore the big baggy pants

with the cowboy boots.

The Superman logo and all his cartoon characters that he drew.

LARRY: He brought a free spirit there.

Always had that crazy smile on his face.

DUVAL: Uh, I came up with what was called the Pinocchio Theory.

I have no strings to hold me up,

to hold me back or to hold me down.

That particular move became now known as "The Matrix".

I wanna say something to the Wachowskis, "Where's my royalty check?"

because I did that move before the movie even came out.

[CHUCKLES]

LARRY: Who helped to take the line dance off

was the guy known as Mad.

TERRELL: Mad was our leader.

He's like the godfather of skating.

SALLY: He was the king of the skate world.

When I first saw Mad, I couldn't stand him,

you know, because of the look.

You know, that's just like... It's his look, you know.

JIMMY: Mad was strength.

He was chiseled.

Six-pack.

He looked like a cobra.

SALLY: He's what Mr. T wants to be.

He's what Arnold Schwarzenegger wishes he was.

They're not it, he's it.

And he kinda, you know, at first, was like, "Who are you?" you know,

"What's your name?"

And I was like, "I'm Jimmy." and he's like,

"Stay out the way." You know?

When I would watch him and see what he could do,

I was like, "Hmm, dude got some skills."

[RETRO DANCE MUSIC PLAYING]

TERRELL: Mad, at his best,

is like a bull in a China shop,

except for he doesn't knock down any of the China.

SALLY: It's poetry in motion.

I mean, the way he moved, it's just like incredible liquid poetry.

JIMMY: I was in awe of Mad.

It looked effortless when you saw him skate.

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

JIMMY: Mad was a great mentor to us

because he made sure you got it right.

"Do it again. No, do it again.

"That ain't right. Do it again."

He motivated you to be good.

TERRELL: Every time I would come out,

"You brought your little ass back out here again?

"Come on, you might as well learn how to skate with feet this big.

"Come on over here."

So he would tease me about that.

He would show me a move,

then he grabbed all over my shirt and have me like...

And I'm like, "Get off."

My mom would be like,

"Why are your shirts always so wrinkled in the shoulder when you get home?"

I'm like, "Oh, that's Mad." "Who is this Mad?"

"He's like my big brother, I guess." kind of thing.

LARRY: Everybody idolized him. I did.

Everybody tried to mimic Mad's style.

The boombox we had out there that Mad built,

it was our lifeline.

It was the beat of Venice Beach.

TERRELL: Mad was the one that called out the line-up,

so what he said, we did.

It was just steps and you just learn the step.

Or you don't have to, but, I mean, then you'd be off by yourself.

If you wanna be part of the group, you had to learn the step.

He'd be at a party one night, dancing, like,

"Wait a minute. I'mma put that in a routine."

and then, boom.

[RADIO SCREECHING]

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

LARRY: Mad is a kid at heart, as well as I.

We watched cartoons.

So Mad basically took certain steps

and named them after cartoons.

They were basically the Transformers.

It was like, Omega Supreme, Optimus Prime, Dinobots.

That was Mad's thing.

JIMMY: Mad was everything.

SALLY: I don't know. I think of him like a lion.

Head of the pride.

JIMMY: So when Mad stopped skating,

we lost a leader.

He's more into his motorcycles now.

He traded eight wheels in for two.

LARRY: It just changed.

Everything changed down there.

They took my beats away from me.

SALLY: We didn't see this coming.

MAD: The roller dream out there was taken away.

It didn't fade, it was taken.

NEWSCASTER 1: A riot zone it was.

The worst riot in the history of Los Angeles County.

NEWSCASTER 2: Six days of rioting in a negro section of Los Angeles

left behind scenes reminiscent of war-torn cities.

NEWSCASTER: More than 100 square blocks were decimated by fire and looters,

and few buildings were left in-tact.

[SIREN WAILING]

Brought up in Watts.

The Watts riot, I was ten years old.

Black people have been under stress

and false accusations just by being black.

White man was basically in charge.

The Watts riot started with a police officer disrespecting a black youth.

When the mob came out, a police officer,

he did something he shouldn't have done.

It was all white businesses in an all black neighborhood.

Every business in Watts that don't belong there,

they just got burned out.

Right down there, the whole street on both sides.

Martial law showed up.

Military showed up.

Anything caught outside after 10:00,

don't arrest it, shoot it.

For a person like me to witness something like that,

it's some hard shit to swallow.

It was very nerve-racking

to a point where you look at things and what you're going through,

how the world really is, and it ain't what you think.

This is the street I was brought up on.

This house right here, we lived in the back.

Five of us lived in this house.

All the nightmares and everything,

it happened here. This is where it started at.

I didn't have a childhood.

In the family, there was no love. There was no understanding.

Didn't have a dad,

but my mom had to be the man of the house.

SALLY: Mad grew up in a very abusive home.

Whatever problems his mother was having,

she tended to take out on him.

Spent the majority of my time in closets, hiding from her

because when she came home,

we were basically waking up 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning,

getting damn near beat to death.

And I didn't understand that.

No matter if you was a kid or not,

long as you was colored you couldn't be trusted.

When we saw the police, first thing we did was...

"We out here."

When they caught us, "Why you running?"

"You the police."

"What that gotta do with it?" "You the police."

This is like a hand-me-down from generations.

"See the police? Run."

And when you're brought up around something like that,

you know, you never lose it.

Then one day, I decided to go to Venice.

I just saw a guy out there

who just was skating to a transistor radio.

When I got bored enough,

I started asking him, "What was that?"

Got me a set of skates to put that ball under the foot,

took that toe stop off and I got busy.

Skating basically meant the world to me

because of what I wanted to do with it, for me.

I didn't just wanna do the routine,

I wanted to be the routine.

SALLY: So Venice was his escape from all that.

Venice was his playground.

It was the one place he could go to express himself and be free.

He was channeling all that pain into his skating

and he turned all that pain into something really beautiful.

Not having a childhood, this is gonna be mine.

And I told myself,

"Nobody out here is gonna rain on my parade."

It's so hard to fully explain

my resonance with African-American culture.

I'm Middle Eastern,

and I grew up in a very, very racist environment.

In the South, you're either black or you're white.

"Black or white" is the way they would say it to me.

"Are you black or white?"

And, um, you know, I never knew what to say.

I came to Venice Beach back in '82.

It was America at its furthest point.

Multicultural, hip, authentic.

I saw Mad skating, and I was just blown away.

MAD: Sally was a nice-looking girl.

Very slender.

She had my attention.

I was on her like skin on grape.

When it came down to the introduction thing, I already knew.

I hopped onto her, I got up in her face,

and she was, like, stuck on a smile.

SALLY: He just turns his skate to the side,

and in one incredibly rapid movement,

just glides right over to me.

Now he's like inches from my face,

towering above me in his skates.

And he just looks down at me and he goes, "What?"

"Will you teach me?" I said, "Look, lady,

"you get some skates. I'll teach you."

And he's like, "Be here tomorrow, 3:00."

I took my life savings, which was $100,

and I paid for these roller skates, you know,

having no idea if I could actually skate.

And then I just started going out there every day.

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

I never gave any thought that Sally would be my skate partner

until I started teasing her.

Then once I made her do the hard numbers,

she did it.

"Man, wait a minute. Do this again."

And when she did it, I got a smile then.

"I'll be damned."

SALLY: "I hope you're what I think you are,

"the skating partner I've always dreamed of." And I'm like, "Yes!"

Because, of course, I was hoping that he could see in me

what I really believed I had inside of me,

I could really move soulfully and really be a great partner for him.

TERRELL: Skating kept me out of trouble because it was that something to do

for those eight or ten hours on a Saturday or Sunday

while I wasn't in my neighborhood.

I'm from South Central LA.

[ENGINE REVVING]

The two permanent black gangs are the Crips and the Bloods.

I lived in a Crip neighborhood,

but there were two different factions of Blood gangs around.

You had to know how to navigate

through the world of the gangs,

and in my case, to navigate without being in a gang.

On my way to Venice, I would take the bus,

and I'd have to go through several Crip neighborhoods just to get to the beach.

And it was like coming out of where I come from,

where you have to fight or dodge bullets or whatever.

It was like a utopia. It was like my little sanctuary.

LARRY: But his mom didn't mind him coming down there.

even though he was a kid.

It kept him out of trouble.

We looked out for him.

We looked out for everybody that skated in that area.

We became inseparable.

I mean, we were turning into a family.

JIMMY: My brother, he got caught up in some stuff.

He was a playboy gangster Crip.

He ended up going to jail,

incarcerated for a long period of time,

so he spent more than half of his life in prison so far.

He's been in jail over 35 years.

When I turned 17,

I was hanging out with some people that were not doing the best.

I would've had to have join a gang

in order to survive in that neighborhood.

I just needed to get away.

I needed to find some new friends.

When I came to Venice, it kept me out of the hood, it kept me out of trouble.

I would say it saved my life.

We didn't have to worry about gang members or anything like that

because Mad is so known all throughout Los Angeles that even gangs know Mad.

TERRELL: Mad would never let somebody get jumped.

And I've seen many times where there'd be, like,

five Crips on one Blood or five Bloods on one Crip.

He'd look and he'd be skating.

"The hell's going on over there?"

And then he'll take off. "What is he doing?"

So now, I'm trying to keep up behind him.

And he'll get to a crowd of people and he just starts throwing people out of the way

and they'll all turn like,

"Oh, yeah, okay. No, I'm good."

He was the law and the jury and the judge all at the same time.

He was more like a protector.

MAD: I didn't trust nobody back then.

I didn't smile. I had this look.

And when I said something, that really scared them

'cause of the voice and the size.

People looked at me like I was a monster.

LARRY: He looks like this guy that just wants to rip your head off

or something like that, but he's gentle.

The music was the most important thing.

Without no music, nobody knew what to do.

The six-pin, a slingshot

slide into it, the alpha.

You didn't feel like doing none of that

'cause you had no motivation.

The music was the motivation. Like a night club.

Is there a night club where there's no music?

That wouldn't go.

When that song Nasty Rock came on,

I felt what was going on, knew all the cuts.

The song came on, everybody knew what to do.

[ NASTY ROCKPLAYING]

[WOMAN LAUGHING]

ALL: Whoo!

[WOMAN LAUGHING]

Come on up.

In the '70s and the '80s,

it was a whole different country,

especially in the black community.

And the music reflected that.

When you incorporate dance into that,

there's so much self-expression,

especially if you're lucky enough to be skating to some meaningful music.

I will tell you, the greatest protest folk song that was ever written

was by Mr. James Brown.

I'm Black And I'm Proud, that song meant so much to so many people.

-♪ Say it loud -♪ I'm black and I'm proud

-♪ Say it loud -♪ I'm black and I'm proud

SALLY: And when we skate to that song, it does something.

You have people just saying, "Goddamn it, yeah."

-♪ Say it loud -♪ I'm black and I'm proud

♪ One more time

-♪ Say it loud -♪ I'm black and I'm proud

♪ I worked on jobs with my feet and my hands♪

My theme song coming up in this

was Egypt, Egypt by Egyptian Lover

'cause there was this breathing part, it was like...

[BREATHING HEAVILY]

And I could thump and flip and do all my tricks

to that song.

The girls would tend to like to see my booty move.

Any song with a lot of breathing

allows me to move my butt, which allows girls to watch my butt,

which allows me to meet girls.

It's a love triangle of music, skating and women.

[CROWD APPLAUDING]

LARRY: Mad was just about fun and women, period.

He's getting in trouble all the time with his girlfriend.

"Larry, watch the box." and he's gone.

"Oh, God, here we go again."

And I go, "Where's Mad at?"

"I don't know."

TERRELL: Mad would see somebody sitting there and have me like,

"Terrell, come here."

Grab me by my shoulder and just like,

"See that girl over there? Go get her number for me."

I'm like, "Uh, okay."

and I'd skate over, "Excuse me, Mr. Mad wants your phone number."

And she's like, "Who the hell is Mr. Mad?"

I'm like, "Uh, that big dude over there."

And she's like, "Oh, tell him to come here."

So I'd go back, skate back,

"Mad, she said you need to go over there."

"All right." Then Mad scoots over and gets her number.

And that's how we did it.

MAD: I was mostly into myself

more than a woman wasting my time.

Mad was more of a big brother than a dad

'cause the dad wouldn't tell you some of the shit that Mad told me.

He would give me words of wisdom like,

"Stick and move. Stick and move."

basically meaning, "Don't get caught with one woman."

Stick and move meant, get one, get done with it.

Get another one, get done with it.

So when he found out that I was having a kid,

he was like, "Oh, you stick and got stuck."

HOST: We have the Venice skaters here,

and I think they're gonna start the show.

We have Mad here.

[CROWD CHEERING]

And let's her it for Terrell, Jimmy.

[PERCUSSION MUSIC PLAYING]

SALLY: When we all lived in small tribal communities,

whether you were in Ireland or Africa,

men would dance together.

And it's a beautiful thing.

And that lives in roller skating.

But there's nothing like a great dance or skate team.

There are things that a team can do together

that just create a certain magic,

like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

I always used to think of me and Mad

as being the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of roller dancing.

The soulful version.

If it came down to going somewhere

to sell it to the public,

she was the ticket.

All females, basically.

It's never the guy that sells a ticket,

it's your partner.

SALLY: My friend from Sweden happened to come by

and take these photos one day,

and I was sort of almost embarrassed by it

because my love for him is so obvious...[LAUGHING]

It's almost embarrassing.

Man, I had one of the great love affairs of all time

without even necessarily having a love affair.

JIMMY: Some people are performers, some people are watchers.

I started seeing footage of myself, pictures of myself,

and people coming and saying, "Hey, look, I found you."

I never really recognized what it looked like,

and I realized, you know, this is...

"You're doing something very unique."

Instead of celebrating us or thanking us or paying us,

Hollywood comes down and tries to exploit the talent.

NARRATOR: He's the best skater around.

She's the hottest date in town.

Together, they're love on wheels

inRoller Boogie.

DUVAL: We taught Linda Blair how to skate.

She was like all feet. Nowhere to go.

LARRY: All of those roller skate movies,

all carbon copies of what we did down in Venice.

MAD: Roller Boogie, only showing Linda Blair,

this dude doing some Scott Hamilton, Dorothy Hamill shit.

Uh, where's the talent in that? I don't see it.

DUVAL: Skatetown, USA.

The whole story was centered around a bunch of white guys.

This white guy, white girl picture.

I mean, none of us are being represented.

Skatetown, USA,where they wanted to cut me in half

and put this dude on top of me.

And I'm like, "You gotta be kidding."

They was like, "What's wrong with that? Everybody does it."

I say, "How they gonna know who I am

"if they're only seeing this part

"with some dude that I don't even know on top of me?"

I said no.

LARRY: Xanadu.

They didn't really get skaters.

You have clowns,

you know, 'cause they're doing flips, they're flopping.

They're doing everything but skate.

Anybody can skate in a straight line.

But can you do the other stuff?

MAD: People came out there, they got upset.

"I can't even see the roller skaters.

"I heard so much about them.

"Where the white people at?"

"We watched it on movies."

They wanted white America out there,

but Venice is about the only beach that's black.

LARRY: They definitely whitewashed it.

SALLY: If we were to look back

on what record do we have of the skating phenomenon

that really was a part of black culture in America,

you wouldn't see the phenomenal things that happened on Venice Beach.

We would see these ridiculous movies,

silly Afros,

ridiculous clothing.

The tragedy of that is that history has just been completely rewritten.

That becomes what people think the culture was.

DUVAL: It doesn't give any of us skaters

who are out there over the weekend any representation.

We have a black Green Lantern, but there's no black Superman.

So I was like, "We gotta remedy that."

Keep it hidden, as you can see.

And this is yours truly

in regal fashion.

I'm Superiad, the forgotten prince of Krypton.

These are my skates of power,

the most dangerous skates alive. [CHUCKLES]

Skating is a need to express yourself,

the same may I do in my artwork.

I'm a freelance illustrator.

And this is my dream called Roller Coasters.

TheRoller Coasters was my very first creator owned series.

I sat there and thought one day,

"Why not have a roller-skating superhero team?"

The reason why they have skates on,

because they're lightning fast.

They're faster than the speed of sound.

This is Mr. Mad.

He's the perfect character. [CHUCKLES]

Strong, brash, and very, very impulsive.

SALLY: Nobody mattered like Mad did.

He was really an artist,

and his dreams were like any artist's,

to show the world what he could do.

He didn't allow himself to have a lot of dreams.

Dreaming is dangerous territory.

Skating with me the way he knew I could skate with him,

skating in competition,

was the only dream he ever allowed himself to have.

And then I went and fucked it up.

So even though skating had suddenly become this wild obsession,

my life-long passion and my career was music.

So just as I was becoming a skater,

I went off to Europe with my songwriting partner to do a tour.

My very last day, and we're in London,

the folks I was staying with, he calls out,

[IN BRITISH ACCENT] "Sally, could you come down and help me jump start the car?"

And I turned to run to the other side of the street

and ran smack into a car.

And the car actually ran over my foot and into my knee,

and sort of permanently destroyed

what would've been my great skating career.

She came back with some crutches,

walked over to me, "Hey, how you doin'?"

I froze and I look.

I went, "The hell happened to you?"

My nightmare just started.

Nobody else was capable of doing what she did.

SALLY: He was like, "You'll never be able to be really good again."

And he turned away from me and didn't speak to me for, like, two, three years.

I basically dashed the only dream

he'd ever really allowed himself to have.

My dreams, everything went down the drain.

SALLY: I didn't understand why he was ignoring me.

And what was really frustrating

is that he would be teaching all these other girls

who just didn't have it in them.

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

REPORTER: The three police officers facing felony criminal charges

were among a group of 15

who stopped a 25-year-old black man last Saturday night,

then beat him, kicked him and clubbed him,

unaware that an amateur photographer

was recording the incident on video tape.

MAD: When the guy filmed the police beating Rodney King,

black people used to seeing that.

That was no big deal.

JURY MEMBER: We, the jury, to the above entitled action,

find the defendant, Stacey C. Koon,

not guilty of the crime of assault by force

likely to produce great bodily injury and with a deadly weapon.

The jury is what started the riot.

[SIREN WAILING]

The world just blew up.

NEWSCASTER: The National Guard has been called in to quell widespread violence

in South Central Los Angeles.

The violence erupted after the acquittal

of four white policemen in the beating trial of black motorist Rodney King.

There's been looting, buildings has been set ablaze.

So far, eight people reported dead.

Scores of others have been injured.

Governor Pete Wilson has declared a state of emergency.

LARRY: The riots were a turning point.

Everything down at the beach changed.

It broke the continuity that we had down there.

It just shattered everything.

All of a sudden, drugs became notorious.

When crack cocaine came out, this place flipped

because, I mean, it's definitely so addictive

that it took people you know that were straight-A students and good people,

all of a sudden and just turned them into thugs,

and people doing whatever they felt they wanted to do just to get a hit.

LARRY: So I started experimenting with heroine, crack

from about '86 and '93.

I was... I was out of control.

MAD: Larry was on a roll of self-destruction.

He looking like whatever them drugs,

whatever that nighttime thing he was doing,

it was on him.

He was showing it in the look.

And we couldn't trust something

to be left right here

if Larry was there.

It came up missing.

LARRY: I was a burglar.

No house was safe.

The day that I got busted, I didn't know the cops were looking for me.

And I was at a crack house.

When I came out this house, as soon as I walked out,

"You Larry Pitts?" "Yup."

And that was it.

You know, I kind of pulled out of the skating scene in the '90s

for a short while because I had a child,

you know, my son was born, and I was busy being a mother.

But meanwhile, other forces were changing the scene.

[STATIC BUZZING]

[HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYING]

SALLY: The big record companies

started hyping up the worst wannabes in every genre,

but especially hip-hop,

which degenerated almost exclusively into gangster rap.

♪ Crack rock, silver pots Manage to get dough

♪ Crack rock, silver pots Manage to get dough

♪ Crack rock, silver pots Manage to get dough ♪

It's really painful to me because we used to have music

that we skated to that empowered us.

How did we get from the '70s,

where everybody was learning

how to listen to one another and respect one another,

and to now?

"Bitch better have my money"?

You expect me to skate to this shit?

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

DUVAL: All they talking about is the bling-bling

or how many ladies they have

or how much gold they got on

or what kind of cars they're driving or whatever.

I don't wanna hear all that.

MAD: I mean, these lyrics,

a lot of "M-Fs," some prostitutes,

that's the number one song

and I'm supposed to, what, enjoy that?

Why the motherfucker's always standing in the middle

at a fucking skate way doing nothing?

JIMMY: That music had to be popular,

had to be what was going on at that time.

It fueled the fire.

MAD: LAPD back then,

they got too many black people in one spot.

That's gonna be a problem.

Just about every weekend, a uniform would show up.

And I knew right then and there that something was about to go wrong.

[YELLING INDISTINCTLY]

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

[CROWD CHEERING]

MAD: And all of a sudden, out of nowhere,

the police got orders.

"Amplified music on the beach is not allowed."

JIMMY: The police started coming and shutting our music off,

and have decibel meters and say,

"You can only have it this loud."

and we'd be like, "We can't even hear it."

The police were afraid of the number of people.

I mean, you'd have like 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people there

and there's only 20 cops or ten cops.

I think they got afraid that if something jumped off,

they wouldn't be able to handle the situation.

SALLY: Then the cops, they started shutting us down at 8:00,

then they started shutting at down at 7:00,

then they started shutting us down at 6:00.

And I was saying, "Man, if we let them do this,

"soon they'll be shutting us down altogether."

MAD: "I gotta tell you one more time,

"you and this box is going to jail."

This is my goat, my goat. Yeah, uh-huh!

It's right here.

-Mad here. -Right on.

Turn it back up.

I say, "No."

"Put your hands behind your back. You're going to jail."

"For what?" "For amplified music."

"Whoa, you gotta be kidding."

WOMAN: Who's in charge?

They put you in charge?

MAD: The police came. They came hard.

And they came directly at me.

SALLY: During that period,

Mad was thrown in jail repeatedly.

I don't know how many times, but it was a lot.

When we were roller skating in the '80s,

we thought things were gonna get better.

You know, we honestly thought that a lot of the prejudices

that we grew up with in the '50s and '60s or whatever

were dissipating.

We didn't see this coming.

All we wanted to do was dance, skate and play.

There's no reason for this reprimand

or for this enforced nonsense.

We have got a little problem here.

After 20 years of doing this for you guys,

LAPD has decided that they don't wanna do it.

Fight for our right, guys.

MAN: [IN MEGAPHONE] I don't think there's a black race or white race.

We're all the human race, right?

There's no law against skates, so we're gonna skate.

ALL: ♪ No music, no music

♪ Come on, come on No music, come on

♪ It's in here Come on ♪

Being black and getting music on the beach

was far as, in white community

and white eyes, no.

"You guys can have fun, but not like that."

I have a look of,

"You need to come fuck with me."

First thing out of their mouth,

"What penitentiary you just got out of?" Attitude.

"What makes you think I've been in a penitentiary?"

"Look at you.

"You see, you're a serious threat. How'd you get that size?"

SALLY: First, he couldn't drive without getting pulled over,

and then he kept scaling down.

Bicycles. He still got pulled over for speeding on his bicycle?

And I don't think it's easy to imagine what that's like.

When you walk out your front door,

you're automatically a threat.

Mad is the black man that white America fears.

And he's the... He's the image.

NEWSCASTER: Venice Beach roller skaters are now skating on thin ice.

At issue is this piece of pavement.

The police say they need emergency access to the beach,

and that this smooth piece of concrete,

a haven to skaters for two decades,

is one of the few routes to the sand.

It's never been designated for that.

They've never got a law or an ordinance passed for that reason.

And they didn't do their homework.

NEWSCASTER: An alternate spot has been offered,

but it's slanted and flawed,

and in the lingo of a skater, "cracked heels."

We hesitate to call it racism,

but we can't help but wonder

why they're selectively enforcing it here.

They have indicated to us in the past

that it's because we attract "a certain element,"

which we all know what that's a code word for.

MAD: They picked out who they wanted to be on the beach

and who they didn't want to be on the beach.

[PEOPLE CLAMORING]

And then they end up finally figuring out

that the only way they can really destroy us and get rid of us

is to rip up the pavement.

SALLY: That land under which we skated

was sacred ground, as far as I'm concerned.

And they just bring in bulldozers and rip it up.

That's when the soul left Venice Beach.

I'll be damned when it was good.

I'm going with it. I can't do nothing else with it.

Time for me to go.

MAD: No more skating.

I miss it, but I can't go back over there.

MICHELLE: I think he misses skating a lot.

He has such passion in what he does, and if he can't...

That's why he's not skating now,

it's because if he can't do it right,

he doesn't wanna do it at all.

Original Steel Horses jacket.

Just about everybody in the club has one of these.

RUSTY: He's my mentor, he's my mechanic,

my personal trainer when I'm getting ready for races.

He likes to teach if you wanna learn.

[ENGINE REVVING]

MICHELLE: I think, sometimes, he's trying to run away

from all his past.

James wakes up mad.

And it takes everything he has in the day

to keep him from showing that side.

WAITRESS: Your eggs.

-You're kidding, right? -[WAITRESS LAUGHING]

WAITRESS: You want your hamburger and your eggs on the side, no?

I wanted two eggs.

Yeah, but he wanted it separate.

I wanted it separate. Two eggs separate.

MICHELLE: I always call him "The Incredible Hulk"

because he's one of those

that when he gets mad, he can really get mad.

Hey, homie. Dude.

Tell her I don't want that burger.

Didn't fix it right the first time.

I don't need a second.

[MICHELLE SPEAKING]

Yeah, fuck me.

LARRY: I couldn't skate in prison.

But when I got back out, I was able to do everything. I remembered everything.

But when I came down to the beach,

all of a sudden, it's changed.

It's not like it was

because they've taken us away from where we were at.

I said "Where's Mad?" "Oh, he don't come down there anymore."

Everything was changed. Everything was different.

And I was ticked off.

And they, like, shoveled us off to the side,

in a corner.

We were totally invisible.

SALLY: These days, the cops don't have to harass us anymore

because we've been neutralized and marginalized.

They've got us shunted off in that funky little area

which has, coincidentally,

become the hygiene-challenged homeless area.

It's not what it used to be,

back when Mad, Jimmy, Terrell, and I

were down there doing our thing.

TERRELL: I think with Mad being gone,

there was no real leader.

SALLY: The skating scene's really gone.

The heart and soul was being lost.

TERRELL: So we need Mad back in Venice Beach to get that back.

INTERVIEWER: If you ever went back to LA,

ever went back to Venice,

would you go back out to Venice

and would you skate for old time's sake?

If they brought it to that situation, I would.

MAD: Utah is not the problem. It's what's in Utah.

And they want you to be, like them, not be yourself.

You can take a boy out of the hood,

but you can't take the hood out of a boy.

I mean, you're talking about Utah.

That's Mormon country. I mean, there's snow up there.

You know, I can even remember him telling me,

"Man, I ain't never felt nothing like this before in my life."

I'm like, "What?" He said it was cold.

[LAUGHS]

MAD: You visit the snow, it's lovely.

You live in the snow, it ain't lovely.

Utah was not a place for me.

I needed to go home.

[ENGINE REVVING]

LARRY: I think Mad came back from Utah

because it just... It wasn't him.

He misses the beach. He misses...

He misses everything that we used to do.

What it feels like to be back?

I don't like what I'm looking at.

I'm looking at the new changes and trying to adapt to it,

but there's really nothing to it.

It's like a showboat place.

Back in the day,

I used to live right up there before it was Muscle Beach.

It used to be just an apartment.

None of this was out here.

[WAVES SPLASHING]

[CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]

LARRY: My whole way of thinking changed. Everything about me.

No more drugs, no more drinking.

I just work. That's it.

I'm the appliance M.D., you know, I'm the doctor.

I've been doing this now going on about ten years.

Something that was given to me by a best friend of mine, D,

another skater.

Gave me a life.

Venice today is commercialized.

It's not what it used to be.

It's changed a lot.

To me, I wouldn't say for the better

because it's... It's too preppy now.

It's not family-oriented like it was when I grew up here back in the '60s.

That's new.

The house here is new.

Another new home going up.

Now, it's like everything is bought and sold in a week.

Somebody come here, "I don't like it. Tear it down.

"Throw something new up, you know, another box."

This right here, they've changed everything.

This is where I grew up as a kid.

This spot right here.

And my grandmother and grandfather lived right here up front,

but all of this has changed.

This is a tree we planted.

It was cool growing up here. I really loved it.

I mean, I love Venice right to this day.

And if I hit the lotto, this thing's gonna come down

'cause I'd give them what they want

just to build the original house that I grew up in

right here on this spot.

I would love to have it. I really would.

SALLY: I'm like a great American tragedy now.

Enormous potential, and I'm living in a garage

without a bathroom and a kitchen.

I'm living on $740 a month.

I have about $20 a week for food.

I keep a smile on my face,

but it's really humiliating to be this poor.

It's really humiliating to never have money

and never be able to buy anything, never be able to do anything.

MICHELLE: The job that he's now doing, which is security,

Mad doesn't like to be micromanaged.

He's one of those who needs a job

that you tell him what to do, and he just goes and does it.

MAD: I'm working at an area I used to have fun at.

I'm working at a beach I used to come down

and be known when everybody comes by.

"Mad!"

Yeah.

Do I like it? No, I do not.

I gotta pretend like I'm happy to see these people.

Every time I go apply for a job,

they ask you that one question right there,

"Have you ever been arrested?"

I'm stuck.

Am I a harsh criminal? No.

But in the eyes of the world, I am.

People are like, "What you crying about?"

"You won't believe what I went through

"just to get a couple of years of roller skating in."

TERRELL: Racism is actually worse today.

Before cameras and all of that stuff,

brothers were getting pulled over and...

I've been pulled over and handcuffed

and had to sit on a curb while they go through my car

at least 12, 15 times, for no reason, and they let you go.

"Okay, you don't have anything."

[CLAMORING]

But it has gotten worse

because it's gone from ass-kickings

to, like, unarmed shootings.

Now there's cameras and Twitter and Facebook,

and so people are filming it and posting it

before cops can even, like, say,

"Oh, no, we didn't do it." "Yeah, you did."

-[SIREN BLARING] -[SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]

JIMMY: I don't hear of black-on-white crime as much,

but I do hear of police-on-people crime a lot.

To me, that's the racism.

[HELICOPTER HOVERING]

SALLY: Meanwhile, Venice has been gentrified

and ethnically cleansed of the positive black role models

that the skaters once were

so that, what I would call the terrified affluent, feel safer.

That's one of the many downsides of racism,

that it causes people to misjudge good people

or a whole neighborhood as bad

out of sheer brainwashed terror,

and they trust people that they shouldn't

just because they look a certain way.

It's a shame that America is still so plagued by racism,

but here we are.

[PEOPLE LAUGHING]

[CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]

You don't have to go do this shit.

MAD: It was pretty shocking when Michelle had set up

a birthday for my 55th year.

The people that she had come to that party.

She has surprises all left and right,

and they walked in one at a time.

Just about everybody that came in came off that beach.

MAN: There you go. The 1980s.

TERRELL: Whenever we all get together,

it's nothing but, like, but just pure reminiscing and fun.

It just takes me back to those days.

LARRY: We started talking about skating and stuff.

I said "You gotta come out and skate."

[ALL LAUGHING]

Oh, my God.

Y'all know what I'm saying.

I'm not going to show this to nobody.

They already said, before and after.

MAD: It hit me like a ton of bricks

'cause all I'm thinking about is

how it's been invigorating,

a tight turn,

slow motion.

Hitting that split.

I cannot do that now.

People I haven't seen in a while, thanks for coming out.

Damn.

Elvis, want some?

Don't tell the other ones.

I can't keep nothing around if they can't do what it used to do.

Michelle is more, like, you wanna keep 'em till they disintegrate.

But, basically, when they get old,

it's time for me to get rid of them

because I ain't into that nursing.

You can't get up, you can't sit down,

to me, you're done.

Come on.

MICHELLE: I would love to see him skate again,

but I don't think, physically, he's capable of doing that.

He had a huge stroke in 2009.

It messed up his equilibrium.

So, the problem is,

the turns and things like that,

throw him totally off balance.

With skating, he is a perfectionist.

If he can't do it right, he doesn't wanna do it at all.

Once I'm sitting down, I'm cool.

When I'm standing up, that's somewhat of a problem.

All right.

LARRY: He's getting a lot older now.

He can't do the same things he used to.

I mean, if you looked at the before and afters of him,

and I'm talking about somebody that could skate,

oh, yeah.

I mean...

And if he can't do it the way he used to, he's not gonna touch it.

MAD: This is my roller skating bag.

Those skates are the new ones.

Why the heel?

-They all come with it. -I thought they come flat.

-Oh, they don't. -This is like a dancing shoe.

-Disco dancing. -No.

You don't know anything about roller skating.

-I don't. -I might put them back on.

And I think about it a lot, but...

MAD: Thought it was a joke.

I'm like, "Really? Are you kidding?"

All I gotta do is just be there.

I'm like, "Why not?"

MAD: I need my hush stretched.

Gotta be like Michael Jordan in that last shot.

That's the only thing they remember.

The last shot went in and won that series with it.

And for me to put them things on and do that...

Just to talk about it all day long cannot do that.

SALLY: I'd like to see us all out there

skating to those really dynamic,

you know, funky '80s tunes

where that bass just makes you grind your heart out,

and remind people what life can be like when it's authentic.

I could just hear it now, you know.

Mad's like, "Five, six, seven, eight."

And there it would be, you know.

[CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]

DUVAL: Once Mad come out here,

he'll pretty much bring us back.

Problem is, with all the old school gang out here.

You're gonna see some dramatic changes.

[FUNK MUSIC PLAYING]

HOST: Venice Beach, hands up!

Let me hear you make some noise!

[CROWD CHEERING]

We have a lot of things we've been doing over the last 30-plus years.

We've been doing line dances, we've been doing choreography,

so we genuinely appreciate you for coming out and hanging out with us.

We got Larry right here, folks.

Larry is one of the OGs.

He's one of the guys that started line dancing.

We got Duval, Superman in the house.

[CROWD CHEERING]

There's a reason that we have what is now called skate dance plaza.

We fought for it, folks. We all went to city hall.

We fought with the police, folks.

All the time.

Who wants to just dance, folks?

Who wants to follow this man right here, folks?

We wanted to follow Mad, folks.

This is the man who started the craze.

One, two, three, give it to him!

[CROWD CHEERING]

Play the music, Maestro.

Everybody who knows what's called a line dance,

he's the very first person I ever danced with. He taught me all this.

[ NASTY ROCKPLAYING]

MAD: When them songs came on,

I didn't know how to react to that.

I mean, that fucked with me real bad.

And I had to turn around and face these people and put on a show.

In my mind, I was doing this, this, and this, and this.

But I'm standing there.

I said, "I can't. I can't. I need to leave."

Come on, y'all.

All of a sudden, my energy level went low.

Very low.

I just turned around.

"You guys go ahead."

"It's your show now, not mine."

Hit me real hard, what I can't do.

This is hurt.

And I never did roller skating when it hurt.

Like, deep down, up in here, this shit really hurts.

[SNIFFLES]

Saying to myself the whole time, "This is it."

I was eager when it was fun. It's not fun no more.

Look at how easy it is for everybody else to do it.

And you wonder why I don't come back.

JIMMY: I don't know what I would do without Mad.

I don't know where I would have been

if Mad hadn't been there for me.

The heart of Venice right here.

The heart of skating right here.

JIMMY: Thirty-five years later, I still can't wait for the weekend.

You can call Venice our Never Never Land.

We never grew up.

We're the Peter Pans of Venice.

TERRELL: Skating kept me out of trouble.

That's one thing Mad told me, like, always try to be the best.

So when it became time for me to be a dad,

even though I was young and kinda scared,

and not knowing what the hell I was doing,

I still wanted to be a good dad.

So, skating gave me a career and a life and a direction.

I signed with the agency,

I believe, three weeks after my daughter was born.

We got iPod, and then there was Mountain Dew.

It put my daughter through school.

My daughter graduated from college in three years. Ivy League School.

My son is at Indiana University.

Venice raised me.

It made me the man that I am.

Venice is what taught me real skating.

LARRY: Some people may think that the dream is dead.

To me, it's, nah, it hasn't gone anywhere. It's still here.

And as long as it remains here, it'll never die.

I can always replay it over and over and over and over and over again.

So it's not gonna leave me.

It's a part of me, and I love it.

SALLY: You know, I think part of our connection

is we both have enormous amount of pride, probably to our detriment.

We think of ourselves as being very strong and very physically fit.

I mean, shoot, I'm 61.

You know, I've got arthritis, cancer, ripped cartilage.

All my joints are bone-on-bone now.

I'm still skating 'cause I love it that much.

Skating is still the greatest joy in my life.

It gives you so much joy

that even excruciating physical pain is like...

"I don't care."

I feel so grateful that I happened to be

in Venice Beach at that particular time in history,

and to be a part of that scene

because there'll never be anything like it ever again.

It's just incredible.

And there they are.

They're precious.

If anything happened to these,

oh, my God, what would I do?

I couldn't replace them. I'd die.

DUVAL: Skating, to me, is like breathing.

And I'll be like a fish out of water.

Superman without the sky.

SALLY: Roller skaters are family.

I'll always feel connected to all my Venice Beach peeps, you know.

[ALL CLAMORING]

[CAMERA CLICKS]

MICHELLE: There's no way to explain the way Venice Beach was 20 years ago.

There's not the same aura about the whole entire area.

He misses what it was, not what it is now.

Because of the police and the music,

it can never be like it was.

SALLY: But I still have this dream

that he'll put his skates on again

and I'll be skating somewhere,

and he'll just jump in there.

And for those few moments,

we'll be what we always knew we could be,

just phenomenal.

MAD: I still dream about it.

I dream about it every day.

Would you like to be filmed?

[ ONCE IN A LIFETIMEPLAYING]