“Two hundred years of American technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground of unlimited potential. But it was the minds of 11 year old that could see that potential.”
– C.R. Stecyk
My first stories were skateboarding stories inspired by C. R. Stecyk‘s Skateboarder Magazine articles, his fabrication and chronicling of the Dogtown’s Z-boys’ adventures. As a sheltered kid turned skateboard geek growing up 60 miles away from Santa Monica, I was blown away by the exploits of the Z-boys and the skaters that became my heros. But I also devoured and dissected the stories and began “borrowing” his openings (which I would later learn he’d borrowed from Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett or Hunter S. Thompson), then wrote my own skateboarding procedurals.
My main character was a teenage private eye, asked to solve some mystery or another, find a missing person. Criss-crossing Southern California in a hot-rodded Volkswagen Transporter, blasting Led Zepplin and Ted Nugent, and (later) punk rock along the way, the stories inevitably climaxed with the arrival at an empty backyard swimming pool or hidden ditch that begged to be ridden. After an epic skate session, he’d solve the mystery and arrive home in time for dinner.