Not bad for someone that ended up selling to K-Mart. It was pretty fucking cool of them, for a bunch of robots. You were seeing those guys in the magazines and then the Varibots were in Detroit hanging out? If those guys were coming all the way from California to Michigan and sleeping on floors, nothing was too good for anybody. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. So none of the pros that came through were pulling any rock star attitude toward you? It was the days of, “Hey, do you have a mattress I can sleep on?” It wasn’t like the days of staying at the Radisson either. Yeah, but also, at that time, skateboarding wasn’t super hot yet, so to go places where people appreciated you was a good deal. I don’t know why anyone would want to hang out in Michigan for a week, but he did. Mike Folmer bailed out on his flight home and spent a extra week in Michigan. They hung out with us, like they were our bros. How were they when they came to the park? Alan Losi, Steve Hirsch and Patty Hoffman came out, too. Eddie Elguera and Eric Grisham came out to skate twice. We had the Variflex team come around a couple of times. It was built by local contractors, but it came out fairly well. Later on, they built a replica of the Dog Bowl. They had a freestyle area, a snake run, a keyhole pool, a peanut pool and a half pipe made out of concrete. I’d seen what was going on in Florida, and I was like, “We’re going to do that here.” That’s when I got my first kicktail board. In ’78, they built Endless Summer Skatepark in Detroit. The first skatepark I ever rode was in 1977 in Port Orange, Florida. We were always putting plywood up on cardboard boxes and calling them ramps. On the East Coast and in the Midwest, the only thing we knew was what we saw in the magazines.ĭid you guys have any skateparks you were going to or were you building ramps? There are the agro guys like Jay Adams and Tony Alva, and then there are the super smooth Valley guy like Stacy Peralta. That’s when I saw the difference between the gnarly agro skater and the guys that just had super good style. Well, he was on every other page of the magazine, so he was hard to avoid. Were you looking at the skate magazines at that point and checking things out? I had a Bahne with Chicago trucks and wheels. I seriously started skateboarding in ’76.
Poser skate quiz serial#
Tell us your name, rank and serial number.īill Danforth. WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE LIMELIGHT. “I DON’T WANT TO SEE A FRITO’S COMMERCIAL WITH A SKATEBOARDER IN IT. So when he comes to town, hide your rollerblades and your China wood and buy him a Budweiser because he has something to tell you.
A blue-collar skater from way back, Danforth is a poser’s nightmare.
It’s evident in the heart and soul he puts into every contest run. Unless you have a good sense of humor, you will hate him as much as he says hates you. Bill is a walking irony of love and hate. We’ve been friends ever since and through the Alva days with Bill being the lone skinhead amongst a gang of hair farmers, Bill kept his sense of humor and integrity intact, along with a steady supply of beer, chicken wings and frontside rocks. My first vivid memory of Danforth was sitting in the Turf parking lot and watching Chris Baucom wrestle him down and drawing the word “HATE” on his forehead after Bill’s half hour hate-filled rant.