Lords of DogtownStarring: Emile Hirsch, Victor Rasuk, John Robinson, Michael Angarano, Heath Ledger, Nikki Reed, Jeremy Renner, Shea Whigham
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
Screenplay by: Catherine Hardwicke
Release Date: June 3rd, 2005
Running Time: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for drug and alcohol content, sexuality, violence, language and reckless behavior - all involving teens.
Box Office: $11,008,432 (US total)
Studio: Tri-Star Pictures
Tagline: They came from nothing to change everything.
About The Production
“What we didn’t realize was that the little wheels under our feet were going to take us on a ride through life that none of us expected.” – Stacy Peralta
From the dangerous waves off a long-forgotten pier to the concrete wasteland of a city slum, LORDS OF DOGTOWN brings to cinematic life the rebel beginnings of some unforgettable sports culture stars.
“When you think about American Graffiti or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, they were seminal movies about youth culture,” says Sony Pictures Chairman Amy Pascal. “LORDS OF DOGTOWN is that kind of film. These kids sparked a movement that reverberates to this day.” In the early 70s skateboarding was a mostly dead sport of boring 360° spins and handstands, but certainly not speed and style. A serendipitous convergence in southern California though, led to the emergence of the Dogtown riders: urethane wheels, a killer drought that dried out the region’s swimming pools, and a surfing aesthetic that took hold in the minds of kids like Tony Alva, Jay Adams and Stacy Peralta.
“Because we had these wheels of urethane, a plastic substance that gripped the concrete, we could now ride vertical,” says Peralta. “We used to ride walls as if we were surfing them. That’s how the whole Z-Boy thing developed. We were surfers first who took all our drive and ambition and motivation to become professional surfers and switched it to become professional skateboarders.”
The Z-Boys became famous for their pool skating and radical behavior. Low-riding cement lovers, these outlaw surfers took to the curves and walls of neighborhood pools and invented a whole new style of skating. With one hand stretched out to touch the concrete as they pivoted like their surf idol Larry Bertleman, the Z-Boys’ skating was like no other, inspiring kids the world over and transforming the sport forever.
The Zephyr Team, which they later became, was aggressive, passionate, and poetic. They unleashed a whole new approach to any given terrain -- shred the pavement, or shred yourself.
In 1999 Spin published an article detailing the history of the Z-boys, focusing on the Dogtown experience, and it caught the attention of development execs at several Hollywood studios. One of those executives was John Linson, who worked at Fox at the time. “I grew up in Santa Monica,” says Linson, “so it was a movement I always knew about. I always felt it should be made into a movie.” Linson immediately began talks with Jay Adams and other original Z-Boys to secure their cooperation and involvement.
But first, Peralta wanted to make the documentary version of their tale, and in 2002 the film Dogtown and Z-Boys was released through Sony Pictures Classics, directed by Peralta. The acclaimed film won the former skateboarding champion and original Z-boy the Audience and Director’s Awards for documentary film at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as Best Documentary at the AFI Film Festival, and an Independent Spirit Award.
For Peralta and the other original members of the Zephyr team, having their life glamorized by Hollywood was initially an iffy proposition. The Dogtowners had gone from pure poverty to making rock-star money and leading rock-star lives, and some of them barely survived. This story had to be told correctly. Once Peralta made his documentary, which showed the real, gritty story, he was ready to write the fictionalized version. “I started writing the film shortly after we introduced the documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in the Spring of 2001,” says Peralta. “I had written five screenplays prior to writing LORDS OF DOGTOWN and it was without a doubt the most difficult, mental, ambitious thing I’ve ever done in my life. When it really got tough, I locked myself in my house for two weeks and didn’t so much as answer the phone until I had something.”
Finding the right director was crucial to the project, someone who not only knew what the material represented, but had a vision in tune with a story that bespoke rebellion, attitude and hardcore style. “I knew Catherine Hardwicke from years back,” says Peralta. “We had studied acting together in the eighties and would run into each other often over the years. I saw [her directorial debut] Thirteen and it just blew my mind. I called John Linson and said, ‘You must see this movie because Catherine Hardwicke is the perfect director for us.’ He took a look at it and called me back to tell me she was perfect. He said the opening scene was one of the most devastating scenes he had ever seen on film. So we contacted Catherine.”
Hardwicke, also reaping the rewards of a Sundance hit, had been following the project. She had met Tony Alva and Craig Stecyk, whose original photographs and magazine stories of the Z-Boys helped immortalize them for a nation, on the film Thrashin, for which Hardwicke was the production designer. There was no doubt in her mind that she had to be DOGTOWN’s director. So when she received the call from John Linson about getting her onboard, she jumped at the chance.
“This movie is a dream project for me,” says Hardwicke. “I live in Venice, I surf and I know so many of the people involved in this, so I was just so excited to get that call. I read the script Stacy wrote, went in to meet Amy Pascal at Sony, and gave her my pitch. After a few months of research and preparation, they green-lit the film.”
“I don’t think anybody could have directed this movie besides Catherine,” says Linson. “She has an affinity for these kids, and for the moment as well as the movement. She cares about who these people are.”
The filmmakers agreed with Stacy and the other Z-boys involved in the project. Authenticity was key. And so the production made a decision to employ as many original members to work as both skating and technical consultants in their efforts to remain true to the story and the tone of the times. Tony Alva has been a professional skater for over thirty years and immediately climbed on board. World-renowned skating champion Alva would take on the task of choreographing the stunts for the skaters and teaching the actors not only to skate, but skate in true Z-Boy fashion.
“It was the greatest thing having Tony from the very beginning, helping us scout locations, find pools, train all the skaters,” says Hardwicke. “He remembered everything he did in those days. You can ask, ‘How would you skate up to a girl if you wanted to impress her?’ And Tony will do this cool little move, just fluid and great. He and Stacy and Jay have it in their bones.”
Now it was time to find the actors who would bring this story to life.
Getting On Boards
While Lords of Dogtown immortalizes on film the legends who revolutionized a sport, it also represents a thrilling moment in time for its young cast, all exciting up-and-comers out to make their mark in motion pictures.
“It wasn’t just something like hula hoops or yo-yos. It was part of our lifestyle, and I knew at some point there would be a future in it, but my dad was always telling me there was no future in it.” – Tony Alva
One of the biggest challenges straight out of the gate was finding a Tony Alva, the group’s fastest-rising star and a skater with magnetic presence, the guy Jay Adams once called “the first pool ruler and one of the most stylish skaters of all time.” Associate Producer Beanie Barnes suggested Victor Rasuk. Catherine Hardwicke knew him from the Sundance hit hit Raising Victor Vargas, and she believed he had the right aggressive charm to play Alva. His challenge as a New York-raised actor was to work on losing his East Coast vibe. Says Hardwicke, “I called Victor to tell him about the project, and I told him to get on a plane right now, because he had to convince the studio that he wasn’t so New York. He zoomed out here right away and we found this little apartment in Venice right next to where I live. I took him around with a bunch of Venice guys to get him into the Venice ‘hood / California thing. We got rid of all of his clothes instantly and put him in Vans and beach clothes. We had him skating with Tony on day one. So immediately he just dove into this world, learning how to skate and surf. It was completely foreign to him, but he caught on fast.”
“When I first came out to California and met Tony Alva, I was definitely intimidated,” Rasuk recalls. “I mean, on the plane over I kept saying to myself, ‘Don’t be intimidated because people sense that.’ This guy was such a huge influence on the skating world, and still is, so how could you not be? But Tony made me feel really relaxed right off the bat. He knew I wasn’t a skater and where he needed to start me off from, so he seemed relaxed and patient.”
“I had never stepped on a skateboard before,” Rasuk continues. “Tony and the production took me to Skate Lab in the Valley to teach me how to skate. It had flat surfaces, banks and a few ramps for me to get used to the speed of skating. We did a lot of street skating early in the morning and would carve around trees or just kind of cross streets and do the simple things that really mean a lot. And while he was teaching me how to skate, he was telling me all about his life. He told me anecdotes and stories and personal things that really helped me to develop my character.”
Alva liked what he saw. “Victor is a very intense person and a very intense actor,” says Alva. “That’s the reason he was chosen for this part. But he exudes the attitude I had as a kid and that, coupled with his facial expressions and movements that are also like me, makes for a good me!”
“Comparing our style to the others was like comparing an automobile to a Conestoga wagon.” – Stacy Peralta, 1982
Initially it wasn’t that easy finding the right kid to play the young Stacy Peralta, either. “We were having such a hard time casting Stacy because he’s really strong in a quiet way; sort of like a pillar,” says Hardwicke. “A little bit sensible but still kind of sexy, fun and athletic. And that’s difficult to find.”
But like Rasuk’s casting, Beanie Barnes suggested a movie that cinched it for Catherine. “We saw John (Robinson)’s work in Elephant and I was just praying that he would come down and want to do this part,” she adds. “He’s from Oregon, so the day he flew in for it, I was so excited to see him and he just blew us away. He was so much like the real Stacy.”
Peralta agreed. “You don’t go through life thinking that someone’s going to play your life,” says Peralta. “It never occurs to you, so when all of a sudden your life is being turned into a film, you have to think about who could actually play you. When I met John, there were aspects of him that reminded me so much of myself as a kid, that it was eerie. I was kind of like the more peaceful kid, always having one foot in the door and one foot out the door, always looking at the situation while I lived it. John had that sensitive approach. He was perfect.”
For the native Oregonian, skating was part of his youth, and stepping into the life of Stacy Peralta was easier than he expected. “I had been snowboarding my whole life,” says Robinson. “I went to surf camp in Southern California every year until a few years ago, so I had been surfing for a long time as well. I long-boarded, so I had more of the surfer style of skating which was cool ‘cause it’s kind of what I needed to do in the role.” As a result, John was able to do over half of his own skating stunts.
“Stacy was this really controlled, fluid skater,” says Robinson. “And that really carried into his personality.”
“Most of us just wanted to skate and have fun. Then people started getting paid and egos were starting to grow. All of a sudden it was Dogtown vs. the world.” -Jay Adams, 2001
Who in the world could bring Jay Adams to life? Wilder and harder to rein in than the rest of the gang, Adams represents the sport’s dazzling highs and hardcore lows, but Emile Hirsch wore the role like a glove. “Emile is just a stunning actor with such a huge range, he could go any way you needed him to go,” says Hardwicke. “He looks like Jay, he skates like him and sometimes you could just almost feel that Jay took over his body.”
“[Jay’s] gift and his curse was this crazy kind of spontaneous energy,” says Hirsch. “At the same time, though, it wouldn’t let him be pro. He couldn’t market himself the same way as the other guys. Jay was never really into the business side of it. He was more the skate and destroy kind.”
Hirsch ultimately went to Hawaii to hang out with Adams and get a feel for him. “I watched him and talked to him about his life and really picked up a lot of stories and nuances about the guy.” Hirsch, like his co-stars, had to learn how to skate in the true Z-Boy style. “I hadn’t really surfed before,” he adds. “I boogie-boarded so I was used to being in the water. And I’d skateboarded since I was ten, so I actually had a lot of street skating skills. But I had to adapt to a whole different type of skating which was pool skating, and I had never done pools before, so that was a challenge. Most of my stunts were done by my double Griffin Collins, who really rips the pool. But during the shoot they let me bomb Bicknell Hill, which is this famous hill in Venice. It was a great time!”
Rounding out the four core Z-Boys is Michael Angarano as Sid Gianetti. “He’s the worst skater of the group and the goofiest skater,” says Angarano. “The only reason I’m really on the team is because I’m best friends with Jay.”
A newcomer to the skating world, Angarano needed Tony Alva to get him up to speed with the others. “I had never skated before,” says the young actor. “I could go up and down in a straight line and that was basically it. I started to learn to skate about six weeks before we actually started shooting and I improved a lot. I mean, I had to improve, since I could hardly even push on the board before Tony got a hold of me. But now I’m skating pools and on the tiny little boards basically doing everything and skating in all the places where the original guys actually skated, but just not as well!”
“Skip was the scout leader … he was there to cheer you up or kick you in the ass, depending on what you needed at the time.” – Z-Boy Wentzle Ruml IV, 2000 Of course, without guru-like Skip Engblom – co-proprietor of the Zephyr Shop – this story wouldn’t exist. The eccentric yet paternal Engblom led the Z-Boys to fame, and from the day he heard about the Dogtown movie, Engblom had only one actor in mind to portray him. “I saw this kid in The Patriot,” he recalls, “and when people started asking me who I thought should play me, I said it should be Heath Ledger. Everyone always said it would never happen because he was too big.”
“When Catherine became attached as director, they asked me again, and again I said ‘Heath Ledger.’ Catherine called me a few weeks later and said ‘Guess who’s gonna play you in the movie?’ and I said ‘Whoopi Goldberg?’ And she said ‘No, Heath Ledger.’ I couldn’t believe it.”
“Heath and I met and it was very strange how similar we are. I liked him right away. We’d go to Laker games and hang out a lot. Heath wanted to get to know me and my mannerisms.”
Ledger’s interest in the project was sparked by Peralta’s documentary. In Western Australia, the young actor grew up with a surfboard under his arm. “If you didn’t you were beaten,” he jokes. “My first skateboard was a Powell-Peralta,” Ledger continues. “I left my hometown of Perth when I was sixteen and I stopped surfing then with the exception of two or three times a year. This movie seemed like a wonderful excuse to get back out there. I met Catherine to talk about playing Skip after I watched Thirteen and knew they had landed the perfect director. And knowing that she would be working with the same director of photography, Elliot Davis, who shot Thirteen, really excited me. That movie felt like a story was being captured and moments were being stolen and magic was being discovered, as opposed to [feeling] preconceived and preset and stale. And that is exactly what we needed for this movie.”
“I realized it was going to be an honor to play Skip, particularly after meeting him,” he continues. “He’s such a rich character and a beautiful human being to portray, and that was really the clincher for me taking the role.”
When Ledger tried on Engblom’s clothes from the ‘70’s and they fit him perfectly, it only added to the serendipity. But once filming started, Engblom kept his distance to let the acclaimed actor take what he had absorbed from their time spent together and create a character all his own. “Heath is a brilliant actor,” says Engblom. “He didn’t need me to tell him how to be me. It would be like standing over a great artist and telling him to add more blue in the corner of the painting. I didn’t watch one scene [being filmed] the entire time and can’t wait to see what ends up on the screen.”
To represent the outside forces descending on the Z-boys, Johnny Knoxville was cast as Topper Burkes, a wealthy heir who poaches Tony Alva from the Zephyr team, further splitting up the gang. Says Knoxville, “The guy is a complete character, dressed like Sly Stone, and remade Tony in his style and demeanor. Topper just wants to be a part of something.”
With all the testosterone that would inevitably be shooting off like sparks on screen, Hardwicke knew that they needed some prominent female roles to balance the maledominated story. Nikki Reed was brought on to play Kathy Alva, Tony Alva’s sister and the quintessential “skater chick” who gets caught in a love triangle between soft-spoken Stacy Peralta and wild child Jay Adams. Kathy Alva summed up one of Dogtown’s themes when she described growing up poor, on the wrong side of the tracks: “It was harder for us to dream.”
“Catherine and I have been friends for eleven years now, and I had such a great experience with her on Thirteen,” says Reed. “After I read the script, I knew Catherine would get the job because she has the right energy for it. This movie needs a lot of energy. And I fell in love with the Kathy Alva role so I was hooked. I called Catherine every day and kept asking her ‘how do I get this?’ So I convinced the studio and here I am!”
Rounding out the cast is Rebecca de Mornay as Philaine, Jay Adams’ mother, who was a fascinating character. She is struggling with her own problems, but loves her son fiercely.
The Look Of Dogtown
For a movie whose story is so closely tied to location – the unpolished, hardscrabble look of 1970s Venice Beach – where and what to shoot were crucial decisions for any production designer. Chris Gorak had collaborated on several films as an art director with Hardwicke, herself a celebrated production designer for years before turning to directing. Both trained architects, they had a short-hand way of communicating and problem solving.
Cinematographer Elliot Davis, a trained architect in his own right was another ideal addition to the mix. “We definitely didn’t want to do anything clichéd, or overstate the styles of the time,” says Gorak. “We wanted it to feel real, so our approach was to get an authentic texture to the film, and find the urban beach vibe that Venice had back then.”
But with Santa Monica and Venice having been transformed over the years into havens for condos and hotels, Gorak and location manager Brad Bemis had to look elsewhere for a less sanitized environment. Says Gorak, “At the time, Venice was a no man’s land, where no one wanted to be except kids and troublemakers. So we had to recreate that texture. The Pacific Ocean Pier (P.O.P.) doesn’t exist anymore. And we tried to shoot Venice as much as we could, but would find ourselves in alleys for grit and texture. So we went to San Pedro for a lot of the locations that needed that coastal beach feel. San Pedro hasn’t been ‘Starbucked’ yet, so it felt more like Venice back then. “
THE PACIFIC OCEAN PARK (P.O.P.) was a mostly dilapidated amusement park – long past its ‘60s heyday -- by the time the Z-Boys began surfing there. “It was a playground for outlaws,” says Peralta. “It really defined the topography of what Dogtown was, a seaside slum.” It was the natural jumping off point for the movie, but it no longer exists. That meant it had to be rebuilt in all its junked glory, a very daunting task. The “new” P.O.P. needed to be a wooden, decrepit pier, yet have some depth to it. It had to be in an area that had waves so the actors could surf and filmmakers could get the shots they needed. And it needed a ferris wheel. In a true sign of the times, the ferris wheel was purchased on e-Bay. But where to film? Eventually the filmmakers chose Imperial Beach, California, very close to the Mexican Border, as the site. The locals embraced the filmmakers and encouraged them to build on their beach adjacent to the pier, where a set could be half on the beach and half in the ocean.
“Imperial Beach was chosen because the tide wasn’t too extreme and the waves broke somewhat close,” adds locations manager Bradley Bemis. “The city was amiable to filmmaking, it had a good look and the best waves, so we chose I.B.”
The filmmakers brought in the original Z-Boys to sign off on the details, to make sure every rusted barrel, broken sidewalk and busted-up piece of signage conformed to how they remembered it when they were adventurous trespassers. “I think in many instances it’s much better than it was because it’s the way people think it should have been, which is far better than the sticky reality we were stuck with,” says Craig Stecyk, who documented the Z-Boys in now-memorable photographs and articles. “To stand in it was eerie.”
“It was like stepping back thirty years,” says Tony Alva. “It was pretty incredible.”
THE ORIGINAL ZEPHYR SHOP served as a second home – a focal point of social gathering -- to the local Dogtown kids. The store sold surfboards and a number of other surfrelated items but in the evening turned host to local bands and was the place to be if you cared about all things surf and skate. As one can imagine, the Venice shop was every bit as eclectic as its owners and patrons. “We also found the Zephyr Shop location in San Pedro,” says Gorak. “We needed a street quiet enough where we could close down and film. It had to have a block of commercial buildings, where we could add windows and signage to fit our story.”
THE DOGBOWL location, a grand, perfect kidney-shaped pool that would be the final skating hurrah for the kids, proved to be one of the most difficult locations to find. The original site in Santa Monica/Pacific Palisades is now nothing but a pile of rubble. In the end, a 50’ long, 25’ wide, 10’ deep Dogbowl was custom built at a house in Pasadena. “We actually found the original one and it had been destroyed about a year ago,” says Bemis. “We had to get satellite images from a helicopter to find all of the pools in the area that were big enough to work for us. We found a guide to where all the swimming pools were in L.A. County. There turned out to be about 30,000 of them. Then we drove to some of the locations and flyered the houses and knocked on doors until we found the house we would use. The owners had a pool they wanted to get rid of. We realized we could use an existing wall, and the property in the backyard was perfect. So we enlarged it by 1 ½ times and we were there for three months. Afterwards, we demolished it.”
“They were revolutionary style-setters … snowboarding, rollerboarding, skysurfing, even surfing now – it all comes from what Jay and Tony were doing 20 years ago. So many people are trying to be hardcore now, but those guys didn’t even have to try. It just came to them naturally.” – Kevin Thatcher, publisher of Thrasher, 1999
LORDS OF DOGTOWN was shot entirely on location in Southern California in 56 days. And it was 56 days of a walk – or more appropriately, a skate -- down memory lane for the original members who were involved in the filming. “I walked into the Del Mar contest set,” says Stacy Peralta, “and there’s hippies everywhere, and hay bales and all of the kids looked like we did in the seventies. It was a really emotional thing to experience because I’m not only seeing a time zone that I remember vividly come to life, but I’m seeing a person play my life and my best friend’s lives. I don’t even know how to make sense of it. You’re just inundated with these images. You don’t know if you’re stepping into a dream or if it’s a reality. It was a very Twilight Zone experience!”
The movie has also helped re-establish some friendships that had fallen away years ago in the heat of competition, such as the one between Peralta and Alva. “I loved [Tony] as a kid and hated him for the same reason,” says Peralta. “Because he was so good. Nowadays we can look at each other as adults and just be cool with each other. There’s been a lot of nice resolve with these guys. There’s nothing to win or lose now.”
For Hardwicke, working with these skating legends was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that she hopes is as infectious onscreen as it was her behind the camera. “I feel honored to have directed this movie and to have worked with these guys,” adds Catherine Hardwicke. “Hopefully this film will re-ignite an era that was so important to not only the world of skateboarding, but to the shaping of Southern California history and culture as well.”
About The Real Z-Boys
JAY ADAMS was the first Z-Boy to compete at the legendary Del Mar Nationals in 1975 and his contribution to skateboarding is unparalleled.
Adams was known for sparking trends in a recklessly off-hand fashion, and for being the first to attempt many dangerous aerial maneuvers. Adams brought the spirit, wild abandon and youthful creativity of Little Richard into his skating, taking huge risks and counting on his ability to transform potential disasters into new departures, literal jumping off points for the next wave of skating innovation. According to skateboarder Magazine, “tales of his madness include getting a ticket for skating on the freeway and allegedly skate-snatching the wig off a bald woman's head. His throwing ability with a dirt clod was legendary—total accuracy for up to two city blocks.”
Acknowledged as the most naturally gifted member of the Zephyr Team, Adams was a frequent prizewinner in his early teens and a huge favorite with fans around the world. “He is considered by everyone in the know as the original ‘seed’ the sport sprouted from,” Stecyk wrote. Adams was also the most prominent casualty of the hard-charging Dogtown lifestyle, succumbing to the temptations that went with youthful success.
TONY ALVA has been called “the Chuck Berry of skateboarding, the original.” SkateBoarder Magazine wrote in 1977, “Tony Alva won the World Professional overall title. Two weeks before that, he had set the New World record in the barrel jump. These victories were no surprise to his friends and followers.”
Born in 1957, Alva grew up in Santa Monica a few blocks from the beach. Bouncing back and forth between divorced parents, he graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1975. Beginning in 1962, Alva was a hard-core skater. He is considered the originator of the vertical style of modern skateboarding and was one of the first skateboarders to build his life strictly around the sport. When Hollywood recognized the skateboarding phenomenon, Alva was often involved, appearing in Skateboard (1977) and Thrashin (1986), working with second unit director Stacy Peralta in the later.
The first skateboarder to successfully market himself as a brand name, Alva still owns and operates the trend-setting Alva Skateboard Company from offices in Oceanside, CA. Early Alva skateboards are considered classics, highly prized by collectors. He continues to travel around the world staging skateboard demos, proselytizing for the sport he loves. As recently as December 2004, he was on Oahu with other Dogtown and Z-Boy Jay Adams, emceeing the All Girls Skate Jam. Peralta says “Today, Tony still sneaks into unsuspecting people’s backyards to taste the illicit thrill of riding an empty pool.”
DERRICK “SKIP” ENGBLOM was born in Hollywood, California in 1948. Having grown up in Hollywood and Venice Beach, his father a professional wrestler, and his mother a parttime model and competitive swimmer, Engblom became an integral part of the early surfing and skateboard scene in Southern California. Engblom co-founded the original Zephyr shop, a surfboard and skateboard manufacturer in Santa Monica, where he became the mentor to the “Z-Boys.” When the Zephyr Team (Z-Boys) split up in 1975, Engblom sold his share of the surf shop and moved to Hawaii.
Engblom has had a varied and colorful life. His various jobs include being a published poet, acting in movies and television commercials, building a skateboard park, and having an antique sales business as well as a clothing company.
After 26 years, he still owns and operates, SMA - Santa Monica Airlines Skateboards, a brand he founded after the “Dogtown” era.
He is married to Martha Engblom with whom he shares a happy existence in Brentwood, California.
CRAIG STECYK, a painter, photographer, graffiti-artist and journalist, played a pivotal role in spreading the influence of the Z-Boys throughout American youth culture.
Born in Santa Monica in 1950, Craig Stecyk was a founding partner in the original Zephyr surf shop in Santa Monica. His graffiti-influenced surfboard designs for Zephyr have had a lasting impact on the surf/skate aesthetic. He designed the famous Rat Bones logo for the Powell Peralta Company, and has a painted surfboard and a skateboard graphic on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History.
Stecyk has been photographing the giants of surfing and skateboarding and celebrating the lifestyle in groundbreaking magazine articles. His early essays for Surfer Magazine were a crucial early influence on the Dogtown style; a decade later, his classic pieces for SkateBoarder, often written under the “John Smythe” pseudonym, introduced America to the Z-Boys.
Stecyk has been working professionally in film and video production, as a writer, art director, production designer and photographer, since the late 1960s. His Bones Brigade video collaborations with Stacy Peralta in the 1980s became a side career working on documentaries, music videos, and TV commercials.
Stecyk recently curated exhibitions for the Laguna Museum of Art, including: “Kustom Kulture: The Art of Von Dutch,” “Ed,” “Big Daddy” and “Roth and Robert Williams” and contributed to the book Malicious Resplendence: The Art of Robert Williams. Recently he has been working with Super X Media Publisher Takuji Masuda on various surf and skate culture projects in Japan, Cuba and Sweden.
Stecyk has an MFA in sculpture from California State University, Los Angeles and has participated in over 200 international art exhibitions.
JIM “Red Dog” MUIR: While on the Zephyr Team, Muir learned the skateboard manufacturing trade. The Z-boys needed boards that could ride in the empty swimming pools, instead of the boards being used to ride between slalom cones. To fill this need, Muir began constructing the boards by hand and built the boards lighter and wider to allow for better stunts. Muir began selling the boards under the Dogtown Skateboarding brand in 1976, which put the Dogtown logo on the map. While other Z-Boys were reaching the end of their skate careers, Muir chose to stay in the skateboard industry to run the Dogtown brand, and has headed the company ever since. Muir resides in Venice and can still be seen surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding and rolling thru Dogtown with his thirteen-year-old son or anywhere the waves or snow might be pumping.
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