David Paul / Kona Bowl

DAVID PAUL

Looking back at the Kona Bowl, I  would just like to state that the Kona story is much bigger than one man can tell. This is solely from my perspective. Back in the early 1970’s,  I lived in Pacific Beach in San Diego. I surfed and skated with my bro’s down there. We would skate hills, driveways, schoolyards that had banks, and pools. At the schools, they had benches. After watching skaters like Ty Page jump off benches or jump over cars, I started to do it too. Back then, I was starting to enter contests and met the north county boys- Murray Estes, Gunnar and many others. We had our own pools in Pacific Beach at the time and were really starting to love them. So, when I met the north county crew, they told me of the Kona Bowl!  It did not take long before we visited it. We went as many times as we could and carving, kick turns and flying off the shallow end stairs were the norm for me. I think this all started in 1974-75.

After seeing skaters jumping off benches,  I tried it at Kona one day. I just rode right in and made it! I jumped into the shallow end about three and a half feet or so to the flat bottom. At the time, I was riding a  Bruce Logan model with X caliber trucks with Road Rider 2’s.  I would break my trucks all the time!  At that time and as far as I know, no one could do the acid drop at Kona or anywhere else that I heard about. In the photo, I had joined the Tracker Trucks family and was not breaking trucks as much. I also started skating for Sunset surfboards and skateboards. Thanks to Murray Estes, shown in the photograph with me. The board in the image was a Murray Estes Sunset model.The wheels were UFO’s. Last but not least, my trucks were Tracker Half Tracks. Thanks to Lance Smith for the images. - Dave Paul