David Hackett - ...tell us about it.
David Hackett
“I think it was in 1977, when we heard about the new Upland Skatepark featuring the first full pipe built for skateboarding. I had already been out to ride the big twenty four foot Ameron desert pipes in Arizona. They were a heavy bust. I went with Alva, Biniak, Valdez, Shogo and Kent Senatore, so we couldn’t wait to ride a permission pipe!”
“I think this was actually our second trip to Upland, because on the first one, they didn’t have the aluminum “L” brackets you see on either side of the fluorescent lighting in this photograph. On the first trip, Jay Adams came off a high backside slash and lost control, shooting his Z-Flex board at about 100MPH, straight into the lights and caused a fluorescent dust and glass shower in the pipe that was INSANE! - That ended the skating in the pipe for the rest of the night.”
“In this photo, I was in my last days riding for G&S due to my association with the
Dogtown crew, and I was starting to hang and ride often with Tony, Jay and Wentzle. The board in this photo is actually a deck TA rode, then gave to me. It was a solid oak Alva proto-type that he dubbed the “Model T”. Since I was still under contract with G&S, I put their stickers on it. I rode Bennett trucks with those two-tone (yellow & red) YoYo Pro wheels- which were actually pretty fast in those days.”
“I’m sure glad this photo is in B&W because I couldn’t stand the yellow & gold G&S colors we had to wear…The ONLY reason I could bear it was that Stacy Peralta and fellow Dogtowner Paul Constantineau were also on the team, so I figured it was cool…After this session I started to ride for Alva Skates. I think it is funny that we wore these silly little volleyball knee and elbow pads. They were worthless and the knee slide had not been invented yet.”
“On this day, it was me, Alva, Adams, Biniak and I think Shogo- we set the bar pretty high that day. The cement in the pipe was still curing so our wheel marks were ingrained into the upper regions of 10 and 11 o’clock for the all the locals to see and take notes… it would be months before anyone else blazed the same lines and the Upland pipe was never the same.” - David Hackett
