Jerry Valdez & Friends

Jerry Valdez. If there was ever a more perfect example of a skateboarding legend, I haven’t heard of it. Jerry Valdez ripped pools, pipes and parks into easily digested pieces. What he didn’t like, he spat out for the weaker to suckle on. Frontside insanity at eleven o’clock in the shadowy realms of the twenty-two foot Arizona pipes, San Fernando Valley pool play mostly above coping while most struggled above the scumline, frontside inverts, frontside rock-n-rolls and incomprehensibly high lines on Baldy’s flat wall were all his and his alone. He was called a “Val” because of his affiliation with Val Surf, yet Jerry was Hollywood – as he puts it – in Yearbooks. He grew up in Hollywood and went to school there. He rode everything and was a ruler from the starting gun.

Now, some forty years later, a few of us gravitated to Angelo’s Malibu clover to put down some lines with the birthday legend. Brad Bowman, Jim Gray, Wesley, Angelo, Christian Cooper, Chris and Tommy, Lance Mountain, MRZ, Tony Alva and I were in attendance.

We pulled grinds, laughed and the hard line crap-talk was a mile a minute. When Jerry is around, he pushes you to skate harder, pushes buttons and shoves the insanity level past the edge. It’s where he’s most comfortable. I love you dude. Happy Birthday Jer. Thanks to everyone and thank you to MRZ for the images. Skate- Ozzie