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(upbeat rock music)
- [Narrator] It is the dawn of a new age,
and your perception of sports is about to change.
No bats, no balls, no sticks, no boundaries.
From this day forward,
the world and sports will never be the same.
These are the Extreme Games.
(upbeat music) (crowd cheering)
- [{announcer] Drops in and makes entry
with a 79 foot world record.
(upbeat music continues) (crowd cheering)
(crowd cheering)
(light music)
- [James] In 1974, I got my first skateboard
from Weinstock's, the local department store.
It was this Roller Derby X24.
Like many skaters, I came from a broken home.
I was the youngest of seven kids, and just after I was born,
my dad left.
I was a defiant, rebellious kid,
and that skateboard was my ticket out.
Out of a crazy household and into the streets.
I would ride my skateboard down to Sierra Oak School
where I would meet up with other skateboarders.
The older kids would bring back stories of spots around town
where there were hills, banks,
and ditches that were being skated.
I remember going on a field trip to Old Sacramento
and seeing a group of older kids skating the embankment
under the I-5 freeway there.
That spot was called "Stoker Hill."
The first skateboard shop to open up
on the south side of Sacramento was Cal Central skateboards.
On the north side of town,
Don Bostick had opened up Skateboards ETC.
That was where I bought my first real park board.
This Brewer with Road Rider Fours and Bennett Pro Trucks.
A couple of other shops popped up as well.
Skateboard City on Auburn Boulevard
and Cal Pro out in Citrus Heights.
Then came the skateboard parks.
First was Skateboard Palace,
the poorly converted indoor rollerskating rink
with roughly sculpted bowls,
some of which were lined with pool tiles
that would pop off when you hit the coping.
Then in 1977, the first real technical park
opened up in Sacramento, Sierra Wave Skateboard Park.
Cheer up little buddy.
It gets better.
That was the first time I saw them.
They were the same kids from Stoker Hill
and Skateboard Palace.
I'd sit on the edge of the halfpipe
and watch them do frontside airs,
and all the radical maneuvers
that I was seeing in Skateboarder Magazine.
I was thinking to myself,
"where did these guys learn to do all this?"
"This park just opened."
We had no idea that they had been riding
empty swimming pools for years.
Who were these guys?
They were the N-Men.
After the skate parks shut down,
I'd see the N-Men at punk shows around Northern California.
We'd party stay up all night night,
and they'd tell us about all
the great pools they were skating.
The only stuff being skated were backyard ramps,
halfpipes like Mike Chantry's Mile High Ramp,
or abandoned pools like the Tilt Pool.
And if you were lucky,
you'd find out about an underground N-Men pool.
I eventually moved to Los Angeles
and had completely lost track of the N-Men.
In 2005, after more than 25 years,
I thought I'd look online to see
if any of the N-Men were still alive.
If anyone would be online, it would be Randy Katen.
Sure enough, I found him right away.
As I scrolled through his pictures,
I saw dozens of photos of Randy
and all the N-Men still skating pools.
They had never stopped.
I hit Randy up and he got back to me
as if we'd spoken the day before.
"Jimmy, what's up?"
No one is more stoked about life
and skating than Randy Katen.
He said he was gonna be down at the Soul Bowl
Skate Contest in Huntington Beach with Don Bostick
and he invited me to join them.
I had no idea what to expect.
When I got there, I couldn't believe what I saw.
Bostick was running the whole event
and the N-Men were there.
All the greatest skaters in the world
skating on Bostick’s stage.
Sponsor banners, bleachers, crowds.
It was the big time.
Randy Katen had explained to me
that when the skateboarding industry
folded in the late seventies,
the N-men helped keep skateboarding alive
and inspired the Sacramento skate scene,
and eventually spread all throughout Northern California.
The N-Men pioneered street and vert contests,
and had a hand in creating the skateboard
and snowboard events for the X Games.
Randy had also told me how some of the N-Men
had gone on to become world champion skateboarders.
I was completely blown away.
I had no idea that I would spend the next 11 years
documenting their story.
(light music)
- [John] "I'm not a criminal."
"I'm not a wifebeater, an armed robber or a gay basher."
"I've never even packed a gun"
"or aimed one of another person."
"Yet the other day,"
"my girlfriend accused me of having a criminal mind."
"I think I know what she's talking about.
"I get nervous around cops.
"Paranoid.
"I avoid asking them questions
"or talking with them at all if I can help it.
"Can you really blame me?
"If you grew up skating empty swimming pools
in Sacramento, California in the seventies,
"you might do the same."
"I'm convinced that's where it comes from."
"Sacramento is an arid, hot, violent place."
"Subject to long dry spells and water shortages."
"As a result, hundreds of pools sit dry at any given time."
"This is the story of those pools"
"and the men who skated them."
"The N-Men of Sacramento."
(phone trilling)
(phone beeps)
- See if we can get a hold of them.
(phone ringing)
- [John] Hello?
- Hey, John, this is James Sweigert.
How you doing?
- [John] Hey James, good.
How are you?
- Doing all right.
Doing all right, man.
Just wanted to talk to you about doing a documentary,
see if you were interested in being involved
and see if you'd talk a little bit about the N-Men
and the original days of it all.
- [John] Okay.
In terms of formation of the N-Men
that was something I came up with when I was,
you know just a kid and it was in some ways a response
to the fact that we were outsiders.
We might as well really been in Montana,
nobody gave a fuck about Sacramento.
Although we still had great stuff to skate
because Sacramento is the home of the empty pool,
and as you know from the Dogtown thing,
California had a drought.
I mean, everything up there was completely dry,
so we had incredible terrain to pick from
and nobody was watching us.
Then that led to the fact
that we created our own sort of clique
and that clique was associated
with the people who skated the N-Bowl.
Well, the original crew is myself and my brothers,
Randy Katen, Gary Cross, a guy named Danny Grady.
And then we had some other younger kids,
we had the Maille brothers, we had a Curtis Bryant.
My best friend at the time was a guy named Doug Jones
and Doug Jones was a surfer, he is a black guy,
built like a linebacker.
- Where is he now, do you know?
- [John] I do not know.
But I don't think it's probably good
wherever he is, you know.
- Yeah.
- [John] If he's even, you know, with us anymore,
I don't know.
- Hey, John, well thank you so much for your time
and your generosity, you're quite the skate historian,
so we'll talk again soon.
- [John] Okay, thanks man.
I hope that was helpful.
- Very much so, thank you.
- [John] Okay, take care. - All right, brother.
Bye. (phone beeps)
(car rattling) (cars whooshing)
All right, girls.
Donna, mom, I'm gonna go check out some old skate spots,
Stoker Hill,
and then go to the N-Men picnic barbecue skate session.
- [Donna] I'll see you there later.
- I'll see you girls later.
(upbeat music)
One of the things about skateboarding is
it's not how many tricks you do,
it's how good you look doing the ones you can.
We're in the Stoker Hill area.
Stoker Hill was one of the first things I ever skated.
Come on over here and let's look at this.
This used to be all a big bank right here.
So what we would do,
we'd come down this hill usually as fast as you could,
and we'd come and we'd ride up the bank,
then back down, and that was skateboarding in 1974.
Old Sac used to be Skid Row here.
I mean, then the city decided to fix it up,
and I'm glad because it's an awesome place.
Old Sacramento is a piece of history that should be kept.
This is where everybody showed up for the gold rush
and headed up into the foothills.
I mean, it's a big piece of history.
It actually has a lower level that
they built the streets up because of flooding.
I mean, it's got a ghost town underneath it.
It's a cool area, Sacramento, I'm glad they saved it.
And this was where we went.
There was very few places that we had
where we could go down and find a bank that we could skate.
We'd be down here for hours and hours and hours and hours,
skateboarding, and sometimes you, like me, I'm regular foot,
so I'd push and do a front side,
but you could come down here and hit this and go up
and do backside and drag your hand and a lot of surf style.
And that was my art back then.
I mean, I'd been skateboarding for a few years
and man, I was digging it.
I was digging the flow.
I was digging the groove.
I was digging who I was hanging out with,
and it was this group of guys that,
they were my best friends back then.
I mean, I was in high school and I had a few friends then,
but we didn't see eye to eye on what we wanted to do
or who we were or how we wanted to do it.
I was the guy that used to pee in the football jocks locker,
you know, I was that guy, right?
We were the outcasts.
We were the ones that no one associated with.
So of course we're not gonna play football,
baseball, or basketball.
That sucks, right?
At that point it was on to what can I do that's rad
and this was it.
(upbeat music) (skateboard clattering)
- You know, it's kind of the whole seventies thing
is kind of a mumble jumble for me.
At the same time, there was so much energy
and there was a place in Sacramento in Old Sac.
Stoker Hill underneath the freeway
from Old Sac into Sacramento,
and that's where I met Doug Jones,
Gary Cross, God, there's numerous people,
but that was the hangout spot.
I kind of became a second dad for a lot of these kids,
which me being in my late twenties,
and these guys were all teenagers, young teenagers,
and I wanna say there wasn't much
parental guidance at that time,
and we were just all stoked to be skating, so.
- [Person] Don Bostick was like our elder and,
you know, we're all kids, right?
15, 16, and Don was already an adult in his twenties,
but Don was all about the skateboarding, you know,
at the skate shop, he's 100% skateboarder.
(upbeat music)
- I had a Dodge van and I got to where
I was spending all my time down at Stoker Hill Skating,
just getting back into it.
- He used to take us around his old Dodge van,
and he'd load eight kids up in there
and he'd like pick 'em up on a milk run and go to,
you know, like APTOS for a two day contest.
We pull up to a gas station or whatever to fill up the gas,
and we'd all pile out the door of his old Dodge van
and just skateboard everywhere.
You know, like just mayhem.
(upbeat music continues)
- Don was a real, true, hardcore skateboarder.
I mean I couldn't believe it.
He did some gnarly stuff and he used to slam too.
He was a big boy.
- To us as kids, he was already old, but he ripped.
And we knew that he went to the 1965 world contest,
and we knew that he was down for life
because he was always broken.
He always had broken arms and shit.
Every time I ever saw Bostick at Sierra Wave,
fucking gnarled,
broken, scabs, whatever, fucking down.
(upbeat music continues)
- But I remember Doug telling us one day
about, "I found a pool."
"Dude, this pool is rad!"
"It's a kidney"
"and it's like a block from my house, dude."
"You gotta check it out, you know."
- We always skated pools just like the Z-Boys would.
And there was a pool that was down in the gardens.
Gardens is the south area.
Doug Jones lived over there,
and he had found this pool over there.
He called that pool, "the N Bowl."
- We had this pool called the N Bowl, okay?
And it was out in the worst fucking neighborhood in town.
You know, to be rolling around in that neighborhood
when I was 14 years old was fucking
taking your life in your hands, bro.
- But then Doug goes, "yeah, we got this pool",
"you know, by my house."
And it was off of Tamoshanter.
Let's hop on the bus.
Let's take the 62 to Florin Road and see what's going on,
and there it was, the N Bowl.
Three feet of transition and six feet of verticals.
(Thomas chuckles)
And that was the first pool we really ever skated.
I mean, that was where it all... the core of it, you know?
- When I first started coming up and you know,
I was staying at Doug's house,
occasionally staying at John O'shei's house,
but I think in the life of the N Bowl,
it was a legend in its own time already.
You know, it didn't last forever, but it was...
You know, eventually, what I really remember
is it's a pretty dangerous place to be at one point.
- And I can tell you stories of being in a pool
and all of a sudden I get showered with rocks, okay?
Bricks, it could have killed us, bro.
But if I had Jones with me,
you know, that was a whole different story.
And so Jones and I hit it off great,
because, even though he rode for Skateboards ETC,
you know, where he lived was down where I lived, okay?
So we were naturals like that.
- When he would tell the other skaters,
"Hey man, come skate the N Bowl with us."
You know?
And we just kind of ran with it.
(bright somber music)
- The N-Men are the N-Men,
and John O'Shei is N-Men to me and Doug Jones,
he's right in there with them too.
When I saw Doug skate and do like these micro edgers
in the Sierra Wave, I'm just like, "oh my God!"
- It didn't start out as the N-Men
with this huge encompassing family.
It was 8, 10, 12 guys, the hardcore N-Men.
- We decided that we were gonna
be called the N-Men at that time.
It was like, it was Doug Jones, John O'Shei,
Ross O'Shei, Roland Bennett.
- Curtis Bryant, Grady, Wiggins.
- Morehouse, barefoot on a Black Bonsai
with Brewer Cone Wheels.
- Those guys were scary, especially Katen and Morehouse
and Doug Jones.
They were kind of like, even though they're the same,
basically the same age,
I was like this like kid from Little Hick-townville,
and these guys were like the players of the area.
- As you start really delving into this,
where it actually started and who actually started.
They'll go back and forth on it.
Doug Jones, which big black guy, he's in prison
or wherever the fuck Doug's at.
He's like MIA, nobody could find him.
And John O'Shei.
These were the OGs.
These were the guys that really started it.
(somber music) (skateboard clattering)
- [James] Randy Katen had mentioned
that there was an amateur photographer
who had taken many early photos of the N-Men.
His name was Bill Golding.
They had lost track of him, and no one had heard
from him for over 30 years.
After we started filming, Randy began calling
every Bill Golding in the Western Hemisphere.
- I get a phone call and I answered, "hello?"
"Well, this is Randy Katen."
I said, "yeah."
He said, "are you the bill that you still live",
"Golding, that used to live in Sacramento"
"and took all the skateboard pictures?"
And I said, and he said, "if you are, tell me."
"If you're not, tell me that too, so I can keep looking."
I said, "no, that's me."
- [James] We asked Bill if he still had any of those photos
that he had taken of the N-Men.
He had them all.
They had sat in a box for more than 30 years.
I'm grateful to Bill Golding
and his son Michael for allowing us to share
these never before seen photographs.
(somber music continues)
- Well, it was just to try to stop the action.
I mean, skateboarding is so quick
that the mind's eye can't remember what you just saw,
but a photograph will stop it forever.
I've always been partial to stills
over video because of that.
It's a split second out of time
that your mind doesn't register that, you know,
but it still will hold it for you forever.
I just enjoy being able to share it with people, you know,
that was something that I did and I liked,
and when I go, maybe I left something behind
that was good, you know.
You always wanna think that your life was something,
you did something right, You know?
I've always liked the action stuff, you know,
like I said, stuff is a moment at a time,
and that's what's always driven me to shoot pictures
in order to create those moments
and keep 'em forever, you know?
So I'm real happy that somebody's gonna do something
and maybe other people, they'll get to see this stuff
and not just, you know, people I know.
(somber music continues)
- [James] In addition to the N-Men photographs,
Golding's archives also include these unpublished shots
of Steve Caballero and Dogtown Legends, Tony Alva,
Stacy Peralta, and Shogo Kubo.
- I was amazed when I saw these guys after 30 years
and they're still doing it.
I'm going, "oh my God."
- [James] When was the first time
you ever heard of the N-Men?
- Oh, I don't know.
Back then, I think I was aware of them,
but it didn't really mean much to me.
You know, it was just...
Skateboarders were always making up stories
and trying to be something.
- [Person] Yeah, Bryce!
(crowd cheering) - [Person] yeah!
- [Person] Yeah, Bryce!
- I first met the N-Men, or knew of the N-Men
seeing Randy Katen skate at Winchester Skateboard Park.
This was in like 1978.
There was a Hester Pool series contest
that happened and that's where all the top pros
came from Southern California and Northern California,
and Randy Katen was there.
And that's the first time I ever heard N-Men.
They had their whole scene going on.
(groovy music)
- So there was these guys that I met from Sacramento,
Randy and Roger Folsom.
And you know, I became friends with them,
and those guys were gnarly and radical.
For sure, they had their own style.
I remember Randy was like one of the skaters
that would charge so hard that he would just get super high
on the largest four foot extension, so another four feet up.
And I just remember him just charging it super hard.
At that time, we had our own like little NorCal series,
and I was part of the Campbell Skate Park team.
We would travel to certain parks in Northern California,
and one of the parks was Sierra Wave in Sacramento.
That's the first time I met Don Bostick
and Curtis, Curtis Bryant.
Those were days before the Bones Brigade.
I mean, those were the days before I met Stacy Peralta.
It was about like a year prior to it, like '78.
- [Person] Kind of like a parallel universe
of what was going on in Venice and Santa Monica
with the Z-Boys in Dogtown.
Same thing was happening in Sacramento, you know,
and it was really raw and undocumented.
There was never an N-Men article
or photos of those guys in the magazines.
N-Men were infamous, just as infamous as the Zephyr Boys
or any of the other cats that were out in the seventies.
- It started out really competitive
and almost a lot of like animosity and almost contempt.
The N-Men were a bunch of Hell's Angels of skateboarding
that at one point were like looking at us Dogtown guys
as just, you know what?
Those guys are the enemy.
- We'd go to these different skate spots
and there was certain guys that were real cool,
like Dave Morehouse and Donald Morehouse,
and they had that cool surf style and stuff like that.
And as we started trying to develop our own style
and we'd look in the skateboarder magazines
and go, "you know what?"
"They're cool, but we've got our"
"own Northern California thing."
(upbeat groovy music) (skateboards clattering)
- JK, Jamie Hart, Hudson, Goldman, and Blackheart.
Caballero, all those guys from within that whole world.
From Sacramento all the way down to Santa Cruz
was pretty much NorCal.
- I think the term N-Men, what it defines is northern,
Northern Californians.
(upbeat groovy music continues)
- Kind of like Dog Bowl and Dogtown of Southern California.
The N-Men were of Northern California.
A lot of the Dogtown success come from the fact that
they had access to the magazine,
and Stecyk was an awesome writer.
I mean, all those Dogtown Chronicle things,
that's what we lived about, right?
But we were up here doing the same stuff,
going, "right on, man."
"Love you guys," right?
I mean, glad to see it's going on and glad, you know,
it kind of fed us to be who we were.
But you know, there's a time when we never
said we wanted to be them.
We had to have our own identity.
- They're them, and they were getting all
the coverage in the magazines
and you see all these guys getting these flyaways
and fucking they ain't pulling that shit.
And we're up here skating the same pools
and having, you know, fun doing our own thing,
but zero coverage because the two magazines
are all from down there until Thrasher came out.
You know what I mean?
It was like, you know, if they're gonna be the boys,
we're gonna be the men.
- I think it was that way because a lot of times
it was built up by the media too.
And then it became like this north south thing
and all this bullshit, because I think
that's kind of what sold magazines too and stuff.
You know, it made it interesting 'cause there's a rivalry,
I'm here to say the N-Men were just as great,
if not better than the Dogtown guys.
They just had a different territory that was their zone
and they basically flourished, grew
and continued to carry on the mission.
- [Person] The N-Men were really guys that love
that fountain of youth of skateboarding
and they don't want to give up,
and they want to attach to their youth
and their teenage years of skating.
And no matter how hard the slams are,
you get up and you do it again, and again, and again.
And yeah, you skate for life, skate forever.
- I could just say straight up
from a northern California perspective,
even though I'm from the south,
those guys were really, really like rough around the edges,
really tough guys, you know?
And being that tough and being that hardcore
is an integral part of being a skateboarder.
They were not gonna survive
being like kind of lightweight and stuff.
Those guys, they were heavyweights,
heavyweights in the sense of like backyard pool skaters.
They were actually riding the really hardcore stuff
that they were finding that was totally illegal.
- It's like the stories or the annals of skateboarding
that everyone needs to know,
and the N-Men were a big part of that.
- The legend thing about the N-Men, you know,
after quite some time is that they would
actually come in disguise and drain pools
under the, you know, N-Men Pool Service.
- Gary and I, we used to look on
the mosquito abatement list, right?
- By the Friday paper and there would be
like a list of abandoned houses with pools in 'em.
- They were filled with water
and they were online to have either the water drained
or chemicals put into it.
And so Gary and I would try to beat them,
beat them to the punch, right?
'Cause if it was a, a pool that was there available
they usually had fences around it and stuff like that.
And cross and I'd show up in his truck
with the N-Men Pool Service logos on the side
and we get outta the truck and the neighbors would look and,
"oh, it's the pool guys!"
(upbeat groovy music)
And you know, show up in there
with the pool pumps or whatever.
And the neighbors go, "oh, thank God"
"they're doing something with that."
You know, finally, or whatever.
- Legitimately drain your fucking pool,
you know, the full suits, the everything.
Like, "oh yeah, no, no, we're taking care of business here."
"We're cleaning the pools," and, you know, and so forth.
And skate 'em and rip 'em and then split.
No one even knew what happened.
It was fucking insane when I heard about that stuff like,
what are you guys doing?
I mean, that's hardcore.
You don't get much more hardcore than that.
(truck engine revving)
- We put an ad, this is great.
This is right after the X Games and Tony Hawk came out,
and kind of cleaned our image up, right?
It was the Tony Hawk generation.
Here we go, Tony Hawk X Games, yay!
We love Tony Hawk.
We put an ad in the paper, said,
"wanted backyard swimming pool to film"
"professional skateboard documentary."
I sat at my car wash and answered the phone
like three times a day with these moms going,
"I got a pool, come film!"
And so we'd show up and Hunter or Bryce
or someone would shoot some video
and we'd bring some N-Men shirts,
and a skateboard and some stickers.
We'd hand them out and everybody would go,
"what about the documentary?"
I go, "we'll let you know whether it makes the cut."
And we go on to the next pool.
Gary Cross and I got fucking tired
from skating so many pools!
It's a great racket, man.
I mean, it worked so well.
- Some of the pools, like I said, we ended up like 99 pool.
We ended up skating it for years.
Like we just, like, somehow we saw it from the freeway
and you know, talked, knock, knock, knock.
And then, you know, like, oh, this nice old lady,
you know, "oh great, that'll be so great to clean it up."
You know?
Before you know it, we're having barbecues in their backyard
and they were like family, you know,
we'd come over Christmas and give 'em stuff.
- I first heard of the N-Men when they all came over
and invaded my backyard because I had a ramp in my backyard,
and somehow they heard about it.
And it was just a quarter pipe and they all came over
and I was kind of afraid of 'em, you know.
- My dad growing up, what I remember is him skating pools.
He would tell us, "alright, kids."
"Look out and you yell five-O if you see a cop." (laughs)
(hands claps) (Randy laughing)
- Good stuff.
- Here's the thing, and this is part of the code,
when it comes to backyard pools and stuff like that.
They're not gonna tell us about
all their best spots sometimes.
Every really good pool, every like really hot spot
that Randy and those guys had.
They weren't gonna share all that with us, dude, every time.
Hell no.
That was sacred territory to them.
And we were the same way.
- Randy Katen had decoy pools.
The decoy pools are the pools
that you would send the kooks to.
"Hey, Randy, you got any pools?"
"Yeah, I got a couple."
"They're over, you know, on Watt Avenue over there."
And they were the ones that were not really skateable or bad
So those were the decoys
and you send the kooks to the decoys,
and you skate the good stuff.
- I know what the decoy pools are now, but back then,
I'm sure we got sent to a hell of a lot of decoy pools
because we were just trying to skate.
And any empty pool in a backyard
was like this, like adventure to us.
And if it had those guys' names attached to it,
like they found this pool, we were all over it.
You know, they weren't even there.
The pool sucked or whatever, but just their name.
Or we'd maybe there'd be a Thrasher sticker
on the tile or something and we would go, "they were here!"
You know, or somebody would graffiti a word
and we were like, "okay, those guys were here."
"We're gonna try to rip this pool."
"But it sucks, but they must rip it."
You know?
So it was all, again, this weird mystery, you know.
- Empty pools back in the day, they were jewels.
You don't just give your jewels away, you know?
- And they would go up and they would rent the planes,
you know, and fly over areas that they knew
to either be abandoned or like after the fires, et cetera,
and search out these pools.
Yeah, incredible.
Yeah, those guys, they're, you know,
they're from an era that doesn't exist anymore
and they'll still do it.
So if you have a pool, watch the fuck out.
- The guys in Sacramento, the N-Men really were
into finding pools and other things to skate
full pipes, reservoirs and ditches.
I mean, it just never ended with those guys
on what they thought up to be able to skate stuff.
(upbeat rock music)
- The Glory Hole experience.
I've been going there for over 40 years.
First time I went was in 1976
and that experience hasn't changed.
It's always been and every time I see it,
including yesterday an amazing experience.
- The quintessential skate adventure you could ever go on.
- [Steve] Just driving across the valley
and going up into the foothills,
and finally getting to the dirty, dusty parking lot.
- You got like about a half a mile to truck all this gear.
You gotta go through this like big sluice rock area
and then hike across a little high desert area.
Then you get to another rock garden
where you gotta watch out for rattlesnakes
'cause they're usually one or two there.
Once you get through all that, it's no big deal.
We get to this one little launch point,
we have to pull our rafts out and pump 'em up.
- And that first glimpse coming around the corner
and you see the Glory Hole.
It gets me every time.
How big and massive this thing is
and really, you look at it and you're like,
"it's too big to skate."
- Everybody gets back in there
and they sweep the whole entire pipe out now.
- Blow the dam out, you sweep the water out,
you build the dam back up
and you're good to go for the entire day.
- [Steve] Would say, you know, in the top five things
you could possibly skate in the whole world.
Anybody that ever skated the thing knows how rad it is.
- [Marty] Everybody has this big smile effect, everybody.
- People come from all over Reno and Los Angeles and Oregon.
(stammers) It is the perfect scenario
and it is a true adventure.
- You have to be almost like a gorilla.
You know, when it comes to skateboard spots,
like if you're looking for pipes, ditches, anything illegal,
if you're taking a risk and you've got a group of guys
that you believe in, and I think those guys,
their crew is tight,
it's about keeping it grassroots and pure.
And it's about success, having success.
Pulling things off that other people
are not really even capable of.
- When you put yourself in danger and you go through it,
you come out the other side feeling way more alive.
And that, that's what life is about.
Like, put yourself on the line.
You go to the lip in that 12 foot pool,
you drop in, you take that run
down that big downhill that you're not sure
you might just eat shit at the bottom.
When you do that and you challenge yourself
that's a real authentic experience, and it's worth doing.
It's worth doing.
(camera reel clicking) (skateboard clattering)
(cars whooshing)
- We started doing interviews about a year,
year and a half ago,
and, you know, some of the guys say that Doug Jones
was the guy that came up with the name the End Bowl,
which is what the N-Men was derived from, so.
But you know, they, every time I brought up Doug Jones,
asking these other guys, "Hey, where's Doug?"
"What's up with Doug?
"What's," you know, "how do we find him?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah, Doug's, it's not good."
They were always very evasive and kind of talking about it.
- The rumors about Doug Jones
been swirling around for years.
The common wisdom was based on our experience with him
and knowing him and, you know, he was a badass
and maybe something bad happened.
- [James] We're trying to find him.
We're not sure if he's-
- I don't, I'm... [James] Still alive or not.
- I don't even know if...
(laughs) You never know with him.
- Yeah.
But nobody's heard from him
or been able to find him for 20 to 30 years.
I got a text from Randy Katen on Monday.
We found Doug Jones with exclamation points
and I was like, "what?"
"Oh my God!"
So I called Randy right away and he said, "we found him!"
I'm like, "well, where is he?"
You know, I figured he'd maybe be in jail
or prison or something,
but he said, "he's in LA!"
And I'm like, "what?"
"He's in LA?"
You know, 'cause that's where we are right now.
So, you know, immediately we got ahold of him.
He popped up on Facebook.
We got him on Facebook through his phone.
I guess he's out obviously, and we're going to find him.
(cars whooshing) (somber music)
(car door thuds)
(somber music continues)
(car door beeping) (indistinct chatter)
That's Craig and that's Hauny.
- [Hauny] Hi! - How you doing, Craig, Hauny?
- This is cool. - Yeah.
- This is really, really cool.
- Yeah, it really is.
It's blowing my mind everything
that's been happening, you know?
- Yeah, no man, this is too cool.
- You know, I called one guy and it just like,
it just like it was a windfall.
Everybody just started hitting me on Facebook, you know?
And that was unbelievable. - [James] That's cool.
- I didn't believe I was that missed.
Right here.
Motel. - [James] This one, Mi Casita?
- [Doug] Yeah. - [James] Mi Casita Valley.
- [Doug] Yes, the valley.
(chuckles) Yeah.
Let's pull all the way, go through the gate.
(somber music)
It's kinda sad what happened to me. you know, um...
Um.
I'd never hit the crack pipe in my life and um...
I'll never forget it.
You know, I'm the kind of guy I go for it.
I do everything.
You know, when I was young, I try everything.
You know, so I said, "here man, let me see that."
And when I grabbed the pipe from him and he lit it for me,
the first words I remember saying was, "wow."
"Marijuana doesn't have nothing on this."
I didn't care about anything anymore.
I didn't care about skateboarding,
I didn't care about surfing.
I didn't care about work no more.
I didn't care about anything.
All I cared about was getting high.
Since then, my life's been in and out of prisons.
In and out, the last 24 years, in and out of prisons.
If I'm not doing six years, I'm doing a violation.
Eight months, six months,
10 months or three years.
You know, I'm doing stretches like that.
In and out, in and out.
I've been in the deepest pits of hell
that nobody, none of the N-Men could even imagine
being shot at, being in filthy crack houses,
being on Skid Row in downtown LA barefoot,
selling your shoes to get a hit.
You know, I've been in some bad situations
and I don't want to go back.
I want my life back.
(somber music continues)
Pretty much the end of my stay here.
- [Hauny] How do you feel
right now? - Huh?
I feel happy. - [Hauny] You feel happy
it's over? - I feel like
I'm getting ready to start my life over officially.
I'm gonna stay clean from here on out.
You know, I want to build a relationship
with all my skateboarding friends, the N-Mens.
Steve Olsson, John O'Shei, you know,
all my skateboarding friends.
The Goat up in Santa Cruz,
you know, Marty Rat,
Randy Katen,
Roger Folsom.
You know, we're the pioneers.
We are really the pioneers of the N-Men.
(somber music continues)
(crowd cheering) - [Announcer] Steve Caballero.
Let's hear it for him! (crowd cheering)
- Sacked on the eighties moved fast.
There was no shops again
and there was like punk rock was going on and stuff.
And then high roller hit,
it was like a roller skate rental place
that suddenly started carrying independent trucks.
Then boards and then all of a sudden,
Sam Cunningham and Mitch,
and all those guys started working there.
And that was the hub for the whole entire Sacramento area
'cause suddenly we had a place to go to again.
So that was early eighties and that's when street skating
was it, because everything was closed down.
(upbeat rock music)
- Just the economy and what was there,
what you had to ride and what you had to make happen.
You had to make it happen yourself.
Like there was no one gonna make a park,
no one's gonna make a spot.
You just rode what you could ride,
any way you could do it.
(upbeat rock music continues) ♪ He combs his hair
- In the mid eighties, it started changing again.
Ghost Skate came to town in '84.
But all the pros came from all over the place.
All the top pros came and skated
in our little street skate zone and stuff like that.
In Sacramento, in a grimy parking lot.
But that, I think even reinforced what Sacto was all about.
Just skate anything, curbs.
Just take what you got and just rip it
because some of the pros were like at odds with it.
Like, what is this?
What are we supposed to do with this?
You know, but we were just like, "pfft, skate!"
"What's your problem?"
You know?
That became further the Sacto vibe
and what Sacto got known for.
Whatever it is, a curb at Denny's.
Rip it, try to get a photo or something like that.
You know, just whatever you got,
shred it and just try to have as much fun as you can.
Stoke everybody out.
(upbeat rock music continues)
- It's a lovely day here out in the country.
We have lots of young fellows here today gathering.
I think it's rather nice to see that
we could have skateboarders
and regular human beings gather together.
- [James] Don Bostick was an early innovator
of some of the very first skateboard and snowboard contests.
He was the first skater to create contests
the way skaters wanted them run.
- Regardless of what any fucking buddy thinks, he knows.
He and I started the official way contests
in the modern era we're gonna run and happen.
- [James] Don Bostick and the N-Men
pioneered snowboarding in the Sierra Nevada
long before any ski resorts
would let you on a chairlift with one.
While original N-Men, Mike Chantry and Tom Sims
were putting on the first
world championship halfpipe competition
in Soda Springs, California.
Don Bostick was up in Mount Shasta
where he invented the very first
slope style snowboarding event,
which we still see in competitions today.
- I get this phone call and this guy goes,
"hi, this is Tom Cousins."
"I'm the new president"
"of the National Skateboard Association,"
"and we'd like to hire you,"
"and we'd like to send you to Hawaii for our first gig."
You know?
And I go, "who the hell is this?"
And I hung up, you know, thinking it was Steve-O, somebody,
you know, giving me some bullshit.
30 seconds go by, the phone reads again, "hello?"
"Don't hang up, don't hang up!"
(Steve chuckles) You know.
I go, "who is this?"
You know and ended up being serious.
And a few days later I was on a plane
to Southern California to meet with Frank Hawk.
Frank was retiring from the National Skateboard Association.
- The first time I remember Don Bostick was through
my father, who started the National Skateboard Association
and would go and set up all the judges
and the events and the, you know, the production of it.
And he invited, I think, Don, to be a head judge.
And I just remember hearing the
name Don Bostick through my life.
Like, " well, Don Bostick would do it, Don Bostick."
And eventually it was like,
"well, Don Bostick's going to do this."
He's going to be the NSA.
- The last year of the NSA I went to Germany
to the World Championships over there.
And when I went to Germany,
I saw what was possible in skateboarding internationally.
It was like, opened my eyes.
- [James] Don then launched World Cup Skateboarding,
which was the first to introduce
a world ranking system for skateboarders.
- We built the basis of what the NSA became
and then World Cup morphed into.
- [James] Don was eventually called by ESPN to design
and create the skateboard and snowboard competitions
for a new show idea they had called "The Extreme Games."
- [Announcer] And there is your champion
at the Extreme Games.
And your champion for all time in skateboarding, Tony Hawk.
- As the X Games came into play, even like the MTV events,
it was suddenly like, whoa, there's these big televised
events who will sanction the competition.
Of course, it's the Bosticks.
They have the most experience.
They know what they're doing
and they have a great track record,
and so they were the first pick.
And I mean, it's been that way ever since.
Like the first X Games, I'll never forget
Don Bostick sitting, you know,
we're all sitting in a little room
discussing the format and it was like, this is what we do.
This is how we've always done it,
and it's the same people putting it on,
and we all felt very comfortable with that.
- [James] After 15 years of running the X Games,
Don left to focus on World Cup skateboarding,
which he still runs to this day with his wife, Danielle.
- World Cup skateboarding, X Games,
all these things have been brought to us by Don Bostick.
He's the mad if you ask me.
He should have been a Hall of Famer a long, long time ago.
- [James] Don Bostick and Tony Hawk teamed up again
to lobby the International Olympic Committee
to help bring skateboarding into the Olympics
for the very first time.
- I'm honored to introduce the first ever
American Olympic skateboarding team.
(crowd cheering) (people whistling)
- The Olympics is such a lightning rod of controversy,
but my attitude has always been
the Olympics needs skateboarding for the cool factor
more than skateboarding needs the Olympics for legitimacy.
Right?
I understand that the Olympics would bring
a whole international audience to skateboarding
that maybe had never seen it before.
But at the same time, summer games are hurting.
I mean, how many more swim events can we have?
Do you know what I mean?
And running and people shooting and throwing ball.
It's like, I mean and I hate that I sound cavalier in that,
but really it's boring for the new generation of kids
that are all about action.
- I grew up competing.
That's how I made my mark in skateboarding
and competition has played a huge,
tremendous role in a lot of skateboarders lives.
I mean, that's what drove us.
That's what that gave us the passion
to progress and to become better.
Don and Danielle Bostick have just
been a huge blessing to our industry,
to my career personally.
I have a strong appreciation of what they do
and what they've done for our skateboard community.
- The Olympics need skateboarding in their summer games,
the way that they needed snowboarding in their winter games
and obviously snowboarding when it was first introduced
was like the bastard child of the Olympics.
It was like, look, these guys, they test positive for weed
All their hair and their logos
and then four years later
it's the highlight of the winter games.
And then four years after that,
it's the only thing people watch.
I mean, besides ice skating, I guess.
- When people host competitions and give us that arena,
it really builds a fire in the skateboarder.
You know, having the crowd there,
it's kind of like a concert, you know,
it's like you're playing your best song.
You're trying to do your best run.
So I look at the Olympics as just another platform
for other people that don't really care about skateboarding.
To get a taste of it and try to understand what we do
and why we are so passionate about it.
(crowd cheering) (somber music)
- At its core, it is skateboarding
and it is modern skateboarding,
and it's gonna be huge.
And I feel like Don understands that.
And World Cup understands all that.
And we are the ones that can
not just control it, but to protect it.
- As far as I think about the Olympics,
I think it should be freestyle and slalom and downhill.
Take it back to the original shit, you know.
(laughs) I don't know, high jump.
I think it should be fucking high jump in the Olympics.
Like some real shit.
And that's another thing is like, I grew up,
you know, skateboarding and everybody I look,
I see dressed as like a skateboarder.
I don't see kids going to school
dressed like figure skaters.
- I can't understand why anybody would be upset.
I mean, I have said in the past when somebody asked me,
like, skateboarding has a, it has a pretty,
there's a pretty dark side to it, you know,
skateboarding is like a rebel sport, you know,
so it's like the outsiders do skateboarding.
- [Announcer] All right, Mark Gonzales!
- I've been part of the group that has been trying to
not usher that in, but really just trying
to help it along the way and to do it with integrity
and to represent the sports well.
And so when people say like,
"oh, it's skateboarding Olympics."
Like, "it's bullshit uniforms and stuff."
It's not like that.
It's going to be a skate competition
the way that we've seen it unfold,
the way that we've seen skateboard
competition through the years.
- Catalina Island.
Today the tiny island town of Avalon
is hosted downhill and slalom racing events
in the Catalina Skateboard Classic.
I'm Jim Lampley.
I hear is the leader in the competition, Jamie Hart.
A little earlier I talked to him as he came to work.
As you watch Jamie Hart on his way to a race,
you might think that skateboarders,
like so many other professional athletes,
are now big businessmen
and must carry a briefcase everywhere they go.
But this is a little different.
What do you have there, Jamie?
- I have a set of wheels that I'm gonna race on today.
- So this is in effect your pit crew?
- Yes, in a sense.
This is what I like to call the skate room.
It's memorabilia that I've collected
over a 41 year pro career
and I'm very proud of it.
- [Announcer] Jamie Mart is a 26 year old truck parts dealer
who practices on a 3.1 mile stretch of highway
on Donner Summit near Lake Tahoe.
- [James] How old are you?
- 64.
Social Security. (chuckles)
- [James] You're still skateboard?
- Yes, I am.
- [James] How old were you when you started skateboarding?
- I was probably about 24, 23 years as old.
It's when urethane first came out.
- [James] Why do you skate?
- I enjoy it.
I enjoy the camaraderie and the friendship.
It's just a, you know, being a slalom downhill skater,
there's a real small community
and it's an around the world community
and they get together for these contests.
And at this stage in my career, I love the attention,
(laughs) I love the, the respect and,
you know, "you were the first?"
You know, I mean, and I guess if I were them,
I would have the same attitude.
You know, the original guys that kind
of saw this before anybody else.
- [Announcer] Combined to determine his overall standing
and as you watch Hart, see how smooth his style is.
He is the leader after two runs.
He needs a time of 27 and 170 thousandths of a second
in order to better his overall time.
- [James] How old were you when you
won your first world championship?
- 59, (laughs) believe it or not
and probably 59, was the oldest
ever to win a pro event of any sort.
So I'm proud of that, that's fun.
That's a feather in my cap.
Something I'll never forget.
- I challenge you to find somebody in another sport
that has won the gold medal at the pro level
at the age of 59 plus.
That's the original N-Men and that's the essence of N-Men.
Never stop.
(skateboards clattering) (gentle uplifting music)
- I was in the downhill and I was coming down this canyon
up in San Luis Obispo.
Whew!
Jamie Hart goes right by me and wins the race.
I'm like, you're kidding me?
How could you not love that?
62 year old dude just blows past me
like I was standing still.
And he had this really perfect tuck.
He's got that, you know what I mean?
He's got a special tuck.
It does not look aerodynamic at all,
but true to the source, man.
He flew by me like I was really standing still get old man.
- Get it old man. - [Cameraman] Yeah, Jamie.
(skateboard clattering)
- Jamie Hart is probably the most classic skateboarder.
He's skated longer, I think, than any skateboarder
besides Cliff Coleman in skate history.
And he's still shredding it up.
- [James] He's out here today.
- Yeah, he's 65.
- You know, the N-Men is not
just about the male skateboarder, it's all encompassing
of different generations, different genders.
Judi Oyama, who is one of the first
team managers for independent trucks.
She's a lifelong skateboarder from Santa Cruz.
- Back in the mid seventies,
I used to skate for Santa Cruz skateboards
with Dawn Bostick and O'Shei and Randy Katen.
And that's when I first heard about all the N-Men.
Skateboarding for me is freedom, it's self-expression.
Like I'll go to the skate park in the morning
and sometimes, you know, lately a bunch of old schoolers,
a bunch of, Joel Gomez and people I rode with
in the eighties we were out there laughing and skating
because it makes us feel good.
Whether we're skating as well as we used to,
we're just out there and it feels good.
- This lady's 56 years old. - Yeah!
- One of the top female slalomers in the world.
Judi Oyama, remember that name.
- She looks 29! - [Judi] Yeah, right.
- [Randy] Judi Oyama, she is an amazing woman.
(skateboard clattering) - [Person] Judi, get it.
Get it!
- Her thing is she really got into slalom racing.
She worked at it and became world champion.
Not too many people in NorCal get the shake
from Southern California to be in the Hall of Fame.
But Judi got in the hall of fame
and that means a lot to me too,
because she represents Northern California.
And that's awesome that, you know,
someone finally recognized her accomplishments.
- This is the evening where I get inducted in the
skateboard Hall of Fame after
45 fucking years of skateboarding.
(upbeat rock music)
- Judi was actually honored in 2015.
She got the icon award for the N-Men that year as a woman.
- [Person] Yeah! (crowd cheering)
In America that's high honors and so without further ado,
I want to introduce my friend of over 40 years.
Put your hands together for Judi Oyama.
(crowd cheering)
- I'm amped to be here tonight.
I feel like I'm standing on a big ramp
ready to drop in on a badass run.
(crowd cheering)
I honestly never thought tonight what happened.
Being here with all of you is such an awesome feeling.
Thank you, and remember, stay badass.
(crowd cheering) (rock music)
- The N-Men bro.
We're from the seventies and eighties
and everybody did a lot of self-destructive behavior. Okay?
Everybody.
N-Men loved drugs and they loved to drink,
and they love to fight and they love to fuck
and get off, bro. (amp feedback buzzing)
So there was a lot of trouble.
So it didn't surprise me when Jones, you know,
when I heard Jones had been in and out
of the slammer all this time.
You know, I hope he is cool.
I mean, he sounds pretty squared away
on his emails and stuff.
Incarceration can have a real
weird effect on different people, you know.
So we'll see, you know, I'm excited to see the guy.
There's a lot of water under that bridge, I'll tell you that
because I think it'll probably be emotional,
you know, to some degree.
You know, I lost my parents a few years ago
and Jones was, you know, really close to them.
So yeah, in some way I've had, you know...
(somber music)
- [James] So you're about to see John O'Shei.
- Yeah.
- [James] How long has it been?
- 30 years.
- [James] How you feeling? - Nervous.
Very nervous.
- [James] Why are you nervous?
- You know, John and me were very, very close.
You know, we skated together.
Got into mischief together.
(chuckles) You know what I'm saying?
And we just had some crazy times.
When I disappeared off the radar screen.
I thought I'd never see him again, ever.
I always thought about him.
It's just unfortunate the way things turned out for me,
you know, but, you know, I'm back.
You know, and I think I'm making
all the right moves this time.
- Hey! (hands claps)
My man! (Dough chuckles)
- My boy, John, man!
- What's up, man?
- Oh man, goddamn, I missed you, bro.
- Good to see you, bro.
- Oh man, I miss you, man.
- Good to see you.
Good to see you. - All right.
All right.
- You look okay, man.
How you doing? - My boy, man.
(both chuckling)
What a trip, man.
- A lot of water under that bridge, huh?
You look good.
- Gained a lot of weight, man.
- Good here, buddy.
It's all good now.
It's all good.
- Damn, man. - It's all good, man.
Give me five.
I'm glad to see you alive, bro.
- Glad to see you too, man.
- Fuck, I'm glad to see you alive, bro.
(somber music)
- And then skateboarding gave us a matrix, you know,
it kind of gave us something that kept us all together.
You had the power under your own feet
to go ahead and inspire everyone around you
by exceeding your own limitations.
And that's what I really dug about skateboarding.
That I still find that to be the most
satisfying thing about skateboarding.
Doug, welcome back.
- Thank you, dog.
- It's just a family of guys that, you know,
keep in touch with each other.
And whenever we see each other,
it's just like a brotherhood, you know?
It's, let's ride, you know, wherever we are,
wherever we're at, we can be in a parking lot,
hop on our skateboards and have a great time.
- Whenever I'm skateboarding,
it just feels like family to me, you know?
And everywhere I've been in the country or other countries
meet a skateboarder, you're just friends.
And I don't know, it just feels like home.
- Skateboarding was a way for all these kids
who didn't have a lot going on in their lives
to sort of mold an identity for themselves
that would reinforce their values
and who they were, you know?
And that's really, I think that's true
for skateboarding just in general, you know?
It's like a Harley for a kid.
- It transforms into something
much bigger than just skateboarding,
if you know what I mean.
It's more like the big brother almost.
And the N-Men are more important than people realize
because of the fact that they
have been around since the beginning,
and they still are here.
And that the N-Men embrace the youth.
They embrace anybody, it doesn't matter what your level is,
as long as you are a (speaks Spanish) rider,
as they say in Spanish, you know, that's all that counts.
And they're larger than life when it comes
to the skateboarding as far
as the family oriented in a group of guys.
If you know what I'm coming from, you know?
- skateboarding is a lifestyle.
It's kept me healthy all my life.
I shattered my femur in 2010 and I still skate.
I can't run, but I can skate.
I skate better than I walk.
And just survival.
I learned survival on my own with my friends, you know,
and real friendships throughout the years
that are still here.
And you can't replace that.
Fame, fortune, you can't fucking replace that.
- I've met people who are very successful
in other forms of life and then you'll see them later,
and they'll almost always regret
that they gave up skateboarding.
They feel like they would almost sacrifice
something that most people would think was greater.
To do an old trick again, or to see an old friend, you know,
that they had met through skateboarding.
- It was crazy.
There were points in all of our lives
when we really did wake up in the morning
and skateboard till we laid down at night.
And everybody came from a similar mindset,
but also the idea of the pure comradery.
Because for lack of a better term,
we were loners that formed a group of loners.
- All the N-Men guys are great dudes.
You know, if you didn't know them, you'd want to know them.
Because A, they'll have your back if they like you
and you respect you and you're a standup guy, you know,
and B, they're just fun.
You know, they do cool shit.
You know, they race, they ride pools, they surf, they ski,
they're just all about the action,
you know, it's good stuff.
(skateboard clattering) (upbeat rock music)
- [Person] Practice starts in five minutes!
- So you're in charge?
(leaf blower rumbling) (upbeat rock music continues)
- Slalom hasn't taken off much
in all the time that it's been going on.
It's still pretty much the same group of guys
and a little bit of young blood.
And my thought was to bring the downhillers into it,
so to have a super G course to where it's longer and looser,
more like the Olympics downhill
wide world of sports that you used to see.
- Stoked to be here for this third annual N-Men bonanza.
- So they started to throw an event here in Sacramento area
and I come up every year
because I love to go fast on a skateboard.
Badass skate dad.
(skateboard clattering)
I love the aspect of going through gates,
like racing through ski gates.
You're literally on a path of 45 degree angle
on your skateboard at mock speed, hanging on, holding on,
and going as fast as you can.
And these guys throw a great venue.
They always pick good hills.
Marty, let me build my ramp
that I've always wanted to show these guys.
You gotta have a 10 foot tall ramp.
Big is better, big ramp to start with, you gotta go fast.
And it makes guys go, "whoa, okay."
They think twice about going down just for that aspect.
- This ramp is huge. (skateboards clattering)
- It's fast.
Go fast.
Butterfly 65.
(skateboards clattering)
- Slalom racing is something that is so
amazingly technical and you know, you really,
your mind has to be so right in order to really go fast,
and to podium and to do good in the race, you know.
So it's very challenging.
- Section three, cone count. (radio beeping)
- Skateboarding is a sport for individuals
and there's something about rolling
over the surface of our planet,
you know, with the G forces you feel.
You can only lean so far standing up,
but you get on a skateboard and you turn the trucks,
and you can lean even further
and you feel those G forces as you make a smooth turn.
Something as basic as a turn, but it's still fun.
You feel the flow.
- Cliff Coleman, legendary Berkeley guy, man.
We used to call him the Berkeley Boys
and we went to Berkeley, there's a hill called Telegraph
that's fucking like this, right?
You know, and here I am, I think I'm this big downhiller,
'cause I was in the Laguna skate contest, right?
And here comes Cliff Coleman, man,
they're jamming these hills at 40, 45 miles an hour.
And cliff's laying down these nasty slides,
like 60 foot slides and then popping up
and taking off again.
Downhill kind of died off and then it came back,
and it came back with a whole younger group of kids.
Better equipment, better wheels.
Wheels that you can slide and they don't go away.
People are going 80 miles an hour stand up now.
And if you watch some of the big races in Europe,
they're racing down like the passes in France and stuff.
And they're going 45, 50 miles an hour,
slowing themselves down to 20 miles an hour
and coming around the turn, it's called a Coleman slide
from our boy in Berkeley, cliff Coleman.
I mean, he kind of wrote a chapter in downhill,
never got any traction till 30 years later.
Now all of a sudden they're flying him to Brazil.
He's living in Brazil teaching all these kids.
I mean he's had a rebirth, you know, after all these years.
- It's racing cones, you know,
it's you against the other rider and the clock.
So it's a different kind of skateboarding,
but it's still good, good fun.
You can go fast in a giant slalom.
It's fast enough to scare you.
(skateboard clattering) (groovy music)
(skateboard whooshing)
- [Person] Whoa. - Whoa!
(crowd exclaiming) (metal clattering)
- And the truth is, you know, I say it all the time,
I like to fall because it wakes me up.
I don't mind getting hurt
because it puts you in perspective.
You get kind of in a slap in the face almost,
you know, everything does is flash almost, you know,
and as a skateboarder and it makes you tougher
and tougher and tougher and tougher in life.
It makes you warrior in life.
I believe skateboarders are some of
the toughest humans alive in my opinion.
- A guy in Korea told me one time,
"you know, you're supposed to hang up your toys"
"when you're 25 in Korea and then you go get a job"
"or something, but I'm 66, I'm the oldest guy."
"I'm always the oldest guy, but I still skateboard."
"I love my skateboard, I love skateboarding."
"I really do."
(skateboard clattering) (groovy music continues)
- There's skateboarders that ride everything,
skate everything,
be it, you know, a backyard pool.
Building a ramp, a new skateboard park, a pipe,
wiggling through cones down a hill.
I mean, it's all encompassing of skateboarding.
- NorCal guys were gritty.
They had something that the southern California
that felt like kind of soft almost in a way.
- N-men, you know, it's one of
those kind of NorCal pride things
where we differentiate ourselves
from Southern California just based on,
I mean, not only geographically, but philosophically.
- Southern California, they always looked at us
a little more polished, like trans world
and you know, trying to do the contest thing.
Where as NorCal, "Eh, we're just gonna drink and party"
"and influence skateboarding lifestyle."
And I kinda always liked that more. (laughs)
- Not all, but some were like, "yeah, fuck SoCal."
And it was like, "wow, why, man?"
I mean, it's not, it's such a waste of time and energy
to hate on, I mean, we have...
I'm from SoCal as well and there's just as many
fun skate spots down here, and I don't hear people
from SoCal saying fuck NorCal.
I mean, I don't know.
- Because we were competitive.
I have to admit that I always wanted to beat those guys
and one up 'em.
But at the same time, I think everything
that happened back then is what got us here
and that had to be that way
in order to make skateboarding what it is now.
If skateboarding wasn't that way 30, 40 years ago,
it wouldn't be like it is now.
(skateboard clattering)
- There's a huge difference between southern California
and northern California when it comes to skateboarding.
I mean, Northern California is this pure thrash.
Kick-ass, thrash shit
and living on the edge of life, period.
(skateboards clattering) (groovy music continues)
(seagulls cawing) (light music)
(skateboards clattering)
- Today I came 'cause of this pool.
Just N-Men thing, they're having a SoCal man thing.
(laughs) It's a S-Man, mixed with N-Men,
and you get this thing.
- So it's gonna be a special day
just to skate with all these guys out here.
We don't get to skate John's pool very much.
No longer resides at the residence,
but pool's here once in a while we get to skate it, so.
- [James] After John O'Shei and Doug Jones had reunited,
we went to interview John at the
Southern California N-Men reunion.
More than a year had passed since I had last seen him.
I honestly didn't even recognize John
when he sat down in front of me.
What you been up to, man?
- Okay, all right.
I'm in Vegas now and I'm back in Malibu
skateboarding in the session with
a bunch of the old boys from up north
and some of the Southern California crew.
You know, it's just a get together
with some of my old friends
that I haven't seen in a long time.
And the N-Men and you know, they're out in force
so that's why I'm here.
- [James] How was it to see your friend Doug Jones
after 37 years? - It's crazy.
I really thought he was dead and I had no idea he could've,
he had disappeared for two decades.
I found out he was incarcerated and no one knew it.
Now he's really strung out and in a hurting way
and you know, a lifetime of involvement
in criminal culture did that to him.
You know, his goal was to make it
to this event (indistinct),
'cause he's got the bracelet on,
so he is not allowed to leave LA County, you know?
But he could come to Malibu and see everybody.
He couldn't go to Northern California and see everybody,
you know what I mean?
When he started coming around,
When he got outta jail, basically.
You know, Jones is kind of a bipolar person
and I think that caught up with him on the outside.
Anyway, he's back in jail now, so.
But, I'm gonna go visit him.
(somber music) - N for life!
- N-Men is a way of thinking.
It's a point of view and a shared history
So you know, that's what I like about it.
(skateboards clattering) (somber music continues)
(skateboard clattering) (somber music)
- [James] Several months later,
Doug Jones was released from jail.
John had made arrangements to bring Doug up
from Southern California to the annual N-Men race.
(skateboards whooshing)
It would be the first time Doug Jones
would be reuniting with the N-Men in over 30 years.
(somber music continues)
The N-Men were stoked at the idea
of getting the whole crew back together.
(skateboards clattering)
- Are you kidding?
I just want to kiss his cheek and see if he's in one piece.
You know, it's only been 30 years
since we sent him to Florida to clean up and get better.
- The way everybody's lives are all different directions,
but eventually everybody cross and intersect again.
You know, somehow that's what this all about.
So we're able to do it now at this time of our lives
because there won't be many times after this.
Right?
You know, it's amazing we all made it this far.
- We're old, we're not supposed to be here.
(all chuckling)
- You know, it's been what 40, 45 years?
Yeah, that's a long time.
(skateboard whooshing) (somber music continues)
Most people don't stay with things that long.
You know what I mean?
Things get in the way and they go on and do other things.
I mean, you know, I quit shooting pictures, you know?
I don't know what brought that on,
but it some, you know, something in your lifestyle
changes and you move on.
(camera clicking) (skateboard whooshing)
- Really honestly, it's rad
that you guys came out and did this.
Some of you guys are older than dirt
and some of you guys are just moldy dirt,
and some of you guys are young dirt.
But the old moldy dirt, it was really rad.
(indistinct chatter)
- Here's first place.
- Thanks there, Marty.
- God bless you, man. - Love you, brother.
(person cheers) - All together here.
- For this guy, for this guy.
(somber music continues)
- [James] It was another successful downhill race
put on by the N-Men.
But unfortunately Doug and John never showed up.
I wondered what had happened to them.
Later that day we got a text from John
Doug had ended up back in jail again.
(somber music continues)
(people laughing) (indistinct chatter)
- And the N-Men have been around since 1975
and we've bolstered many, many friends in the industry,
many, many friends locally,
many friends in Northern California.
And we're still going strong.
And I wanna thank everybody for being part of this.
- To this day, when someone says N-Men, I think of my dad,
the reason why we have a party every year is because of him.
When it comes down to it, he's the one that put the time
and the effort to make this stay alive because he loves it.
This isn't about him, it's about the group of people.
It is what it is because he's kept it alive
and the passion for it, and everyone that's involved.
- Katen's my key go-to guy
'cause he's like, he epitomizes Sacramento to me.
- And like Randy goes back so far
and you know, he's a hundred percent skateboarder.
He just blows me away.
Yeah, it's an honor to know him.
You know, he's triple OG in my book, you know.
- All I gotta say is if there's ever an encyclopedia
of skateboarding and they want a picture
of a definition of a hardcore skateboarder,
they gotta have a picture of Katen in there.
'Cause nobody's ever been more dedicated, charge harder,
been more into it and been more
into the spirit of what skating is.
Katen's one of the best men I've ever met.
- Yeah, the N-Men are really important to skateboarding,
just like Dogtown and Z-Boys are.
But the one thing that remains is the M-Men
have not stopped skateboarding since 1974 ever.
They're still doing it.
I'm proud to be a part of it.
- I think it's an important story
the N-Men spread out other than just the Sacramento area,
they kind of engulfed the whole northern California area
and there was a good group pf skaters here
and there still is.
- Not all of us were honor roll students,
as you might probably know.
It's not just the skating that brought us together,
but it's kind of this lifestyle.
You know, a lot of people have been through some rough times
and it's good to know that,
you know, they're still going strong.
- You had to have loyalty, integrity,
you had to be a standup guy.
You know what I'm saying?
And those guys in there to this day are still those guys.
- And who they are is what you get, so,
and I think everybody has a lot of respect for that.
- If you don't have any good family background and stuff,
you've got your skate family and you can always rely on 'em.
They got your back.
They give you a ride, they help you out,
loan you money or feed you.
You know, I love that.
- They're family guys, they have kids,
but they still find the time to skate
and make it a part of their,
you know, really their daily ritual.
- You know, it takes a village.
It totally takes a village to make this all happen.
- It's really hard to predict where the future's going,
but I don't see this disappearing anytime soon.
If I can and my sister can,
then we're gonna be a big part of keeping it around, so.
(dogs barking) (upbeat rock music)
- The next generation is Catherine Folsom, who's a ripper.
You know, she's a mom, she's an educator.
She is learning tricks still at the age of 32.
- I did it!
- We built this ramp in our backyard
and she was skating there every day.
It was such a weird point when she finally got the bug.
I tripped out.
I could tell she got it too.
It was just like, she just wanted to get better.
- I take pride in being N-Men.
(laughs) It sounds cool.
(upbeat rock music continues) (Catherine growling)
(crowd whistling)
- [Announcer] Catherine Folsom is N-Men of the Year.
(crowd cheering) (upbeat rock music continues)
(all cheering)
- I just got a N-Men of the year. (laughs)
It's pretty awesome.
I am definitely the first woman
to ever get N-Men of the year.
(Catherine yells and laughs)
- The other N-Woman that I saw skate
recently was a Beverly Flood.
Shows that the next generation is coming up
and carrying on the torch of,
you know, what it is to be N.
- I saw this group, I think it was five years ago
and I started just going for it.
And skating, skating with all these legends over here.
- Long after I'm gone and Steve-O's gone and Martin's gone.
There's gonna be kids carrying on this whole N-Men thing.
We're gonna put it in place where it'll be in good hands
and it'll go on to another generation.
(uplifting music)
We're in Auburn, California at Eric and Andrea Biebelheimer
and it's an amazing deal they got here.
It's the skate family, Miles and Tim skate,
Andrea and Eric, they all skate.
They've built this amazing clover leaf swimming pool
for skateboarding in their backyards.
Thursday nights and Sundays when they're in town,
it's a skate session and for anybody like that
to open their home to people who love what we do
is all part of the plan, you know?
- It's really, pretty deluxe, you know?
And so it's definitely not Minor 49er, it's the shit legit.
They really created something amazing here.
It's world class.
It's not just somebody's backyard grunt pool.
It just seems legit, you know, and it's really fun.
Props to them for doing that.
(uplifting music continues)
- They have a great organization called SkateMD
where they take a road show on the road
with tons of skateboards and equipment,
and they go and they share the skateboard experience
with different types of organizations
that have disabled children.
They bring everybody together.
It's been a really successful program.
I mean, they're all about giving back through skateboarding.
- [All] SkateMD, SkateMD!
- I feel like I've learned a lot
from skateboarding over the years.
And for life, it's not just about being N-Men, whatever.
It's about being in life.
Living in life. (uplifting music continues)
- The age span of N-Men, it's undefinable really.
It's, yeah, anywhere from 70 years old to 10 years older.
It's generations.
It's not really like you have to fit
into a certain age category or a certain style.
It's an attitude more than anything.
- A lot of kids don't have the potential
from their family or their influence from anyone
to give them the true roots of what skateboarding is.
So they can learn from a book,
they can learn from seeing other kids doing it, right?
But to truly get it hardcore
is they almost need a big brother
or somebody, you know what I mean?
To give 'em kind of the school of hard knocks.
- Long hairs, dude, we shred. Skaters!
Whew!
- Dartanyan reminds me of Dave Morehouse when he was young.
He skates almost exactly the same way.
He's got most of his stuff
is totally seventies old school skateboarding,
and they both have that long flowing hair.
- Teaching the next generation.
(uplifting music continues)
- The thing I could say to the kids more than anything
is don't let it die.
Carry it on.
The youth is the future.
And the youth needs to carry on what the N-Men started.
- We all love to relive the old days.
We all love to tell each other how great we are and were,
but it's actually something that was bigger than all of us.
We all, you know, go different paths,
but we all still live on the same plane.
That's why it is a greater shared experience
because we are all more experienced in life
and we understand what it really was.
Even though we didn't really know back then
and we respected even more now for being so.
- In every town in America,
there are the kids that their life is shit.
And skateboarding can put you in a place
where you can gain control of that.
Okay?
All the negativity can be put in second behind you
when you have the freedom of riding your board
with your friends in an environment
where you have total acceptance.
But if you got a board and you are in there with the crew,
then you're part of it, man.
You're part of it.
- The N-Men have been there for me as a group of people
when I really didn't have anybody else.
Always be able to skate with Bix,
any one of the guys.
Doug Jones, we've been-
- Don't listen to this guy.
(all exclaiming and laughing)
- See, this is exactly what I fucking was talking about.
See. - Never trust a Pirate.
- It's all lies!
It's all lies!
- See, that's what I mean, family.
This is my family. (uplifting music continues)
(somber music)
- [Person] All right,
we are rolling. - [James] You want him
to clap?
- [Person] Sure, yeah. - [James] All right.
Here we are.
February 16th.
- Yes. - [James] 2019.
- Yes sir.
- [James] How you been?
- I've been fine, a lot better than I have.
- [James] What's been going on?
- Well, I just got outta jail on the seventh.
Well, actually Super Bowl Sunday.
- [James] How long were you in jail?
- Eight months.
I just don't want ever go back to that lifestyle again.
I wanna get far away from it as possible.
I know what I'm capable of and I know where I've been.
And the path that I'm going down right now.
It's killing me. (sobs)
I'm very tired.
You know, I'm battered.
About almost a month after I went in,
I called my mother down in Miami and she told me,
asked me, "have I talked to John?"
I said, "no."
I called back the next day
and she said he was in the hospital.
He's on life support. (sobs)
That’s my boy!
And the next thing I called, they said he was dead.
They took him off life support. (sobs)
That was my bro, man.
That was family, man.
He was the best friend I ever had in my whole entire life.
I loved him more than my own brother.
My flesh blood brother, man.
John was my family.
There was no question about it.
You know, I'd die for John.
I would take my life before him.
That's how I felt about it.
I loved John 'cause he cared.
He cared about people.
He loved to help people
and he didn't like to see anybody suffer.
John had an enormous heart
and he cared about me.
- [James] Doug, what would you say
to the skateboarding world?
- I'd say enjoy what you have now,
and my friends, you know?
You know, my friends, you know, they...
N-Men for life.
There, that's what it's all about.
They're for life.
They're my friends for life.
They've showed me, you know, that they're here.
You know, no matter what my situations were
in the time I was gone, when I returned,
they're here and they're there for me.
They're here for me.
You know, that's what it means to me.
(somber music) (camera reel clicking)
- [John] An empty pool holds a special place
in the hearts of anybody who has ever skated one.
Does anybody out there find themselves
scanning the landscape for skate spots as they drive?
I still do, everywhere I go.
Or when you're taking off on a plane,
do you look out the window for empty pools, square pools,
kidneys, keyholes, figure eights?
As long as they're empty, they give me a hard on.
I love the whole feel of being in a pool with no water.
There's something surreal about it,
like being in a Salvador Dolly painting.
There's something odd and unnatural about it,
but pleasing.
(somber music continues)
(skateboard clattering softly)
(upbeat rock music)
(hands claps) - Ow!
(upbeat rock music)
- [James] What do you know about the N-Men?
- Ancient, methodical creatures.
- You were so good, nobody would skate 'em
and you would pick the ricks outta the magazine.
- No, no.
We're talking about music now, so-
- No, you ran. - These guys come along-
- You ran. - Yeah, yeah.
- Okay, fine.
- So you have to grab a handful of forks and knives.
One, two, three, whoo!
And it'd be you chuck 'em and be like, ah!
I learned like that from them, that's what I remember.
Wow, this is crazy.
I wouldn't trade this for the world.
What the fuck am I doing?
♪ One, two, three, four
♪ We don't care what you're people say ♪
- Damn skateboards.
- You went and did a demo in Sacramento.
Go skate.
That was, it was a hardcore crowd.
I remember, like, I did a demo with Cav in the parking lot
and then there were all these weird little like spine ramps
and then-(indistinct chatter)
Yeah and we would just keep moving stuff around
to create a new obstacle.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was sick.
♪ Tonight
- Still running the whole deal.
Hold on buddy! (all laughing)
This is N-Men, bro!
- What is an N-Men?
Northern man.
It's fucking...
They're a badass group of old guys
that fucking tear it up in skate parks still.
- It's something that I'll do till the day I die.
Period.
♪ Our right to fight
- What else can I say?
(upbeat rock music)
♪ Our right to fight
(upbeat rock music continues)