Skatepunk

In case you are unfamiliar with Garry Davis, here's a rundown on this guy. Garry was the first person to make a skateboarding zine. He was the first person to have a "street" pro model skateboard. (I know that sounds weird, but back in the day, there were boards for vert skaters only!) He invented the boneless one, or boneless. He does great sweepers, and during the late '80s El Cortez pool sessions in downtown San Diego, he did backside tailslides, layback style, on the lip of the spit drain. He was on the cover of Thrasher (May 1983) and wrote "Steep Slopes" in that mag for several months. He was one of many who lived at Del Mar Skate Ranch over the years, and for a long time, Garry wore black pants with skeletal bones that he painted on them. Exclusively. He also wore a devil lock for a long time. He has been the main creative force known musically as Custom Floor for about 10 years now, and is afraid of no experimentation. Now, this may not paint an accurate picture of the man in 2008--there's way more to him that that--but it tells you why he might be worthy of an interview, skateboarding wise. As a person, Garry has a different sense of humor than most. He is persistent, tells stories in a way that makes me laugh, and I can honestly say he is the one person I've ever gotten to know in my life that truly doesn't act out his day-to-day life in any manner that he feels society or anyone else dictates he should. There's a lot more to tell, but if Garry ever sees this page, he'll probably be sick of reading by now and ask me to take it down or change some minor detail that's wrong. So I'll stop here, and start here...

SP: Have you looked at skatepunk.net yet?

Is it running?

SP: Yeah.

Yeee...I think maybe once. Hey, Mark, did you invent the boneless one?

SP: No. You did. It was named after a finger puppet, right?

Yeah. No, just a puppet.

SP: Did you name the puppet?

No, Robert Hamrick did.

Is he an Ohio guy?

Yeah.

So, where did you get the idea to do a skate zine?

From an early issue of Thrasher. There was an editorial in it that said, "Make your own zine." So, I did. (Laughter) So, I guess it came from Kevin Thatcher.

SP: Was yours the first one that you'd seen, though?

That I knew of. I made it in isolation, in Ohio. The name was a silly little rhyme. A silly little Bing Thing.

SP: When did you move to California?

July 19, 1982.

SP: Why'd you move to San Jose?

I had a big crush on Craig Ramsay. I had a lot of pen pals in San Jose from skate 'zines, like Steve Caballero, Gavin O'Brien and Corey O'Brien. For the first week, I lived with Craig Ramsay, but he and his roommates booted me out. I moved over by King and Story on the East side, in a full-on barrio. (King and Story is a legendary cruising spot for low riders.) It was just this '50s suburb, like a crumbling reality, and I lived in this weird house that this middle-aged alcoholic lady named Diane rented out.

Each room contained a completely different kind of person. There was this old man with a trench coat and a beard who would come downstairs to eat once in a while. He would never, ever acknowledge that anyone else ever existed. He was in his own universe. There was this burly, super-macho construction worker guy--a total airhead--and a full-on jock guy who always talked about girls like they were pieces of meat. Diane's teenage daughter lived there, too. She was just a full-on partier. There was a Mexican guy who was also a major stoner / partier guy. He was super-friendly. He'd always talk about partying, and scoring on girls. He was super jovial.

There was a spider monkey in the backyard tied to a tree with its own little house. It was on a 10-foot rope, so it had a 20-foot diameter circle that it could romp around in. I was always super leery of that thing. I never tried to go up and pet it. But everyone else would always go up to it and say, "Hi, how's it going? Aww..." and totally hold it and pet it. I don't know why, I just never went near it. I just had a feeling about it.

One time, Craig Ramsay came to pick me up to go skating. He went up to the spider monkey and started petting it. "Hi, how ya doing?" The thing instantly bit a big chunk out if his wrist. A huge chunk. You know how on cartoons when one character bites another, a huge chunk of teeth marks comes out of their arm? It was exactly like that. There was blood everywhere, and Craig Ramsay was totally screaming. One of the ladies who lived there put Craig in her car and bolted to the hospital. I swear, she was running red lights the whole way there. I can't believe we didn't die on the way.

Craig had some severed tendons in his wrist, so they operated on him. I lived there for nine months—enough time to have a baby, which I didn't. I couldn't get a job because I had hair down to my ass. Every couple of months, I'd move into a cheaper room. Finally, I ended up out in the garage, and then the trailer in the backyard. Eventually, I ended up doing yardwork to pay rent.

SP: Was that when you were writing Steep Slopes for Thrasher?

Yeah, and it got to the point where I was pretty much broke. I'd donate plasma twice a week and get $10 each time, so I was getting $20 a week from doing that. Then I got a job washing dishes at this old folks' home, but it was totally on the other side of town, so I had to take a bus to the West side. It was only two days a week for, like, four hours each day, so I made $20 a week from that. I was just scraping by. Then I got a letter, or a phone call, from Larry Balma at Tracker. He said, "I saw one of your Skate Fates, and there's an editorial in it we'd like to use. We're doing a newsletter for Tracker." I said, "Go ahead."

A few months later, the first issue of TransWorld Skateboarding showed up in my mailbox. It had a color cover. I thought it was just going to be a Tracker newsletter, but it turned out to be this full-on magazine. So, I called Larry and asked him if they needed help. I took the bus down there just to check it out, and I was stoked on it. So, a week later I moved down to SoCal.

SP: Did everyone at Thrasher instantly hate you?

I don't know. I didn't really hang out with those guys—just a couple of times.

SP: I remember one Steep Slopes column in Thrasher about graffiti and boom boxes.

I barely even remember those.

SP: Do you remember which one I'm talking about?

Vaguely.

SP: You said, "Don't spray paint at skate spots, and don't bring a boom box."

(Laughter) So, anyway, I just moved to Tracker.

SP: You lived there?

You wanna hear all that stuff?

SP: Yeah.

I pretty much lived in the building at Tracker for about six months. After that, Bryan Ridgeway moved in, then Marty Jimenez. They each lived there for about six months, or so. We just slept on the floor, and there was a shower there. We pretty much got paid minimum wage, so that's why we slept there. We couldn't afford to rent a place—at least I couldn't. Eventually, after over a year, Larry and Peggy kicked me out, but I was still making minimum wage, so I couldn't afford a place. I would either sleep at Del Mar, or I'd occasionally couch tour at someone's house.

Sometimes, I'd still sleep at Tracker, but I'd try to hide behind boxes, and stuff. There was this ladder that went up onto the roof above these ceiling panels, where there was a two-foot high space throughout the whole building between the roof and the ceiling. I put a piece of plywood up in there, where I could sleep in between the ceiling beams. I was cramped in every direction. One time, I accidentally put my knee down on the ceiling panel, and it cracked a little bit. It just made a little impression.

Somehow, I think I slept in late one day and Larry Balma heard me rustling around up there above the kitchen. Then I heard someone climb up the ladder and pop open the lid. Larry Balma's head appeared. He was all, "You're busted, GSD." Just like that. "You're busted, GSD." Check this out. He started this story that still persists today, and which appeared in the Trash column in Thrasher. It said that the ceiling gave way and I crashed down into a sink in the kitchen below! That never actually happened.

SP: So, he probably told Stecyck, huh?

Yeah.

SP: So, when did you leave TransWorld?

I started in May 1983 and left in May 1993.

SP: When's the last time you skated?

A few days ago at the Carlsbad park. I went late at night. I just wanted to cruise around for a few minutes. There were probably, like, 20 or 30 people skating. There's a cop station right there, so the cops drive by the park on their way in. Every time they drive through, every one of them slows down and looks into the park—they can see the whole thing—to make sure everyone is wearing safety gear. There's always a few guys who don't have it on. The first time I ever skated there, which was the other night, I put my skateboard down and started rolling, and I heard this, "ALL SKATERS MUST WEAR APPROPRIATE SAFETY GEAR!" This cop was rolling by. He just happened to make that announcement precisely when I stepped on my skateboard. But, there were a few other guys without pads, too, so I waited for a while. I don't really like the park in Carlsbad. I don't like the slant that it's on. I wish they would build one that's more simple and functional, with a clean L-bowl or egg bowl, and without wacky little features or oddly angled walls. I'd like something more clean and functional.

SP: I read a story on atomjack (the Rocket From The Crypt / Drive Like Jehu / Pitchfork listserv) that said "What's the story with Custom Floor? I saw them once, but the show basically consisted of some guy banging pots and pans." Did you do a show with pots and pans?

Yeah.

SP: Just pots and pans?

Um, let's see. Probably about three years ago, I started playing more improvised music with this guy Matt Crane, a drummer who lived in L.A. at the time. We played music just using paper and plastic. No, just kidding. Paper, beer cans, potato chip bags, toy zylophones, toy tambourines, pieces of junk and garbage, buckets and pieces of wood. We would just start out rubbing and tapping everything, making an array of sounds. We would do that for five minutes, then we'd start playing guitar and drums. It was pretty free-form, almost like free jazz, but still a little bit rythmic--but not that much. Then we'd transition into another section where I played the guitar I built with three steel rods and three low "E" strings.

With Matt, I usually played free improvisation, meaning nothing was thought out beforehand. Sometimes, I had a basic idea of what I was going to do on guitar--not always, though. The music was full of a lot of rubbing, scraping and tapping. It was mostly about creating a long, wide cloud of sound, as opposed to playing songs that were all written out.

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