The only version of the Tuff Skts promo on the web, when Christian Hosoi and Vision Skateboards worked together for a short time in 1990. I shot and edited the original promo (7 1/2 minutes)) and a shorter version (4 1/2 minutes), using Bad Brains and Muddy Waters for the soundtrack. This is a further cut down version, dubbed with canned music, to avoid copyright issues, to air on Sk8-TV on Nicklodeon in 1990.
While known primarily as a BMX industry guy from the 1980's to Old School freestylers, I actually worked for Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Street Wear video company, for 2 1/2 years from late 1987 to mid 1990. I was mainly a production assistant, the other six people, plus a few women in promotions, and most anyone in other Vision departments, could tell me what to do. My nickname was The Dub Guy, I spent most of my time making copies of video footage for all kinds of reasons. I pretty much lived in a little 6' by 8' room, filled with all kinds of VTR's, professional grade VCR's, basically. I made dubs, copies of one thing or another, for the whole Vision empire. Betacam raw footage to VHS with a window to log footage? Yeah, I did it. 1" to 3/4" for offline editing, I was the guy. 50 copies of the four second shot of a Psycho Skate skateboard that appeared in some lame ass TV sitcom, yep, I'll make copies. I'll hide in my room, and make them, three at a time.
In 1989, our staff camerman, Pat, found another job, and I got upgraded to cameraman (while continuing as The Dub Guy). All of our producers and tech guys were also cameramen when we did big shoots, but I did the little jobs. The cool part of that was that I got sent to all the 2-Hip events that year, which Vision sponsored, and occasionally I got sent out to shoot video of Vision Street Ware fashion shoots, skateboarding footage, whatever. I even went to this video shoot, the skateboard part, and shot behind-the scenes footage all day (Kele Rosecrans, Joe Johnson, Eric Nash, and Micke Keller were the skaters). That was in 1989, when BMX freestyle was "dying," as corporate America deemed the "fad" over, and pulled their money out, followed by the mainstream bike industry. Vision also began to struggle that year. Their massive sales growth didn't double that year, like expected, it only went up about 15%. The 1980's skateboarding "fad" era was ending, and skate and snowbard sales began to fade. In January of 1990, Unreel got dissolved, and the two cheapest people, myself and our production coordinator, were kept on, and our boss, Don Hoffman, went to freelance mode. We moved out of our plush office, with the upstairs ocean view, at the end of Brioso Drive in Costa Mesa, and into the Vision main building in Santa Ana.
Before the Brioso building was all cleaned out, I got a call one day. "We need you to go shoot Christian Hosoi and his guys for a couple of days, then make a promo video for a new joint venture company." I thought, "Hell yeah!" I'd worked at contests where Christian and Tony Hawk skated, even been to Tony's Fallbrook ramp to shoot film, but I'd never actually met either of them. I was stoked to meet one of the two best vert skaters of the era.
I packed up the $50,000 Sony Betacam, one of our huge "TV news cameras," that were full broadcast quality. The beasts also weighed 35 pounds each, which made shooting airs from a ramp deck a workout. While most BMXers and skaters were using the new "prosumer" S-VHS cameras, or the brand new Hi8 video cameras, Unreel was still in broadcast quality mode, when there was still a huge difference between consumer and broadcast quality video.
Day one of shooting was at Christian's home ramp, a full size halfpipe hidden at his hilltop house in Echo Park, not very far from downtown L.A.. The idea I heard that was behind Tuff Skts was that Christian's top skaters on Hosoi were intimidated when competing against him, because not only was he one of the top two vert skaters, but his name was on all the boards. At least that was the idea. So he decided to work with Vision, starting a new brand called Tuff Skts, under their corporate umbrella. Vision also ran Sims and Schmitt Stix skateboards, and Sims Snowboards, so it would save Christian headaches on the business side of things, and it could be a huge new source of board sales for Vision, who made their own boards. At the time, the deal made a lot of sense.
Christian and Tony Hawk were the consistent top two vert skaters then. Christian was known for his really high airs, super smooth technique, and amazing style. Tony was known for having less style, but doing incredibly hard, far more technical vert tricks. Contest after contest, it was high air and style versus tech. Usually one of the two won the contest. Occasionally Steve Caballero, Chris Miller, or even Vision guy Gator might sneak in for a win. But mostly Tony and Christian battled for the top spot, contest after contest.
As 1990 rolled in, Christian was tired of being known just as the "high air guy," and he worked on some more technical tricks. Part of his plan that day was to debut some new tech tricks. In the promo above, you can see him doing tail grab nose grinds, and alley-oop nosegrinds, and a blunt, along with the standard grinds in his trick bag. In this video, edited by Sk8-TV (a Nickelodeon TV show in 1990, hosted by Gerry "Tater" Hertado), Christian talks a bit about Tuff Skts, and you can see his classic style in a good pool skating session. Here's another good video, it's just Christian skating vert in 1990, going through his reportoire of tricks. He's even wearing a Tuff Skts T-shirt part of the time, so it was in the era I'm talking about.
Always the showman and host, my first day shooting footage of Christian was an event, not just a casual video shoot. After reaching Echo Park, I drove the little Unreel Toyota van up this steep, winding driveway, where several cars were already parked, precariously, on the edge. I crabbed the wheels, pulled my gear out, and headed up to the house. Not only was I there, representing Vision, but a handful of magazine photographers were also there, as was surf filmaker Herbie Fletcher, shooting 16mm movie film. Herbie's son, pro surfer Christian Fletcher, another friend of Hosoi's, was also there. Christian's am guys, friends Block, Little Man, and Joey Tran, were there as well.
The house had trees around much of it, a full size halfpipe hidden a bit below on the hill, and an amazing view of downtown L.A. from the driveway. Word was that it was old time actor W.C. Field's house at one time. It was the most rock star skateboard day I could have imagined. The house had a 25 yard lap pool, long and skinny, something I'd never seen before. From the pool, it looked a lot like the house from 5:00 to 5:16 in this video, but the driveway is different. I did a little research just now, and I just figured out it wasn't the W.C. Fields mansion, but the story that day was that W. C. Fields lived in the house back in the day. What I remember thinking is "Holy crap! Skateboarding paid for all this?"
Everyone was gathered in a room of the house, and when I showed up, Christian was the gratious host. He introduced me as Vision's video guy, and walked me out and showed me the ramp, and gave me a run down of the plans for the day. He was as friendly and cool as could be. I think I set up the camera on the tripod outside, and went back inside, where everyone was watching skate videos, (and smoking some weed). Within ten minutes or so, everyone wandered out to the ramp, and the session began. Christian wasn't the only one skating, Christian Fletcher, and Christian's am guys took some runs. But he was the star of the show, and we all spread out on the deck to get shots as Christian tore it up run after run, talking with us guys on the deck between runs.
After maybe an hour of skating, Christian said, "OK, fatty break!" Most of the guys headed in the house to smoke some more weed. Again, this was 1990, years before the trouble Christian ran into in later in the 90's, and before cleaning up his act after that. When they headed inside, I asked him if I could ride my bike on the ramp. The skater vs. BMXer vibe was still strong in much of the skate world, but Christian just told me to go for it. So while most of the group went inside, I got some runs in on his vert ramp. I could never ride vert worth a damn, I'd do airs a foot under coping on any ramp. Six foot quarterpipe, I'd air a little under coping, On an 11 foot skate halfpipe with a foot of vert, I'd air a foot under coping. In the San Juan mansion pool, with 8 foot transition and four feet of vert, I aired a foot under coping. The funny thing was that day, while everyone was inside, it was me on my bike, and a guy with dreads down to his waist, who someone said was Christian's weed dealer, on his skateboard. We took turns on the ramp while most everyone else was getting stoned.
When guys started wandering back out to the ramp, someone told me to get my bike off the ramp. Much to my surprise, Christian walked up behind him, and said, "No, let the video guy ride. Let's see what you got." So I did a few under vert airs, and Christian seemed stoked to see I had some skills on a ramp, if not a lot, even if wasn't skating. That really surprised me. On local backyard ramps, I often got vibed by skaters. But at the backyard ramp of one of the top vert skaters, he was down to let everyone get some runs in, bike or board. That was really cool, and totally unexpected. I took my bike along mostly in case I had to ride some distance with the camera, following them skating.
At that point, Christian herded us into a small guest house. Herbie Fletcher had set up his movie projector, and was going to show everyone some film footage he shot of Christian a few weeks before. It was high speed film, meaning it played back in slow motion. Christian put some music on a record player, since the film didn't have sound. Once he saw the slow motion, he said, "Wait, I've got the perfect music for this." He pulled out a Muddy Waters blues album, on vinyl, and put that on. It blended perfectly with the slow motion skating footage.
I just sat there on the floor watching, wondering how this weird day had happened. I was a dorky BMXer/industry guy, sitting in a room with Christian Hosoi, a few of the top skateboard photographers, top pro surfer Christian Fletcher, and surf filmmaking legend Herbie Fletcher was showing his footage. I'd heard of all these guys before, but didn't expect to meet any of them. It was kind of surreal, like, "This is cool as hell, how did this happen?" The Muddy Waters music inspired me to do the same thing in the promo video, I edited a couple minutes of slo-mo footage of Christian doing airs to Muddy's song, "King Bee." It worked out really well.
When the day's sessions were over, we made arrangments for the next day, and I headed back down to Orange County. I can't remember exactly what order we went which places. Over the next two days, I shot some more of Christian, and his guys, Little Man, Joey Tran, and Block. They were more good friends who were good skaters, then top amateurs, and all Venice locals, I believe. We went down to Venice Beach, and I shot footage in their local skate shop, skating the curb out front, and then on the board walk, skating and hanging out. The guy with the surfboard in the mural, in the top clip, that's Block, who was also the founder of the MSA, the Mexican Surfing Association.
The short wall tricks of Venice local skater Tim Jackson, in the last post, is what inspired me to write this post. I knew Block had some different tricks on that same wall, one of which is in this clip above. Block would also skate with "sky hooks" on his board at times. Those were little plastic clips that went on the outside of your feet. They would screw into your board, then you're kind of clipped in, with plastic bits around the outside of your feet. That's how he does the method off the curb, and "bunnyhops" over Joey and Little Man. Those things were kind of hokey, but Block was a guy you didn't make fun of, and he could do cool stuff with the clips on his board.
One the second day of shooting footage, we also went to the blue pool in the clip. It was a drained backyard pool in Van Nuys, at an abandoned house that was next to a crack house. That was a great session, partly because Christian tore up the pool, and partly because we ran into this unknown guy skating named John Swope. John was doing Smith grinds that were more stylish than Christian's, which was a tall order. Christian started calling him "Johnny Grind" while we were there. We had a great session, They all skated, I shot video, and Block shot some photos.
Christian was so impressed with John's skills that he invited him to session another pool the next day. That's the big rectangle pool. But first we headed out to session another backyard pool, also The Valley, but it was half full of water or something. There was some reason it wasn't skateable. I think that's when he headed back to Venice to finish up the afternoon, actually.
On day three, we met up somewhere, picked up John Swope, and head to some obscure driveway up the 14 freeway, way north of L.A., on the way to Palmdale. It's about as 'middle of nowhere" as you can get, and still be in Los Angeles county. We parked at some little spot, then had to hike over a pretty high ridge, then down the other side, to get to this big rectangle pool. That was the day I wished I had a little Hi8 camera, not the big, heavy Sony Betacam. But we got to the spot after a solid hike, and no one was around. It was a big rectangle pool, larger than a big backyard pool, but much smaller than Olympic size. Everyone got some good skating in, and Christian just tore the place up. He would do whole lines of just cess slides, like 8 different variations of slides in one line, with that great skidding skate wheel sound. Then he'd air, grind, do corner airs. It was hard picking the best shots for the original promo video, which was 7 1/2 minutes long. There was a lot of great footage from the three days of shooting. As is the case with nearly all the raw footage in the Unreel tape library, there's a bunch of great footage sitting in a box, right now, somewhere, that no one has ever seen.
After a great session, we made the hike back to the van, and had dinner at some restaurant near the 14 and the 5 freeways. It was a great dinner, and Christian was telling stories to the skaters and me, from his travel and adventures. Then he gave the ultimate pro skater advice, how to skate a contest properly. He told his guys to have a big pasta dinner the night before the contest, to do some carbo loading. Then he told them to wake up the morning, take a big shit, smoke a fatty, have some breakfast, and "you're ready to skate hard all day." It actually was good advice (if you smoked weed), but it was so funny the way he said it. They all piled into the other car at that point, and we parted ways. I got in the Unreel Toyota "toaster" van, for the long drive back to Orange County.
Over the next 3 or 4 days, I did something I'd never done before. I actually edited the clip in our broadcast caliber edit bay. That place always intimidated me. I never in a million years thought I would be able to work that room, technology has always scared the hell out of me. It was simple cuts editing, and luckily no one else was in the building to hear me cuss and watch me struggle. But that was the one bit of video I edited in the actual edit bay, on the Big Boy system. I'd never make it as a real video editor, doing broadcast TV caliber work. I was used ot having Unreel's wizard editor Dave Alvarez doing the editing. But the whole staff had been cut at that point, except for two of us. So I managed to edit a mediocre promo video for Tuff Skts. When the women in the promotions department saw it, they wanted me to cut it down. So I made a shorter, 4 1/2 minute version. That's what got shown at trade shows, and sent out to anyone who needed to see one. I made a 3/4" copy of the original version. That was one of the tapes I lost in 2008, when I lost everything in my storage unit. I wanted that one for my demo reel someday.
So that's my story of spending three epic days with skateboard legend Christian Hosoi and his crew, in the spring of 1990. It was an great skate adventure for me. Tuff Skts ended up lasting about 6 or 8 months, as I recall. I quit Vision in July, 1990, so I wasn't around for the end of it, I'm not sure what the story was. But there's a little known piece of skateboard history few people know of, or remember.
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Great story, thanks for remembering!
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