This is literally my life, step by step. I remember seeing Natas in Thrasher, getting sponsored by Alva, watching Natas start 101, skating with Gabriel Rodriquez and more!
So funny hearing him talk about the kickflip. "We'd ollie and kick it and it was just so funny, because we'd spend the whole day landing with one foot on and one foot off." Haha little did he know that 10-15 years later this is the struggle every skater would know while learning kickflips
These cats were my heroes back in the 80s. Gonz first...Natas and Tommy very close...even Jesse Martinez, who wasn't in this but his board was...those guys were the first true street skaters. There was the pretty boy-Hosoi and squeeky-clean Hawk, but I always dug these guys. Street was just taking off and you didn't need a ramp or a pool...just a spot. Ohio was a million miles away from Santa Monica and Huntington Beach and Venice...but we didn't care. Several times I'd layer up in long underwear and thick jackets to go outside and skate where the sun had melted the snow, but it was still 30 degrees. My favorite all-time board was the Vision Gonz deck...you could Ollie the moon with that thing...HUGE kicktail. Second was SMA Natas deck with the panther. It was fairly tame compared to Gonzs deck, but to this day it was the only board I've ever been able to kickflip. Now kickflip are the norm, but back then with a 10 x 30 deck it was an accomplishment. After about the mid 90s I all but quit skating. I got married, settled down. Had a couple of the newer double kick decks, but I just never got into that style. No, I'm old and tired and in bad health now...but I always dream of hopping back on a huge 10 x 30, P&P Gorilla Rib rails, Thunder trucks and Powell 95a Rat Bones or Santa Cruz 92a Bullets and rolling somewhere...anywhere. Thank you for posting this...lot of history for us old farts... ...and Natas...the kid who at 16 looked 30 and who at 30 looked 16... Right on.
Natas you are a true skateboard legend remember skateboarding at 8yrs ... Watching your vids spinning around that fire hydrant blew my mind then plus the wall rides epic n carving it up down the street ...totally wicked ..I'm 39 now n don't skate much after having the same injury in 2000 as this great man ..a metal plate n 8 screws in my right ankle after a nose stall revert went wrong n bent my foot back the other way woooooooow that hurt .. Keep skateboarding enjoy life to the max I do ......peace out ✌️✌✌
Steven Sippio Hey Steven I'm here bro ..ask away ..it seems funny as I wished when I was young skateboarder that RU-vid wasn't invented n watching RU-vidr john hill ..Arron kyro and co..skating reminds me of them great times ..me and my friends made ramps learnt tricks together and it was epic you know ..but yea hook us up bud ..peace out ✌️
I love modern tech skating and what it has evolved into, but this video shows the kind of skateboarding I grew up with. I still think it's fucking gnarly.
I hear you man. I got into skating right before Tony Hawk's Pro Skater came out so I knew technical skating from the get go but I still love watching my old favorite skaters of that particular time now and appreciate how ahead of their time these guys are.
I owned a skateshop in bakersfield ca from 95 to 2013 we had vita shoes in beginning ahead of time!!! and we would get natas stuff in but the "New Breed" sk8r only cared about bam muska mike v. in the early days of my store I always Loved Natas style and personality!!!
Came here looking to confirm that deck rails were introduced to skateboarding before handrails. Stayed here for the incredibly interesting and entertaining video. Haven’t heard of him before just now, but Natas is an inspiration !
Owned Streets of Fire in the late 80s and remember being blown away by Natas. Had seen pictures of him in a magazines before of crazy WTF things he'd do but watching the footage was transcendental to a young me then. That ollie onto a school table still gives me chills; those old boards were heavy and lacked the pop of boards these days. The best kids rolling down Wilshire Blvd would grab the board and jump onto small handrails to do boardslides; I remember the heated debates about the rumors that Gonz and Natas had actually ollied onto them. Many of us were 100% sure that it couldn't be done.
Natas was always my favorite skater. I traded a brand new Jeff Kendall for a well used Natas board because I liked the concave and size better. Had it for a day and my brother ratted me out to my dad, it's Satan backwards, and he threw it away. I had to save all summer to get a vision double tail.
Man, as a musician who really appreciates skating, natas is probably my favorite. His seamless, improvised use of everything in his path reminds of a lot of radical jazz musicians, like the fucking John coltrane of skateboarding. He utilizes everything at his disposal, yeah, but with completely perfect flow, no artifice, or technical sporty bullshit for the sake of. A real artist
Landsdowne was fun to skate but we had to leave someone at the car otherwise it wouldn't be there when we got back. The place was super sketchy back in 80's. Someone told me that the city build a project house on top of part it. You could kinda see where the rest of the snake run up hill used to be.
Had so many of the Natas decks from '87 to '89. I also like Tommy Guerrero's sword w/flames deck. Right up until Matt Hensley King Size came out. I still love skateboarding and how it has evolved, but there will never be times like these again. Shit was so fresh.
He's the most badass street skate ever,no one has fun like he did back in the day,Natas saved skate boarding,all skaters owe this man props, he's the realshit.
So Inspired! He is now my favorite skater! Wow! I love all the old school skaters from the late 80's early 90-'s Gonz & Marc Johnson as well.This was a great vid I really enjoyed it! THANK YOU
That fire hydrant is nothing less than national heritage and should be put in a museum. I remember reading an interview with Natas in which he talked about touring and doing demos in the aftermath of that video. People would put a fire hydrant in their street course just for him, expecting him to replicate the spin, only they'd be huge, four foot tall European style hydrants.
+Arno Theadorno Right! I remember read some about some Asian company flew him over there (Japan maybe?) and they had a fire hydrant and a photographer. They pointed at the hydrant smiling at Natas. Funny shit.
2 tricks in two weeks fuckers bow down to a pioneer. Natas shaped the way you skate. Pay homage. He was doing handrails that would make your sack bleed 20 years ago. Legend.
wow that was cool, i had heard of natas spins, but never knew of his contribution to skateboarding until having watched this movie. I liked that he was friends with Mark Gonzales, i am a fan of his for sure, and also i think that his contribution to the artistic and design aspects of skateboarding were very interesting.
The trick off the chain link fence is still my favorite. I can remember watching that video back in the day! Still love Firehose & 'Brave Captain' to this day!
I had an original santa monica airlines made natas deck back in '85. I remember it fondly, but today it would be very weird, it had the shortest nose a street skater could imagine using today.
I'm 44 now and too broke down to skate.Seeing Natas in Transworld doing wall rides got me doing em back when.I appreciate Ritchie and William but,watching Natas,Gonz,and Mullens gets me stoked as much as it used to.Damn getting old.
Bro, you + me both.. *tell me hearing that song kick in from Streets of Fire " CAPTAIN, there are doubts!" when that kicks in I instantly get super stoked and Psyched to skate BUT a remix of that feeling as it's a old school version..Makes me happy remembering doing 50/50 axel stalls on low benches.. and what a big deal learning backside stuff was.. **I'm SAME age as you dude.. I UN-retired 3-4 years ago when I saw Adidas Busenitz skate shoe and emmediately went home and watched Video Days and this led me to watch Streets of Fire... (I stayed a skater whole life but hadn't skated since late 90's..... you?
+Steven Sippio I've got a 21 year old son and we moved to a rural part of town about 10 years ago. On two acres and I'm a carpenter so what did I do?Yup,built a mini half for me and the boy. (For me,ha!)I admit that I'm not what I used to be but,I still get the same rush that I did when I was 16.If Animal Chin could do it,why can't we?
always wanna to be good at this an i know mostly the reason i wusnt i wus so scared to jus go wit it i psych myself out an i also wldnt comit to the tricks 100 percent but still i wld skate with my friends growing up bc to me i jus loved all that came with skating the hanging out the times an ppl i knew cld skate so i wus always stokked for them to perform an like a fen jus cheering for them to do there thing my teenage days 2002 to 2006 fun times i havent stopped since 2001 2002 luvin skateboarding its radical
as the vid goes on i really see the evolution of skating. at first it was like the old bowl sessions but then, everything changed starting from those wall rides
The best thing about Natas' skating is that he isn't smooth. He is always on edge and borderline out-of-control, so it makes it more interesting to watch. It is the counter to someone like Nyjah Huston who is also fun to watch because everything looks so effortless.
Does anyone know what these old skate videos with the blue circle in the bottom left hand corner are called? there was heaps of them and i want to see more!
I have that Thrasher with Natas on the cover, the dude was so mysterious to anyone not in Cali at first, it's things like that that kids nowadays can't experience. I think Mullen should be given a little more props if you're gonna say the history of street skating but, yes, Natas was the shit.
So I've now learnt that, in addition to his legendary skating, Natas later invented that '00s fashion where t-shirts all had messy white cursive writing on them! I'd forgotten about that. But seriously - probably the greatest street skater of all time just based on style, let alone innovation. Watching the ole Wheels of Fire/Streets of Fire footage brings back a lot of memories.
