Remember when… these actors were action sports athletes?

The CW series In the Dark recently kicked off its second season, and I remember trying to figure out where I had seen one of its actors, Casey Deidrick.  The most likely answer would be on Days of Our Lives or Teen Wolf, but a quick search brought up the fact that he used to be an amateur skateboarder who competed in Vans contests and appeared in Transworld Skateboarding.  In interviews, Casey mentioned switching from a skate career to acting because of the injuries.  Although I could not find the Transworld spread, there’s this video of him on Youtube.  He also has a clip on him tre flipping on Instagram, showing that he still has it.

Casey isn’t the only skater with past action sports aspirations.  Austin Amelio was on the flow team for Osiris and appeared skating through the city he was named after in The Devil’s Toy.  After gigs in short films, music videos, and commercials, he landed the role of a lifetime in The Walking Dead as Dwight.  Nowadays he remains busy on the spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead, but he still finds time to skate and even made a film with Volcom spoofing his celebrity status (no skating in it though).

Austin was photographed by Drew Pickell for a feature in PUREFILTH Magazine about the skate scene in Austin, Texas.

Fans of another cult series, Strangers Things, might recall the punk girl with a fabulous afro named Mick in season 2.  She’s played by Gabrielle Maiden, who was the first black female competitive snowboarder ten years ago.  Snowboarding was a hobby that happened to give her new experiences and some success, but Gabby has said that her dream was always to become an actress.  Her recent work include Showtime TV series SMILF and horror anthology Scare Package. When she’s not acting, modeling, or playing the ukulele, she does occasionally snowboard and skate.

Gabby Maiden placed 5th in the Snowboarding Rail Jam at the 4th Annual Supergirl Jam.  Photo by Jason Lewis (L.A. Sentinel)

Of course, it would be remiss of me to not mention the original action sports athlete-turned-actor, Jason Lee.  After a stint as a pro skateboarder in the late 80s and early 90s, he got his big break in the movie Mallrats.  He’s a two-time Golden Globe nominee for My Name Is Earl and currently voices Charlie in the cartoon We Bear Bears.  Jason has also put on several photography exhibitions.  He still skates, having recently shared a video of a double line with his son on Instagram, and remains “co-captain” of Stereo Skateboards, which he founded with Chris “Dune” Pastras in 1992.

Oh yeah, did I mention that Jason was inducted in the Skateboarding Hall of Fame of 2019?

Remember when… surfing and skating looked like this?

One of my friends Julia, who photographs skaters in addition to pin-up models, shared a couple of really cool articles that give us a peek back into what surfing and skateboarding looked like in the 70s.  The two subcultures thrived in that decade, and it’s interesting to see what has evolved through the years.

The Digital Trends article outlines how film editor Doug Walker got his hands on boxes of discarded negatives from Surfing Magazine and began to piece together the stories behind each photo, which were taken by some of the most well-known surf photographers in the 70s.  He’s compiled them in the book The Lost & Found Collection: Volume one and made a documentary.  Now he’s working on a second volume while continuing to share some of the tales on-line.

Big Honolua Bay by Shirley Rogers (thelostandfoundcollection.com)

i-D talks to a photographer from the 70s for their piece on the skate scene.   From 1975-1978, Hugh Holland followed young skateboarders as they traversed the growing competition scene and started getting sponsorships.  The result is a documentary of how the sport was beginning to evolve from a casual hobby of surfers to the Olympics-bound discipline it is today.

By Hugh Holland/ M+B Gallery (i-d.vice.com)

I’m a big fan of honoring our roots, and both articles provided a great link to the past.  It makes me wonder what skateboarding and surfing will look like 40 years from now.  We gotta hang onto our photos so that we can find out in the future.

Remember when… skateboarding was not cool?

I found an article on the blog of Cole Giordano, a photographer and skater who was featured in the piece and more recently in Freshly Pressed.  It was about the skateboarding scene in the Hudson Valley and the pros and cons of the sports popularity.  It made me think about my relationship with the sport. You can read the article in the November/December 2011 issue of The Hook.

Despite the title of this post, skateboarding has always been cool to me, and I actually got into as it started to become more popular.  As much as I enjoyed all the action sports broadcasts on TV and the availability of skatewear (I’ve always liked the fashion aesthetic), I miss how it was sort of a secret passion of mine.  While I never hid my love of action sports, I embraced the fact that few people knew about the X Games.  It gave me an opportunity to introduce them to something different.  Now the response is more like, “Oh, you’re into skateboarding.  That’s… unexpected” and the person has already judged you for liking something “extreme”.  I also really hated how the popular girls suddenly found skater guys attractive and how suddenly skater girls had to change their image to be more appealing (read: feminine).

The Hook article reminded me of a piece in the Dallas Observer about how skateboarding has drastically changed throughout the years. I had no idea that Dallas had a skate scene, and it was interesting to learn how skateboarding had gone from an underground sport to a P.E. elective as it relates to my city. It’s a good history lesson for anybody curious about skate culture.

Remember when… Shaun White had short hair?

Anybody catch Shaun White on Conan last night? If you missed it, the clip is on the Team Coco site. Conan had some good questions, like whether surfing would be the next sport for Shaun to take up and how did it feel to be in a video game way back before the Wii and PS3. The interview managed to turn into Larry King Live halfway through, as the camera shifted to Conan’s other guest. It wasn’t the most informative of interviews (besides the Winter X Games), but there was a lot of funny light banter.

I feel as though I’ve kind of grown up with him because we’re the same age and I’ve followed Shaun’s career since the beginning (his Winter X debut was the first year I started watching). His hair is a good measure of how long it has been. While he’s pretty recognizable these days with his long red hair, I remember when he was pint-sized and short-haired. I also remembered him saying in a Winter X profile back in the day that he liked building Gundam models (I liked the Gundam series). I wonder if he still has those models.

For those of you who have never seen Shaun White in his early days, check out this video:

Listening to: “Space Cowboy” by Abney Park