That’s right, we gave former pro skater Danny Gonzalez his own column to “talk about old skate video parts,” which basically means, write whatever the fuck he wants. Each week or two, Danny will post up a forgotten video part and add on a little commentary. He might praise it, he might shit on it.. hell, he might just tell you a crazy tour story from the good ol’ days. Who knows. All we are really sure is, it’s Danny’s column and were gonna let him do what he wants. And if it sucks, feel free to write us some hatemail or a spam or two.

This week, Ocean Howell in “Next Generation” (1991):

“I don’t know shit about this guy other then that I was super psyched on his skating. He flowed super tight and always skated to rad music. I think it wasn’t until I seen the Birdhouse video that I realized he was a huge fuckin’ stoner. I just want you to watch his skating cause he rips and he deserves a second viewing. I don’t see young people these days even knowing who this guy is or what he meant to skating. He flowed super tight and well it was probably cause he was tweeked all the time! In all the years there’s only ever been a few people that skated with this type of fluidity. Karl Watson is one of them and Nate Jones too. Nate’s part in Reel to Reel, is so freakin rad, watch it again.

Which by the way reminds me of a funny ass story involving Nate Jones that happened back in 99′. There was a club in SF called 1984. It was a place where you could let all your inhibitions go. They had cages that hung from the ceiling and at the peak of night for some reason, after either standing on tables or buying everyone drinks at the bar, I would lose all my shit when I heard “I Melt With You” by Modern English. I would seriously go fuckin’ bananas! I’m talking making out with complete strangers, jumping in the cage and dancing – I mean If I had a jet pack I would have blasted through the roof! That kinda bat-shit crazy. But don’t get me wrong, everyone else went apeshit at the place too.

Anyway, 1984 became such a smash sensation due to skaters making it the illest spot to be on Thursday’s. Celebrities actually started
coming through, which pissed some of us off. Not knowing Nate Jones I don’t know how we started talking, but I devised this caca-mania idea to some how get Adam Carolla (a pig and a womanizer) from The Man Show to leave the club. The funny part was that since the place was so loud, I had to take Nate in the bathroom so we could hear each other. I was so freakin wasted it took me a sec to focus in on our conversation but when I did, I could hear myself trying to convince him that we needed to act like super sleazy gay guys so we could continuously hit on Adam Carolla in hopes to creep him out so he would leave the club.

At that moment I thought to myself, what – in – the – fuck am I saying? Nate was smiling all big, nodding his head as he said, “Alright let’s do it!” So we walked out hand in hand from the bathroom in Mr. Carolla’s direction. We must have not been more then 5 steps away before in unison we broke apart and said, “AHH FUCK THAT!” That was one only time I ever spoke to Nate, never seen him since. But Nate if you reading this, thanks for being a sport, you’re a stand up guy. And oh yeah… Ocean Howell Rips!” – Danny Gonzalez

Words: Danny Gonzalez
Original Illustration: Lauren Kolesinskas
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