Like most major US cities, present day San Francisco, California has been transformed by industry. The top ten most expensive cities in the United States happen to be coastal, able to fluidly deal with recessions and economic crises, while the majority of the country struggles to reinvent and reinvigorate themselves in a world where technology reigns. Like Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., who share the top five, San Francisco was not only a skateboarding hub in the ‘90s but for a stretch was the Mecca of progression and trend. Several texts including Iain Borden’s Skateboarding and the City: A Complete History (2019) have detailed the synergy between urban renewal and plaza skateboarding as well as their roles in gentrification.Justin Herman Plaza, better known as Embarcadero in San Francisco, California became the most renowned proving ground for skating in the early-’90s. Like Love Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., Embarcadero was a downtown plaza largely ignored by the city’s inhabitants with architecture rife for street skating. More than the ledges and stairs, it was a place to congregate with little interference from authorities until it wasn’t. By 1994, there was a beat cop on duty at Embarcadero, making it illegal to skate, forcing people to move to Pier 7 and Union Square, to varying degrees of success based on patrolling and skate-stopping.Though he wasn’t part of Embarcadero’s original wave, Lee Smith was a part of its most infamous. Growing up in San Francisco’s Richmond District, in a single parent household, Smith eventually took the bus down to Embarcadero where he befriended a group of skaters that included Mike Carroll, Henry Sanchez, Jovantae Turner, Chico Brenes, and Karl Watson among others, who all helped shape modern street skating in a way unique to San Francisco. Smith skated for Think, a local brand co-founded by Greg Carroll (Mike’s brother) before leaving to skate for ATM Click which evolved into 60/40, both run by Mark Gonzales. It’s noteworthy that ATM Click which was founded by Mark Gonzalez and John Falahee in late 1992 became the first brand to feature a team of all Latino or Black skateboarders. In many ways, ATM and 60/40 were also the blueprint for Menace whom Smith also rode for, with its Los Angeles street culture influence and image.Smith eventually moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles and later Barcelona, Spain where he helped open and operate FTC Barcelona before finding his way to New York City and settling into a television production role. He’s been involved with several projects including Black Skaters Matter and The Mission Statement podcast where he hosts other skaters through conversations that dig deeper than their timeline but rather their persona.I linked up with Lee to talk about his personal experience in skateboarding at a bar in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn in early October where temperatures were set to reach a record high of 91 degrees F and of course, the thick stench of unbearable NYC humidity—perfect fall weather.
Interview by Anthony Pappalardo / Shots by Quentin De Briey
I know we talked about this at Pushing Boarders this past summer but it’s wild to me how little has been documented in skateboarding. For example, most skaters don’t know who the first black skateboarder to turn pro was. Even if you dig there’s no official call but the consensus is that Dogtown / Z-Boys riders Clyde and Marty Grimes were the first in tandem. As I was searching for more info I came up on this quote about Marty from Skateboarder Magazine in 1978 by Tony Alva:
“He’s one of the hot black skaters anywhere; a radical goofy foot in the pool and a body torque specialist.”
Wow. That’s crazy. [laughs] But honestly, in some ways I feel like being like a certain type of black skateboarder is a great marketing tool, right? Like Stevie Williams or Kareem Campbell. You kinda gotta be like really from the hood and then people will really love you. That’s something people gravitate to—everybody loves like a guy from the hood. Even Darren Harper, had his little hot minute because he was like hood dude, you know?
Why do you think Stevie became such a name and figure and someone such as Ray Barbee, who was so groundbreaking and influential never even got a shoe model?
Because he’s the nice dude and like Stevie is the hood guy. Americans love the rags to riches story. I mean that, cause that’s a symbol of the American dream. But also if it’s like from the hood to like to Beverly Hills or whatever, people fucking love that. That’s a great marketing tool and a great selling point. It’s spicy.
It works over and over. People loved Chad Muska because he’s the white trash hero turned socialite and now artist.
Exactly. Another thing about Stevie is that he was one of the first black skaters to step outside of skateboarding and then market himself to a whole other hip-hop/celebrity world and say, ‘Hey look, I’m part of you guys. I’m on this level playing field but I make money from skateboarding.’And then all those people in those and that in those scenes are like, ‘Oh, he’s this black Tony Hawk!’ then people from outside of skateboarding, this core skateboarding scene, the black community, and the celebrity community started gravitating towards his story.
That could have easily been Kareem Campbell, who not only was pushing street skating but one of the first black skaters to actually own his own companies but again, that didn’t happen either.
I think that with Kareem the thing was—as somebody who was kind of close to him and rode for his team—was that he might of bit off more than he could chew by taking these two brands (Axion / City Stars) that he had and trying to be the face of them and doing it all on his own on the business side. Stevie essentially started DGK but like at the end of the day, Troy Morgan is the one that’s doing most of the business.
Maybe it wasn’t the best decision to take Menace out of World Industries, when he felt that Steve Rocco was making all this money off Axion and Menace that he could split off and do it himself—he could make that money. But he was really just a 24-year-old kid who didn’t have the time to run two companies and be a top pro skater in the game and enjoy life at the same time. I believed in him because… he’s like my hero. I was about 17 and thought he could do no wrong but the reality is he was just a kid also. And then again there could of been things going on behind the scenes at World that I didn’t even know about… Who knows.
‘Oh, he’s this black Tony Hawk!’
This isn’t a diss at all but after about 1992, I never saw a Daewon Song board in the wild and definitely never a Prime board but Menace was everywhere so it was weird to me to hear in documentaries or interviews that World was telling riders that Menace wasn’t doing that well compared to the other brands. Anywhere you went you’d see kids emulating Menace… Prime, not so much.
I mean Menace was doing pretty damn well. When he [Kareem] took it out of the umbrella of World Industries, it started to go downhill from there. I heard a crazy rumor that Kareem and Stevie actually had a little bit of beef when Stevie got the Reebok deal because of his shoes and Kareem’s KCK Duffs shoe being modeled after a Reebok trainer. Maybe Kareem felt jealous because there was no other reason for him to be mad about it.
I wanted to touch on like the jealousy thing because in the ‘90s there was no real metric or way to know how successful you were as a skater. You don’t have contracts or sales data or a social media following so it’s very easy to be like, ‘Why are they pushing him instead of me?’ Did you ever see that play out?
Talking about those two guys there, it could of been that there was a little bit of competitiveness or jealousy. I mean Stevie always wanted to ride for Menace and of course it would have made sense. Menace was this urban company but there was only one black guy. Well I was kind of black but I’m not the blackest in the world. [laughs] I tried to get Stevie on the team so many times. Kareem was always like, ‘Nah.’ Overall I think there was a really—in the black skater community—I feel like there’s been a strong bond within the skaters. But everything kinda changes once money comes into play. In the beginning you’re always friends but then once somebody starts making money then feelings start to change.
In the Epicly Later’d “Menace” documentary there was a lot of emphasis on the fact that the riders didn’t really fit in in the skateboarding industry. There was no lane for a hip-hop influenced brand. Now every brand—not just in skating—wants to be an urban brand.
I think a lot of that has to do with just brands going with what’s cool at the moment. Honestly, it’s never been cooler in the history of the world to be a black person is right now. You have Virgil Abloh who’s the artistic director of Louis Vuitton. Fashion is dictated by Kanye West and fucking A$AP Rocky. You got Cardi B who’s a few years ago was a stripper in the Bronx who’s now a fashion icon in some people’s eyes. We’re in a period of time right now where like rappers and skateboarders are the people that are dictating the trends in the fashion world in a sense.
Going back to your first exposure to the industry, who was your first sponsor?
My first sponsor was Think skateboards. I don’t know if it was a sponsor. Greg Carroll gave me boards in the “rave era.” Josh Swindell was on the team before he went to jail for murder. Then Mark Gonzales and those dudes came to Embarcadero and they started sending me ATM Click boards and later 60/40.
Getting on 60/40 essentially is what got me on Menace because they had the same riders: Joey Suriel, Fabian Alomar, and Steven Cales. Those guys were the ones, Kareem approached to ride for Menace. They needed an amateur and they told Kareem to put me on.
60/40 was a really interesting team because the 411VM commercials were almost like mini-videos and essentially what Instagram edits are today. The team was an all black/latino Los Angeles street team—that hadn’t happened before.
Interestingly enough. Before you mentioned that to me, I had never thought about that. There really were no white dudes on the team. John Deago was the only one for a minute for, and I think that was like late after the fact once everybody kind of left for Menace. It was kind of groundbreaking in that way. Another thing is another weird thing about 60/40 and ATM click was that Mark Gonzalez wasn’t that cool at the time. He was not that hot. Had his like huge moment with the Blind video but then like he kind of went underground. All his drawings and all his like art… people weren’t like praising it at the time like they are now. I thought it was super cool that I rode for Mark Gonzales but at the same time I remember thinking he’s my favorite skater but his, he wasn’t as “hot” at the time as he was during Video Days or as he is now.
Mark has also always kind of been obsessed with like LA Cholos. Fabian and Joey Suriel, those guys are really from that background. I mean Fabian’s dad was the leader of 18th Street Gang. I think that had an appeal to Mark especially being born and raised in LA. The funny thing is that we never did anything. The only thing I did was go to Long Beach to skate with everyone. There was no plan, no video. We just went skating and filmed whatever and that was what ended up in 411.
That’s kind of what skating has become now. FA is the hottest company but they don’t hype up super-videos for years, they just drop edits of the riders skating.
I don’t know if you remember [laughs] but I had a line in a 411 where I just do a 360 flip then ollie over a bench and noseslide a table and then a trick on flat and we just put that in the video. It just wasn’t that serious. But then right after that skateboarding became very serious and that lasted 15-20 years. Nothing could be sketchy or simple—Menikmati edited to the beat landing the hardest tricks perfectly.
And counter to how serious things became, you had Big Brother which was essentially a satire magazine. In looking at some of those issues and interviews now they were supposed to push buttons but out of context they seem really off. For example, it was like interviewing an Asian skater and asking if they’re good at math or if they can do karate. Did the magazines ever rub you the wrong way?
There was nothing racial specifically but in the ‘90s Thrasher was really slow to even come around on street skating. All those dudes hated our era of Embarcadero in the beginning. That’s something that a lot of people don’t know. They were like , “All you guys just sit around at this one place in the city, trying tricks on curbs all day long.’ They didn’t grasp it. Phelps talked so much shit on Embarcadero back then. Once there’s 200 kids showing up and everyone is riding Carroll or Henry’s board it was hard to ignore it.
“I listen to a lot of hip hop, they call women bitches but that’s disrespectful and I grew out of that a long time ago.”
What was weird and caused a little beef, was a Skateboarder with lists. One particular writer who I know, Alex Klein, was writing lists in the back of the mag like ‘10 Things That Tell You You’re Washed Up” and the descriptions would be very specific. Alex and Henry Sanchez got in a fight about that one down at Pier 7 because the list was like, ‘You’re this tall, you used to ride for this company’ etc. and it was Henry, which is kind of crazy.
He’s addressed it now but how did you feel about the Big Brother Corey Duffel interview?
That was probably one of the more shocking things that I’ve read and I never really understood it either. Like what was his excuse? There has to be something deeper to it because that’s not just wording that like people just use. Like I said, I called like women bitches when I was young because that’s what NWA fucking told me to. I listen to a lot of hip hop, they call women bitches but that’s disrespectful and I grew out of that a long time ago.
But you don’t like calling people the N-word if you’re a white person back then or at any time. There had to be a deeper reason why he said that about Stevie. I remember how I hung out with Stevie a lot at the time [of that interview] and he was making a lot of money and his attitude was basically, ‘Fuck him. I’m rich.” I don’t know if it really bothered him and he didn’t seem worried but that was one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen in skateboarding.
For whatever reason, the Southern California white surfer boy image is what has stuck with skateboarding for the last 40 years and the media still caters to that mentality. Which is kind of crazy to think about because skating was diverse from its beginning but the point-of-view has always been narrow.
It’s just like the marketing. Brands are always trying to change with the times but so many of them are late on shit. I remember that people used to say that Alien Workshop is like the “racist team” because there’s never been a black guy on the team.
Alien or Zero until recently.
But is it racist to feel like a skater doesn’t fit your brand’s image? Like what if Stevie was like, ‘Nah, I can’t put you on DGK cause you’re like a white dude with leather wristbands?’ I think Baker has always done the best job of having a really diverse team and if for some reason it all works together. You got like TK with like his diamonds in his teeth. You got like Antwuan Dixon, the recovering alcoholic boss Reynolds, Brayden who’s a Hollywood, hipstery trashy white dude but somehow it all seems to work out and I think it’s just because they’re genuinely friends in real life or that at least in the beginning.
And like the teams that came out of Embarcadero in the ‘90s vs. trying to create a super squad, it helps when people are friends and share experiences. It’s a lot different than going to a skatepark everyday next to a tennis court. Because of where it is in the city and how it’s configured, I almost feel like LES Park is more of a spot than a park.
Yeah, and that place essentially created Tyshawn [Jones]. There’s so many crews and people that came out of there. I just looked on Instagram and saw Gang Corp. hanging out in Paris. Somehow like this whole group of skaters from all around the Five-Boroughs congregate in this place and now they can market and brand themselves. At the same time, New York has no plazas. We always kind of tripped on that coming out here because it was like we would look at like Astor place and be like, ‘This is your spot?’ LA has no plazas either but they have school yards and then like the majority of big cities have at least one huge like Pulaski, Love, Le Dome, or Santz in Barcelona. Here you have Tompkins which is the only piece of like flat open space. LES is where kids going to hang out and congregate—actually hang out with each other. That’s when you’re really learning how to skateboard.
There’s probably more brands came out of LES Park than any other place in the world
Another thing a lot of people don’t talk about from a racial standpoint like skateboarding, which is awesome and beautiful to see is that the majority of skaters at LES are people of color. Skateboarding was not very much accepted by black or Latino people in their own communities historically. Even Ray Barbie mentioned that in an interview years ago. I think that’s always been one of the biggest hurdles of being a black skateboarders, to have your own people accept you as a skateboarder. Kids probably don’t deal with that as much as they used to because now it seems like anything goes.
In the 90s there were so many rules in society of what you were supposed to be like: Your, your pants have to fit like this. Your shoes can’t sit like that. A black dude wearing Vans in San Francisco that was like crazy. Nowadays kids can kind of do whatever they want, which is beautiful and amazing. I made this some skateboards that say “Black Skaters Matter.” It was kind of a double meaning. I was actually talking to black people because a lot of them used to say black people shouldn’t skate, which is absolutely fucking ridiculous because anybody should be able to do anything they want.
Another big shift is that skating is more diverse in how people are viewed. People forget that Mark Gonzales left skateboarding for a brief period to pursue art. Skateboarding wanted you to be a skateboarder. Could you imagine if Lavar McBride decided he was going to be a sculptor after Trilogy came out in 1996? No one would have taken that seriously. Now being yourself and being creative is almost a part of being a skateboarder.
You didn’t step outside of your lane back then. There were so many rules and expectations from being an inner city kid in the ‘90s. I was talking about this with somebody recently, it was one of the most most relieving things that happened to me when I was young. I was 22 or 23 and I told myself that I didn’t want to be a tough guy and that really lifted a weight off my shoulders. It wasn’t that I was a tough guy but if you were with your friends and you got into something, you had to fight. If you backed off from a fight which is what a mature adult would do, you’d beat yourself up for not standing up for yourself. ‘This dude bumped into me and I didn’t like check him, fuck!’ When you get a bunch of kids together, they always expect the city kids to be tougher and then it creates this weird dynamic where like they’re almost egging you on.
Right, and once you have that rep it just escalates. As an outsider, it seemed like James Kelch was that guy–the ultimate enforcer, whether he wanted to be or not. Would people come down to Embarcadero looking for fights?
Sam Smyth talked about this recently and it is totally right that like one of the problems that led to the downfall of Embarcadero was that we all started doing graffiti. So once, once a bunch of us started doing graffiti, that’s when that attracted this group—this outside entity of people that were a little more rough around the edges and that brought attention to our little circle. They’re the ones who started causing trouble right on. We would have fights with random people that would come through. It would be like a businessman who talk shit and it would be always Kelch who would run and punch him in the face and the guy would leave but it wasn’t a regular thing. Once the graffiti situation started happening, that’s when it started becoming a day-to-day recurring thing and kind of like led, which led to the demise because when that shit starts happening the cops show up more frequently and eventually the city making an effort to stop us from skating there altogether.
And 25 years later people Embarcadero’s had a resurgence. What do you think about how people are skating it and the spot being featured in Supreme’s Blessed and Baker 4?
I think it’s really cool that it’s a spot again. What’s funny is that we skated there every day in the ‘90s and we never thought to skate the parts people are skating now—we completely ignored the fountain and it was right there….. Well obviously nothing else is left [laughs]
