The year was 2001. At the ripe age of ten, my interest in skateboarding was just budding. I probably hadn’t even learned how to ollie yet, and somehow knew about Rampage, the old indoor park in Davenport, IA. I signed up for their monthly newsletter and got all giddy each time they came in the mail. A couple months went by before any noteworthy events popped up, the first of which was a Foundation demo.
The only pro I knew of was Kris Markovich, and that was because I’d seen him on the Tony Hawk Tour and in those trick tip videos where Tony makes him demonstrate all the wrong ways to do tricks. Naturally, it sent me off the walls with excitement. Thinking back on it now, the demo was pretty well stacked. Daniel Shimizu must have been there, along with Ethan Fowler. I had no clue what I was going to see at the time, but it didn’t matter one bit. Just the idea of watching pros skate was enough.
Rampage reeked of mildew, body odor, and burnt masonite; the classic skatepark smell. I couldn’t hear a thing over the crowd cheering, gigantic speakers blasting Built To Spill songs, and the slapping couplets of urethane coursing over sheet metal. My adolescent height kept me from seeing much of the skating. All of the deck space on every ramp was taken up by some bigger kids trying to witness a frontside flip. I was out there trying to get in on the action, and in the mean time my mom was posted up in the balcony area where spectators (parents) usually sat. At some point I went over to find her and there she was chumming it up with Kris Markovich. He looked over at me in his frayed button-up with beads of sweat covering the parts of his face that his beard hadn’t.
I exclaimed, “I saw you in the trick tip video!”
He smiled big, eyes wide, and replied with a drawn out, semi-enthusiastic, “Yeeeaah!” Then he told us to wait there and walked swiftly away. Moments later he came back with a fresh Hollywood deck bearing scribbled signatures of half the Foundation team. It was surreal. My first interaction with a pro skater ended with him giving me a board.
My mom was the coolest one in America on the day of the demo. She took me out of school early so we could go see the pros “rip it up”, as she always said. She stuck it out at the park when other parents dropped off their kids and hit the road. She even took it upon herself to have a conversation with a pro. I can’t verify this, but I don’t think Markovich was too keen on giving away a board, and she somehow coaxed it out of him for me. I still owe her for that.
The question I ask myself now is: what the hell was Markovich hoping to get out of the situation? Was he simply being a nice guy, or was he trying to score points with my mom in front of me? For all I knew, he was putting the moves on her and it went right over my head. Was I oblivious, or was I the fortunate focus of circumstance?
-Dylan Luloff
