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| Chris Baucom "Rude Boy" If you have high speed access and would like to see a modern movie clip of CB click on this link. Quotes from Friends Being anywhere within sight of Chris was a lesson on pushing life as far as you can. Weather it was pushing his skating, friends, family, strangers, it did not matter who or where as Chris was always challenging everything around him. Hence we all have memories of Chris that should never be written. Paul Schmitt Chris and I were practically brothers when I lived in Gainesville from 80-83. I was 4 years older than Chris and I'm sure his parents were a bit concerned about their 16 year old boy hanging out some college student with a weird haircut. I don't know if I corrupted the kid, but I certainly wasn't a great role model. We both grew up a lot during those turbulent years. I'm still suffering karmic paybacks for some of our youthful transgressions. We were both arrogant, self-centered skate-rats that were out to have as much fun as possible. Rules and social norms just didn't apply to us. Along with Womble, Mason, McGuigan and many other Gainesville freaks and punks we pushed the limits of an anarchic and decadent lifestyle. We all paid the price one way or another but if we could go back in time there would be very few things we'd change. I first started hanging out with Chris in the golden age of skateboarding, and Sensation Basin was one of the hotbeds. Ed Womble was the King and absolute ruler of the Sensation Basin world. Baucom was the heir apparent, and Rodney, McGuigan, Wes Aho, Tony Romano, the Myher Bros were the court with Tim Scroggs as the jester. Chris has amazing talent on a skateboard. In his youth he was strong, driven and focused. He picked up tricks quickly and usually pulled the frontside variations first. He had a bag of tricks in "the Worm run" at the Basin that probably still hasn't been duplicated (although Rodney may have come close). And he transferred just about all of those tricks to pools, parks and ramps across the US. His style was best suited to half-pipes but Chris could rip pools and parks with the best of 'em. He was a first rate freestyler as well, (check the old contest score sheets, Baucom always won freestyle too). Having Scroggs and Rodney as resident teachers helped I'm sure. I even heard he was a pretty good street skater. Great memories of road trips in the silver Buick(?) to Kona. Monty and John McGuigan came along on some of them. Chris had just gotten his drivers license but could not keep his speed under control while driving on the highway. After a few tickets he gave up trying and handed the keys to me and asked me to drive. He was fine around town, it just seemed when he saw miles of open road he wanted to get it over with. I've got to give him props for recognizing his weakness. A couple of trips later he said "OK - I can do this, I want to drive", and he hopped behind the wheel and drove 60 mph all the way back to Gainesville, no problem. Baucom - The Rude Boy, I kinda had a hand in his nickname. I may have been the one who introduced him to ska. We sure did listen to a lot of it when we were hanging together, The Specials, The English Beat, Selecter, early Clash, Sham 69, etc. He was a big Stray Cats and Joe Jackson fan too (I still think of him every time I hear anything from the "I'm the man" album). True Story (rambling but true) - Spring of '83 (I think). I had just moved to San Diego and was a semi-local at Del Mar. I was skating the pool with Owen Nieder and some young grom named Tony Hawk and a few others. They knew me as the Florida guy but I could still rip pretty good so they let me into sessions. Hawk hadn't attained god status but you could tell he was gonna be incredible. Tony had just returned from Kona where Baucom had beaten Lance and I don't think Hawk even made the cut (in the Am division). We were talking about new tricks and I mentioned that new Powell rider Chris Baucom was throwing blunts on the coping at Sensation Basin. Hawk got all defensive and said something like "so what - I don't give a shit about what he does" and started acting like the 16/17 year old little punk he was at the time. I skated with them a little longer and the session broke up and I went and skated the banks for a while or got baked with Gator or something. For the rest of the night though, every time I looked over to the pool, there was Hawk, trying blunts, slamming or jumping off and getting board-throwing pissed. I just chuckled to myself as I packed up my Robinak and headed south to Ocean Beach. His parents were very supportive of his skateboarding but rarely made it out to contests or the park. I found out why one night at the Basin. Mr and Mrs Baucom were watching Chris and I skate in the pool, standing behind the coping between the pool and the worm. I pulled a backside fastplant and landed a little low on the trannie with my weight a little too far back. Wham! - full on wilson, slam city - right to my back, smacking my Protec to the 'crete, board shooting skyward to the snake run take off area. Right in front of them. I popped up (happy that my helmet worked) and continued skating. Chris's mom got pretty shook up and had to go sit down, it apparently looked worse than it was. I don't think she wanted to see her baby fall like that. I think that was the last time I saw them out at the park. I am proud to call Chris Baucom a friend and skate partner. He has matured into a true gentleman, dedicated father and devoted family man. After a 15 year absence I'm glad to have him back in my life. The stories are endless, but I think I'll let Chris let out what he wants.... Hasta, GBMII Chris always demonstrated great focus when he rode. His fun personality matched his seriousness on the board. At Sensation Basin he took on a leadership role and was always helpful in making the park a fun place to be for a lot of people. He contributed to what was that magic and the comraderie that took place as the sport was just getting established. He was a consistent performer and placed consistently near the top at every competition. He was also a handful to deal with at times-but I admire the rebels, anarchists, limit pushers, and jokers for they are the people who move society forward. Thanks Chris for all the memories including the many I've forgotten. Phil Chiocchio - Owner/operator/builder/broom pusher/skater Sensation Basin 1976-1982 Chris Baucom was dubbed Rude Boy while I was riding for Walker by Bruce I believe, I never considered him to be Rude so much as honest and opinionated ! But One thing's for sure He Ripped hard and still does, so quick and powerful with an amazing array of tricks in his schedule. I was never able to pick up stuff as quick as he could and used to be bummed, but now as an older and slower skater, I just look back and appreciate all the great influence his skating had on me... Thanks Chris and Steve for keeping it real !! Love,Peace and Blessings and Grace to You and Yours, Glenn Klugel Layback
Air to Invert… huge lappy Smith Grinds… aggressive… but with style.
Chris Baucom…CB… the only guy who can get away with calling Kelly Lynn,
"Smelly!"… Rude Boy! It's a label that has been placed on Chris by
some who see, what in their eyes, is a certain amount of irreverence.
Irreverence for what? Irreverence for the over done politically correct bull
crap that we live with day to day. What some call "rude" I call
honesty. Chris is straight forward… honest in his life and straight forward
and honest in his skating. If someone is made to feel uncomfortable in his
presence maybe it's because they are uncomfortable with the truth. There is a
truth in his skating. The truth is that he shreds! He has shredded. He shreds
now and he WILL shred ON YOU in the future… so get used to it! I first
met Chris on the contest circuit in 78. He was already ripping and he was
already the guy to beat in his age group. I was lucky enough to be in the next
age group up most of the time. Being a highly competitive guy myself back then,
it was always lots more fun to skate with him knowing you didn't have to compete
with him in contest! These days it's a huge stoke to see him still rip the way
he does. You've got to respect his skating. You've got to respect HIM. In
doing so he will show you the same respect. Not a sugar coated version of
respect. I mean if you f*ck up he'll let you know it! He "will" try to
educate. If you were a clueless "Blader" he'll tell you,
"Watch…don't just drop in anytime you want," and "don't drop in
when I'm in there!" He'll give two warnings… The third time you'll get
run over! "Chris was always at the Basin. You could tell he felt the sport. He would be skating even if no one else was. He mastered the little half pipe thingy, no small task. It was slippery and tight (hmmm... maybe that's why he liked it). While Bruce Mason and I were skating the vert he became the ranking king of little flippy flappy tricks AND he could skate the vert. Even though he was a pain in my butt I had to respect him. I can still kick his ass at golf though." Ed Womble After a hot day at Kona The Rude Boy takes off all his cloths and showers right there by the Club House. Then the young Ramos girl come out of the club to see Chris Full Monte taking a shower, she runs back into the Club house gets Mrs. Ramos HOW funny is that...Some how he got out of it... Thanks, Donny (Pad) Griffin Chris was extremely important to Florida skating. He had a no B.S. attitude (still does), which is probably part of the reason he won the '81 Kona Summer Nationals...he wasn't psyched out that Cal was supposed to be better...did not even phase him. It was a huge win for Florida. We had some recognition previously with magazine covers, various pictures in Skateboarder, etc. But we did not have a 1st Place over the best competition in the world until CB. Heck, the amateur division was stacked heavily, back then all the team managers encouraged their top guys to stay amateur until they could really make a showing in the pros at the top of the pack. The list of amateur competitors at Kona was a "who's who" of skateboarding, almost more so than the pro roster. Chris rose to the occasion and took home top honors. It was huge. I kept the Thrasher Magazine from that contest, reading it now is still a stoker, (I also had my name on the back cover Sims ad which was probably why I kept it as well). Over the next few years I was able to skate with Chris and am stoked to see him skating now 20 plus years later, and he still skates great, and is a super nice guy. Steve Marinak
Baucom, the name brings back memories of a park I never visited- The Sensation
Basin, and rumors of a vertical snake run and the legendary Gainesville
crew: Nolder, McGuigan, Myhres, Mullen. The first time I ever saw him was
during the '82 Summer Nationals, I was in the back seat coming up to the
park and in those years there was an outdoor shower in the southwest corner of
the park near the clubhouse and freestyle area. So there he was- in the
shower naked. Watching him on the ramp at Kona, locking into Smith
grinds, floating ollies and doing switch stuff that was years ahead of
the curve was fucking great. His giving me the opportunity to be his friend as
we skate together (seldomly) is mindblowing. Seeing him always brings me
back to '82: he was a master, I was a student. - Todd Johnson
One cannot describe the Rude Boy with mere words, one must personally experience the Rude Boy to fully comprehend the phenomenon. I can't think of anyone who's as rad and so nonchalant all at the same time. He has frontside smiths so wired it pisses me off every time I see him do one. In recent years he has really pushed me to be a better skater and I thank him for that. Baucom is f---ing classic! A true skater to the core, you can't help but love the guy. Kelly Lynn The "Rude Boy", Chris Baucom was and still is one of the hottest skaters to ever come out of Florida. I'm not sure what event he skated in or skate move he performed was the most memorable. His skating has always been as gnarly as his facial expressions during his skate runs. He was the first person that I witnessed lighting farts! Nine inch high blue flames shooting sky high! I just remember walking in a room full of skaters, seeing the event and then quickly U-turning out! His frontside footplants have to be considered high on the list of his skatedom. Kona "OLD RAMP" covered in slick fiberglass and pulling these high azz frontside footplants off at will! Then there were these rock-n-roll board slides in the pool bowl at the Sensation Basin that made cool noises while he and his board traveled across coping blocks during his contest runs. Robbie Weir and I just look at each other and said Damn that's rad! I'll send a you a pic, but first I have to dig one out. Peace, Cleo Coney The first time I saw Chris skate was at sensation basin. He did so many lip tricks & ollies. He was the master of the coping for that ERA. I remember one time when we were both riding for Powell at a contest in Pomona CA. He was doing Frontside ollies to tail & Tony Hawk was so stoked that he tried until he made it. I also remember when He beat Lance Mountain At Kona. He was sick & Barry was Icing him between runs. Chris was & still is a master of the edge!!!! Thanks for the Memories. Robbie Weir All I remember was Chris kept sucking on the helium balloons saying....we're having a contest....we're having a contest, in a Mickey Mouse voice and yelling ........at every skater........not to bail but to----ride it out in glory or slam [he expects no less of himself....big tricks -hard slams is how you play]. Another, 22 or so years ago one night at the basin, I think he put on a superman cape and just rode completely nuts through the entire park! There were maybe 10 of us skating, and we just stopped and watched I think he might have been singing devo or something punky-new wave huge frontside rock and roll slide in the basin pool I think anyone else would have come off arrogant or an ass but Chris was good enough and zany enough to pull it off probably one of the greatest skaters ever. Bob Beebe Photographs
This was the Thrasher pic of CB doing a perfect ollie at Kona the year he won the Summer Nationals.
Snapshots from my personal archives. These were taken around late 1981. I think these were from U of F's Gator Growl weekend, which is in October I think. Pat Love and I went up for a skate weekend because the Plasmatics were playing Gator Growl. Wendy-O did a great job, blew up a cadillac on stage after spray painting FUCK on the side...plus the g-ville students were in rare form with their phalic costumes...very surreal. We were supposed to stay with Bob Beebe....we show up and Bob lives in an old camp site with a plywood door, it's cold out, no facilities, ...we skated the Basin and CB in his straight forward no BS style says something like "What the F are you staying out in the woods for?! Stay at our house." Well I felt bad about ditching Bob, but it was a house without Freddie Kruger. Chris gave us a first class skate weekend, (thank you again Mrs. Baucom for letting us stay there). We skated all weekend with Bob, Chris, Monty, and Rodney. Chris even brought us out to Rodney's house to see him doing something new that CB was raving over. We show up and Rodney shows us his ollies over a stack of 3 boards in his garage...I have snapshots of those too, but I'll save them for Rodney's Profile someday. Here's some pics of CB at the Basin from that weekend.
Exclusive Chris Baucom Interview January 2004
Are you originally from Gainesville Florida? yes How old were you when you started skating? And what got you into it? I was about 6-7 and my parents
moved from student housing to a home in a small neighborhood. The teenager that
lived across from me let me use his roller derby (yes-steel wheels). I skated on
it all the time and when his family moved he left the board with me. Was there a certain age or moment when you knew you were a skateboarder? I was an only child and there weren’t lots of kids around my age
in our area. I just loved skating and I didn’t need anyone else to do it. Who were some of the people and skaters at Sensation Basin? Give us some insight on these people and how they influenced you. I was a
freestyler until Phil Chiochio opened the Basin. Phil let a few of us skate free
(we had a Basin team) and was very good to us. The Basin had some great skaters
through the years. Rodney-obviously was unreal-his work ethic was phenomenal. I
have heard Rodney grew up skating by himself somewhere out in the country. This
is way off base- he was at the Basin most days as were the rest of us. Bruce
Mason (skated faster than anyone), Peter Andrews (when he could stay on skated
better than anyone), Mike Thibault (could do every trick known-probably pushed
me more than anyone to come up with new stuff) all ripped the park. Ed Womble
and George McClelland (who both always came to contests from the Clearwater
area) showed up in Gainesville a few years later to go to U.F. and spent many
hours shredding the place. Monty Nolder moved to Gainesville when he was around
17 and just ripped the place apart. McGuigan, Donny and Sam Myhre also were
constantly at the park throughout the years. Keith Hollein was the slalom king.
I’ve skated lots of places in my life but nothing touched the lines and
different areas the Basin had (my wife recently procured the old stop sign from
the park with the original sticker still on it). Other than the Basin locals, who were some key people that influenced you, and you’d like to mention. Bruce Walker was a great
coach/mentor for me. I skated the way I wanted and he didn’t push me to mimic
what everyone else was doing. We had some of the best road trips ever….you
wouldn’t believe the stuff we got away with. I spent a lot of time with Barry
Zaritsky over the years. Barry tried to help us take care of our injuries and
attempted to control our diets and a few other things. He’s a good guy. Alan
Gelfand came to Gainesville wearing his cords and Norcon and blew me away flying
without his hands. Smelly –sorry – Kelly Lynn was the smoothest skater I’d
ever seen…o.k. I.gotta put Folmer and Reggie Barnes there as well. Had unreal
road trips with Mark Lake, McCall, and all the other Walker guys. Phil Chiochio
didn’t influence me but he built the best park ever…. You were (and are) an early master of lip tricks; do you think skating in Gainesville with Rodney on a daily basis had any influence on this type of thinking? From Rodney I think I just learned that you don’t stop
trying the trick if you can envision it. Just do it over and over ……. I do
remember it got to a point where I didn’t want to go home until I had learned
a new trick each day. The skating at the Basin was at a very high level. All our
locals were very skilled and could hold their own. If you think about the guys
that were coming to our contests or just coming for a weekend trip….Clyde
Rodgers, Kelly Lynn, McGill, Gelfand, Jimmy Plummer, Shawn Peddie, Reggie
Barnes, Pat Love, Jim McCall. These guys mixed with the locals had some great
sessions. Are there any tricks you have invented or done first? I
haven’t seen anyone do an invert varial to tail before. Layback invert to
tail. I did ollie to tails both ways. I did what GBM and I called wrong-O’s
for awhile but someone out west decided to call it a boneless. Fakie to
frontside RnR’s. I did ollie grinds early on. Fakie axel to Frontside RnR.
Fakie 360 to tail (no hands). Fakie 360 to tail-stall ( kona ramp 1981). I’m
sure there are many people that think they made something up………....and
they did if they hadn’t seen it before….When I skated for Peralta he would
ask what new stuff I was doing and report on it in his bones brigade newsletter.
He wrote about my ollies to tail and fakie to frontside rocks but if you look in
the Tony Hawk trick timeline thing published recently he did them………...so
I don’t know………how many people know Kelly Lynn did layback airs first? On Friday July 17, 1981 you won the amateur division of the Kona/Variflex Summer Nationals beating Lance Mountain, Tony Hawk, Jeff Jones, Scott Green, Billy Beauregard, Buck Smith, and Andrew Lopez. How did this feel? Were you exhausted? Tell us about the contest and what it has meant to you. It was good for the Florida guys to get
one. It was cool to win one that I wasn’t supposed to. The contest was the
first double elimination I had done. You needed to be consistent. It was a long
day, I had slammed on my hip in the pool event and was having problems with it,
Barry iced it quite a few times throughout the evening and the half-pipe
tournament lasted until midnight. I ended up in the final against Lance. He
needed to beat me twice because he was in the loser’s bracket. He won the
first round and we had to go again. Lance
stepped off on a 50-50 or some other filler trick like that and I made a solid
run. It was one of my better days. I know you were sponsored by Walker then Powell then back to Walker. The skate-world has always wondered why? Can you give us the story? Evidently I was a bit wild for Stacy. He was very corporate minded
and I was a young skate punk….. Bruce and I always got along. How did you get the nickname “Rude Boy”, and who gave that to you. I think Jeff Newton . I’m not sure why. I was always very well
behaved. Was it true that at one point Stacy was considering a signature model and it was either going to you or to that Tony Hawk guy then you broke your arm or something and the rest is history? I haven’t heard that one. Did you play any other sports in high school? What was that time in your life like? No. I was skating all over and just
had a blast away from school. My senior year in high school I only had two
classes (I was an aide in one) so I had a great time just skating many hours a
day.. Do your kids (and wife) think it’s cool to have a great skater for a Dad? I think my son thinks it’s cool when some of the skater’s
come by the house and we take him skating and stuff like that. He likes seeing
the old video’s and posters of me. I just took him to Olliewood with GBM and
Kelly. I know he thought skating there was cool. My daughter likes to go watch
sometimes and my wife thinks I’m too old. What do you do for a living today? I work in a R&D lab
at a small/medium sized chemical plant. Did you ever stop skating for a brief period? If so when did you get back into it? I’ve had 6 broken arms and a
really bad broken leg. These certainly have slowed me down before but I always
have had a board around. Do you have any advice for skater-kids reading this? Skate
what’s fun for you and skate the way you want. Make up your own stuff. Any closing comments or things you would like to mention? Just like to thank all my friends for all the fun through the years. Besides family and God there’s nothing better than a good session. Thanks to Bruce Walker for everything, Phil C. for the Basin, The Ramos family for flowing everything at Kona. Bill Murray from Inland Surf Shop in Gainesville sponsored me in the early days-RIP. Congrats to Paul Schmitt, I went to Cal with Paul in the early 80’s for the first time. The goofy guy hung in there and made gazillions doing what he loves. Thanks to Marinak for getting some of us guys back together. |
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