Skateboard Safari

West Palm Beach

Chuck Lagana: The only action photo of  Skateboard Safari ever published in Skateboarder Magazine (I think).  Every park in the 70's had their version of Tony Alva, Chuck was ours.  When Chuck would come down either run at the park, there might as well have been fire coming off his wheels, all the kids would stop skating and essentially run for cover cuz nothing was going to stop or get in the way of Chuck Lagana.  He would throw these extremely powerful 540 slides and frontside airs on the banks at high speed, no soft touch b.s., full on dig in the rail surfstyle cutback.  You actually knew wherever Chuck was skating in the park...you could hear him...his wheels would bark this long drawn out guttural moan like a Jurassic Park dinosaur.  Hence his nickname "Beast from the East".  Last I heard, Chuck went on to become a Navy Seal.

Looking West at the East Run.  From here you can see the backside of "Mini-Vert" and behind that the Freestyle area.  Froggy would drop in swing high on the North wall and catch air over the grass into the Freestyle area, freakin over-head-high-launch that seemed to last for 30 feet or more.  Andy MacDonald would be proud to shake his hand, it was that impressive.  That was over 20 years ago and everyone in town still calls him Frog.  Pat Love and Tab Textor would have invert rallies between themselves on the "Mini-Vert" wall.  Pat's inverts were ...I hate to use the term, but they were bionic....total Steve Austin Six Million Dollar Man handplants.  He could stick one and hold it forever anywhere, didn't even need vert.  Almost 10 years later we were competing at Kona in Jax and Neal Blender, Christian Hosoi, and Steve Caballero come up to me on the roll-out deck and want to know who the heck my team-mate is...fully blown away.

Looking West at the West Run.  The "Cone Bowl" and "The Trough": The Cone Bowl makes me think of Tony Montalvo, he was smooth and stylish, great lipslides, Hotel California playing in the background.  Then you'd see Thilbert Gillespie pop an invert in The Trough and think man that looks weird, little did you know he was WAY ahead of his time.  To this day, whenever I am referring to West as a direction I think of the Trough.  My buddy Bob told me once he thought people were calling it the "West" Run after Chris West.  I had to laugh, not that it couldn't have been, Chris West rode for the original Sims East team and ripped, guess you had to be there.

I think I'll step inside for a Lemon Rush!

We plan on doing a bigger Profile someday on Skateboard Safari, the Sims East Team, and the FOX Team, if you have any photos, stories, etc.  We'd love to have your contribution.