Still stoked: Corpus Christi native celebrates lifetime of skateboarding on 70th birthday
For Jimmy Gonzalez, skateboarding is life, and has been for more than six decades. The Corpus Christi native celebrated his 70th birthday at the end of July with a party at Brushy Creek Skate Park in Cedar Park.
Skateboarding was still in its infancy back in late 1950s and early ‘60s, but Gonzalez couldn’t get enough. As he describes it, skateboarding went through a few different eras, from homemade to steel wheels to clay wheels to urethane wheels − and his love of the sport grew along with those.
Homemade was the beginning. At around 7 years old, Gonzalez had a pair of strap-on roller skates purchased from the GI Surplus Store downtown on North Water Street, and used them frequently. But around the summer of 1960, he started hearing about “sidewalk surfing.” He took apart his skates, hammered them flat and nailed them to a one-inch by six-inch piece of lumber, then sailed down the sidewalk, trying to figure out how to turn.
“I was immediately and forever hopelessly hooked on rolling on concrete,” he said.
From there he upgraded to his first commercial board, a Nash Fifteen Toes board, at Woolco for $2.98, since he couldn’t afford the $3.98 board. He recalls many hours riding down the breezeways of Lexington Elementary and South Park Middle School – both schools long-gone, he pointed out. The rides included many falls, because the steel wheels slipped easily on the smooth surface.
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Around 1966, Gonzalez purchased his next board, once again at Woolco, this time with clay wheels and loose bearings, as was the style then. His family moved to the city’s Southside, so now he rode all over Sundeen Junior High (also gone). He admits his skateboard got a few years’ rest when he acquired a 1967 Camaro in 1968.
Some of his earliest memories of the greater world are tied to skateboarding. He remembers riding his skateboard at 10 years old when he learned about President Kennedy’s assassination. In 1970, he and a friend sat on their boards as Hurricane Celia approached the city to let the wind push them down the street.
But in 1975, a new board piqued his interest. He recalls calling up his best friend Jeff Bower and telling him about the board with urethane wheels and closed bearings – all previous wheel bearings had been loose. Bower was over within minutes to check out the new board.
“We used to ride at Gulfway Shopping Center in the evenings, down the long and smooth concrete in front of the stores,” Gonzalez said. “We then turned to Gulfway National Bank to learn new tricks.”
With these new boards, the two turned their sites on a new thrill: empty swimming pools. The first pool they skated was at the old Mayflower Motel on Shoreline Boulevard – now the home of the American Bank Center’s arena. This is where Gonzalez developed his love of vert skating: meaning skating from a horizontal surface to a vertical surface, like ramps, skate bowls or the wall of an empty swimming pool − which is where the move originated.
In the winter, Gonzalez and his friends would start at North Beach and just go down the rows of motels along the bay and offer to drain and paint the swimming pools if they could also skate in them. And a surprising number allowed it.
Skating had a reputation as being for troublemakers, a stigma that continued well into the 2000s. But ironically, he remembers one of the few places skaters never were chased off from was the police station on Brownlee Boulevard.
Gonzalez was also around for the opening of Corpus Christi’s first skatepark, and likely the first skatepark to open in Texas: Holly Hills Skateboard Park. The park opened May 15, 1976, just months after the Carlsbad Skatepark in California. It was located on Holly Road near the current site of the Athletic Club. His friend Bower lived on-site as the manager with his wife and 2-year-old son.
"So one o'clock in the morning, we'd go over, flip on the lights and skate for hours." Gonzalez recalls attending a party at the park, where he broke his ankle skating. He was so determined to keep skating he ended up cutting his cast off early.
But eventually Gonzalez let skating drop off. He’d been working at one of the refineries for several years, gotten married and started a family. So, in 1985, he called it quits, thinking skateboarding was a young kids’ sport.
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Then in 2000, he made a trip to an indoor skatepark in Houston. Walking inside he felt that cold air conditioning, saw the 11-foot bowls and knew he needed to get back in.
“I saw that bowl, it was like music and fancy lights,” he said. He and turned to his now-ex-wife and said, “I have to go again.” He got to talking with the young man at the counter about his days skating, and who ended up finding Gonzalez an old board and spare parts and sent him off to skate.
“I’m still friends with that counter kid,” he laughed.
Gonzalez is thrilled that these days skateboarding is a family affair. Kids, parents, grandparents are out skating as a group. He skates with his grandson – his daughter prefers running and biking – and his girlfriend, Jacque Jones.
Jones was married to a skater for years and knew Gonzalez through the skating scene. But in December 2016, they reconnected at a mutual friend’s funeral when they were both divorced.
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“I could skate a little bit, I had skates and a skateboard as a kid,” Jones shared. “But I mainly liked being a skater’s girl.”
“But once I was with him, I said, ‘I want to try to skate again,'” encouraged by Gonzalez’s enthusiasm and obvious love of the sport. “And now I’ve got a skateboard, pads and everything. It was his [love of] skating that pulled me in.”
Gonzalez lives in Pleasanton now, where he skates at least once a day and tries to make a minimum of one trip a week to the small skate park in town.
“I’ll carve back and forth at home,” he said. “Break a sweat basically.”
Gonzalez is still a fan of skating pools and bowls.
“I’m not a Tony Hawk, with ramps,” he points out, and he’s getting too old to attempt many tricks, but he still skates vert. His favorite maneuver is a backside double grind.
One of Gonzalez’s favorite quotes comes from well-known skater Jay Adams in the 2001 documentary, “Dogtown and Z-Boys”: You don’t quit skateboarding because you got old – you got old because you quit skateboarding.
But he knows his limits. Skate too hard and you can barely move the next day, he acknowledged. He’s had a number of injuries and nine breaks and fractures, including his ankle, tibia, femur, arm, and a rib. He has a rod in his left leg, has messed up both his rotator cuffs and acquired innumerable scrapes and scratches.
But his doctor is totally on board, despite the injuries. She has told him that skating is excellent for his balance, coordination, dexterity, and keeps his heart healthy, Gonzalez shared. He only takes one pill a day, and his doctor has told him, “Mr. Gonzalez, we don’t know how you do it.”
But what message does a 70-year-old skater have for the masses?
“The beautiful thing about skating is, it’s for every age level,” he said. “There are no rules, no coaches, everyone is included and welcome. There’s no limits and no boundaries.” He knows of a skater with no legs who skates bowls, a partially blind skater who uses their cane, and a friend who skates Venice Beach in her wheelchair.
“I’m like an ambassador,” he said. “I want everyone to skateboard.”
“I don’t know what the pull is, but I can’t stop.”
Allison Ehrlich writes about things to do in South Texas and has a weekly Throwback Thursday column on local history.
Editor's Note: Jimmy Gonzalez's homemade skateboard was one-inch by six-inches. An earlier version of this article listed the incorrect size.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Still stoked: Texas skater celebrates 70th birthday
