Craig Stecyk, Father of the Now
I saw DogTown and Z Boys earlier this year (my wife is the webmaster for the Del Mar and the Nickelodeon here in Santa Cruz, so we see art house movies [the kind I prefer] for free)… saw this article when doing a search for something completely different, thought my wife would get a kick out of it, just finished it myself.
DT and Z was amazingly cool, because I grew up in Santa Monica in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s… I wasn’t a skater, but my brother was, and there were DogTown stickers and beat up skateboards and Thrasher magazines and punk rock records and random stuff scattered all over the house and through my memories… the movie helped me make sense of all of that and put it in context…
At one point in high school, I actually semi-seriously tried to learn how to skateboard… lacked the obsessive compulsion that generates the amount of practice neccessary to get good… and the social skills to hang out and learn it with others… but I did manage to ollie and nose ollie and while I could never drop off a ramp, I was able to go up and down it… for a rather uncoordinated and ungraceful scrawny bookworm, I think I did alright.
Anyway, this is a fascinating, and very detailed account of Craig’s life and impact on our culture - fascinating historical reading (I love history).