I’m 32 years old right now and started skateboarding about 1986. I had a few banana boards, and then my dad gave me a Variflex for my 10th birthday. He woke me up that morning skating down the carpeted hallway in cowboy boots. My dad made me help him mix concrete when i was a kid.. he taught me a lot about construction growing up.. When I was 12 years old I spent my summer in the middle of nowhere nail gunning plywood to a roof, 2 stories up, on the side of a mountain. I saved money from odd jobs like that, and bought my first real complete skateboard.. Pink mini rats on Venture trucks with a hand me down Hosoi Hammerhead deck.Skateboarding was just transportation or something to do at the time for me. I’d skate down nasty hills and push across seas of flats.. Ollie down 4 stairs then up 3, slappy noseslide a parking block, 360 powerslides.. Going super fast and slappy boardslides on curbs were the first real tricks I ever learned.. If those even are tricks, and not that any of this matters anyway.
I didn’t ever really skate transitions till I was 19 and moved out west. Deaf Brian, and some other skaters from St. Louis were in the west coast. We met the cowtown team and the Desert West park opened.. That was the first concrete skate park I ever skated. It was 1997. I skated 24seven for a decade!! It is just something more adventurous to be involved in!! More than anything I’ve ever found in my life Skateboarding is the best. My life since has been hammering, painting, shoveling, cooking, and bar tending for money, just to break myself off on my skateboard for fun. I learn to film, travel, and a whole lot more college would not learn me. I moved back and forth here and there for a while always skateboarding.. August of 1999 I found myself livin in San Diego. Watched Washington Street skate park grow up from a small hip and rail to what is now the best skatepark in the world.. I traveled to Burnside, Whistler, Cuatros Casas..
I had a mini ramp in my back yard 2 blocks from the pacific ocean, and skated every concrete park on/in or near the west coast... I always liked to helped with building ramps, rails, parks, concrete, skate-able garbage, jersey walls in STL & SD.It was about 2003 when I started to consider moving back to St.Louis and building my own ramp again. So in October 2005 I packed up and left San Diego not really knowing what would happen. I just had dreams and needed a change.. I came to STL for a bit.. 2 days after christmas I was off to skate the world!! India to skate, learned, and built some concrete skatepark obstacles the hard way.. Went to Germany to skate with Grobowski @ Minus-Ramps... Off to England for meetings with Wada Pirates.. After a while of this & that I came back and got a job with California Skateparks. Built a bowl in Greenbelt, Maryland in 2007. Got to skate FDR in Philly, and the Green Lab Bowl in D.C. I came home again and dabbled in DIY stuff around ST. Louis but we always got harassed by the cops.
That's when I decided to stop my skate travels for a while and concentrate on building something Missouri needs!!
So I moved home, got a job, and built a bowl!!! Surrounded by forest in a valley near Hermann, Missouri is where Hermann's Hole was created and skated.
I’d have to say Cholo’s Bowl in Hawaii, SK8Goa in India, Cuatros Casas in Mexico, Zarosh's Place in northern California,and WSVT in San Diego are my key inspirations for Hermann's Hole.
Standby for the future.... And/or go do something