With its big hills and smooth streets, Tiburon has always been an ideal place to street skate. I grew up on Tanfield Rd, which splits off the top of Hacienda Dr, and as a kid I road my skateboard everywhere. I skated to school at Del Mar. I skated to my friends’ houses. Most warm summer days, you’d find me skating with family and friends or even solo in shorts and no shirts. We often tightened our trucks to avoid the high-speed wobbles and bombed the hills, going straight down in a tuck position to minimize wind resistance and maximize our speed.
My older brothers were always more daring then me on their skateboard. They would bomb from the top of Stewart Dr with one person holding traffic where Stewart crosses Silverado. My brother Fred once bounced off a bus skating down Mount Tam towards Stinson Beach. Another time we did a full moon skate down the Mountain, and Fred flew off the side of the road and landed in a tree. He had to climb down the tree then back up the hill to the road where we found him somewhat disoriented.
The one time I was able to muster the most courage I had and bombed from the top of Reed Ranch Road, I hit a rock at the bottom. I had never gone faster on a skateboard. First I flew, then I tucked and my friends at the top of the hill said they saw my feet where my head should have been three times! My mind didn’t process those cartwheels/rolls, but suddenly I found myself running, my body still going nearly too fast for my feet to keep up. With no helmet or pads, miraculously I ended up only scraping on my knees, elbows and the small of my back. Fortunately, I was wearing a tee-shirt and painters pants that day. The next day I was a little sore. I owe my life to three things: taking a Judo class in fourth grade at Bel Aire School where I learned how to roll, PE coach extraordinaire Paul Stevens at Del Mar who taught be how to wrestle (and take falls), and mostly my guardian angel.
In eleventh grade I broke my wrist fooling around on my skateboard at Del Mar School. I wanted to play rugby that year but coach David Kirschhoff wouldn’t let me because my hard cast was too dangerous to the other players. So, I ended up surfing instead. On the way home from surf sessions, I’d hang my cast out the window to dry while blasting the car heater. That year Redwood Rugby, now the Marin Highlanders, won the national championship. I stayed in one piece and joined the team as a senior specifically because we toured Australia and New Zealand and I was hoping to surf down under. However I ended up trashing my left shoulder and couldn't paddle when we visited Manly Beach at the conclusion of the tour.
Sometime in the mid to late 1970’s they tried to outlaw skateboarding in Tiburon. Bright white “No Skateboarding” signs were painted in all the streets. There was a circle around the image of a skateboarder with a slash going through it. That didn’t stop me or my brothers or anyone I knew from skateboarding. Ever. The law was a total joke to the Tiburon youth. I don’t think they floated that law because skateboarding was dangerous, more likely it was because skaters were a nuisance to the adults. Ironically there were plenty of other ways we were nuisances, and skateboarding was the least of them.
In the 1970’s and 80’s skateboarding was a big part of the Tiburon youth culture. I skateboarded all the way through my 20’s, then put my boards away until I hit my mid 40’s. I didn’t stop until recently after falling and breaking three ribs. In my late 50’s now I’m still recovering from that accident. So, I’ve probably skateboarded for the last time. I’ll stick with surfing. I like falling in the water: on the cement, not so much.
Such was the life of this Tiburon skater.