Cliff Coleman Interview

Submitted to NCDSA.com (under interview) on 8/31/2001 by D.T.

Are you old school?

Submitted by D.T.

When I think of old school, I think of the days of Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, John Hutson, Roger Hickey, and Cliff Coleman. Each brought a unique talent to our sport whether it was Tony’s vert, Stacy’s all around greatness, John’s dominating the downhill circuit of old, Roger’s speed record, which stood untouched for years, or Cliff’s eye catching slides. I wanted to get a real feel of what it was like growing up on a skateboard, so I gave Cliff Coleman a call and he was stoked to give me some time from his busy schedule.

D.T: When did you first start skating?

Cliff: Well either in 1960 or 1961 I met the UC Berkley crew team. They were a bunch of older guys, who didn’t have a dad around, and they were always nice to me, and one day one of these guys said, “hey, have you ever seen one of these? It’s called a skateboard,” and that was my first experience with one.

D.T: What were the boards like back then?

Cliff: It was a 2 by 4 with steel wheels, and the skate was nailed to the wood. It was terrible, but we thought it was great. We would just ride on them, and maybe try and make a little turn on them every once in a while, and there’s no traction on steel. So if you went any fast at all, it would just slide out on you.

D.T: Speaking of slides, when did you first start sliding?

Cliff: Well, we first thought about them in the sixties, during the clay wheel days, and just thought, gee, if you could only slide and stay on the board, it would be great. But we never had any idea, we would actually do it. However, in about 1975, I started sliding on a skateboard doing stand up slides. I saw Torger Johnson and Ed Nadalin doing stand up slides on the concrete floor of the cow palace at the Northern California Skateboard Championships, and I started doing them myself out in the streets. First I was just making my turns tighter and tighter until the wheels would start to break free. After awhile, I started doing them on purpose and it was a lot of fun.

D.T: Had you already been racing at this time?

Cliff: The first race I was in, was a slalom race at Berkley High School in 1965, and then I raced in more slalom races that were depicted in the old quarterly skateboard magazine, featuring Joey Cabell, Torger Johnson, and the rest of the Southern California Hobie Skateboard team. We were doing the same thing, putting out soda pop cans in the street, then weaving our way through them. It reached its peak in May of 1965 in Anaheim, I entered both the flatland and downhill slalom there. I was a finalist in the downhill slalom, but I was slow. I fell on one run, and was just trying my best to make it through the course. Their finalists meant the top 20, because there were 100s of people who entered. I was terrible, 19th I think, if I remember correctly, but it was a lot fun.

D.T: How long did you do race slalom for?

Cliff: Well, right after that skateboarding took a dive off the deep end for about a 9 year period, until it came back with the advent of the urethane wheels in 1974. Then I started racing downhill on a road called Tunnel Road in Oakland, California. It’s about 3.1 miles long with a wonderful surface on it and lots of turns. That was great fun up there. You could go there on a summer day and there would be 30 to 50 kids hitchhiking back up. So it gave us a good chance to learn how to draft and race through the corners, and we did it everyday.

D.T: Who got you started and influenced you the most in downhill skating?

Cliff: There was a guy named Arthur Fisher who is now an attorney at law, and he was skateboarding when it had started to make its come back. At this time my mother actually went out and bought me a clay wheeled skateboard called a Bold Knight, she laughed and said, “If you get halfway down the hill, it was worth buying it,” and literally, after half way down the hill, big chunks of the wheels started flying off because of the heat. I was a full-grown man, and not a scrawny little kid anymore, so it was just too much, but I had a great mother. She went out and bought me four urethane wheels with loose ball bearings. And these guys took me out to tunnel road. It was Art and his buddies. So I got to thank Arthur Fisher for getting me back out to riding downhill.

D.T: How long was it until you started competing?

Cliff: I heard about these people racing every Sunday at La Costa, and I was a friend and teammate of Torger Johnson, and I knew he was riding down hill with the Logans and another group of really good skaters called the A-Lot-A-Flex team from Oakland and Berkley, California. They had one rider, Tim Marting, who was the first back to back winner in the pools in the old Hester series, these guys were great downhillers, so i started riding with them everyday. I taught them some of the old school tricks, you know headstands and handstands. Well I took them on a road trip and we went down and skated in La Costa, we went to the Kona bowl, which was my first experience in a pool, and they went on to become great skaters. One of them, Jeff Sand, went on to invent the switch snowboard binding. Well shortly after the tour entered my last amateur event in Nevada and entered 3 events, and was fortunate enough to win all 3. I became the overall champion, and then after that, I decided to turn pro. The Catalina Classic was that next October in 1977. In qualifying, I was 1st place and ended up 4th place in the finals. It was the biggest downhill race I ever went to as far as having a lot of fun.

D.T: How many years did you go on to race for?

Cliff: This went on for awhile, I raced in all the Capitola races, all the Laguna Secas, and in 78 I entered the Signal Hill race. After that, there weren’t that many races. Santa Cruz decided to go to street style and change their format at Capitola. And for a long time that was the end of downhill, until Roger Hickey got things going with his buddy Perry Fisser and started EDI down in Southern California. During this same time, I had no idea what was going on. I lived right by UC Berkley and there was this guy who use to crack hop the concrete out front of my house. I could here him rolling by everyday, and one day I was going out the door as he was coming by. He recognized me, and told me about that Hutson and Hickey had been riding down there. So I called up Hutson and he told me he hadn’t been riding for awhile, I was a little discouraged but called Roger and he told me about EDI. So I took Hutson down to San Dimas, California in 1996 and that’s when I got back into competitive racing. I have been riding nonstop since skateboarding made its resurgence in 1974. For the most part, we were always just racing and sliding down the hills, not really much organization. It was nothing compared to what it is today. There was one race that had 73 competitors. It was quite a large gathering, and I actually won that one. That was the one and only time that I beat John Hutson in a downhill race. So it was a thrilling day for me, but gosh that was like 23 or 24 years ago.

D.T: Tell me about the challenge you put out at the Capitola race?

Cliff: Well, what had happened was, we had developed the sliding skills when the dogtown guys, the manufactures, and the magazines steered all the interest towards vertical. I was 27 years old and had a child and was getting older. They didn’t have plastic on the kneepads, and I wasn’t a great vertical rider. I could do grinders on the coping, 50/50s, and one wheelers, but I never did an air. I thought to myself, “You know, I’m just going to ride these hills out here,” and it became a scene. People started joining me, and we would let anybody come, as long as their attitude was decent. I didn’t care if it was a first time skater or someone with a lot of experience. We developed all the slides back in those days to where they are now. The idea for this challenge started in 1976. I was trying to spread the sliding to the rest of the skaters in the world. The next Capitola race fell on Labor Day weekend, since this is a three-day weekend we would have an extra day. So I wanted them to come up and learn how to slide. The problem was it was difficult to get people to come out. So I offered The Cliff Coleman Challenge. I had the promoter and the MC pass out flyers. The flyer promised 10 to 1 odds for anyone on their money to come race me on this coursed called the Buena Vista Run in Berkley. So they could bet $10 and if they could beat me, they would win $100. Beyond that, I gave two riders, Rick Blackheart and Roger Hickey, 20 to 1 odds. So they could win $200 on their $10. Well Roger Hickey was the only one that had enough heart to show out of 30 some odd pro racers. I had also guaranteed that anyone that showed up and couldn’t ride the hill after looking at it, for that same $10, I would teach them how to slide. Well Roger didn’t want to ride, and since he was the only one to show, I taught him for free. I taught Roger the basics, but he never really pursued it after that. Roger stuck with his old school style and dominated everyone, until Hutson finally beat him.

D.T: As far as racing, what are your future plans?

Cliff: Well recently I have been acquiring all the equipment necessary to race on the pro circuit. I’m 50 years old now, but I am still in fairly decent shape. I think it would really be a kick to go out and qualify for the Gravity Games at my age. I want to race all the guys that are your age, 20 and up, and see how competitive I can be. I’ll do my best everytime I go out, I’m going to try and win. And if I do my best, I know I’ll do fairly well and be satisfied with whatever results. Now there is a lot of money to be won, but the most fun of all is having a chance to meet and ride with new skaters. I’m really looking forward to skating with the Europeans and people from other nations. It’s really been a lot of fun meeting all the EDI guys from Southern California. So I am going to race this season, and I am going to pass up the first race in San Diego, because I’ll be in Australia for 7 weeks. I’ll be back for the Santa Rosa race, the Zurich, and the Mammoth. In those three, I hope to qualify for the Gravity Games in Providence. And if things go well, I might even race next year. I have some gloves I have produced called Cliff Slides. They’ve been around for 20 years, but the interest just wasn’t there. Now there is a growing interest, so I would like to get them on the market by next fall. This racing series will help me introduce them to racers that don’t know about them, and I’ll be there to teach anybody that wants to learn.

D.T: You have been teaching people to slide for years, I know you mentioned Roger Hickey, who else have you taught that we might know?

Cliff: At Powell-Peralta, I met Stacy Peralta, when I did a Columbia Pictures television pilot. They had me do the downhill and Stacy did the studio work. Stacy couldn’t get down those steep hills in San Francisco. So one time I went down to look for him at Powell-Peralta. He was out, but a couple of his employees were there, Chris Iverson and Todd Hastings. Chris was working as the head of R & D, while Todd was the team manager for many years. I told them about the slides and how to make the gloves; and I had told many people this, but few had actually done it. Well these guys made the gloves that night, and taught themselves how to slide the next morning just from the verbal description. We met at this road they told us about, and since they knew how to slide, we just did slides the rest of the day. But the road wasn’t very exciting. So we started looking for a better hill, and as we looked across the valley at the Montecido Hills, I could see this windy road named Park Lane. I told them, “ That’s the kind of road we like to ride on.” We couldn’t tell if it was paved or not, cause we were so far away from it. When we checked it out, we found it was an access road to a new home development. There was a cable across the road, and our skate key fit it perfectly. We would let ourselves in, than lock it back up to ensure no one would come up. So we skated there, and that was depicted in the Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade video, “Future Primative.” That’s Park Lane, and the two riders are Chris Iverson and Rich Dunlop. There were a couple of other skaters who I taught, Rich Dunop was from Boston, and was featured in both “Gleaming the Cube” and “Thrashin.” He had a good friend named Jim Kluggish, who is now my best friend and still skates up here. Recently, Jim and I did some video work for the Gravity Skateboard Company. Now back to the two I taught at Powell-Peralta, Chris and Todd. I told them that I would only teach them if they taught Stacy. They taught him, and it was Stacy, Chris, and Todd who than went on to appear in the Bones Brigade “Video Show.” Later on, I received a phone call from Stacy. He told me it was the most fun he ever had on a skateboard; and for a guy who was voted #1 in the reader’s pole in 1979 as the best all around skater, that was really flattering. Now, I also taught John Hutson to slide many years after his competitive days, and he loved it and had a lot of fun with it. Oh, and another thing about Powell-Peralta. After I met them, Chris would shape me boards. So I told him I wanted a double kick with each end identical. That way if you slide fakie, either end could be the front of the board. Chris than put a blank of my design in the R & D room at Powell-Peralta. It was this board that Tony Hawk chose as his last signature model before leaving to start his own company. To this day, I don’t know if Tony is aware of it, but I do know that Tony Hawk is an outstanding individual. He has never seemed to have an ego and as great as he is, he always kept his head about him. This was really flattering to me, to have this guy who I wish I could be 1% as good as, riding a board I designed. So I am very thrilled about that, it is another one of the thrilling things in my history.

D.T: You mentioned you were going to Australia. Could you tell us a little more about this journey?

Cliff: Well skateboarding is my #1 sport, but I learned to yo-yo about 9 years ago, at the age of 41. I got one as a present during Christmas. I practiced a lot, and met some of the manufacturers, and before I knew it I became pretty decent. I think I won 3 California tittles, a couple of western state tittles, and a National tittle in 1994. I have since retired from competition, and have now taking up judging. I now judge at the Spanish, Japanese, and Korean Nationals and I will judge the upcoming Australian Nationals. I also judge the U.S. Nationals and the World Championships. So I’ve been a yo-yo demonstrator as a living for the past 3 years. I kind of dropped out so that I could get on this pro skateboard scene, but I had a good 7-week offer to go to Australia. I’ll still be able to skateboard in all but one of the races. So I decided to accept the offer, and I’ll be down there from March 28th until May 20th. I’ll have about a week to get ready for Santa Rosa.

D.T: Sounds good, is there anyone you would like to thank?

Cliff: Yes, I would like to thank all my sponsors I’ve had through out the years. And I would like to list them in chronological order. The first one is Hobie Skateboards. Hobie Alter was a personal friend of mine when I was 15 years old. He was always great to me, and that’s what got us going as a sponsored team. Hobie always made sure we had skateboards, surfboards, and plenty of clothing. We got to travel around Northern California demonstrating their products. The second sponsor I had, I picked up at the Catalina Classic when I qualified first, by Santa Cruz. Next I would like to thank Powell-Peralta, I know its just Powell now, but Stacy Peralta was my main connection there. And Chris Iverson, too. Chris flowed me wheels and decks for quite a few years, and I can’t thank those guys enough. Since then, I got wheels from Gordan & Smith when Henry Hester was there; a great guy who was on the Santa Cruz team with me. I would also like to thank John Hutson for dominating the sport the way he did and inspiring so many of us others to do the best we could out there. If you beat Hutson, it was like someone beating Michael Jordan in a game of hoops. John was unbelievable. I would also like to thank all the people who have put a lot of time into this sport. Currently, I would like to thank the people and sponsors who are putting on the contests. Biker Sherlock is doing a lot with his connections at NBC to bring real money to this sport. Manu Atuna from France, he is a great guy I have talked to on the internet, and I am looking forward to meeting him. To Roger, Perry, and Beau at the GRA for bringing back the slalom races in California. To Adam and DT at the NCDSA for creating a place for all of us skateboarders to meet and discuss things online. And there is a book out now called the Concrete Wave by Michael Brooke. Michael has done an outstanding job and he is very accurate on the history of the sport. So if anyone wants to know what it was like back in the early days, I highly recommend picking up this book. And I want to thank Nike for their ad campaign that stated: “What if we treated all athletes the way we treated skateboarders.If you ever saw any of these ads, you know what I am talking about. For a big corporation like Nike to give us a boost towards legitimacy, I can’t thank them enough