Christian Maalouf, Daniel Shimizu, Taylor Caruso, and myself grabbed a morning coffee in our neighborhood of Echo Park, and bombed the hill leading into Elysian Park, it’s quite a wake up! Trouble opening your eyes? Bomb a huge hill! It works.
Then we headed to the stairs in the intro of the video. Little Echo Park history on those stairs, they lead up to the old estate of the silent film star W.C. Fields, an estate which later belonged to skate legend Christain Hosoi. I remember walking up them to skate Christians vert ramp w. Jason lee and Mark Gonzales in ’90-’91 when I first moved to California. In fact, the vert clips in Blind Skateboards “Video Days” were filmed up those stairs, and on that now defunct ramp.
Afterwards we skated through some neighborhood streets on our way to the Griffith Park ditch.
The Griffith park ditch has been sessioned by us since the early nineties, some clips of myself skating that very ditch in ‘93 are in Stereo’s “A Visual Sound”. It’s a fun one with various options and sections. It’s a Classic eastside LA skate spot!
Next we jumped in the cars and hustled across town to Bronson Ditch, under the Hollywood sign, and still technically part of Griffith park which is a sprawling 7 miles. Bronson is up the hiking trail of Bronson ave and it was actually the ditch in the movie “Thrashin”, a.k.a. The Dagger Ditch. They held the skate joust there, and the Daggers are still around! Might be time for modern day skate joust? Maybe not. But the ditch has some new additions down below, and a massive hip up top that Christian and Taylor launched themselves off of with explosive precision. You guys nailed it at this spot. Teamwork baby.
We ended the day back on the Eastside to catch the sunset on my pop’s hill overlooking LA. It’s a private road, with a serious hidden gem of a view. It’s actually the hill in the helicopter scene in the 80s gang movie “Colors” starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. My dad moved into a small cabin up there in 1984, and I’ve been going to that bluff ever since. On a clear day you can see all the way from the ports of Long Beach to the Santa Monica coastline. I think it’s one of the best views in Los Angeles.
It was a truly special day.
Big thanks to Mark Spencer, Micah Hollinger, and Ron Rauto for the great work on the visuals. And THANK YOU to my RP Athletics Club members Christian Maalouf, Daniel Shimizu, and Taylor Caruso for killing it.
Cheers!
— Chris Pastras
View the RP Summer 2015 Lookbook - https://www.richer-poorer.com/lookbook-summer-2015-athletics
Video by Mark D. Spencer
Music by Patrick Carney
Photos by Ron Rauto and Chad Cress