Lonny Peoples Interview

In the collective mind’s eye of early-Nineties skating, every metropolis housed an Embarcadero-like plaza, over which presided an EMB-like hierarchy. Indeed, one of the most evocative moments of the recent Kalis Epicly Later’d was his ridiculously long line at that Dallas spot–City Place I think it was called.  As city center plaza skating recedes into the sands of time, the value of pre-internet documentation of its practice increases exponentially.

ANYWAY, in Richmond, VA,  Shafer Court was the spot–the first place we went after the oldest dude in our little crew got a driver’s license. The first place in which I felt that primal “fight-or-flight” response of being in a heavy session with some heavy dudes. There was only one way to do it; in that moment, I realized the true meaning of Danny Way’s personal philosophy. I had to move it or lose it.

Truth be told, I think I lost it.

ANYWAY, Lonny Peoples became one of the main dudes in the Shafer hierarchy and one of the few from VA (not counting Northern VA) to “do thangs” in skating out west. His career spans the golden age of vert to the weed-hazed heyday of Pier 7. The interview that follows is a window into a largely undocumented era.

Legendary Skate Houses of the Late Twentieth Century

I have never lived in a skate house, and I never will.

Let me clarify–living in a skate house would be sick as fuck. However, my age precludes me from doing so. This is a fact. As one ages, the possibility of doing certain things quietly disappears over the horizon. Joining the Marine Corps. Doing the whole “Barcelona” thing. Even the quintessential cross-country road trip would require logistical planning comparable to staging the D-Day invasion.

During the time I skated the most and the best, I lived in one of those weird NYC living situations with a bunch of random people whom I never saw, except for the Asian “landlord” dude who rode his bicycle around the Columbia campus. It would have been fucking sick to live in a skate house back then. I started thinking about this topic because, in the aftermath of the Kalis EL, a particulary vivid account of an evening at the San Diego Alien House surfaced on the SLAP messageboard—I assume from CBI or Police Informer. So vivid and powerfully nostalgic was this story—the likes of which one rarely reads in skournalism—that it reminded me of that one scene in The Great Gatsby when Nick goes to a party at Gatsby’s house for the first time: