Jay Adams died Thursday

[Tobra]

Man looked like he had been rode hard and put away wet in every picture I saw of him. He was really something though. I hope he went out surfing.

CNN) -- Former Z-Boys skater Jay Adams died Thursday after a heart attack while vacationing in Mexico with his wife. He was 53.

Adams was enjoying an "endless summer surf vacation," and was set to return to the United States in a couple of days, said Susan Ferris, manager and friend to the Skateboarding Hall of Fame legend. Adams had never experienced any heart issues. Despite previous legal hardships related to substance abuse, Ferris emphasized that Adams was completely sober and had been for a while. "We are honestly shocked."

Fellow Z-Boys member and director of "Dogtown and Z-Boys" Stacy Peralta took to Instagram to mourn Adams, who was commonly known as "The Original Seed." "I just received the terribly sad news that Jay Adams passed away last night due to a massive heart attack, send your love," the post read, alongside a picture of a young Adams.

[TCracingCA]

Living in the Torrance/Carson area, we were emptying the swimming pool at our house with my Dad's permission in 1973, up at the drainage channels trying tricks around Jack Rabbit Hill from 1969-1978, and surfing when we could down at San Pedro, Palos Verdes, or Redondo/Manhattan Beach from 1969- 80's. Somehow this group got press was the only difference.

The equipment sold by the Z-Boys shop (Z-Flex and Zephyr) basically I thought was inferior to many of the other manufacturers. I went thru all of the classic equipment from Jim Phillip's earliest boards in fiberglass to my late 70's boards which were the G&S planks, then custom made by us in the garage, to running the Cadillac wheels early in the 70's, then G&S Yoyo's, Bones etc.. and the earlier 60's with Nash and the first steel wheels to Chicago trucks and wheels, and the differing compounds that evolved. Had every type of boards/trucks back in that day that were hot, and tried all of the wheels from Park Riders, to Kryptonics, Sims Super Snakes, OJ's etc., and trucks from ACS to Gullwing etc. to you name it.

But out of all of the Z-Boys, I liked Jay Adams style of riding the best, because I would mimic surfing when I rode. I never attacked a swimming pool deep end without visualizing it being a concrete wave. I would say we were hitting the tiles around 1974, but never had a pool with the lip knocked out. If we would have, don't know if we would have went truly airborne or not over the lips! I grew out of Skateboards by about 1978 and exclusively surfed. Thus over the lip aerial tricks, I will give that to them, because they were knocking the coping overhang tiles off of the lips which we weren't allowed to do. We got all four wheels in the air doing somethings like hopping at the top and grinding the coping, but that was not quite flying out and over the top of the bowls. The most famous individual out of our neighborhood street group was Greg Bradford who starred in a few movies like Skatetown USA and did some roles on TV shows like in CHIPS, etc..

My neighbor friend, who lived on our street! Greg B., I think these were movie shots of him or something! On our street we also had the Kamikaze Ninja Mayeda brothers Howard and Glenn, and the Stewarts- Dave and Ronnie, Gregs brother Lance, and my older brother Dain and younger brothers Daron, Dean, and Draden, and others! Even all of the girls on our street were skateboarding in the 1960/70s!!! We were some of his competitors!!!!!



I don't have respect for drug addicts or guys that want to be disrespectful to society! Too bad he (Jay Adams) had to grow up and couldn't have stayed a kid! R.I.P.

PS I still have a number of my original Boards! But like a young enterpreneur, I was selling the custom boards we made to friends and younger neighbors copying Peralta who started his own line of signature decks. I think in wood, our home boards were just as good as any ever made. We had the wheel cut outs, and shaped the tails and gave a little more in the front for leverage with some curve to do flip tricks. For the long speed boards, we were mounting the wheels right to the nose! We made a side by side with eight wheels also and tried a number of funky designs. My father tried to get World Enterprises back then to Manufacturer two of our designs. I search EBAY all of the time to see if one of my boards ever pops up!

Me on the left, circa 1978! (With the skateboard scarred legs!) And showing off one of my younger brother's Van Tennis Shoes. But I never wore the Vans because I actually got better traction from running shoes!




My poster! 1976!

[craigster59]

I've worked with a couple of the Z-Boys and they have all felt that Jay Adams was the best raw skater in the bunch. He had a very hard time toeing the straight and narrow in his personal life, but seemed to have turned it around.

Always has been one of my favorite skating photos, RIP Jay....

[TCracingCA]

Adams stayed with the Zephyr shop and I think 1975, the deck was plastic which was cheap and the trucks were narrow and the wheels were still square when others were shaping them for purpose riding! Naturally Jay Adams did not ride one of these first mass produced boards in his competitions! Alva and Peralta left for business opportunities, but still maintained the Z-Boy connections!



Here is my original 1972/73 (maybe 71) board (Jim Phillips fiberglass design but done by Bahne or someone with the original early Cadillac wheels and the earliest dedicated trucks from Bennet), shown with my 1975/6 G&S Gordon Smith Warptail 2 with some riding damage on the deck with the 1st Conical yellow Yo Yo's, but I put new NOS vintage trucks on it which was my ride it to school (transportation board). The other G&S is beat up from the swimming pools and I wil have to get a picture of that up. I only photographed my still pretty boards. PS I still have the smaller and narrower Warptail 1 solid wood deck prior to Peralta's involvement somewhere also in the garage with I think Park Riders on it. But I think this second design was the first board professionally that Peralta helped design in the G&S name that led to us saying that we could just make our own! The Warptail 2 could swimming pool ride, the deck sucked because this second design was laminates and would damage easily but it would flex which was good, but you would slip off of the low curved tail easily, it was good that it was longer and wider, but G&S/Peralta put the low profile trucks on them so the wheels would dig into the deck like is apparent in the picture (wheel dig damaged), but the Yo yo's were really good in those mid 70's swimming pools and also note the custom Santa Cruz Cellblocks, which were essential we found to have these early spacers for what we were doing with them!!!. Bones came later, and copied the G &S wheels! When Peralta tagged these G&s boards with his name, we used this warptail as the basis for our own custom shapes, but put a more pronounced tail, and ground out the wheel wells very early on, maybe prior to the manufacturers. I have one of those in the garage somewhere.
Just for history, Jim Phillips became the most prominent skateboard deck designer with radical skateboard art later, so this fiberglass board (he also did yellow/white and we had one of those also) is actually one of his very first decks (A pre-ARTWORK Phillips board)! The Warptail G&S this was the evolution of the Swimming pool capable boards. I put the black cell blocks on my decks to space up the wheels so they would not hit the deck on super radical vertical skating. But then we all trashed the cellblock spacers in favor of the board clearancing and a lower profile for more stability! Also note that the truck were considerably wider, and if you actually tried Jay's 1st signature deck on a pool wall, you would have died!!!!!!!!!!




PS I had met him in person and competed against him!

[Baz]

from ENCYCLOPEDIA of SURFING videos on Vimeo.

[nota]

weird that our kid stuff became million dollar tv sports
I invented the long board in 61
to make a more stabilize semi-roller derby board
we played a crazy game of racing with no rules
so knocking the other kid off was a big part
and no helmets or pads
all we had were steel narrow clip on skates
later we found clay wheels on rink truck skates

our other races was with 20'' bikes with angelwings and banana seats
on the golf course at nite
can you say BMX

[Bill Douglas]

A bit more here Dogtown skateboarding rebel Jay Adams dies at 53 after a heart attack | Mail Online

[Racerbvd]

R.I.P

A picture from I believe his last visit here.

[ramonesfreak]

Wow RIP

[Racerbvd]

Old skate pix to go with some of the other guys pix. I saved my Vans for Kona skate park & school, as not many places had them locally back then. Reading about some of your guys skates from BITD is very much like my own, and I remember when I 1st met Peralta & Henry Hester, at a contest at Kona, the very 1st one Kona hosted. I had a beck, my father & I made out of a old water ski, Peralta & Hester applied the grip tape for it (Henry also cut the shape & circle for the Road Rider Wheels decal he applied in top of the deck) what a great time to be a kid in Skate history. Jaye's connection was with a group I skated with called ROTW or Rats on the Westside, we had a few ramps and Adams considered it Dog-Town east and some of the guys I skated with then, still skate and as you can tell, like Jay, never grew up.

[mistertate]

From FB:

Venice Skate Alliance
Yesterday at 5:22pm ·
Jay Adams Update: We have reached $8,500 which is awesome. We are almost there!!! Thank you to everyone who has given to help get Jay home from Mexico and thank you for all your prayers. We are continuing to raise money via Paypal to help with Jay's additional funeral expenses... the email for paypal is kaleco@me.com