Bryan lived in Huntington, West Virginia during Apple times. He now works at Birdhouse and lives in Costa Mesa, California. The following interview was done in-person on magnetic tape just after a chewing session at Coco's in Huntington Beach on December 6, 2001. Interview & Photos by Garry Davis
Through skating Falcon Skatepark, I think. Rick Summerfield and Dave Jones heard about it in a magazine or something. They went up there—didn't invite us, of course—tested it out, came back with a report that there was this new skatepark in Columbus and it was better than our park. We all went up two months later.
What did you think when you first arrived there?
I thought it was going to be like our park a little bit, but I hadn't seen transitions that had flat-bottom—the reservoir—everything was just...I didn't even know how to skate it. It was too smooth (laughs). I walked out and it just looked like paradise 'cause it was so big, vast. I had never seen a skateable pool in real life—even though they were dormant. Just walking through a real pro-shop and seeing—not to cut down on our park—but Apple was just on another level. It was a professional level. Everything was just so big. I spent two hours figuring out how to skate anything—even the peanut bowl, like, two-feet deep. I hadn't seen anything like that.
Was it crowded when you first went?
The first time we went there, it was cool. There were so many things to skate that even if there was five or six people at each run, it didn't look like very many people at all. We all took turns, we all tried to figure out how to skate the runs—you could learn how.
Who was working there in the early days? Who was the owner? Did they own the building, or just rent out the space?
He leased the building out and I think his daughter and son worked there. The dad was working there in the beginning—I don't remember his name. The girl was kind of attractive—she had curly hair—I remember that stuff. Everybody was kind of hittin' on her a little bit, for what we knew back then—age fifteen-sixteen or something, you know? Try to get her to smile at you and give you a token for one of those video games. That's about it. That's all I know about the family.
So what kind of stuff went down when the pros came through?
I think we got those schedules in the mail—those pamphlets about who was going to be there and when. I used to sneak up there. I used to have to make honor roll to get the trip to Columbus—that was the rule. So I did good in school. We would go up there and sometimes they were on the schedule and [didn't show up]. I didn't care—we were skating. It would have been cool or whatever because I had never seen a pro. David Andrecht was probably the first one that I saw—he was just killing it. He was there for one of those sleep-over sessions. The park was open all night. You could just pay twelve bucks and you could skate two days in a row.
Was Kevin Tate there in the beginning?
No, he was there a little later. He must've got hired after a while—it was probably like a year later, maybe. Yeah, Andrecht was the first one I saw. He was killing this left-hand kidney. He was doing twenty-block rock 'n' roll slides. He would haul ass from way back by the peanut bowls and he would hit the kidney entrance—he would have so much speed that when he didn't make it, his board would continue going for like forty more blocks. He made a lot of them. He was doing big backside airs before I had seen that big air at Big-O. I think it was after that when he started blasting. But those [Apple] pools were hard to ride and he was killin' them. He was trying to do axle stalls in the three-quarter pipe—it wasn't really three-quarter, but it was above vert. He didn't make that, but he sure as hell did grind that thing. He did all his tricks in all the bowls. He could skate. He was powerful.
Did anyone ever use that little bowl at the back of the halfpipe?
Oh yeah, they used it with the channel. I never saw anyone do anything directly up that wall, but they would go from the three-quarter over across the channel into that little bowl area—jump the channel.
What was the kidney like? I just remember it had a lot of vert. Did it have flat bottom?
Yeah, it had flat bottom. You dropped in, it was wide. It was super-tight in the shallow—that reminded of the Del Mar kidney. You could carve it—had flat bottom. People would ollie the canyon.
The egg was easier to skate, huh?
Yeah, the egg was easier, but the entrance was tapered off so it was harder to blast anything, but people started doing ollies over that stuff, too.
It wasn't really all the way vert at the channel?
Right.
Was the keyhole good for tricks? It was kind of small.
I wouldn't say it was good for my tricks 'cause I couldn't do any (laughs). I just tried to grind that thing—the coping was so slick there. I don't know what kind of coping that was, but it was so slick that even if you were grinding, it was just like ready to slip out.
Do you remember how deep all the pools were?
The egg was probably like twelve, the kidney was probably ten or eleven and the keyhole was like eight, I think.
Didn't the L-bowl have kind of a shallow-end and a deep-end?
Yeah, when you'd first come out of the pro-shop, the L-bowl was a little bit more shallow right there and the deep-end went around the hip. It wasn't that much deeper. That's where I first learned how to do a rock 'n' roll right there. Those banks just felt like butter.
It had round transitions, but weren't there flat banked walls? It wasn't like a mini-ramp.
Yeah, it wasn't transition [all the way]. It was perfect.
What were the little bowls like?
There were three. One was right behind the L-bowl, that was the mini-peanut bowl—it was real small: probably like two-and-a-half feet deep, maybe three if you measured it. It was pretty mellow. Right behind that was the reservoir—the rectangular one. It had a shallow entranceway—the wall curved a little bit and it had a lip all the way around it. The other walls were just straight, so you could work it as a halfpipe or you could try to do figure-eight type stuff in there. That thing was cool, too. There was another peanut bowl in between the halfpipe—it was just kind of in the middle—right beside the halfpipe. It was a little deeper—it was probably like six feet deep.
Were the little bowls grindable?
The L-bowl was, but the other ones were just like, you could feel like your trucks were going to touch that concrete—and sometimes they did—but you couldn't really grind it. If you tried to grind you'd probably roll out of it or slip out or something. Then you had that big freestyle area over there. I just called it the "flat area" (laughs)—didn't see any freestyle going down.
If Apple would've stayed open, they would've built a big street course or vert ramp there in the mid '80s. Tell us the college / skatepark story.
My whole college direction was geared around where the skateparks were. I was doing pretty good since I had to make honor roll every time just to go skate, and Apple was three hours away from my house so it was hard to get rides. I would just tell my parents I was taking the bus and jump in the car with Rick Summerfield—one of my friends at the time. They were good with me taking the bus, but they didn't like me driving with a teenager. I just had to lie. But I was trying to figure out what school to go to because I was kind of getting recruited a little bit. I applied at Rutgers so I could go to Cherry Hill. Princeton. I got accepted at all of them. Ohio State was near Apple, so I was just like, "Okay, the parks are there—I can hit the books". But then all the parks closed within a year and it just limited my opportunities. I still should've probably pursued school, but it just wasn't the same.
Is that why you went to California?
Yeah, after that I went to California two years later. I knew I wanted to be in California for a long time, I just didn't know how I was going to get there. You have to have money and stuff sometimes.
I was there when Duane was doing acid drops into the egg bowl—he made 'em all, he made it every time. He was killin' it in the halfpipe, killin' it in the egg. I didn't see him skate the kidney that much—he didn't like that, probably. But he could skate, man. He was just gnarly for nobody to be there—just like three people—he skated just the same as if there was a huge crowd. I just remember this other guy Dave Bush was like his clone and they were doing drugs behind the three-quarter pipe. I was just skating around—'cause I liked to cruise around the park— and they were just doing this stuff and they both looked up at me. I was scared shitless 'cause I don't really see that stuff too much. It was just strange. I turned around and rolled back. I just thought they were looking at magazines, but they were getting ready for something. I don't know what they were doing. I don't want to talk about it (laughs). May be incriminating. That's pretty much it. Ran into Jamie Godfrey there one time and thought he was just amazing. He was killing it—so smooth. He's still one of the smoothest guys I've ever seen. I think Bob Reeves was up from Florida, too. I was kind of into Powell at the time—that was kind of cool hanging out with those guys. We started writing each other and talking about the other parks. Just didn't have time to visit the other parks before they closed. I could barely make it to Columbus.
Do you recall any standout tricks that went down?
Duane Peters frontside grinding that extension is just hard—plain and simple. And he would do frontside ollies out of the three-quarter into the halfpipe. But you don't really think about him doing ollies for some reason. His frontside air style was rad. I'm trying to think of some fun stuff. It was all fun—it was all skating and getting up there with my friends, taking different trips up there and staying at the hotel and we knew exactly where we were going to eat, what we were going to do the whole time. That was just cool stuff—staying up 'til four in the morning on some of those overnight sessions. We'd sleep in the pro-shop. They put all the equipment in this storage area so nobody would rip anything off and they would lock the front doors—nobody could get in, either, if you didn't pay earlier. So we had the place to ourselves. You could wake up at three in the morning, go hit the L-bowl if you thought of something and go on back and get in that sleeping bag, baby (laughs). That was the shit. I did that, like, three times. Kevin stayed there the whole night. Music going the whole night. Sometimes nobody would be out there and you could just...it was just amazing. It's empty, you could hear the dust when you were riding through the place, the softest—it was just the best feeling. You could look back and see your tracks of what you'd done. Your wheels were soft enough where you didn't have to worry about any slip-outs or anything, so it was just like...it was just so smooth to hear that. There was no hard-ass wheel sound—it was just smooth. That was the smoothest place. I went to Colton one time and that snake run was kind of smooth, but Apple was just...besides the transitions in those huge pools, that place was the smoothest place I've ever been. That halfpipe...I've never been in anything in skateboarding that's that smooth—other than a nice wood ramp. But concrete-wise, there's no comparison today, still. I've gone to parks recently—you just can't find anything like that.
You know those slick, smooth concrete floors that are perfect and shiny? That's how the halfpipe was, but it was curved.
But it still had texture to it where it would grip and you didn't have to slip. I didn't feel like I would ever slip out. It was scary 'cause you couldn't really feel anything. I just remember rolling into that thing—I'd never...I just started advancing somehow. I don't know what it was—maybe Jamie Godfrey was pushing me a little bit from writing me. Everything was smooth—even the way the door opened into the pro-shop (laughs). The bathroom. Everything was good.
Who arranged those sleep-overs? That sounds so fun.
The park manager—Kevin Tate and those guys—he would show super-8 movies at night of skating at Apple and some of the stuff he had sent from California. Some of those ASPOS—I don't know what contests he had. Kevin skated—he was a bigger guy. He could hang, though.
Did anyone have a boom box or was it quiet there?
They had an intercom with music—they would play whatever. It was totally cool.
Do you remember the games of tag with Andrecht?
It was pretty much just chase—they were hitting every bowl. He was bigger, too. He was older—kind of lanky and he was chasing people and you were going to be scared, you know, because he was hauling ass (laughs). There wasn't anybody that could've beat him, so he was just chasing people around the whole park—every bowl. Everybody had lines to go through every place. He was just chasing them around. You had to know how to carve, you had to know how to get through the place. It was just fun stuff, man.
Do you remember seeing Rob Roskopp there?
Yeah, Rob was there all the time. I remember seeing him—he was good. Roskopp and this guy Kenny Mollica—those two guys. Kenny was like a bigger guy—about the same size as Roskopp or maybe a little chunkier—but had control. He could bust big things in that egg bowl. Those were the first guys I saw getting out. He was doing everything that people were doing at that time. He just got sponsored by Sims. They were sponsoring hardly any amateurs then. He was totally one of the better guys. If he'd kept it up...I'm sure he's good at something now. To get to that level that early...you try to get to that level at anything you do, obviously. I wonder what those guys are doing right now? I didn't meet Jinx until we went to Cincinnati. Roskopp was getting good—halfpipe and stuff. I remember seeing how he advanced, the trips I would make every four or five months—just how much he was advancing. Obviously, he didn't live there, either—he had to come up from somewhere. He was into rollerskating or something, now that I think about it. Rob was rollerskating like crazy after Duke Rennie was there one time. So Rob got good at rollerskating.
He would skateboard and rollerskate on vert?
Yep, I totally forgot about that.
I saw someone there on rollerskates do a McTwist like three feet out of the halfpipe.
Duke Rennie was doing—I don't know if they were McTwists or if they were little Elgaerials. Duke Rennie, Carabeth Burnside was there.
She was there?
No, wait a minute...Cindy Whitehead.
Her card's on the Apple web site. I got it from noidnoskate.com
Really? She was kind of cute, too. She was pretty good, yeah—pro for Variflex, I think. Pro girl. It was like Patti Hoffman, her and I don't even know if Carabeth was on the scene then. I think she was, I don't know.
You may want to mention Chris Phillips.
Chris Phillips was this local kid that was...you see a lot of 'em now when you go to the parks or whatever. You see kids that are just ripping. But for a kid that little to be super-good on vert was incredible. He'd be crying every now and then—it's the same stories I heard about Tony Hawk. He'd just slam and then cry and then all of a sudden he's back up. You look back over—they just recover. I think Chris was eleven at the time and he was just killin' it. He got sponsored by Santa Cruz early and he was totally worth it, too. He had lines. For a kid, man, I couldn't believe the guy could frontside roll into that bowl and then just bust a frontside air—no problem. Eleven years old. The keyhole—he was killin' it. Knew how to carve fast, hard. Had lines in that halfpipe. He was one of the first I saw do fakie ollies. He was trying to do them over that egg bowl entrance, which tapered off. I don't know how you could even think of doing it. I don't know if he landed it, but he was doing ollies and frontside airs over that thing. He eventually started doing acid drops, too, after Duane went through there. Hopefully, Duane didn't do anything else with him. He was just a local and all the adults...you could just tell they were all his older brothers. They're just like, "Get in there!" A lot of kids grow up that way and I'm sure alot of our friends now had it out here like that—where all the older kids are just pushing them like crazy.
Yeah, there was a lit sign out front. There was one on the building, then there was a little sign on the road that you could see if you were driving by. Got all these memories flowing right now.
Did you guys hear about Apple closing beforehand?
I went up there and they said that not enough locals were supporting it and that was the last I heard. Then I heard it was closed. I called up there, they said it was closed and that was that.
Do you remember your last session?
Yeah, I was by myself. I had no idea [it was closing]. I was just trying to learn more stuff. I just had a different approach. My friends were doing some crazy stuff, and I was just like, "You know what? I'm just going to go up there on my own." My mom would take me and drop me off and go shopping. I would just go by myself—everybody just took it for granted. And I was like, "I'm gettin' better. I want to learn this." I kept looking at the magazine. "I want to try that." The only way to do it was to go there. I just went up there by myself the last six times
Was it ever crowded any of the times you went?
During those ASPO contests it would be crowded—kids would come from all over. I'd never seen them, either 'cause I didn't even know other skateparks were still around that much. I didn't have the list.
Was it pretty sparse the last times you went?
I would go in the summer and it was just me and two other people.
That's why it closed, huh?
Yeah, they couldn't keep running that. I mean, you could see the problem—plus liability and the economy.
Did it get dozed right after it closed?
They were trying to bring it back, but they couldn't raise the money.
I heard some rich guy was going to buy it.
Yeah, it was still there, but nobody could get in. I think they had some sessions by themselves. Kevin and those guys got to skate it for a while longer. Then they ended up dozing it and a year later I went up there and snuck into it from the bay doors 'cause it was UPS at the time and you could'nt go through the office and get to the warehouse. So, I just kind of went through where the trucks were at and jumped on the bay to walk around. Nobody was in there and I was just kind of walking around through these trucks and you could just see all the outlines with the new concrete from where it got filled in—the shape of the bowls.
You could still see the bowls?
You could see the shape 'cause it was all new concrete right there and they just concreted up to one point.
I assumed they just crunched the runs and concreted another floor over the entire thing.
No, they just filled [the runs] in. It was like this old concrete and then white concrete—you could see the whole shape of the egg pool, you could see the halfpipe, the outline of everything that was there. I heard they had to dynamite the three-quarter pipe, like blow that into the halfpipe.