Like his friend Pete Kunz, Jeff helped build Apple and worked in the pro shop. His biggest claim to fame was frontside grinding Apple's kidney in a Skateboarder magazine photo. Interview conducted by phone in late 2002.
I first started skating around 1974 or ’75. I competed on the Le Sport Limited team all over Ohio with Kenny Mollica, Mike Ohm and some other people. We also used to go to the Arcadia ditch and skate there. Sometimes, we'd build our own long boards and go skating there on them. Pete Kunz used to go there. He had a low, surf style—kind of a mild approach that was pretty interesting. Everybody else was trying to do tricks and this and that, but Pete was just kind of in the groove.
Was Arcadia the main spot in Columbus before Apple?
No, mostly ramp riding. We used to go to Kenny's house and skate his quarterpipe—that was fun.
How did you first hear of Apple?
I don’t know. I think it may have been when I was on the Le Sport team. Before Apple opened, I actually didn’t skate for about two years. Skateboarding had gone through a freestyle / slalom phase—which is what I did—then it died out. Later, I got back on the Le Sport team and got back into skating. We mostly rode wooden quarterpipes. Blaize Nessor and I built quarterpipes and a little halfpipe and we used to skate quite a lot. Then I heard about Apple in the summer of 1979 and decided that I'd like to skate again. I graduated from high school and started working constructing the park with Peter Drotlef, Wally Hollyday and...I forget the other guy's name.
Bigelow crew? Ronn Dudley?
Well, the Bigelow crew was from Arizona—they did the concrete. I've got lots of funny stories about that.
Were you there on Apple's opening day?
I can't remember, but probably. We did all of the construction part and all of the playing and swimming and skating before it opened.
Tell us the funny construction stories.
When there was water in the pools, I remember we would climb up on the two-thirds extensions and do backflips and gainers into the water in the halfpipe—that was fun. During construction, Larry McDonald—who was kind of like the construction manager with the money to pay Wally and Peter—was basically out getting high all the time and not really doing anything. But one time, he said he'd buy us a keg of Heineken if we got to a certain point in construction that day—and we did. So, we had a fun party afterward. That was a good time.
One funny thing was when one of the Bigelow guys—who was not very intelligent—was in the L-bowl shooting concrete. Sometimes, they would shoot a sponge through the hose to clean it out and, for some reason, this guy was holding it—even though you’re not supposed to hold it while it's happening because there's so much pressure. Well, needless to say, it blew him about thirty feet backward out of the bowl and knocked him out—he was just out like a light. All of the Bigelow guys were just laughing their asses off. It was really funny.
When we—all of the grunt workers were skaters—were carving the walls of the pools, Peter Drotlef said, "This is going to be the transition." We all looked at him like, "There is no transition." There was just, like, four feet of transition and the rest was vert. He said, "No, that's the way they skate out in California." I said, "Okay, well." He had the backhoe guy hand-carving the side and we would go back in and finish it off. To this day, I still think there wasn't enough transition in Apple's pools. They could have been a lot better, but it was still a great park—it was fun.
Wally said he made the transitions quick because he thought it would make you skate faster.
I just had all faith in those guys because they built Cherry Hill. When you skated those quick transitions at Apple, you were kind of like just whipping down at the bottom and you kind of lost speed going up the next side.
Wally said he wanted to make Apple's pools more like backyard pools, because he made the transitions bigger at Cherry Hill. He said that he doesn't like to design the same park twice.
I remember someone put all the coping down on the kidney, the egg and the keyhole and it was all wrong (laughs). It all had to be taken out and this company had to come and put it all back in. Then we were looking at the coping and it kind of angled up—there was a scalloped edge on the top. So, we thought, "Hey, if we're going to roll-in, we need to flatten this out." We told the contactor that re-set the coping to put concrete on the top of the coping blocks to make them flush. I think that made it better.
How often did you go to Apple?
I was going to school at Ohio State full-time and working at Apple part-time, then skating the rest of the time. So, I skated there almost every day. I worked in the pro shop when it opened. I used to take all of the ID card photos—that was one of my jobs. Everybody pulled down their pants and mooned me. I would take a picture of it and Gene would come out of his office and say, "No, we can't have that on the card!" I think I had the No. 1 or No. 2 Apple ID card. We've got one that says "B-52s" on it—that band was pretty big back then.
Jeff Kasson • Unknown Photo
We did skate patrol for a while, and that kind of fizzled out. I did little skate instructions for some of the younger kids and some of the beginners—that was fun. I tapered off going to Apple toward the end—around the time Kevin Tate was the manager. Ronn Dudley was there for a while and he was sort of goofball. We didn’t click, and I just said, "Well, I'm not having any fun anymore." So, I quit the job and got a different one, but I came back and skated. Toward the end there, I just kind of didn't skate that much anymore.
Which areas of the park were your favorites?
Oh, my gosh. The deep end of the L-bowl was great, because the lip was kind of sharp and we could grind it. The thing I liked to do was boardslide or rock 'n' roll slide or just kind of carve up frontside and pull the tail around and do a backward grind—that was kind of neat. The L-bowl was so nice. You could work it because of the shape and size—you could carve and pump continuously in that thing. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the hip should have been a little bit sharper so you could do easier air over it. The L-bowl was one of my favorites.
The kidney was one of my favorites, too, because it was a left-hand one, which favored goofy footers. David Andrecht blew my mind when he came to Apple. The first thing he did was go right to the kidney—he was goofy foot, too—and did a rock 'n' roll slide around three quarters of the deep end. I just went, "Whoa!" You just heard all of this loud clicking and clacking—it just blew my mind.
That was his first run? No warm-up?
That was it. He just went right in there and did that. I thought, "Wow, these guys from California are awesome!" Some of the other people that blew my mind were Steve Caballero. He did a 360 ollie in the egg bowl and that kind of blew my mind.
Please comment on any of the following pros that visited Apple:
Brad Bowman: He was one of the more aggressive skaters. There were, like, two schools of skating: the Powell Peralta team, for whom everything was kind of effortless—that was their style. All of the locals would try to figure it out: "How did you do that? How did you pop that ollie so easily?" or whatnot. Brad Bowman, Steve Olson and Duane Peters were pretty aggressive. But, yeah, Brad was a really nice guy, too—very nice to talk to and fun to skate with.
Steve Caballero and Mike McGill: We just kind of stood there in awe watching these guys. Then we would come back and try to do everything that they did. McGill's ollies were just blowing my mind. Caballero was such a teeny-weeny little kid—he was even shorter than Chris Phillips, I think, or around the same size. He was just this little kid on this big board just popping all of this stuff all over the place. I just didn't understand how he did it.
Did you see Cab and McGill follow each other through the halfpipe? I seem to recall something about them jumping the channel in the halfpipe.
Oh, yeah. People didn’t really do that too much.
Was that roll-in used much?
Hardly anybody went over there, because you couldn't really get much of a start since it didn't go into the two-thirds extension. It was kind of a steep drop. But, the main roll-in to the South was a gradual kind of thing.
Eddie Elguera: Some of the crazy things included El Gato doing a frontside rock 'n' roll on the two-thirds extension, which was really more like a tap—even though his back wheels were off. But, he landed it and that was kind of astounding.
Duane Peters: He did a frontside air holding the bottom of the board—that was pretty wild. I think he did it backside, as well.
Lean air and Indy air?
Yeah, I've been out of it a while (laughs).
Fred Blood and Duke Rennie: Oh, yeah. We used to have all of these night sessions where none of the paying skaters could come in, but the people who worked there could skate. That's when we would get time to skate with the pros. Fred Blood's trucks were really wide. Duke Rennie was really aggressive, but kind of a quiet guy. Fred Blood was more of a flamboyant kind of person. They came together one time and were completely outdoing each other, one after the other, because you can do so many tricks when you're on rollerskates—lots of handplants and that sort of thing. It was pretty interesting.
There was a local guy that lived about a mile from my house—a really quiet guy—but, in about two months he was doing almost everything Fred and Duke were doing. We kept saying, "Why don't you talk to a vendor and see if you can get some support." He had too many things going on in his life. But, he was absolutely smoking.
What was his name?
Tom something or other. He was a really short kid. I think he was just creating as he went along, because he never really skated before and didn't know any better. That was kind of neat.
Were you at Apple when Steve Olson came? I was there that day.
Were you? Well, he was there for a while. In fact, that's his board I was riding in the picture of me in Skateboarder magazine.
Jeff Kasson • Ted Terrebonne Photo
Oh, really?
Yeah, I was riding a Powell Peralta Beamer and Ted Terrebonne wanted Steve's board to get some recognition in the magazine, so he asked, "Hey, will you ride this?" and I said, "Well, I don’t ride Indys." I don’t know if the board was concave or not.
Do you remember that session?
Oh, yeah. We had fun. The things Ted Terrebonne wanted me to do included an air off the two-thirds extension—he took a bunch of photos of that. I did this tail slide in the halfpipe and he took a bunch of those. Then came the extended grinds in the kidney, which is what I'm doing in the magazine. But, yeah, Steve was kind of egging me on to just keep going and going and Ted took a bunch of pictures—that was fun.
Ted said he lost all of his photos back in the '80s. He didn't say how, but they're all gone.
That's really disappointing, because I don’t have a lot of photos of me skating back then. It would be cool to be able to buy those.
Kevin Tate said he has hundreds of Apple photos, but they're mostly negatives that have never been printed.
Really?
He said they're packed away in boxes and mixed in with tons of other random photos. He's a running a restaurant, so he can't make time to get to them. I keep trying to get him to dig them out, but...
That would be great.
I haven't succeeded yet.
One of the other things, too, when T-Bone came out, there was a guy who managed Marina Del Rey Skatepark.
Ray Allen?
Maybe it was Ray Allen. He came out to Apple four or five times. He brought out films of the latest tricks people were doing out in California. Everybody in Apple would stop skating and would just be glued to the screen watching these films. They'd just keep watching 'em and watching 'em and watching 'em and then go back out and try to do those tricks.
Please comment on any of the following Apple locals (that you knew):
Dave Bush: I knew him before Apple. I remember going into the house where he grew-up and going into his bedroom, where he had every square inch of the ceiling and all of his walls covered with photos from Skateboarder magazine. I thought that was pretty cool. Dave was quiet, mild, very nice. He wasn't a good skater initially. But, all of a sudden, he started doing some great things—he really blossomed. He had a great layback in the halfpipe that was really stylish. Dave's style may not have been like a forceful kind of aggressive style, but it was a really nice touch. He did some nice, stylish rock 'n' rolls, and I think some rock 'n' roll slides. I see him every one in a while. We go to guitar shows. That's kind of a side business of his—selling guitars. He's just a really nice guy, but kind of crazy.
Michal Grau: He was a big, stocky aggressive skater. Some of the things he did that I liked were the early release frontside air from the two-thirds extension. He was just an aggressive skater and a really nice guy, too.
Pete Kunz: As I said, we skated way back at Arcadia. One thing I remember about Pete is that he was more of a backside carver, backside air. When he did frontside kickturns or frontside anything, his arms were so wide that his hands were just kind of flying out there. But, he was a really nice guy and I really enjoyed working with him building the skatepark, too.
Wayne Lyons: I remember Wayne, but I didn't skate with him that much. Was he from Worthington? I can't remember.
Kenny Mollica: He's a great skater. We used to compete in freestyle and slalom back in the mid-'70s. When he skated, people would stop and watch him. He would do great handplants and rock 'n' rolls and things like that. I've talked to him in the recent past while skiing some hills here in Ohio and he's a really nice guy. I like talking to him. One thing I'm impressed with is that he's still into skating and he's doing really well. In fact, I'm going to try to do that—I'm inspired. I looked him up on the web and saw the downhill slalom coverage. I thought, "Hey if those guys can do it and Henry Hester could do it..." No one could beat me when I was doing slalom in the '70s and I still feel like I can do it, so I'm going to give it a go and see what happens.
Mike Ohm: Mike skated Apple quite a bit, too. He was kind of a fearless guy. He would do a lot of frontside roll-ins before anyone else would even attempt it, because they were all kind of scared to. He had an abrupt kind of style, which was, I think, derived from downhill skiing. He was a big downhill skier when he grew-up. Mike was on the Le Sport team, too, and did slalom and freestyle a little bit.
Jeff Kasson • Unknown Photo
Bobby Reeves: He was an excellent skater. He could do huge ollies and laybacks. He could do just about anything and do it with finesse. If anybody could turn pro at Apple, he was the guy to do it. I didn't know him that well, but I just admired him because he was an excellent skater.
Chris Phillips: I think he was one of the kids whom I taught how to skate when he first came to the park. He was another little kid that rode a Steve Olson or Brad Bowman board.
Maybe a Duane Peters board.
No, I think it was a Brad Bowman. It was a big, heavy log of a board. But, Chris was a very determined young kid. He just wanted to do it and do it. He had a little competitive edge to him, as well. I don’t know what happened to him, but he was a fun kid to skate with. The big novelty was that he was so young and doing so well.
Yeah, he's pretty much the only Apple local left that I haven't got in contact with. His sister emailed Wayne Lyons through classmates.com and Wayne got Chris' email address. We've both tried to email him, but haven't heard anything back.
Charlie Shively: Just a crazy, crazy guy—lots of fun, doing all kinds of weird things.
Ronn Dudley: We didn't really click when he was working at the skatepark.
Did he skate?
Well, I think that just because he was there, he felt that he had to attempt to skate. It was sort of a spectacle watching him skate. You know, I think he had a good heart. He built a traveling ramp to try to promote Apple and get the word out—trying to do the good things. But, he was kind of a goofball. I just never understood him.
In what way was he goofy?
It was just hard to talk to him and understand him. It's hard to describe.
Gene Goldberg: I think he was a part-owner and there was another guy that was kind of a business partner—a guy that really didn’t do any work, but just contributed money. Gene was there every day and very intent on being successful and making money, but he didn't understand the kids. But, about six months into it, he really clicked with people. I think he was getting desperate, because Apple wasn't doing so well. The pools cost $10,000 each to make, so there was a big investment and a lot on the line with his family and Charles Chips, which was his only other source of income. But, Gene started being mellower and we had a great relationship.
Michael Musgrave: He was the one who came up with the Apple name. He was nice, but had a problem with alcohol. One night, somebody was trying to break in to skate. Mike took his bottle of Jack Daniels, broke it on a fire hydrant and was trying to thrust it into the guy. That's when he got fired.
That was inside the park?
That was just outside the park, out in the parking lot. But, he did a lot for Apple. He was a photographer and did all of the artwork for the Apple bumper stickers and T-shirts and everything. He felt very bitter after he got fired, because he felt that he was the one that really pulled it all together to make the park happen.
Who designed the Apple logo?
I think that was Musgrave, but I'm not sure. The big mural on the wall inside the park was done by a guy from Worthington.
Karen Goldberg: I didn't really talk to her a whole lot. She was a young kid—she may have been eleven or twelve or something like that. I think she had a brother named Jay, who was a nice little kid.
What is the raddest thing you saw happen at Apple?
It would either be a backside ollie that Steve Olson did on the two-thirds extension, El Gato doing the frontside rock 'n' roll on the two-thirds extension or Dave Andrecht doing the rock 'n' roll slide in the kidney. It just looked like he would never stop. He would go so fast and so hard—I thought he was going to rip the coping right off the top. Very aggressive. He was probably the one guy that really stood out in my memory as being the raddest guy that ever ripped there. A lot of guys had their own little niche and their quiver of tricks, but Andrecht is the guy that would go for broke.
Worst slams?
I took one in the kidney. I was doing a frontside air out of it, I think. I don't know if someone told me that or if I remember it, but I landed on my back and got knocked-out. I went to the hospital for two weeks or so. Another time, I was teaching one guy how to drop-in on the halfpipe, but his back truck hung-up and he just did a swan dive face first to the bottom. Six or seven of his front teeth just got completely busted out.
That sounds awful.
It was terrible. That was the last guy that I trained. I thought, "It's just not worth it anymore, getting four bucks per hour to show these guys how to skate."
How did Apple rate as a skatepark?
I didn't really skate any better places, but the halfpipe should have had flatbottom—that was very frustrating. The transitions were very quick, but the concrete was very smooth, it was indoors so you skate it year-round, there was nothing better at the time and it was a wonderful place to be—lots of energy there
Jeff Kasson Today • Unknown Photo
What were Apple's weak points?
The weak points were the keyhole—the diameter was too small. It was frustrating, because the keyhole concrete was very well done and very smooth. The coping was very well-done, too, but you basically dropped-in, did a few kickturns and you were done. If they had doubled the diameter and maybe added to the depth, that would have been the one to skate. Another waste of money was the peanut bowl and this little reservoir—basically no one even skated it.
What was the peanut like?
It was very shallow with very rounded lips, so it was kind of like rolling in and out of a little ditch.
Did you ever attend any of the am contests at Apple?
I entered two, I think—they were fun. That was toward the time I was stopping skating, for the most part, because my life was getting busy.
Any parties?
One time, I hired this band to come in. They played one night for a couple of hours for seven or eight of us . It was just a fun night. It was really fun for Steve Olson, because all of the kids were gone and he could just skate all over the park without stopping. We would just chase each other—we had, like, five guys that would skate from one run to the other, just following each other along. We had a good time. The same band also played for the paying public the next day. They actually never got paid and were kind of mad about it.
Were you at Apple for the sleep-overs?
Oh, yeah. I had a '67 T-Bird at that time, so we'd do crazy things going out in my car—just taking off and going places. One time, we went out with Steve Caballero and the big thing was Converse high-tops, so we all got some, went back to the hotel room, got some permanent markers and just marked 'em all up. We had a couple of overnight parties at Apple. I didn't have a sleeping bag—not many people did, We just crashed in the snack bar area where the games were. We slept in there one time.
Was there ever a scene of non-skaters, girls or whoever hanging-out at Apple?
There were a couple of girls who would come around every once in a while and some kids who would play games and just kind of hang out. But, there wasn't much of a scene going on.
Did you hear that Apple was going to close?
Yeah, I did and I went and skated it a couple of times. It was kind of a disappointing situation, because so many people put their money, time and their souls into that place to make it good. It was pretty sad to see it go.
Did you get a last session?
I wasn't there toward the very end.
Did they jackhammer the pools or just fill them with dirt?
I walked in there after UPS assumed the place. I told the UPS manager I used to work there and asked if I could go back and look at it and he said, "No." But, I talked to him some more and he said I could go back there for a minute. So, I went in and kind of glanced around. It looked like they just capped it with concrete. You could see the outline of the egg bowl and the keyhole, which were closest to the front desk of the UPS place. But, I doubt very much that they would have jackhammered everything, because that would have cost more effort and more money. So, I would assume they just filled everything in and capped it off.
If Apple were made into a skatepark again, I don't know how viable it would be. I've been skating all of the city skateparks that are in Ohio now—there are a bunch of them—and I think they're better. They're nicer, the concrete is good and they're geared more toward street skating now. It's a different ballgame. I don’t know if I'd really want to skate Apple's halfpipe again, because it didn't have flatbottom. As you went down one side, you were immediately going back up the other—I think that would get old these days. But, I’d love to skate Apple again if it ever opened back up.
Is UPS still in there?
I don't think so. I drove by and looked though the windows and there is furniture in there, but I didn’t see anyone doing anything. I think they make clothes. There's a door where you can look at the whole floor. It's right near the drop-in to the egg bowl. You can see the outline of the egg bowl, but you can't see much beyond that. It's kind of dark in there.
Where do you live now?
I live in Westerville, Ohio. I'm married and have one son.
Are you still skating?
Yeah, I just got a Birdhouse board, some Kryptonics and Titan trucks. My son is eleven, so we've been skating at the Dublin, Worthington and Lancaster parks. I need a lot of practice. I've only been doing it for a couple of months now. I'm rusty, but I'm having fun.
Closing comments?
Apple was a wonderful experience—it was a great time. You can tell from looking at all of the comments on your site that it touched a lot of people's lives. I appreciate everything you've done to bring all of the memories back for everyone—that's awesome.