During Apple's heyday, Steve Dread was a local at Michigan skateparks like Cosmic Waves and Astro Speedway. You may recall Steve skating for Alva in the late '80s. He was in the upper left corner of the infamous Alva ad group photo in which almost every team member wore a black leather jacket with dread locks. Steve was interviewed in person in mid-February 2002.
How did you get to go to Apple?
I lived in Michigan—we had four or five parks within an hour of my house. We'd always take road-trips, and I got to go with a crew of kids. I was the last one in the car—it was either me or this other guy. We went out for the weekend, got one session and that was pretty much it. Apple was something we saw photos of and heard about—it was like the great rush: "We've got to go and skate this place before it's gone".
Oh, it was in 1981—right before it closed?
It was probably between '79 and—my dates are foggy, man. I graduated in '80. It was the year before I graduated, so it had to be the summer of '80. We just went on a weekend to Ohio—got to skate it. I was pretty intimidated, because we had a pool in our park in Kalamazoo, Michigan—Cosmic Waves—that was my first and favorite park. The bowls at Apple were bigger and gnarlier than I anticipated, so it was kind of like standing there quivering for about twenty minutes before dropping-in. But it was good because even if I didn't have a good time, I had to see it—just like all the other places.
Were any pros there?
I don't know—was Rob Roskopp considered pro?
No, I just meant like Duane Peters or whoever.
Once that park popped-up, you know, we thought we were going to go there and see everybody, and it was just the locals—it was a really slow time for skating. That's when the road-trips started coming into play.
Do you remember Rob Roskopp skating at all?
No, I saw a guy who was really good and somebody called him "Barn" or something.
That was Rob.
He seemed like he had control and I considered that pro—someone who could actually ride, grind, carve and get air. There was a lot of kids that were unknown at the time to me, but I'm sure they were probably prominent skaters later in the game. It was an interesting thing, because I was expecting Apple to be exactly like I saw it in the magazine pictures and it was nothing like the pictures—it was scary. All I remember was shivering, you know, just walking around checking out which bowl I wanted to ride in before I killed myself. They had a halfpipe with a two-thirds extension—that was really fun. I spent most of my time in there.
They had a keyhole that was pretty ridable, but the big bowls were always overcrowded with the big guys. Somebody was pulling rock 'n' roll slides. The big thing back then was, David Andrecht and all those guys were going coast-to-coast and he used to do method airs before anyone called them method airs—they used to just call it big backside air. There were guys pulling two, three-foot airs out that looked big as hell to me, but it was just a little pop-air. Back then, I don't even think tricks were a big deal—it was set-up tricks: rock 'n' roll to set-up to do something else. It wasn't like it is today—it was a lot of carving, a lot of grinding, tail-blocks, laybacks, berts, things like that.
Was it crowded when you went?
By today's standards, I would say no—it was crowded with hardcore skateboarders. For the space that it was in, it wasn't packed. If anything, it was a sign that skating was dying—we were tripping-out because it was such a killer place that was just empty. It was a strange thing, because most of the locals would skate all-together and it was not a vibe—but it was like a clique. They had their control—one guy would drop-in and you could almost count on that the next guy who went behind him ten runs ago was going to do the same thing.
Who all went with you?
This guy Mike Early was kind of like a Brad Bowman / Tony Alva-style skater—really smooth style, clean. He had that gift—knew how to pump it. This guy we used to call "King Herod"—his name was Herod. We had two parks' worth of people going. Aaron White was a local at Cosmic Waves—he was probably one of the raddest little skaters, a small guy that could just do it. I think one of the Northrop brothers—they owned Cosmic Waves—there were two brothers, Mark and Kevin. Kevin was the better one—the one that didn't get all the love—but he was on that trip. I remember he was turning punk-rock and all that stuff. I remember him skating at Apple and just feeling at home because they had a park that his parents owned, so they were skating all the time.
Watching the locals, it was almost like we were rooting for our team mates when any of our boys would ride. It's really fuzzy, man, cuz I'm almost forty years old now. When I think back on those little road-trips and then someone mentions an area that they skated, I'm like, "Man, when were you there?" I can tell you, I've run into people coast-to-coast that have been at the same session somewhere—it just blows my mind. My memories of Apple were very short and sweet. After Apple, The Turf popped-up and I was a local there—we'd drive from Chicago three nights a week. It was a ninety-minute drive.
Did any of those Turf pools have flat-bottom?
Only the shallow-end of the clover. The Turf's clover had a big, flat area and it was perfect. It had a drop-in channel that was about five-feet wide. Both of the bowls were eight-foot, but one had a little vert and the other didn't. One had big, stick-out coping and one had very little coping—but it all had orange tile that made the most beautiful "brrrddddlllll" sound when you hit it—that was great. The shallow had a nice bowl—you could carve the hell out of that thing. We went there one session, it was twelve people there—six of them were Santa Cruz riders and the other six were the people I came with. That was the first time I met Jason Jessee—when they were shooting Streets On Fire. The Turf was probably the closest thing that was like an Apple-esque park. Apple was a flawless park. The Turf had some flaws, but it was near perfect.
Did you know Bill Danforth?
I knew Bill when the GLSA was going on. Bill was a really angry, straight-edge guy who didn't like anybody but the people he came with. I met him a few times—I didn't like him at first.
So you were in Kalamazoo?
It started out as just looking at magazines and seeing if I could go to California and skate a park—not knowing what was going on—and the next thing you know, we hear about a skatepark going up in Kalamazoo. I lived in a town forty minutes from there called Albion. I was in the middle of the state, and a hundred miles to the east was Detroit—that's where Bill and his crew was. Forty-five miles west was Kalamazoo and another forty minutes from there was Astro Speedway—which was another indoor park that had the same set-up as Apple. It had a three-quarter pipe, but they tried to throw in a street reservoir that didn't really come out too well. They had a keyhole pool, and a figure-eight bowl. That was in Jenison, Michigan, around '78 to '82. It was in a small, indoor warehouse.
Cosmic Waves was outdoors, it was just your typical formula park—like if you looked in the back of any old Skateboarder and saw [an ad for] "Sarasota Skatepark", you know. It's like, go down the sidewalk, it empties into a giant lumpy bowl with an extension, then it comes into a lumpier snake-run that ends up into a little spittle bowl. Then we had a halfpipe stuck in the middle with a giant mound, a quarterpipe at the end and two little halfpipe runs that were just little ditches. Ray Allen from Marina Del Rey came out and built the Dog Bowl at our park. That's when we really started concentrating on pool-skating.
When I went to Detroit, it was weird because a contest had happened recently and Duane Peters was there. He came out and everyone was raving about how he cut everyone's hair. I got a set of trucks from one of Duane's boys—he had a set of Indys that he spray-painted green and they were so punk that I had to have 'em. I paid fourteen dollars in the men's bathroom at Endless Summer for a pair of beat-down trucks. He said they were from Duane. I met Duane last Saturday night, finally.
At the Old School Skate Jam II?
Yeah. It was a beautiful night, man. It was like walking into a virtual-reality magazine and seeing all of your heroes.