The Old School Skate Jam was a gathering of the legends of skateboarding, held at the SkateLab in Simi Valley, California on February 10th, 2001. The original idea of the Jam was to show appreciation to the older pros, as a way of honoring the path they paved, which so many have followed. The party became so much more than that, though, and as people shuffled in the door, there was a near magical transformation as one generation of skateboarding legends gave way to the next.

As a kid in the mid-seventies, I devoured every inch of every single issue of Skateboarder Magazine, so I felt very lucky as I watched Tom “Wally” Inouye, Tony Alva, and Duane Peters draw incredible lines in the wooden kidney bowl, and to shake hands with and talk to Alan “Ollie” Gelfand, Chris Strople, Jay Smith, Jerry Valdez and Bob Biniak. These are the guys who invented the tricks that are taken for granted today: the ollie, the backside air, the invert, the rock-and-roll railslide, and more. But aside from the tricks, these are also progenators of the attitude that created four generations of skateboard progression. Without the foundations, everything beyond crumbles, and the skateboarders being honored passed on the radical idealism that all skateboarders are indebted to.

Perhaps one barometer of the depth of skateboarding’s history present was the image of Lance Mountain, holding an old Variflex banner, walking around getting autographs of the guys he had looked up to as a kid 20-plus years ago.

As Steve Caballero put it: “It was an amazing night. I was totally stoked to be here, to be around this whole aura of the history of skateboarding. This is a family. I never went to any of my high school reunions, but I consider this to be my first school or family reunion.” Coming from a legend of several generations like Caballero, that holds some weight.