BILLY RUFF INDUCTED INTO SKATEBOARDING HALL OF FAME
Celebration to be held on Dec. 4 at Green Flash Brewing
Carmel Valley’s Billy Ruff was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame at the Vans Headquarters in Costa Mesa recently. During his 10-year professional career, Ruff was considered one of the best vert skateboarders of the 1980s, riding for San Diego-based Gordon & Smith (G&S) Skateboards.
Due to the pandemic, there was no induction ceremony last year so this year’s celebration was packed with 36 skateboarders from the classes of 2020 and 2021. Ruff was inducted alongside San Diegans Steve Cathey, Dave Andrecht, Eric Grisham, Denis Shufeldt, Dennis Martinez and Doug “Pineapple” Saladino.
“It was super fun,” said Ruff, who lives in Carmel Valley with his wife, Jill, and daughters, Jamison and Avery, students at Canyon Crest Academy.
Ruff was born in Fitchburg, Mass., into a military family — his father got deployed to Scotland shortly after he was born. Ruff moved around the country with his father’s military deployments, living in North Carolina and Florida before his family settled in San Diego when he was 12.
His interest in skateboarding began when the Pepsi Skateboard Team visited his middle school, Marsten Middle in Clairemont. Among those doing the skateboarding demos that day was Dennis Martinez, member of the G&S team and his future friend and fellow hall of fame inductee.
“At 12, I see the skateboarding and said ‘Oh my god that’s so cool I want to do that’,” Ruff said.
He persuaded his parents to get him the most basic, store-bought inexpensive, plastic skateboard, “I just rode it constantly around my house and neighborhood and Mission Bay Park,” he said. “I skated every day, whenever I could.”
Ruff was hitting the skateboarding scene as it was winding down from the 1970s’ boom — by 1978, there were few skate parks in the area. He found a second home at the Oasis Skatepark, which was under the Interstate 805 and Interstate 8 interchange, begging
his dad for a ride or taking a bus just to get there and skate for the 12 hours it was open.
Eventually his helpful cousin saw he was riding his skinny little board and gave him a bigger board to ride Oasis’ pools, slalom, snake runs and half pipe.
At Oasis, G&S rider Steve Cathey approached him and offered Ruff some G&S Yo-Yo wheels, his first sponsorship. In the 1970s,
G&S, a San Diego surfboard institution since 1959, became one of the top three skateboard companies in the world with its Fibreflex board. It was also one of the first companies to sponsor professional team riders.
After winning a contest at Oasis in early ’78, Ruff joined the G&S team at age 15. He traveled around the state to compete in both freestyle and pool/vert- style skating.
At that point, skate parks all over the state were closing — his beloved Oasis closed in 1979. The Del Mar Skate Ranch was one of the last skate parks standing and Ruff made the migration north after graduating from Clairemont High. Located across the street from the Del Mar Fairgrounds, where Wave volleyball teams practice now, the park had multiple pools, a big reservoir/bank area and a half pipe.
Ruff competed professionally until 1988.
In 1988, Ruff stopped skateboarding entirely — he had taken a position at the footwear company Airwalk as a sales representative, and as he got busier and busier there was not much time to practice.
Ruff worked for Airwalk for 12 years and moved onto the footwear company Sole Technology, then started his own company, Sha Sha Fine Shoes, which he closed in 2010. These days, he is working for a telecommunications company.
For many years, Ruff didn’t skateboard at all but he picked it up again in his mid-50s when the Pacific Highlands Ranch Park’s pump track opened in 2019.
He also got involved in organizing community events at the park built around skateboarding, which he found he had a knack for. In March 2020, he organized the Skate Against ALS Skate-a-Thon to benefit a good friend in the skateboarding industry who is fighting ALS and, in August, he helped out with the Skate Jam, an event put on by the city’s park and recreation department with the San Diego Police Department’s Northwestern Division where people could skate with local police officers at the pump track. He hopes more Skate Jams are in the future.
A party will be held on Dec. 4 at Green Flash Brewing Co., celebrating the 2020 and 2021 Skateboarding Hall of Famers. The event will be held from 4 to 10 p.m. with food trucks, a street course and live music. The event has a $7 suggested cover donation with proceeds going toward the Dave McIntyre Skatepark, an effort to rename the Carmel Valley Skatepark in memory of the G&S manager and Carmel Valley resident who died this year. Green Flash is at 6550 Mira Mesa Blvd.