GETTING AIR
Skateboarding gaining momentum at Olympics
Skateboarding might be new to the summer Olympics, but the sport’s roots go back to the late 1940s and California’s surfing community, and an estimated 11 million enthusiasts are now riding boards world-wide.
Among them, inaugural USA Skateboarding Olympic Team members Jordyn Barratt, Bryce Wettstein, Brighton Zeuner, Heimana Reynolds, Cory Juneau, Zion Wright, Mariah Duran, Alexis Sablone, Alana Smith, Jagger Eaton, Nyjah Huston and Jake Ilardi. But way before these young athletes claimed their spots on the Tokyo roster, pioneer daredevils like Olympic commentator Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta were just some of the names synonymous with skateboarding culture – living legends who wowed viewers in documentaries like “Dogtown and Z-Boys” and the followup narrative “Lords of Dogtown,” films that detailed the exploits of Venice Beach skateboarders who turned empty swimming pools into private settings for any number of breathtaking maneuvers and tricks.
Peralta and skateboard designer George Powell eventually became business partners in Powell Peralta and, in 1979, created an intrepid team of competitive skaters called the Bones Brigade (described in the film “Bones Brigade: An Autobiography”). The group’s membership fluctuated, but one of its skaters was Jami Godfrey, an Elkins Park native who currently lives in Berwyn and – at 56 – rides his board on a regular basis at venues like Lansdale Skatepark and New York’s Chelsea Piers and campaigns for the sport with other members of Delco Skatepark Coalition.
“Age, gender, income level… these aren’t really factors when it comes to skateboarding,” he says. “A lot of people my age are still doing it. Tony Hawk, for example, is 53 years of age, and he’s still definitely a contender. Another thing, with the Olympics, skateboarding
is being showcased as something that’s good for the entire household. It was a lot different for my generation when we started skating. Everybody was more or less my age. There weren’t any 56-year-olds out there skating. And back in the old days, it was a male-oriented sport.
“Southern California and the publications that were out there controlled it, too, because there wasn’t any Facebook or Instagram back then. ‘SkateBoarder’ magazine’ was my bible, and it looked at California as the center of the universe. But there were 2,500 skateboard parks built here by the mid-70s, and even though most of them were sub-par – dangerous, even — with lumpy concrete and imperfect transitions, they served as ‘a little spark that created a big wave.’ So, southern California might have been skateboarding’s epicenter, but the sport had grown far beyond.”
That included Philadelphia – where Center City’s Love Park became a controversial,
internationallyknown hub for skateboarders – and neighboring New Jersey, he notes.
Godfrey took up skateboarding as a freestyler – street skating’s precursor – when he was 10. He honed his park chops at Frankford’s former Philadelphia Skateboard Park in the late 1970s before becoming a regular at thennew Cherry Hill Skateboard Park, “probably the premier skate park of that era.”
“The big-name skaters from California came to open it, and that’s where I got to see all my idols,” Godfrey says. “They were so inspirational to me. No one’s good when they start out. Becoming good at skateboarding is like anything else. It takes time and effort. As I got better and better, people started to notice me.”
At 12, he began riding under the sponsorship of Powerflex and remained with the West Coast-based skateboard company until he was recruited by Bones Brigade as a 14 or 15-yearold. He made the switch after close friend and fellow freestyler Mike Jesiolowski
told Brigade co-founder Peralta about his buddy’s super smooth skating, exceptional hand-plants and fluid ollies.
“Stacy had already put Mike, who was incredible, on the (Bones Brigade) team. At about the same time, he brought on Alan Gelfand, who invented the ollie – the key trick in all of modern skateboarding – and Mike McGill, who invented the 540 aerial called the McTwist, another groundbreaking trick.
Another team member, Rodney Mullen, is credited with creating modern street skateboarding because his street style maneuvers influenced the way people do tricks on handrails and a lot of the other stuff you’re seeing in the Olympics.
“Powell Peralta’s idea was not to pay pros to ride but to find amateurs who were unique, different and really accomplished. Stacy was more concerned with developing talent than contest results, and that’s how so many maneuvers and tricks developed during that era…1979 through 1982.”
In the early 1980s, Godfrey
enrolled at Northern Vermont University and discovered snowboarding. He and his mother subsequently ran a snowboardskate shop called Cool Runnings in Ardmore, then Bryn Mawr, from 1989 to 2002. He is currently coowner of Tapped Into It, a full service draft beer service in Glen Mills.
“Snowboarding drew me away from skateboarding, and I had no interest in getting back to it for many, many years,” he says.
Then, Peralta’s “Bones Brigade: An Autobiography” premiered in Philadelphia, and the documen
tary gave sons Mason, now 15, and Carter, 12, fresh eyes on their father’s impressive skateboarding credentials. Their interest and the increasingly problematic nature of snowboard outings (expense and fickle weather) with the boys, both avid rockclimbers, and wife Jessica Jones combined to revive Godfrey’s own interest in skateboarding.
He says the sport’s accessibility and camaraderie have kept him interested.
“For someone like me who grew up skateboarding with all boys, I’m thrilled to see so many young girls and women enjoying the sport, and that’s the kind of thing that a group like Delco Skatepark Coalition encourages,” Godfrey says. “We’re looking to build something that’s a highlyneeded community recreation resource, and we hope we’re planting a seed that will grow in Delaware County but also spread to Chester County where I live and Montgomery County which…has made a terrific
start with Lansdale Skatepark. This isn’t just an effort to develop more athletes for a new Olympic sport but to create additional
community recreation options, not just for skateboarders…for all wheel sports and, again, all ages.”