We're going to do one on Monrovia's favorite son, Mr. Benjamin Schroeder.
We want to show you why we think Ben is so fucking cool.
Up on the ramp right now and ready to drop in is Ben Schroeder.
He is 18 years of age.
He is one of the younger pros on the circuit.
He is also a very tall competitor.
He was influential in late 80s vertical skateboarding.
The amount of change and fucking awesomeness that he brought to the table.
I started skating at the upland pipeline.
My mom would drive us out there every Saturday.
And there in the skateboarder, build a half pipe, got sponsored.
Locomotive, crash test dummy, Ben Schroeder.
I did have a reputation for taking slams back in the day too.
My first block little graphic was a crash test dummy.
So I don't know what that's about.
I think it's just, I just hold on.
I'm just, you know, just try to make it.
Committed.
Like I was saying, skateboarding was totally stale at the time.
It had kind of peaked out with its kind of progression.
You know, there was a lot of back stairs, a lot of back stairs and inverts.
And there was a small group of individuals that were pushing the envelope.
And Schroeder was at the forefront of that.
It's just, you know, just something that was born out of necessity on just me having
no vert to skate, skating mini ramps.
And so I came up with a whole bunch of new mini ramp, lit tricks and then adapted them
to vert.
And just by all these tricks that I had come up with on a mini ramp, you know, we're not
using my hands.
You know, like the alley lip slides and the, and the lip start revert and the 50-50, alley
50-50 fakies and all the tail slide, chafe slide, you know, without just, without even
alling to tell, just kind of whipping it to tell.
It's a lot of tricks.
We're just kind of, you know, using your feet maneuvering and that's what street skating
does also.
And I wasn't doing the kick flips, but still kind of, I don't know what I'm talking about.
The way the guy approaches his skating, you know, he has one speed and it's, you know,
go and goes fast as you can.
And it's, it was exciting and scary to watch, you know, because it's, it's all or nothing.
You know, I'm going for the gold, going for the gold, so to speak, and I'm either going
to get there or I'm going to go down in bloody flames.
Nothing's planned.
It's all spontaneous.
You go watch him skate, Glendale skate park.
And nobody rides that place like that guy does.
Skating to me is, is, it's a feeling out and in this plane, you know, not plane, but,
you know, experimenting or expressing yourself and doing the same, the same tricks, the same
type of things every day is kind of, it's, it's, you're not really expressing yourself
so much.
It's getting kind of stale.
So I always like to try to think of a new thing to do, new tricks to do every, you know,
usually when I skate.
So I've started my own company, locomotive skate parks, and I'm designing and building
skate parks all over the world whenever I can, whenever I get the job.
And I'm trying to continue to influence skateboarding with, with my skate park design now, as I,
I managed to do in the 80s with my trick inventions, you know, during that time period.
And so I'm trying to continue influencing skateboarding and trying to continue my implementing
my ideas and hopefully the nudge skateboarding in a direction that I like or some skateboarding
in any way.
How do you fucking make it as gnarly and as death as possible?
In a nutch rotor, in a nut shell.
