It’s funny when someone you don’t know dies, and you realize that somehow, they’ve worked their way into a large part of your life. They did it without you even knowing – through books and movies, quick flashes of a their brilliance quietly influencing in some way or another, implanting themselves under the skin of a growing passion.
Jay Adams was someone like that for me. The way he grew up and the way I did are incredibly different. Him at the peak of a cultural heyday, the king of a generation that went on to play such a huge role in nearly everything in both surfing and skateboarding. He was at the front of a steamroller that was just building speed, and he managed to find another gear. I grew up in a quiet town, far removed from anything and everything Venice in Jay’s day offered.
I started skating bowls and mini ramps about ten years ago. I’ve never been great at street stuff; if I can ollie up a curb, I’m pretty happy with myself. That kind of skating just never really appealed to me. But coping tricks and perfect, flowing lines in a bowl, I can deal with. I love to watch it – there’s a beautiful juxtaposition between the smooth speed and the quick, almost static lip tricks that is incredibly attractive to me. When I first started, I was unaware of Jay Adams and just how entrenched he was in skateboarding. My path had yet to find his footprint. But when it did, the footprint it found was a deep one – and in its own small way, it altered my path, if just a little. I actually remember picking up a book of old California skateboarding photos – the cover had a woman doing a handstand on a skateboard. There is one photo in particular of Jay Adams that is stuck in my brain: he’s at the top of a turn out of a bowl, staring at his back foot. The photo itself isn’t anything special, but the look of intensity on his face was something that, for some reason, resonated with me. I figured out what it was. That’s a photo of what pure passion looks like.
It wasn’t so much Jay’s style of skating that I was drawn to. It was the naked passion he showed for not just the physical act of riding a skateboard, but the entire culture surrounding it. Granted, it was a culture largely born of Jay’s own doing, but it was that honest, stripped-bare kind of passion that draws in the crowds. Jay had that in spades. There are few better examples of misled youth – and that’s not a bad thing. He had a Peter Pan-like quality, at least to someone that didn’t know him. I’m sure he would probably hate that comparison, but it’s the only one that makes sense to me: he refused to cave to corporate pressures, something that is easy to do once the pressures of adult life rear their head. It’s ironic that that is the exact mentality that many corporations use as a front, but it speaks to his magnetism, and how attractive that pure kind of honesty is.
He did what he was passionate about, no matter what. He saw what it was that he loved, and he wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s difficult to find true passion in most people – it’s usually covered in some kind of measured, thick coating of what “should be done.” But Jay Adams didn’t have that coating. He did what he loved, he did it how he loved doing it, and he would have done it even if no one liked it. That’s something that I try and emulate, because it’s that kind of raw honesty that I respect more than almost anything. Jay Adams had it, and I wish more people did, too. But that’s what made him so special, I guess – he had something that no one else had the guts to have.