Died Friday: Jay Adams. Without Jay and his band of merry men, Tony Alva, Chris Cahill and Stacy Peralta (and others), aka the Zephra Surf Team or Z-boys, the modern sport of skateboarding and snowboarding, as we know them today, would not exist. Adams and the Z-boys were profiled in two films, a documentary released in 2001 called Dogtown and Z-boys and a feature film called The Lords Of Dogtown, staring Heath Ledger. Jay Adams was born in a part of Venice, California known to locals as Dogtown. His father was a heroin addict who went to prison when Adams was a baby. He was raised by his mother and Kent Sherwood, a lifelong surfer who made Adams his first surfboard and taught him how to use it. He grew up with his mother and his step father, Kent Sherwood. He began skating/surfing at the age of 4. Sherwood worked at Dave Sweets Surf Shop under Pacific Ocean Park, where Adams was introduced to skateboarding by all the surfers who visited. Adamss skateboarding was greatly influenced by Larry Bertlemann, a professional surfer who was known for dragging his hands along the waves as he rode them. In 1974, Adams joined the Zephyr surf team that represented the Santa Monica shop Jeff Ho Surfboards and Zephyr Productions. He was the youngest and most naturally gifted member of the team. When asked about Adams, fellow Z-Boy Tony Alva said, Some kids are born and raised on graham crackers and milk, he was born and raised on surfing and skateboarding. But as natural as the moves looked, they had a competitive purpose. He skated with aggression, talent and disregard for what others were doing, Skip Engblom, who worked with Ho, told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 2002. Skateboardings Mozart and Hendrix. These were the lean, drought ridden times of the late 1970s in California, where water rationing was strict and pools began to dry up, as it was illegal to re-fill them. Adams and his restless crew used to canvas their Venice neighborhood in search of empty (or near empty) pools in which to practice their new found joy, surfing the pools or riding the pools. This was a completely novel idea. Before the Z-boys, skateboarding and surfing had been two separate sports with nothing in common. Adams took skateboarding to a new level, transferring surf moves to concrete in a style that is still practiced today. The Z-boys were sunburnt, flaxen haired, skinny kids with lots of time on their hands and hundreds of pools at their disposal. They were not put off by fences or trespassing fears, often draining and cleaning out a neglected pool themselves, then riding it for as long as they could, or before the cops came. They became legendary. The Z-Boys became a skate team when they heard about the Bahne-Cadillac Del Mar Nationals in 1975. Jay Adams was the first member to enter the competition, held in Del Mar, California, taking 3rd place in the Junior Mens Freestyle. His explosive energy and low, bold, surf-like moves characterized the style of the Z-Boys and contrasted with the traditional style of the era, which was still based around tricks formulated in the 1960s. According to Bones Brigade founder Stacy Peralta, Adams is probably not the greatest skater of all time, but I can say without fear of being wrong that he is clearly the archetype of modern-day skateboarding. Much of Adams and the rest of the Zephyr teams fame is due to Craig Stecyks Dogtown articles in the relaunch of Skateboarder magazine in 1975. The Dogtown articles were a series of magazine articles that chronicled the adventures of the Z-Boys. Money and fame followed, and all the problems associated with youth and too much too soon. The Zephyr team broke up shortly after the Del Mar Nationals and half the team followed Kent Sherwood, who made the Zephyr boards, to a new team. Sherwood and Adams created the brand and team EZ RYDER, which changed its name to Z-Flex six months later. Adams was the face of the brand. While taking care of his mother when she was dying of cancer in the mid-1990s, according to Hamm, he began taking her pain medication. He was living in Mexico at the time with his girlfriend and son, Seven, going to church on Sundays and selling dope on the side.Adams spent time in prisons as he struggled with drug addiction. He was charged with murder and convicted of assault following a gay bashing on Dan Bradbury that he instigated in Los Angeles in 1982. In the late 1990s, after the murder of his brother, and the death of his mother, father, and grandmother all in the same year, he began taking heroin. He was serving two and a half years on drug charges in Hawaii during the production of Dogtown and Z-Boys and was released in 2002. The movie brought Adams back into the limelight and won him endorsement deals. However at this time Adams failed to pay taxes for three years and then relapsed into his drug addiction. In November 2006, he was arrested and sentenced to four years in the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Oregon, after being caught on a wiretap acting as a go-between for a buyer and seller of crystal methamphetamine. He was released to a halfway house on July 8, 2008 for the remainder of his sentence. Adams seemed to have turned his life around in recent years and was enjoying a long surfing vacation in Hawaii when he fell ill. Adams was not feeling well Thursday night (August 14) and went to bed early. Early Friday morning, his wife, Tracy, alerted Sarlo and other visiting friends that her husband was choking in his sleep and having trouble breathing. An ambulance took him to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. Jay Adams died Friday, at the age of 53.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 18:16:25 +0000
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