Fabian Alomar – Caught in the Crossfire

Take a good look at this crew photo shot by Canadian photographer Jody Morris from his 20 Plus book. It captures Fabian Alomar, Keenan Milton (RIP), Mike Crum, Gino Ianucci, Jason Dill, Eric Pupecki (and tour driver) in the midst of a banging era of skateboarding whilst on tour in Nottingham, England, 1994. Steve Rocco’s anarchic revolution was well under way by then, Big Brother was the best mag on the shelf, Sidewalk Surfer was just starting up, DC Shoes and Chocolate Skateboards were also just launching and Gator had already served two of his 31 years in the slammer for murdering his girlfriend and burying her in the desert.

“I was working for World Industries and being very lean times in skateboarding the European distributors had pooled together to do a collective tour with all the World brands traveling together,” remembers Morris. “For many of us it was our first trip overseas, and quite possibly one of the best.”

The influx of American teams over the next couple of years lead to the Generation 97 comp at Wembley Arena in London. This mammoth skate event featured an old Jag dumped in the middle the street course and saw the likes of the Gonz, Creager, Rowley, Senn, Wainwright, Koston, Duffy, Brauch, Vallely, Daewon, Templeton, Reynolds and many more sign a page in the UKs skate history book. To this day, G97 still puts the likes of Street League to shame, which isn’t hard, it was all about skateboarding.

Menace pro Fabian Alomar remembers G97 well and delved into his memory banks for a quick story from behind the scenes. What goes on tour, stays on tour…well, for at least two decades.

Fabian Alomar – Lausanne, Switzerland 1995.

“OK, so back in 1997 we were in London to compete in a comp there at Wembley, and well, it started off good. I was skating, getting my run down and the rest of the Menace, Girl, Chocolate, World Industries heads were on the course and we were doing our thing. I remember approaching another pro skater who was talking shit about “skaters in LA all wearing gold chains and driving Honda Civics and sagging and shit” in an interview he had done in one of the mags. Of course, me being the person I am, once I laid eyes on him I dropped in from one side of the course to where he was. We won’t mention his name for his safety cause he couldn’t bust a grape then and I’m pretty sure he’s still peeing his pants when he gets confronted. Talk about ‘Turnt Down’.

Anyway, back to the story…

So, I took a break from skating and went outside to grab a hot dog from this truck that was parked out in front and flirted with the Hot Dog Girl who was serving up and let me just say this…by the time I smashed on them two hot dogs with a vengeance, I knew I’d be smashing Hot Dog Girl’s ass with fury. Yeah, I bagged that broad in no time.

So later that night we went to a wack-ass place to drink and smoke. I still remember the FUCKEN MUSIC! There was techno and fucken lazers everywhere! I was over it and remember talking to Hot Dog Girl again, grabbed her and said “let’s go to my hotel” and she followed.

OK, here’s were shit gets kinda fucking weird. I was piping Hot Dog Girl in my room – and believe me, I was really giving it to her “FRANK HURTS STYLE” with the kids in the room (Javier Nunez and Lee Smith) acting like they were asleep. They were too young to go out so they hung out in the hotel, smoked blunts, drank beer and jerked off to porn. Now in the middle of my sesh with this broad, I hear frantic banging on the door to my room, so naturally I pulled out, ran to the door with a stiffy, opened the door, and it’s Guy Mariano standing there.

My lil’ buddy is scared outta his mind (and fucked up wasted of course) and there’s this older, big ass dude right behind him yelling shit out and he looks like he wants to hurt Guy. So Guy gets behind me and throws a fly punch on him from the right and said “fuck him up Fabes”, so I threw a punch too. Naked.

This fucker got nailed twice and that was enough for him. So now Guy’s telling the story and it turns out that Guy stole the bouquet from a wedding reception in the hotel lobby, all drunk and shit. I was like “of course everyone from the wedding is gonna be pissed Guy! I mean fuck dude, you stole THE fucken bouquet of flowers and you still have it in your hand?! Give it back so all these people can get the fuck away from my door, can continue with their wedding, and I can continue penetrating Hot Dog Girl!”

So I threw it back at these fools, and by the way, I am still in my birthday suit (minus the stiffy) but I still wanna bang this broad so bad. So now Guy notices something that I totally missed. Hot Dog Girl has 666 and some Devil shit Pentagram and crazy bat shit tattoos all around her snatch. So now I’m like WTF?! I’m a firm believer in God bro, I ain’t trying to bone the Devil homie. Now me, Guy, Jav’s and Lee are trippin on her tats and this Devil / Hot Dog Girl is spread eagled telling us the story on how and why she got her crazy ass tats around her pie hole.

To make a long story short, at the end of the night I banged her with the lights on with everyone watching and making comments, and I was doing all the positions I loved in porn, even taking requests from the homies too. Yeah, those were the days. The making of FRANK HURTS. Good times!”

Words by Fabian Alomar.

If you have a True Story you want to share, write to us.

Order 20 Plus online or ask your local skate shop to get one in for you.

Enjoy this G97 footage:

Photo: World Industries, Blind, 101, Menace, Plan B – Euro Tour – Amsterdam, 1995. Standing L to R‭: Fabian Alomar‭, ‬unknown‭, ‬Kelly Bird‭, ‬Henry Sanchez‭, ‬Keenan Milton‭, ‬Yves‭, ‬Colin Mckay‭, ‬Pat Duffy‭, ‬Chris Hensley‭,‬‭ ‬Eric Pupecki‭, ‬Kareem Campbell, Joey Suriel‭, ‬unknown‭. Front L to R‭: Ronnie Bertino‭, ‬Gino Ianucci‭, ‬Matt Hensley‭, ‬Jeremy Wray‭.

For more Fabian Alomar stuff, watch this Vice documentary.

Photos courtesy of Brad Rosado, Matt Daughters and Seu Trinh

The back end of 2012 brought some great skateboard video treats across the globe and as you may well remember, we finished our year by screening the UK premiere of DGK’s first full video production after the 10th Anniversary Xmas Jam.

Pushing skateboard films forward is no easy task, but the DGK crew had their own plans of how their first major flick was to be rolled out. Actors, film crews, special guests, closed-off roads, crazy skits and of course, some absolutely banging skating was meticulously planned over a long period of time. With all of this in the mix and a great reaction worldwide, we spoke to Brad Rosado who filmed about 90% of the video to explain a few facts about how this came to fruition alongside a selection of DGK’s ever-impressive team riders discussing their most memorable days from filming ‘Parental Advisory‘.

Who directed the original plan for the overall production?

“The original plan for the production was a group collaboration between the DGK Team, Troy Morgan, Matt Daughters, and myself. We knew we wanted to make a video that no one would forget. When the skate portion of the film was near completion we started to brainstorm how the intro’s were going to be. There were talks about making it into a documentary but that turned into having skits. I think Daughters had this idea for a few years that the video should be focused around the team as if they were mini versions of people on DGK. One day I remember Baker (our graphic designer) showing a bunch of us a dope music video he found online. Troy saw it and I could tell he saw the vision he wanted for ‘Parental Advisory’ from that video. After that, he contacted Randal Kirk (the director) and we started to plan out the rest of the video.

When did the shooting originally start?

All together it took us about 3 years to gather all the footage for the skate sections. Everybody was filming for their parts up until a week before the finished DVD was due. The whole team busted their asses to the very end and it shows in their parts. We started to shoot the narrative part of the film in early Spring of 2012.

How were the actors picked to play the roles between sections?

The actors were found a few different ways. We had a few casting calls and that’s where we found the actual actors for the film. We found the skate kids through Susan Williams”Save A Heart’ program. We did a casting call with her one weekend and were able to find the majority of the younger actors there. They all skated and already had the background that represented the film correctly. A lot of people in the film had no acting experience at all. All they had to do was act natural pretty much. Randal directed everybody well and got the performance he wanted out of them to make this film what it is.

Which celebrities are involved in the cameos?

Some cameos we had in the film were DMX, Beanie Sigel, Kareem Campbell, Fabian Alomar, Vanessa Veasley, Peedi Crakk, and Cappadonna.

With weapons involved in the skits, did you need licenses to shoot in the public domain?

For most locations of the film we had permits and it was closed sets so we could do whatever we wanted. Most of that stuff was shot between 1am-6am so there was barely anybody out on the streets to see what was going on.

How difficult was it to cut HD footage together with VX footage?

That was one of the hardest things to figure out while editing the video. At first we had all the HD footage cropped and the VX stuff kept 4:3. This was probably considered the correct ways to do it. We ran into a problem when we started to add the narrative part of the film. It wasn’t transitioning right between the two sections so we had to make a rough call and stretch the VX footage to 16:9 and kept the HD footage normal. I know a lot of people don’t agree with this decision but we made the best judgement call to make sure the aspect ratios weren’t jumping around. Overall I feel it worked out and most people didn’t even notice. We went through over 25 different aspect ratios to find the right look to make it seamless.

What are your most memorable days from filming this flick?

There were so many good times with these dudes it’s hard to remember them all. The ones that stick out to me are some of the battles we overcame with the cameras we were using. During the last few months we would hit up Jkwon downtown LA every Sunday. During one of the sessions Marquise was in the zone and started to try halfcab fs nosegrind nollie flip out on the long ledge. We tried for a while and he landed a pretty good one. Quise knew he could do it better so we kept trying. After trying for a while longer he did the best one he could of possibly done. The camera I was using at that time never gave me any problems until we watched back the footage. For some reason on that one try it had an insane glitch from right before he popped until right after he landed. I tried everything I could do to make it playback properly but it wasn’t happening. That try was completely destroyed.

Quise was pretty bummed but he knew he had to do it again. We tried for a while longer and got another one. It wasn’t as good as the glitched version but it was still amazing! I remember people asking why we were doing it again since the last one was so perfect. I didn’t even know what to say. It sucks that no one will ever see how good he really did it but that’s the gamble you take sometimes when using a camera that’s 10+ years old. I don’t even think anybody thinks that the version in the video is less than perfect anyways. To do that trick 3 times is impressive! Thankfully we have upgraded to HD and glitches are a thing of the past.”

STEVIE WILLIAMS

“ATL has always been a home away from home when we were working on this project. For the majority of the video we had team apartments and the squad would fly in and out filming nonstop. Staying together and going on missions is what helped make this team a real family. The first clip I filmed for the video was in a school yard in East Atlanta. It was first time filming with Brad so I knew we had to break the ice and get it poppin. I was really just cruising around, but ended up getting a dope line on film for my part. I started off the line with a few flat ground tricks and then there was a quick flat gap I was trying to fs flip. On one of the tries I ended up landing in a manual by accident and held it to the end. That day symbolized beginning of the video and after that we just kept stacking clips and made it a reality.”

MARQUISE HENRY

“We were on a DGK NY trip for like two weeks we had are own apartments right downtown Manhattan. It was dope being in the city waking up hoping out of bed and just hitting the streets. We had a big crew mobbin’ up and down the city blocks, hopping on and off trains going to and from skate spots all day and night. I remember skating down Time Square with Dane, Brad and Seu and we see this random guy that had these dope-ass parrots. Seu shot some dope pics with them on head and on my board. That night we ended up chillin’ in Time Square till 4am and then skated 50+ blocks back to the crib. It was just dope being with the crew in New York having good times skating, chillin’, and livin’ man. Those are some good times I’ll never forget.”

JACK CURTIN

“So Stevie and I tagged along on an Expedition filming trip to China a few years ago. Every morning we would all get breakfast at the cafe downstairs from the hotel. Spencer Hamilton and I would get this super strong ice coffee every morning because it would get us so sparked. So one morning Stevie was at breakfast saying how he felt super tired and jet-lagged or something so I told him to have one of the ice coffee’s cuz it would get him hyped. He never drinks coffee so he was hesitant at first but eventually he got one cuz he wanted to get hyped to go skate.

So like an hour later we’re at the skate spot and Stevie is really hyped on it. He was trying these crazy manual tricks and he had already filmed one banger, but while he was filming the second one, he started freaking out cuz he needed to take a shit super bad. The coffee had messed his stomach up. The skate spot was in the middle of nowhere so there really wasn’t anywhere close to go, plus in China they rarely have toilets or toilet paper at the public bathrooms. Somehow he managed to land his 2nd manual trick while holding everything in, and as soon as he landed the trick, he took off in search of dumping grounds. He was gone for like 45 mins to an hr but I guess he found one because he came back with a look of relief on his face. He blamed me for everything and he swore to me that he would never drink coffee again.”

DERRICK WILSON

“One time we were heading to las Vegas from Phoenix am. It was Brad, Keelan, Marquise, Dane and myself. When we made it to the hotel, I went to the bathroom. After using the bathroom, I failed to realize that some toilet paper was stuck in my boxers. To my knowledge, Keelan and Dane were the first to know, they broke down in the lobby laughing! We went on day and night sessions, getting as much footage for the video as we could. Afterwards we chilled, gambled some. Minus the drinks and gambling, it was a fun productive trip. We made the best out of what we had!”

WADE DESARMO

“There were a bunch of situations we got into while filming for this video. One that I will probably never be able to forget was a trip we took to Philly and New York. Being from the east coast I always jump at the chance to skate Philly whenever possible, so when Brad told me about this trip we were going on that had Philly on one of it’s stops I was so hyped. Although if I could of seen what was going to happen I don’t think I would of been so enthusiastic. First day, I don’t even remember how but the VX broke, had to send it off for repairs so we didn’t have a camera anymore. We got lucky and Rasul knew someone who had just got a brand new VX and somehow we managed to borrow it for the last couple days we were in the city.

The first night we got it, we went straight to Love and started skating around and warming up. I had a line I wanted to try so we start going at it, things were feeling good and then one try the board just got away from me and nailed the cam real good. The person who lent us the camera happened to be skating with us at Love so once we knew the camera was jacked I had to try a few more tries and then act like I was over it so she wouldn’t suspect anything was wrong with the camera. Sent that one to the repair shop the next morning and we were once again without a camera. Definitely not the best time I’ve ever had in Philly but I still love it.”

LENNY RIVAS

“Barcelona was one of my favourite places to travel during this video. When we were there, everyday was a good day skating with my boys. We would skate all day, get tricks, and then go party all night. After my first trip out there I was already thinking about what tricks I would get the next time I went. On my second trip back to Spain I fell asleep on the plane and had a dream that I switch fs 360’d the Macba 4. During the middle of the trip we skated by the set and said fuck it, let’s do it. I warmed up for a bit and just went for it. It was a battle but one of the tries felt right so I put it down. My whole squad was there and that gave me the motivation to stack clips for the rest of the trip. When we put together my part for the video the clip looked a little old and didn’t make the cut. All I know is that I dreamt it and I made it come true. That’s what it’s all about.”

Find DGK on Facebook and Twitter and make sure this video is in your collection today. It’s out on DVD in your local skate shop and on i-Tunes for download. Support it.