Stacy Peralta, it could easily be argued, has impacted action sports like no one else. Photo: Screenshot//Bones Brigade Interview
I didn’t need much of an excuse to find myself driving north from San Luis Obispo on California’s picturesque Highway 1, following the asphalt seam that binds the Central Coast’s rugged Pacific coastline to the undulating folds of the Santa Lucia Range, bound for the quiet beachside berg of Cambria.
I’ve made this trip many times in the past — I first surfed the region’s wide variety of quality waves back in 1974, and have been a regular visitor ever since. This time, however, I found myself turning off the highway and heading away from the beach on Cambria’s Main Street, passing its various tourist shops, cafes and art galleries to one in particular, the Cruise Control Contemporary Gallery, here to attend the opening of a remarkable installation. Remarkable, in that it seems that Stacy Peralta, legendary skateboarder, skate brand magnate, action sports video pioneer, award-winning documentary filmmaker, commercial director, lecturer and accomplished ocean athlete, has apparently revealed yet another, previously undisclosed talent, now adding “fine artist” to that impressive resumé.
It’s entirely appropriate that I’m to meet the artist here on the Central Coast. It was the summer of 1975, when standing at the side of Foothill Road on San Luis Obispo’s outskirts, board under one arm and thumb out on the other, I brightened at the sight of a VW squareback with racked surfboards approaching. Okay, it drove right past me (“sons of bitches!”), but then slowed to a stop and backed up to where I stood. Two young surfers, the one behind the wheel vaguely familiar, with his candid smile and long blond hair parted neatly and tucked behind his ears. On surfari from Down South, not really sure where they were headed this foggy morning, just toward the coast. I jumped in, eager for the ride and the opportunity to display my local knowledge, but it wasn’t until settled into the back seat that I recognized the driver, having just recently seen the premier issue of Skateboarder magazine. Our initial exchange was brief.
“Hey, thanks. I’m Sam.”
“Stacy.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Some of Stacy’s art on display.
That chance meeting at the side of the road marked the beginning of a friendship and collaborative relationship that would eventually span decades. Yet, over the course of those years, while I so resolutely clung to the surfer’s path, succeeding in various degrees, Stacy would go on to redefine himself again and again. A champion skateboarder in the mid-to-late 1970s and one of the sport’s most popular, visible figures, he stepped out of the limelight in his early twenties to found his own company, Powell-Peralta Skateboards. Of course, in the 1980s he slid right back into the limelight as a driving force behind skateboarding’s provocative cultural relevance, first through Powell-Peralta’s intentionally disruptive marketing campaigns, and later with his innovative video productions; 1984’s The Bones Brigade Video Show has been credited as the world’s first “action sports” video (all that stuff you’re watching online today? Yeah, thank Stacy), and 1987’s The Search for Animal Chin, which, by adding the element of plot to cutting edge performance, is still considered a skateboarding masterwork.
Formal documentary films represented a natural evolution. Sundance Film Festival hits like Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001) Riding Giants (2004) Crips and Bloods: Made in America (2008) and The Bones Brigade: An Autobiography (2012) helped establish Stacy as one of the genre’s preeminent filmmakers; his executive producer’s role in ESPN’s Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau earned him an Emmy Award in 2013. Small wonder that Stacy, having consistently displayed his visual storytelling chops, was tapped to direct and film a number of major corporate advertising campaigns, as well as being enticed back into the documentary director’s chair for the production of Patagonia Film’s The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez in 2022.
None of this is to say that Stacy abandoned his watery roots for the more terrestrial achievements he’s gained renown for. Along with land-based freeride sports like skating and snowboarding, he’s remained not only a dedicated surfer on conventional equipment (skates regular, surfs goofy — go figure), but has demonstrated a refreshing open-mindedness and curiosity of sensation, becoming an all-around ocean athlete in disciplines that include stand-up paddling, kite-boarding, wave foiling and, most recently, wing-foiling. This laundry list isn’t to imply he’s a dabbler: piloting his kiteboard in his Cayucos, California, home surf, Stacy, at age 67, is pulling off aerials of a height his vaulted Bones Brigade team riders could’ve only dreamed of.
And now, this artist thing, which he apparently only took up to pass the time during 2020’s COVID pandemic lockdowns. Again, demonstrating an avenue of self expression previously unrevealed to even his closest friends. No explanation, then, is needed to explain why Stacy has recently been asked to conduct a lecture series at the Moder Elder Academy, an inclusive adult school operating in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Todos Santos, Baja California, with a curriculum specifically geared toward those transitioning between careers. Stacy’s focus is on developing the conscious willingness to embrace new things, requiring new skills, a lesson he not-so-facetiously refers to as “the joy of being a kook.” Although looking at Stacy’s CV it’s pretty clear that if he’s enjoyed being a kook at any of his chosen endeavors, that joy didn’t last too long.
So, all this was running through my mind as I drove up to the Cruise Control Gallery in Cambria on a fine October evening, parked, and made my way through the throngs of attendees crowding the building’s brightly-lit concept space and mushrooming out onto the sidewalk. It was a diverse demographic. Stylish gallery-opening types in narrow jeans, berets and pashmina scarves, mixing easily with boisterous kids, running between the legs of glowing yoga-moms, their t-shirted dads having probably once carved coping on ivory-white Bones wheels; bearded, flannelled and wool-capped surfers, Aussie cattle dogs sitting obediently at their feet, trading new board and swell stories; giddy visitors from city zones far to the south, reveling in the sophisticated, small-town atmosphere where, stepping outside to catch a breath of fresh air, the stars above glitter like a swath of silver brush points. And the skaters, board-sliding the adjacent steep driveway curb and shooting the curl under the crowd’s spontaneously outstretched arms; reaffirming their passion, celebrating their lineage by showing up for the man who had such a hand in creating it.
All here to see Stacy’s extraordinarily detailed paintings and photographs, drawn from an equally extraordinary collection of historic skateboards: every significant ride he’s ever owned, from his first, crudely-fashioned wood-shop cut-outs, to his colorful Zephry Z-Flexes, to his personal Powell-Peralta models. A literal timeline of the sport’s genesis, each waypoint conceived, captured, and now suitable for framing.
Taking in the whole scene, I couldn’t help but think about the journey that Stacy has been on, since that day, so long ago, that he backed up and picked me up on the side of Foothill Road. And with those thoughts a passage by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard came to mind, who wrote:
“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”
There it is. The art of Stacy Peralta.