An Afternoon with Hoops

A few weeks back, I spent the afternoon skating and shooting photos with Julien Kidd, a.k.a. “Hoops.”  The two of us have been friends for about seventeen years now.  We met through skateboarding, of course.  

Hoops has always been one of my favorites to watch on the board -- style for miles.  Not only that, but he is an incredibly well rounded skater, meaning he can get tech on some ledges and many pads, then turn around and shred a pool equally as hard.   

On this particular outing, we lurked downtown, hitting all the old spots…or what’s left of them anyway.  Over the last ten years, mostly everything in San Francisco has been skate-proofed or demolished, which leaves one wondering what the state of street skateboarding will be in the next five years.  But I’ll save that discussion for a later date.

In the meantime, have a gander at the photos below, then check out the story I wrote for the SF Chronicle back in 2007, “No Easy Skate,” which talks about the current state of street skatboarding in The City.  And don’t forget to watch the exclusive video, "Street Skating in San Francisco," that Hidehiko Fujiwara made to accompany the piece.  

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This bump is WAY harder to skate than it looks.  There is a really gnarly crack at the top, which makes setting up for your trick nearly impossible.  People fix the crack from time to time, but on this particular day it was fully exposed.  Hoops ate shit several times on the approach.

He landed this buttery Tre Flip like five times in a row.

Grape Swisher to the face...

Ran into the homie Joe Valdez on Grant Street.  Digging the Turbon...

Hassle free sesh at China Banks

This dude looked like he was on his way to rob a bank...

Like the Kearny Street bump, these stairs are much harder to skate than they look.  

I made Hoops do this like five times before I got the right shot.  He was not stoked.