The B & W one is circa '78. Brian Grant, Pat Schutte, Tom Venus and Tim Grant. 8th graders at the time at Van Hoosen Jr. High, Tim was in 9th at Rochester Adams. Noteworthy: Check out the Logan Earth Ski decks me and Brian are running, and the original Alva deck Tim's on. This was when Rochester's "Roach Boyz" were in their prime and dominated the first Endless Bummer pool freestyle contest (Jeff "JJ" Jackson, Kit Shigur, Chris Yandall, Todd Cadieux, Pat Murphy, Randy Kniesley, Steve Sowter, Rob Hamburg). I came on in the second wave of Roach Boyz, with Rob Mahanes and Mike Manich. Arguably, Rochester's Roach Boyz were to the Michigan skate what Dogtown was to the Cali scene for about three summers back then - '76 through '78. Rough, innovative, rowdy, dope smoking/drinking - basically just came in and blew doors in contest, blew minds in the pools - both backyard and parks.
The other three shots are of the Skateboard USA keyhole. It was, by far, the burliest pool ever built in Michigan (with the possible exception of the capsule pool built right next to it, but we hardly ever skated that. Fuck, if you fell in it, you couldn't get out! The drop in was so steep, you literally had to get back on your board, start rocking back and forth and lauch yourself, hopefully with your deck, up onto the coping and climb out. I still have nightmares about that fucking pool). Anyway, Skate USA's keyhole was deeper, had more vert, wilder kinks and gnarlier coping than any other pool around. This made it difficult to learn tricks in (compared to Endless Bummer), but an absolute blast to skate. When the park closed, the deep end filled up with water and we used to just rip the shallow end a bit. But about that time I was getting into motocross and a couple times we brought out a YZ 80 (dirt bike) and I used to carve it around on the tiles in 2nd gear - about the same time the BMXers hit the scene. I also used to get massive air above that tombstone we're posing the B & W elevator shot on.
Also, probably the worst wreck I ever saw at a skatepark was when we were ripping on BMX bikes, doing these pretty long bowl-to-bowl transfers (from USA's snake run into the resevoir). I was with Al Bodrie and his buddy, Scott Long, augered hard and his glasses cut a gaping hole into his cheek. Knocked him out but good. The scaries part was Al driving us back to get to Crittendon Hospital in his '70 Malibu. Al went all "Gone In 60 Seconds" (the original version) and got poor Scott from Warren to downtown Rochester in like 15 minutes".
Pat Shutte
