‘High Rollers: The Golden Age of Arizona Skateboarding’ is AZPX’s first full length video seven years in the making. Two thousand-thirteen was a very tough year for AZPX and myself. After losing both parents within 8 months of each other and my awesome wife dealing with the horrors of stage 3 breast cancer treatment, AZPX was on brink of being shelved due to sheer dis-interest and sick of always being broke. Around this time Donnie Ho decided he wanted some shit to happen and came to me help him get it happening.
Don wanted a custom deck with his name on it. Normally I would brush off this request but the Ho-Man had his shit together and was ready to rock. After-all, Donnie ‘Ho’ Crist was a local first-generation Arizona skateboard legend. The dude had photographic evidence of himself destroying the fabled DeadCat Bowl in West Phoenix way the fuck back in 1976! Ho’s claims of being an early Powell-Peralta rider are backed up by Stacy himself. Needless to say, it didn’t take Donnie long to talk me into another project but this time he swore it would be different then my past disastrous dealings.
What became of this relationship is the AZPX Viejo Guerrero Signature Model Skateboard Series and subsequesent blog category, Viejo Guerrero (translated from Spanish means ‘Old Warrior’). Don wasn’t done with his model, he foresaw a whole series of decks designed by local Arizona skateboarders who put a mark on our long Arizona Skateboarding History. So far we have released a deck for Ho, Todd Joseph, Brian Brannon, Steve Shelton, DeadCat Pool Tribute Deck and Rich Zuccarello too but his deck is more of a pro model.
When it came time to do Shelton’s Viejo Guerrero Blog interview, Donnie kept putting it off because Shelton is a walking encyclopedia of 70s-80s skateboarding. Finally, the interview was going to be a video interview because Don didn’t want to write down all the knowledge Steve was about to drop. This was the birth of the idea of ‘High Rollers: The Golden Age of Arizona Skateboarding’ documentary. After talking to Steve, they decided they had enough info and contacts to tell their story of skateboarding legendary Arizona spots when skateboarding was still in its infancy. Essentially, this is a labor of love seven years in the making. Donnie Ho and Steve Shelton have put everything they got into this, compiling archive footage and photos, we hope you dig it. Of course, it takes a community to pull this off, especially with the likes of Mike Hathcote, Oliver Whitelaw and Joey Albillar. We made a website just for the vid: HighRollersMovie.com.
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