Skater Stories

Stacy Peralta helped shape both skateboarding and pop culture, first as a '70s-era skater with the Zephyr team, and later as the man behind the camera for a series of Bones Brigade videos starring the skater army he assembled, including Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrero...

By Colin Bane

March 22, 2012

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Stacy Peralta helped shape both skateboarding and pop culture, first as a '70s-era skater with the Zephyr team, and later as the man behind the camera for a series of Bones Brigade videos starring the skater army he assembled, including Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrero and Mike McGill. The Bones Brigade videos, which began in 1984, coincided tidily with the rise of the VCR in the mid-1980s, providing a blueprint -- and ready-made role models -- for skateboarders around the world.

"We made the video with the idea that it would play at skateboard shops, and we'd probably sell 100 of them, max, because not that many people had VCRs," Peralta said recently. "We ended up selling more than 30,000 of them."

Peralta capitalized on the phenomenon, releasing a new team video every year until 1991. More than a decade later, Peralta's documentary films Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001), Riding Giants (2004) and Crips and Bloods: Made in America (2008) have helped establish him as a storyteller extraordinaire.

And now he's come full circle with Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, an inward-looking study of his Powell-Peralta Skateboards team. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January; Peralta will bring several clips to a free public lecture through the University of Colorado Denver's College of Arts & Media today from 12:30 to 3:15 p.m. at St. Cajetan's, 1190 Ninth Street on the Auraria campus. For more information, go to www.facebook.com/UCDCAMEvents.
Mon., March 26, 12-3:15 p.m., 2012

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