We're going old school with John Swanguen here for a minute. John grew up riding with Bob Haro down in San Diego in the '70-s and helped out making the first HARO number plates. He is also the inventor of the Rock Walk. We tracked John down in Fontana, Ca.
Where did you ride with Bob Haro in San Diego?
John: Well, we rode Oasis skatepark of course but our biggest hang out was Skate Heaven in Spring Valley because we both grew up in Spring Valley and we lived like 4 blocks apart. Bob is two years older than me. I'm like 15 and he's like 17 and at the time I'm dating his sister. We got to be really good riding partners and rode a lot together.
Were people looking weird that you did tricks on bikes and not on skateboards at the time?
John: Yeah it was weird, it was kinda one of those things where we did not know where to take it, on account of nobody had done it yet. It was a whole new thing. We actually got the skateparks to commit to letting bikes in two days out of the week. They gave us 2 - 3 hours on bikes and we did not have to deal with skateboarders. Which at the time was quite a bit.