Owner's personal skateboard biography and skateboard collection

The first attemp at building a ramp (mid 70's)

My name is Mark Ward and I've been riding skateboards since the mid 70's.

The way skateboarding began for me is when our family moved to San Jose California in 1972 from Joliet Illinois

and what a time it was to live in California.  Skateboarding was just becoming the hottest new thing to do and my brother

and I jumped on it like it was meant for us.  For young kids like my brother and I that had way too much energy,

skateboarding was the perfect thing for us .  The first skateboard that I ever owned was a plastic GT skateboard

that I got on August 13th 1975 and the first skate park that we were able to skate at was Concrete Wave in

Anaheim, California.  Our family took a trip down to Disneyland and Scott and I got our first taste at riding at a real

concrete park.  Eventually other skate parks started popping up like the Alameda Skatepark (Bay Area, Cal.),

Soquel Skatepark (Santa Cruz, Cal.), Milpitas Skatepark (Cal.) and the classic Winchester Skatepark (Campbell, Cal.)

Winchester was by far my favorite skate park, at that time. The park had runs like the washboard, big and

small snake runs, two big half pipes, a real small pool with coping and no vert, a very fun

clover bowl and eventually the classic Pink Pool.  Many great memories from that skate park.

Steve Caballero was a normal sight to see ripping up the park, along with a bunch other local rippers

like Scott Foss, Steve Alba, Mickey Alba or skaters that came up from Southern California.

Another great memory of San Jose and skateboarding is going to the Gremic Skateboard Shop in

Los Gatos.  As a kid walking into that place was like going to Disneyland for me.  One of my most vivid

memories was the smells of the shop.  The smells of fresh urethane and griptape filled the air.

I don't know why that is still stuck in my mind, but what a skate shop it was.  It had everything that

you could ever want and at that age, I didn't have money to just go and buy anthing you wanted,

so you would just dream about the perfect deck to buy.  I remember finally picking out a Gordon and Smith

wood deck with Bennett trucks and OJ wheels.  Oh man, that was a big day for me.

In 1979, my family moved us back up to where I was originally born, Richland Washington and

it was one of the worst moves in my life, except for one factor.  Our neighboring town Kennewick had

a skateboard park.  If it wasn't for that park, my brother and I would of gone crazy in this really small area.

The skatepark became our hangout in the summer times and even winter.  We met a bunch of great friends

and eventually got on a team that was put together for a group of contests that would be in

Kennewick WA, Olympia WA, Victoria B.C. Canada and Burnaby Canada.  The set of contest was called the

Northwest Challenge and was one of my greatest experiences with skateboarding.  My brother and I

ended up meeting some of the best skateboarders in the Great Northwest and even keep in touch

with some of them today, like Rob Skala from the Seattle area, Henry Koski from Richland,

John Potter from Spokane, and then a few others that were in the skating scene like

Thomas (Bill) Reese from Walla Walla, Glen Siekawitch from Richland and Gary Loudahl from Kennewick.

In the very early 80's, the Kennewick Skate Park ended up closing their doors and tearing down the

skate park, just like almost every other skate park in the U.S..  Liability insurance took its toll on

the owners of the parks and the skateboarding scene for my brother and me pretty much died...

We moved on to other things in our lives and pretty much only picked up a skateboard

when someone had built a half pipe, like John Potter in Kennewick.  I eventually built another

1/4 pipe ramp out in front of my house during high school and a few of my friends pick up

skateboarding real quick, like Dave King, Sean Beary, Mitch Richardson, Todd Wilson and

David Gilbright (R.I.P.).  We had a skateboard scene for a short time and eventually most

of these guys moved off in different directions and again, skateboarding died for me.

It wasn't until around 2000 that I started getting interested in skateboards again.  Ebay was

getting big and buying old school classics decks got me interested again.  The internet in general

probably was one of the biggest factors in why I got back into the sport, except for the

obvious reason.  How fun it is to ride a skateboard..  Web sites like Northwestskater.com by

Dan Hughes and Sleestak.com were a great inspiration for me to get back riding.

I had fallen so far out of the skateboarding scene and at that time there was no one to skate

with in my area and who had the same passion for this great sport.

One of the first parks that I got to ride with real vert was the Seattle park that was just torn down

by the Space Needle.  It wasn't the best park to ride, but it had vert and it was just enough

for me to get the want to get back into the sport.  I eventually heard about the Ballard Bowl being

built and ended up going there to ride in the early mornings when I was able to get up to

Seattle to visit.  It took me a while to get used to riding vert again and even to do frontside

kick turns on a vert wall.  But after a few trips to the bowl, I was back on board and

able to do frontside grinds, backside wheelers and a few other old school basic moves.

Around 2004, after hearing that my brother was going to open an online skateboard shop, I decided

to do the same and started Wardboards.com skateboard shop.  About that same time, Richland

Washington started talking about building a skatepark and I eventually got involved in the late stages of

the design of the park.  The City of Richland, not knowing much about skateboard parks, hired

Purkiss Rose and Wormhoudt to design the park and the lowest bidder concrete company out of

Oregon to build it.  Unfortunately, the inexperieced concrete company that usually did regular concrete work

really screwed up the snake run and bowl sections of the park and with the help of Dan Hughes and a few

other skatepark activists from Oregon, we were able to show the City of Richland and all of the local skateboarders

how bad of a job this company did.  I took pictures of the horrible transitions, coping reveal and real rough finish

work that was done and basically said that for the money the City of Richland was spending on the park,

the skateboarders of this area were getting a horribly built park.  After a few emails that were sent to the

City of Richland with these pictures, we were able to convince the City that the park needed to be redone.

To make a long story a bit shorter, the City ran off the concrete company and hired Grindline Skatepark builders

from West Seattle to come back in and redo the snake run and bowl section and to go ahead and build a

second phase big 10 foot deep bowl area.   Grindline saved the day and finished the park in an amazing

amount of time and now we have a pretty nice concrete skatepark in our town.

Now, with companies like Grindline, Dreamland and Airspeed, our little corner of the United States has

some of the best skateparks in the world.  Who would of thought that skateboarding would go this far and

be one of the 3 top money making sports in the world today.  It's flat out crazy to think that a sport that has been

through so many ups and downs to be that big of a sport today.

Currently, at the age of 40, I am still enjoying this great sport and plan on skateboarding as long as my body

will allow me to do so or as long as my family allows me too...

So, there it is.  My bio on skateboarding.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy riding a skateboard as much as I do!!!

Below are pictures of my collection of skateboards

that I've been collecting over the years.