He shoots down the face of the six-foot bowl, flies up the other side, gets air and spins into a 360-degree backflip.
This is Don Hamilton, a 21st century misplaced pirate. He has a shock of red hair, big brown eyes and muscles for miles. And, he’s 45.
Hamilton was practicing at Skatelab in Simi Valley, one of his favorite skate parks. It has a huge birch bowl, which is a recreation of a swimming pool made of birch wood, a very hard and expensive wood imported from Italy. Supposedly, this particular bowl is one of the best for “extreme skateboarding,” an expression Hamilton uses frequently.
This November Hamilton will be 46, which will mark his 40th year as a skateboarder. Hamilton started riding skateboards in 1962 in the Verdugo Hills area in Southern California. He started out skating on a red Roller Derby, metal wheels and all. Hamilton said one of the worst things that ever happened to him as a child was when his uncle “accidentally” ran over his red Roller Derby skateboard. This event was a significant milepost in Hamilton’s life, an almost foreshadowing to the trials and tribulations of skateboarding. Hamilton knew that, to him, skateboarding was the “be all end all.”
During the course of his skateboarding career Hamilton managed to become a champion pro skater. In 1975 he was the team captain of the Hang Ten skateboard team; during the 1970s Hamilton was an unofficial test rider for an invention called “skurfing,” which later became snowboarding.
In 1977, he consulted with skatepark owner Paul Bushnell in the postconstruction phase of the Boogie Bowl Skatepark in Glendale, Calif. Hamilton was the captain of the Boogie Bowl skateteam, giving safety seminars and teaching vert (vertical) and freestyle skateboard classes.
He also released a pro-deck (board) model called the DxHx Shredder in 1978. Later in 1978, he appeared in “Skateboard World Magazine” in the New Faces segment. Hamilton compared skateboarding with skydiving in the article. He ranked second best skateboarder in the nation in the ASPO Pro/Am National Championship held in Escondido, Calif. in 1979. The list of his achievements goes on and on, and yet Hamilton is virtually invisible in the skateboard world.
“Don Hamilton practically invented skateboarding, yet he remains unknown. There is something wrong with that,” states Richard White, Hamilton’s public relations manager. Brad Dorfman, owner of Vision Street Wear, a popular company that manufactures “skatewear,” is “very impressed” with Hamilton’s skating. Hamilton has a small sponsorship from Vision Street Wear and is also sponsored by Team Goon, a skateboarding company.
Hamilton compares the urge to skate with a sex drive.
That “urge” is one of the side effects people get when they are into extreme sports, he says. Hamilton told many crazy stories about when he got the “urge” to skate.
On one occasion, Hamilton and his buddies needed to get to the San Diego area in 40 minutes from the Valley. They drove 140 miles per hour to get there.
These are just some examples of what the urge to skate can do to one’s psyche, he says. Hamilton stated that he would never do any of these crazy antics now and that he would not suggest anyone doing them. He also stated that back in the ’70s, it was a very different time.
Hamilton went underground in 1985. It was no longer the freewheeling ’70s, it was the 1980s. Skateboard parks closed and the fad of skateboarding died out; it was time for everyone to put on a suit and get a job. Hamilton got a job in construction and skated empty swimming pools and ramps in secret. He said the reason he concealed his skateboarding was because he feared, if found out he was doing such a dangerous sport, he would be fired. Or maybe people would make fun of him and tell him he was too old to be skateboarding. Whatever the case, he became a covert skateboarder.
In 2001, 16 years after Hamilton dropped out of the skateboard scene, he performed in the 1st Annual “oldschoolskatejam” that took place at the Skatelab in Simi Valley.
At 44 years old, he performed a trick called the “Miller Flip,” a 360-degree back flip, on his skateboard off the side of the bowl. Also last year, Hamilton appeared on Fox Sports Net Bluetorch TV and performed yet another death defying trick called the “Alley Oop Layback Air,” which is skating off the hip (side) of the bowl and getting “air.”
Hamilton claims he is a “shut up and skate” type of guy, not a self-promoter, which unfortunately has not helped him being known in the skating world. Yet, at the same time, when asked about his achievements as a skateboarder, he is not modest at all.
Tony Alva, a pro-skater and skateboard manufacturer (he was in the “DogTown and Z-Boys” movie and is a skate legend) saw a video of Hamilton’s skating and invited him up for the last leg of “The Alva Skate Tour.” The tour starts the end of June and travels from California to Oregon.
Although Hamilton is a skateboarding fiend, he lives a very simple life. A Malibu resident for five years, he skates as much as he can.
On the weekends you may see him on Hollywood Boulevard as Crocodile Dundee taking pictures with tourists. Hamilton does parties and openings as his Crocodile Dundee character. He also has written, produced and performed an all-original “Really Funny Comedy Show” at the Comedy Store in Hollywood.
Maybe Don Hamilton should have had more recognition in his lifetime but the vicissitudes of the skateboarding industry are so unpredictable. Maybe being from the Valley was Hamilton’s only hindrance. Hamilton claims he invented many of the tricks “on this side of the hill” (meaning the Valley) that the highly acclaimed Dogtown kids were doing, as far as skating pools.
But Hamilton has no regrets.
“I think things work out for reasons. I am so fortunate and gracious and grateful to be skateboarding at 45. It’s a tough sport-it’s really a tough sport. It is not a sport for wimps at all, because it’s awfully hard ground when you fall.”