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MEET THE NIERATKOS - A LOVELETTER TO JEFF GROSSO

Long time, no see. How have you been? I think the last time I checked in with one of these blogs was last July, right after

my first Father's Day

. Since then I've been working on these Adventure shows for Vans Off The Wall.tv where I fly around and hang out with Vans team riders and see what antics ensue.

Just yesterday the site launched what might be the best show on the internet ever (assuming you love skateboarding): Jeff Grosso's Love Letters To Skateboarding. The teaser gives you a good idea of who Jeff is and why people love him:

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Growing up he was one of my favorites and I didn't even really care for vert skating. He just came off as a really fun and funny fellow in his interviews, ads, and graphics. While most of my generation gravitated toward the sparkly clean Bones Brigade with their blond-hair, blue-eyed Hitler youth look, I got stoked on guys that looked like people from the East Coast. Dudes that looked like they hadn't slept in a while and could give a fuck less. Grosso was one of those dudes. As his career started to wind down with the "death" of vert and street skating taking the spotlight he got into heavy, heavy drugs. I think it's that drug phase, or rather the fact that he beat drugs, that makes me love Grosso now more than when I was a kid. I'm a sucker for happy-ending survivor stories. They make me all mushy inside. And Grosso has died more times than any cat and is still around kicking

and

ripping. He's actually making a resurgence. Aside from his show, at age 42 he just got a pro model on Anti Hero Skateboards and has a Legends Pack of Vans coming out this month. I'm beyond stoked for him. But I know you don't get excited for daisies and rainbows; you want the misery. The junkie lore. Like the time Jeff OD'd and died and there was no ice in the apartment to shock his system, so the person grabbed the only thing in the freezer, a frozen burrito, and shoved it up Jeff's ass. Jeff is so over that story. He hates that I keep mentioning it. But the visual always makes me laugh. Two years ago I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon with Grosso to film and interview him for

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The Skateboard Mag

at his house. Here are a couple excerpts from the interview, some of which never made it to print:

Chris: When you were living with Barnes, didn't he come at you with a knife? Jeff Grosso:

Yeah, Ricky and I always had a real volatile friendship. One morning he's laughing at me as I'm putting on my socks, getting ready to go to my Plush For Play job at the toy factory. I was like, "Why are you laughing at me? You laugh at me every morning." And he's like, "Dude, I been jacking off in your socks for about a year now." I think he had taken a bunch of acid and you can't mix speed and acid very successfully. He thought that I was going to go shoot morphine. He didn't understand mescaline from morphine because he was real fucked, so he chased me out of the house with a buck knife and I had to dive in the back of some chick's convertible and take off. Then he went in my room and ripped it apart--destroyed it--and put everything on my king-sized bed. They called my room "the swamp" because I used to piss in my bed so much. You put that much booze in your body your kidneys are going to shut down. It's either die or pee yourself. John Lucero got a couch for his first wedding; a really nice white couch. I came over, slept on it, peed on it, and turned it yellow. Thousand-dollar couch ruined. It got to the point if I went to John's house to spend the night he'd be like, "Dude, you're sleeping on the kitchen floor." So anyway, Ricky put all my stuff on top of my bed and peed all over it.

Tell me about living in the Kwansit Hut.

Kwansit huts are those WWII, half-domed, corrugated aluminum storage sheds for the army. We moved into one. No running water, no bathroom--it was just a big hut that we would live in and shoot dope in all day and it stunk really bad. We had gallon milk jugs that we would pee in. We'd have 15 or 20 jugs full of piss all over the place. It was pretty ugly. Really smelly, really stinky. Just a couple of junkie boys living in this hut. I remember we used to go steal tires off of cars. Ronnie got a jack and we'd roll the jack down the street and he had a tire fence and we'd roll these ties over there. Not good tires--not like dubs or 22s or whatever kids call them now. No, like shitty tires like off a Toyota Corolla. You get like $5, $10 a tire and that would keep you high for another 4 or 5 hours. I have been real fortunate that I haven't had to go to prison; knock on wood. -- Jeff has been clean and sober for over 5 years now and is possibly skating better than he ever has in life. I'm stoked he was able to come out the other side in one piece. I tip my hat to Vans for recognizing his importance to skateboarding and giving him this show to serve as a history lesson on everything and anything under the sun. The first episode is pure perfection, a heartfelt ode to Steve Olson:

CHRIS NIERATKO