New York Skate Stories: #1 Shut Skates- What Made Them Bad Ass

It's been a long time since I've wrote and each day that goes by I say to myself, I want to write a story, I want to write a story. And each day that goes by the stories get buried deeper and deeper. Stories that were once so clear in my mind become cloudy and less vibrant. So her I go before they disappear forever.

So often have I read stories about "New York Skate History" and I've said to myself, that's not how it all went down, or what about that time... I also realize that for every moment in time each person has their own account of what happened. Well this is my account of some radical skateboard events that went down in the late 80's in New York and New Jersey.

The following skate stories are not in chronological order, but are pieces of a longer story that I plan to one day reassemble into a book.


Shut Skates
Shut Skates was a bad ass skate posse based in New York City. Most of the skaters on the team were actually from across the Hudson River in New Jersey- specifically from towns like Weehawken  (pronounced We-hawk-in), Union City, Edison,... towns within an hour or so from Manhattan.

Off the top of my head some of the early riders were: Felix Arguelles, Mike Kepper, Coco Santiago, Rich, Charlie Butterly ...  The dudes on Shut were the best in the area. And it never seemed like any of them ever talked. They just skated hard.

Charlie was cut from the team early without hardly an explanation, so he started his own team Nimbus Skates. The skaters of this team would later become the foundation of riders for Zoo York. This is another story I want to tell.

More important and interesting than name dropping, is what made Shut Skates so "Bad Ass"
Here is a moment that attempts to illustrate it.

The Brooklyn Banks were not only a meeting place for most skaters in the NYC metropolitan area which included the 5 Borrows, Upstate New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. But it was the meeting place for all skaters in the world who came to East Coast during the time. The Brooklyn Banks was the East Coast Skate Mecca during approximately the years 1986 to 1991.

There were banks everywhere made out of brick and the brick laying was masterful. If it wasn't a bank, it was a marble curb, ledge, step, rail, smooth street, wood bench or metal curb. A skateboarders dream.

Most Spring, Summer, or Autumn days there would be anywhere from 20 skaters to a hundred. And on contest days, all skaters from the Metropolitan area would be there and that meant hundreds and easily breaking a thousand. How anyone accomplished anything is a phenomenal. Doing a trick up and down the bank meant navigating through constant moving obstacles (aka other skaters) An ollie down the nine step was a big deal then. It meant clearing a path between a hundred skaters, pushing down a narrow path and going for it.

This Shut moment occurred on a contest day when hundreds of skaters were warming up before an ESA Contest. It would be hard to walk 5 feet without getting hit by a skater. Yet somehow hundreds of skaters went one by one or two by two or back to back going up and down the banks, over walls into the street, going up walls for wall rides. At least an our or so before the contest amongst the functioning chaos of skaters, here comes a Van going super slow cutting across the main path of every skaters line.

Who is in the Van? Shut Skates. Out comes Bruno Musso and Rodney Smith.
They open up the back of the van and take out a 3ft+ street ramp and start spreading there arms out clearing a path which makes it pretty much impossible to skate the banks. Out of the van comes Shut riders Felix, Coco, Mike Kepper, probably Jeremy Henderson and others whose names I can't remember. They started launching off the street ramp pulling off bigger more tweaked maneuvers beyond the skill level of every skater amongst the sea of hundreds:

Frontside 360 Japan Airs. 360 Judos, Saran Wraps, 360 Methods, Nosebones, Ollie airs, Ollie Japans.
They came and blew minds then put the ramp away and let the contest go on.

Stuff like that is what made Shut Skates Bad Ass.

The next contest they brought on an Animal of a skater named Sean Sheffey. He was BIG and FAST and that's how he skated. He unlocked jaws and made eyeballs pop out of heads when he Sheffey Popped the big wall something no one imagined or pulled off until him. Maybe I'll explain what that is another time.