If you happened upon this section of ISM and you find yourself wondering who the hell I am, my name is Lon Porteous. I have been flatland skimming for 25 years of my life. Through out my time in the sport, I have been involved in pioneering; growing and progressing the sport of Flatland Skimboarding to help mold it into what it has become today. I started Flatland skimming in a time when doing a head-stands and fire-hydrants on your skim was perceived as cool, to the rail dominated flip tricks out of boxes in today’s Flatland Scene’s.
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MY Road Trip To Coos Bay, Oregon, To MEET With Skimboarding Legend Jim Gordon.
ISM has allowed me to contribute some of my thoughts, my experiences and talk to some key people in flatland skimboarding about the sport. My first write up will take you along my road trip to Coos Bay, Oregon to meet face to face a Legend in skimboarding, Jim Gordon of J-Gordon Skimboards.
I have had the great pleasure to have known Jim for the last 15+ years of my life and rode for his company for 11 years. Over this time, I have got to know Jim and his family very well. I have seen Jim’s boys grow up to become Men, Jim and his wifes battle with cancer and the firing of Mark Robinson on a message board. Jim has been a great friend to me, a true mentor and has no problem acting like my other dad too.
Jim has spent his entire life as a rider and builder of everything from Surf Boards to Skate Boards and Wood and Foam skimboards. He moved to Santa Cruz in the 5th grade to, what was then, a retirement / surfing community. When in the 7th grade, Jim made his first skim board. It was a round wooden board that he would ride at 26th Avenue. Jim spent his time in the mid 60′s to the mid 70′s making surfboards. He has worked for such companies as O’Neil, Freeline designs and Haut surfboards.
In the mid 70′s Jim started making skateboards and had his own skate team. After stints of working other jobs from selling furniture to the climbing the ferris wheel at the boardwalk to rescue the park goers, Jim went back to his roots of making Skimboards in 80′s. At this time Jim started incorporating formica / HPL to the tops and bottoms on all his wood skimboards and was the first board company to do so. He also created a skim with flex that wasn’t found in any other boards at the time. In 85′ Jim put together his first skim team of all wave riders and in 86, Jim put on the first ocean skim boarding comp at 26th Avenue.
In 87′, he was the first skim board company to start using carbon, kevlar and epoxy on his foam ocean boards. These boards were also featured in Skimboard Magazine in 88′. At this same time in Sacramento, Jim’s boards were being used to pioneer a new style of flatland skimboarding that wasn’t even known to him. In 96′, I contacted Jim about his boards and spoke at great lenghts about this new style of Flatland Skimboarding with rails. It was this same year that Jim was the first company to pick up and sponsor a Flatland rider. The very next year Jim was the first sponsor to donate product and get behind a brand new flatland event “Sacramento SkimFEST”. In 09′, Jim came out with the first flatland and wave cross over board in the “Fish” model. Jim has consistently been one of flatland’s key figures and supporters and has compliled teams of great riders that are not only known for their riding, but are as stoked about Jim’s boards as he is.
When I think of Jim from outside the skimboarding world, A couple of things about him come to mind. First is that Jim has a very strange ability to perdict things; He predicted that gang members would be shot dead outside of my house and it happend. He predicted my house would be broken into. Most of the things that Jim perdicts about me do happen and it freaks me out a little, as it should. Another thing is that Jim is well armed and likes to blow things up. This wouldn’t be the guys house you would want to break in and steal board secrets from. I always give him a hard time about living a compound type lifestyle and joked that he has a moat around his house with aligators and draw bridge to get in. It’s time to find out.
I was on the road by 10am, fully armed with two fruit punch Rockstars and a freshly charged ipod to make the eight hour drive from Sacramento. I was making good time going into Oregon, besides the multiple stops for the bathroom, thank you Rockstar. Jim had told me that in Oregon you can’t pump your own gas because having an attendant creates jobs. I happened to completely forget about that part when I did stop to get gas. The gas pumper guy must take that stuff pretty serious because he was on me quick, I had no chance.
I was back on the road for about an hour, when I took a wrong turn off for an exit that I believed was mine. After the frustration of being possibly lost took over, I stopped in some small town bar to find out. I ended up asking these 2 older guys in their 70′s, that appeared to have been at the bar since it was established. They slurred their words at me until I could understand that I was lost and needed to go back towards California apparently. They attempted to show concern about my well being when they told me to drive careful because of the amount of police that were out. I laughed when they said this, they should of been more worried about how their drunk asses were getting home.
I didn’t want to chance going the wrong way again, so I asked another older lady walking down the street in this small town. I told her I was on my way to Coos Bay and ended up the wrong direction. She told me that I wasn’t even close to Coos Bay. I explained to her I was already aware of this information and needed to find the right direction. So she, like the others, told me to go back to California.
Up till this point, I wasn’t aware of the civil war that was going on between Californians and Oregonians. I guess they don’t like people from south of the states border since all they want is for me to go back California (Mental note: Don’t pump your own gas in Oregon and when you see someone from Oregon in California, give them the finger. GOT IT). At this point I called Jim after giving up on asking anymore warm friendly locals. As I suspected, I was lost and needed to head AWAY from California. After getting back on the correct path, it was pretty smooth sailing from there. The rest of the drive to Jim’s house was full of small mountain towns and a beautiful view to go with it.
I arrived at the Jim’s house around 7:30p.m. that evening. His house is a humble country home, that sits in the beautiful woods of Coos Bay on several achers of land. As I got out of my truck and walked up towards the door, I could see Janet (Jims wife), Jared (Jims youngest son) and Jim standing in the door way with a paper bag over his head. It was a on-going joke for years on Jim’s team that nobody had seen his face, He took the paper bag off and looks like a normal old school Santa Cruz surfer in his late 50′s to early 60′s (that’s a guess, he wouldn’t divulge his age). Walking into his house, as Jim was telling me how he thought I was shorter than I was, I got my first look at a J-Gordon pig skate board. It had independent trucks, with a set of old school Kyrptonic wheels. The deck looked fairly new and was damn cool. I had always joked with Jim on the phone on how he lives on a compound and how well armed he is. This theory was proven by the ammunition rounds sitting where the keys for the cars would normally go and a bullet hole in the ceiling. If the the United States is ever invaded, I’ll be at Jim’s house.
The next morning Jim and Jared showed me around the property, it had a bunch of cool trails that they dirt bike on and drive their matching jeep cherokees around on. They took me over and showed me the skim run that they made. When we built the skim run (Zen Garden) at Noah Lanes house, we had always talked about adding a step down to his run, but we never did. Where Jim’s run was built, it has a decline slope to it. The only way to get it level was to add a step down. I was pretty stoked about riding this after I had seen the set up, but you run on the plastic liner and you need to wear booties to keep from slipping. I don’t own booties, so I never did ride it, but it definitely has endless potential for great footage that wouldn’t be on this day.
Jim took me over and showed me the shop where he makes his boards out of. It was a small shop that looked more like where an artist would work rather than a skim board company. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to look at a J-Gordon skim board, you know it is art and Jim is a perfectionist when it comes to his boards. I had only seen his foam board once before in the early 90′s, he still had one in his shop that was yellow and faded into red with the original old school logo. I swear I would of paid $500 for it as is, umm JIM?? He showed me the sign from his original shop that he had in Santa Cruz, when I looked at it I couldn’t help but wonder, how many boards people rode that came from under that sign and who’s boards they might have been. He had the silk screen from the original logo I designed for him and tons of boards with the other designs I had done for him that were around.
After showing me around the Gordon compound, Jim, Jared and I went to go skim. Jared and I grabbed our boards as Jim grabbed a couple of extra Fish boards and we headed for low tide. We checked out a couple of spots and ended up at Bastendorff Beach. It had a couple of good flatland sections, but the waves were breaking so far out, that all you could do is ride the wash. Jared and I rode the pools and puddles and got a pretty good mini session out of it. Jim had me test out the Fish’s flatland capabilities, it rode great and had good pop to it. It’s definitely a board that you can ride a rail on and then turn around and wrap a wave, it holds strong as a true cross over board.
When we got back to the house, I guess my compound military training started. Jim had me fire off a round from his tactical shotgun with a front sight. I haven’t fired off a shotgun since I was 15 and this was quite the gun to bridge that time gap. Jim placed a small coffee can with water in it less than 20 yards in front of me for a target. I had it firm on my shoulder, aimed and pulled the trigger. The kick pushed me back a step or two while Jim chuckled. The lame part was is that I missed the coffee can completely with the water still safe inside.
If you’ve been on Skimonline message boards, you already know that Jim is on there giving great advise on boards, materials and sharing the histroy of the sports he has been involved with. Jim has also started theads like: “ Time to nuke North Korea” and “road side bomb video’s”.
He had asked me if I had seen the post and then showed me the video. After watching the video in “WTF” mode, Jim proceded to tell me he had water boarded himself just to try it. He also said he tried to get Jared to be water boarded, but Jared refused. You dont say! Jim being a good host and not wanting to leave me out of the fun, asked me if I wanted to be water boarded? It was hard to pass up, but the words ” Thats never going to happen ” flooded my thoughts. After a couple minutes of Jim trying to get me to change my mind, he then asks if I want to water board HIM? I could see the thread on some Forum, “ Flatland pioneer kills Skimboard legend from Water boarding torture for skimboarding secrets“. Jim’s not a young guy and I’m not going to be giving him CPR if this goes bad. He wasn’t taking No for an answer this time and it was apparent I would be water boarding him.
After a short explanation on what would be required of me, Jim comes back with a rag, a rock and a pot of water. Jim hands me the pot of water and lays upside down on the lawn chair with his feet higher than his head. He then puts the rag over his face and says he will drop the rock from his hand when he wants me to stop. I began to pour the water over his nose, but I guess that was the wrong spot. (This chapter wasn’t covered in my express water boarding course) I was informed by a wet rag covered Jim and a laughing Jared that I needed to aim for the upper lip more so the water can run into his nose to simulate drowning. Sounds great, lets do that. It did seem to work really well, Jim dropped the rock and sat up coughing for air. I just stepped back so I could run for my car if he wasn’t still alive. I’ll stick with Skimboarding.
It was getting dark by this time, which was good for me, because it will reduce the witnesses that had a good view. Being that it was the 4th of July, I went with Jared and his girl friend to watch the fireworks in Coos Bay. It was packed and the fireworks were cool. When it ended , back into the 88 cherokee and to the compound for who know’s whats next. Jared started it off with a cap of gun powder in a 2 liter bottle with a fuse. It lets out quite the boom when its set off, much better than mentos in a two liter bottle. Then here comes Jim, at this point I though what ever C-4 bomb he has made or Canon he would be shooting himself out of, I wouldn’t be partaking in. To my surprise, He had a box of safe and sane fireworks. Even though at anytime he could probably turn that box of fireworks into an RPG, but it was pretty low key for the rest of the night. I ended up concluding my stay that night after the fireworks and headed back home to Sacramento.
I can’ thank the Gordons enough for letting me stay at their house and letting me feel like a part of their family all these years. Its great to know I have crazy family members in The Republic of
to Santa Cruz in the 5th grade to, what was then, a retirement / surfing community. When in the 7th grade, Jim made his first skim board. It was a round wooden board that he would ride at 26th Avenue. Jim spent his time in the mid 60′s to the mid 70′s making surfboards. He has worked for such companies as O’Neil, Freeline designs and Haut surfboards.
standing in the door way with a paper bag over his head. It was a on-going joke for years on Jim’s team that nobody had seen his face, He took the paper bag off and looks like a normal old school Santa Cruz surfer in his late 50′s to early 60′s (that’s a guess, he wouldn’t divulge his age). Walking into his house, as Jim was telling me how he thought I was shorter than I was, I got my first look at a J-Gordon pig skate board. It had independent trucks, with a set of old school Kyrptonic wheels. The deck looked fairly new and was damn cool. I had always joked with Jim on the phone on how he lives on a compound and how well armed he is. This theory was proven by the ammunition rounds sitting where the keys for the cars would normally go and a bullet hole in the ceiling. If the the United States is ever invaded, I’ll be at Jim’s house.
work rather than a skim board company. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to look at a J-Gordon skim board, you know it is art and Jim is a perfectionist when it comes to his boards. I had only seen his foam board once before in the early 90′s, he still had one in his shop that was yellow and faded into red with the original old school logo. I swear I would of paid $500 for it as is, umm JIM?? He showed me the sign from his original shop that he had in Santa Cruz, when I looked at it I couldn’t help but wonder, how many boards people rode that came from under that sign and who’s boards they might have been. He had the silk screen from the original logo I designed for him and tons of boards with the other designs I had done for him that were around. 
to it. It’s definitely a board that you can ride a rail on and then turn around and wrap a wave, it holds strong as a true cross over board.
(This chapter wasn’t covered in my express water boarding course) I was informed by a wet rag covered Jim and a laughing Jared that I needed to aim for the upper lip more so the water can run into his nose to simulate drowning. Sounds great, lets do that. It did seem to work really well, Jim dropped the rock and sat up coughing for air. I just stepped back so I could run for my car if he wasn’t still alive. I’ll stick with Skimboarding.
off with a cap of gun powder in a 2 liter bottle with a fuse. It lets out quite the boom when its set off, much better than mentos in a two liter bottle. Then here comes Jim, at this point I though what ever C-4 bomb he has made or Canon he would be shooting himself out of, I wouldn’t be partaking in. To my surprise, He had a box of safe and sane fireworks. Even though at anytime he could probably turn that box of fireworks into an RPG, but it was pretty low key for the rest of the night. I ended up concluding my stay that night after the fireworks and headed back home to Sacramento. 
Saving...
Hilarious! I don’t even know where to begin. Looking forward to more editions.