Who’s Guy Hartley?

This is a lesson to all the skaters out there who have a friend who is a better skater than you are or ever will be.

You’ve probably never heard of Guy Hartley. He’s a skater. He placed 46th in the 2002 Tampa Am out of 94 skaters (see http://216.26.171.157/spot/results_byskater.aspx?SkaterID=80&Descr=Hartley,Guy). According to that same page “hes good @ sk8ing but not in looks” which could be true, but I’ll leave the judgement on that to the ladies. Guy also happens to be one of the skateboarders I went to high school with. But he wasn’t just any skatebaorder, he was the best skateboarder I ever knew well.

Guy and I went to different junior high schools but the same high school, so I didn’t know him until I was about 15 or thereabouts.

I can’t remember when I first met Guy, but I remember the first time I saw him. No, I wasn’t smitten by his good looks, I was just skating down Duarte road with someone else and we saw this kid and another kid skating in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. Whoever I was with said “That’s Guy Hartley, he’s really good.”

I was used to being the best skater at my school (which wasn’t hard since I was the ONLY skater at my previous school) so I was instantly suspicious. Guy skated with a kid named Chris. I can’t remember the details, but I remember figuring out that I was better than Chris, and that basically Guy was the best skater in our school, and I was the next best, and then there were a bunch of guys who weren’t really committed skaters, just part-timers. Guy and I were the only ones who were addicted.

I started skating with Guy and it was pretty obvious that while I was second best, Guy was way ahead of me. So what did I try to do? I tried to get better. The funny thing is I don’t think of myself as a competitive person, but I wanted to be good like Guy, even though there wasn’t much hope. I didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to try the gaps, rails, or stairs that Guy tried, let alone land anything. I owned a mini-ramp so I should have been the mini-ramp champ but Guy blew me away. But it was hard to admit at the time.

Three experiences stick in my mind, the first two involving me filming Guy. One was at Camino Grove elementary. I remember riding with my dad’s full-sized VHS camcorder while Guy skated a curb. Guy rode along and pulled a flawless frontside kickflip to 180 nosegrind to revert out. He did it on a board that had no nose or tail and that had worn-out griptape. And bear in mind this is back in ‘92-’93 when most people were still doing lipslides on curbs.

The second experience was at Pioneer in Upland. I remember filming Guy doing frontside double-kickflips over the smaller hip. I think it took him two or three tries. Again, this was a pretty insane trick for the time (for the record, I pulled a double backside 180 kickflip over the same hip no prob once).

The third experience was seeing Guy’s sponsor-me tape, including a lot of footage I hadn’t shot. Guy did a gap to five-o grind on a round rail in Pasadena at night that was fairly crazy. It was only a six stair or something, but the stairs were big and steep, so it was comparable to a nine-stair. Again, this was crazy stuff at the time, even if ever 10-year old today can do this stuff.

After high-school I went to college in Idaho. I saw Guy when I came home for the summer and we skated together once or twice. Then I went to be a missionary in Brazil for two years for the LDS church. We lost touch. I tried to find him after I got back from Brazil but nobody was at his house when I went by, and I didn’t even know if he still lived there.

I went back to college in Idaho, then Utah. Every once in a while I’d wonder where Guy got to, and whether he ever got sponsored. Then a few year ago I was flipping through a skateboard magazine in a grocery store and there was Guy in a full-page ad for Puma. He was doing a frontside boardslide on a bank to rail or something in the ghetto or somewhere. I freaked out. I was so stoked to see he was still skating, and not only skating but sponsored. And since he had always worn Pumas in high-school I was stoked to see him on that company, even if I think Pumas are kind of lame myself for skating in.

After that I saw a few other photos of him in magazines. Nothing huge, but little stuff here and there.

But then I didn’t see any more photos of him, and as I got older I realized Guy was also getting older, and that if he hadn’t become a big pro by now, he probably wasn’t going to. And that’s when I started feeling kind of bad.

I would watch videos and think “You know, someone is filming this guy, and that’s how he got sponsored.” I became aware of how important the filmer is to the skateboarder’s career, especially when he’s an unknown. I started thinking about how instead of trying to one-up Guy while we were skating, I could have been filming him. Sure, I could have still skated to my heart’s content, but I could have also been filming him and pushing him to do more tricks. If I had done that, maybe Guy could have gotten sponsored earlier, maybe he would have become a bigger pro.

A few months ago I got a hold of Guy’s email address and we’ve started corresponding a little. I haven’t really gotten the scoop on what he’s been up to the last ten years. I don’t know if he’s happy with how things have turned out for him. Maybe he is and he wouldn’t change a thing. Regardless, I wish I had done more to help him get sponsored earlier. He was good enough, that’s for sure.

But I thought Guy’s fame made me smaller. In reality, if I could have helped Guy go farther than it would have made me bigger. I never had a chance of being sponsored. Maybe I could have been good enough, but I just didn’t have the guts. But I could have been the guy who skated with Guy. I could have been the guy who helped Guy get sponsored and helped him turn pro. I could have been getting stuff flowed to me from Guy. Instead, I just wanted to skate and try to get better than him, and that makes me a little bit depressed.

Today, I still skate. I think I’m even a little competitive sometimes. I know I’m not going to get sponsored. I’m too old, and I’m still not that good. I’m not skating for the chicks cause I’m married. That never worked for me in the old days either because skaters were the bottom of the social barrel when I was in high-school. Today I mostly skate for fun, and maybe for exercise. I’m not that good, but I’m actually better than I was in high-school. Sometimes I think that if I could go back with what I know now maybe I could get sponsored. I could be busting out tricks that aren’t that big a deal these days, like a hardflip, but which hadn’t been seen in 1992.

But if I could really go back, I know what I’d really do. I’d skate for fun, and I’d film Guy and tell him to do the bigger set of stairs. I’d tell him he can make that gap. I’d tell him he can back-smith that rail and it’s not as hard as he thinks it is. Someday people will back-smith 20 stairs like it’s nothing, but he can be one of the first. I’d push him to be better, and I think I’d be happy knowing that I’m helping someone to achieve their dreams.