- I was skateboarding from the time I showed up on the outer banks until my body just didn't want to do it anymore.

- Well, you don't stop skating, it's just in your blood for, for life - Where I could walk, I was sitting on a skateboard getting pushed around.

My mom bribed me.

She said, I'll get you a new skateboard if you, you know, go potty.

It just kind of spilled into doing it as a career.

- Skateboarders were always kind of out tests.

Punk rock skateboarding kind of went hand in hand, - Skateboarding's funner with other people.

- They'd come and tear down your skateboard ramp when it was halfway done and you're like, oh, I gotta go build this somewhere else.

Taught you, never let anybody tell you you can't do something.

- Most people that that surf at some point has picked up a skateboard and it, it emulates surfing.

- We don't have waves all the time and riding a skateboard sometimes can feel like surfing.

I guess - When the waves were down, they were out riding banks and ditches and pools trying to slash grind.

- You can definitely tell when the surfers are here.

They have a different style, a lot of early grabs, but the same way I'm sure they can tell when I'm out in the lineup looking like a dumb skateboarder, trying to surf.

- Skateboarding had died in the early eighties and you know, we'd go street skating, backyard half pipes, doing things where you could get away with it and you know, we'd go skate somewhere and they'd throw us out and we'd go skate another place and they'd throw us out.

- We were skating beach accesses a lot and then when they put the deck boards down and you're riding over with your wheels, it's making a really loud uncomfortable noise.

But every once in a while you would find a good one where the wood would be going the right way.

And those were our best spots.

- This guy, Meyer Barnes built a skate park.

The way he told it was there wasn't really any skate parks from here to like Myrtle Beach and him and his brother, they wanted to start a skate park together.

Now the park was probably three standing walls with a couple moguls in the middle and then a little beginner area, a little square right by the Avalon Pier.

Probably one of the most pivotal one was the sandbox.

Chip Cohen started the Sandbox Skate park, a series of metal ramps for BMXers - And he said, man, you guys wanna build a ramp, I'll buy the wood.

And we were like, oh, that's the greatest answer we could have got.

So we started adding on to the little halfpipe he already had and made it twice as big - And it was our spot for probably a couple years.

- You weren't gonna have anywhere to skate if you didn't build something to skate.

So it taught you how to do something for yourself by yourself.

- It, it helps to have a bunch of people that skateboard to build skateboard parks because you know, we, we know what's what's best and you know, I always tell people like, you don't want a vegetarian cooking your steak.

- My friend Brent Beasley owned a piece of property in Wanchese and he said, Hey, why don't we build something to skate on this land?

I've got, we had the idea we're just gonna do this and we're gonna give it to the world.

- We thought it was crazy.

We were like, this is way too big what we're trying to do.

But it just kind of all came together.

- By the end of the first year, we built the round bowl and put plywood on it and we were riding it.

Yeah, the rule was if you're a skateboarder and you've got the guts to skate it, then bring it on.

- I think we measured it 60 feet long, 40 feet wide.

It's probably 15 feet off the ground at the deck.

- What the Juan Cheese Bowl had going for, it was symmetry.

It was a square bowl and a round bowl and both sides were similar.

The only part that wasn't symmetrical was the overt and that was where you could go up and try to do something real crazy.

- It had the most perfect two hips that connected the two bowls of any bowl that anybody's ever skated.

They were like little gas pedals.

You could just get over 'em and just pump and your speed would just be instantly fast.

- A couple years after we built it, I was reading the Dan Brown novels and it brought up the concept of the golden ratio.

I was like, wonder if that works with the bowl.

So I took my plans, I drawn from it and I was like, oh wow.

It lines up perfectly on the golden ratio.

What a lot of people said when they first saw it was, I'm gonna have to step my game up.

- I had some great nights at the cheese bowl.

We used to treat it like a night cap.

You'd have a big two hour session, fight the mosquitoes, then drive home, give blood, we'd call it - Pretty soon.

We were kind of almost like rock stars and stuff.

We didn't get any money for it, you know?

But it was kind of crazy because some of the local talent was better than some of the pros that would show up.

- Oh man, there's so many characters from here.

Sam Buxton, one of the greatest skateboarders to ever come out of the Outer Banks.

My good buddy Mikey Weeks is a ripper named Rob.

He's an og.

He's like our skate historian.

- I wasn't the greatest skater in the world.

My friend Bruce Martin sums it up pretty well.

They go, are you a pro skateboarder?

He goes, well, we're not amateurs.

- Jesse Davis probably one of the biggest standouts, you know, he came from a vert background and he ripped.

We had a fellow move into town named Dave Maxwell.

He was just a phenomenon, his nickname Science Fair.

And it showed when he skated.

So - There were a lot of girls that were involved in the ES crew and Ashley Barnes was like as good as any dudes, if not better.

We ended up having, the only contest they ever had at launches was called the Wicked Wa Heini and it was all girls contest and it was just crazy.

- I played baseball all through middle school and high school and I don't really keep up with those guys anymore, but the guys that I grew up skateboarding with are all still my best friends.

- We had some fellas come move into town after that.

My buddy dirty, he was just naturally good at skating that bowl.

He got good really fast.

You know, the young kids that came out, you know, Durant, Mikey Weeks, Dan Tugwell, - These are all my people.

Not a day goes by.

I don't talk to somebody from the crew.

You know, we're all a bunch of brothers and sisters.

- Che's just changed the whole dynamic of this place.

- The bowl is still there, but nobody skates it anymore, unfortunately - To say it changed the scene as a understatement.

I mean it turned it around on its head.

- I I, I constantly wake up having dreams about going out and skating it.

- Wanchese was a catalyst for the YMCA skate park.

- Well we had a hand in building most of the skate parks.

I built the YMCA skate park with Grind line.

My crew built the wooden stuff and then I started building concrete skate parks for a while.

My friend Andy, who runs Artisan Skate Parks, is all over the country now building skate parks, - Kil Double Hills, hired Artisan to build a park.

They also hired him for Kittyhawk.

They built a park in Maple.

They built a park in Pals Point.

They've also built Rodan Park and they built the Buxton Park.

It's just mind blowing to think that it's 10, 10 skate parks and we didn't have anything.

- Once you build one in one town, then the next town wants one.

The towns have seen how much they've been getting used and I think it's, you know, it's just a no brainer to, to do something like that for the community.

- We wanted places there that would last that our kids could use and maybe if they are gonna decide to stay here and grow up and have, you know, children and make the family bigger, they got a place they could skate too.

- People will ask me like, are there any skate parks around here?

I'm like, actually like, how much time do you have?

'cause I'll draw you a map of all these different parks.

- We kind of put North Carolina skating on the map.

- I was working in Lincoln, Nebraska building a skate park out there and was talking to some guys at an indoor park and I had a post 22 board.

James Tupper started post 22.

He was kind of one of the first people, not even just in North Carolina, just everywhere that would make skateboard videos and upload them to the internet.

And so this guy in Nebraska noticed my board and was like, oh, post 22.

I, I used to watch that in computer lab in high school.

I just really had no idea that it reached all the way out to Lincoln, Nebraska somewhere.

I thought I would never end up myself.

- Batter.

Banks's played a big part in me becoming an adult.

Really.

I moved here at a really young age, not knowing anybody.

For sure.

Anytime you're around skateboarders, you know, you're instant friends.

I mean, you're doing something that you share, you know, a passion in and - Skateboarding takes some time and the more you do it, the more you'll realize you're it.

It's hard.

- A lot of people kinda live their lives like spectators.

That's not skateboarding.

- I don't feel like I'm a master at anything, you know?

'cause I think there's always trick.

I, I can think of five tricks here right now that I want to land, but I haven't yet.

- Don't be a spectator, you know?

That's what I learned from skateboarding.

Do something, get out there, make something happen.

It's probably the only reason I'm still around doing what I like to do.