Zaturdays: Confessions of a Blue Collar Pro

I was a professional skateboarder from 1993 to 2006. Give or take. I’m not bragging so don’t act all disappointed in me. I use the term professional loosely and I’m not particularly proud of my years doing what is often referred to as “living the dream.” In some ways it was a total embarrassment. I was not at all the celebrity pro who cashed checks based on name recognition and an ability to move product. Other than a surprise top seller I had during my brief stint as a Birdhouse pro (the Zitzer Bear!) you couldn’t give my boards away. To prove it, Mike Sinclair, who at the time worked at Endless Grind skateshop in North Carolina, would send me photos of Zitzer boards in the sale bin, still gathering dust at 75% off. The Bear was a hot seller for a month or two. Ten more years of sales like that could have been a game changer. Other, more legit pros probably thought of me as one of those “pros” who wouldn’t go away and just kept showing up, sponsors or no sponsors, like George Costanza after he got fired. Looking back, I was doing less in the way of “living the dream” as I was “hanging on to it.” That’s me up in the air over Neal Hendrix fs grinding to fakie, doing what I did to make money as a “pro.” Entertaining the masses. It wasn’t always as glamorous as it looks…if it even does look glamorous? I was the epitome of what I’ve come to refer to a Blue Collar Pro, or a BCP for short, which is easier to understand when contrasted with the White Collar Pro. WCPs are easy to spot, they’re usually wearing brand new clothes and shoes, and rock logos of companies that have a lot of money. Think energy drinks and major shoe brands. Most of them are also members of Street League. Or could be. They’re the celebrities whose names alone sell product, and although most all of them can back it up with their skating, they don’t always have to. Guys like Shane O’Neill and P-Rod come to mind. Other WCPs are less visible but equally hooked up, Dylan Rieder, Alex Olson, Stefan, Stevie Williams. Stevie Williams, WCP ALL DAY! BCPs are the guys that don’t have jobs, but they make JUST enough money from boarding that they somehow manage to squeak by, month after month, until they don’t. Really they probably should have jobs. They’re the ones in the trenches, sweating it out for every dollar, sharing apartments, rooms even, just to stay in the game. They eat Top Ramen, they depend on filmers for rides, they take their extra product to Buffalo Exchange for spending money. I know because I lived most of it. So yeah, pro, but on a totally different plane. At least that’s how most of them appear. Who knows, one of them might be getting fat royalty checks from a commercial he did years ago in South America, another might be a closet trust funder, but that’s not the point. Over the years I’ve come to see some redeeming traits to the BCP that I was missing when I was in the middle of it, and that’s that they’re at least as valuable to skateboarding as WCPs, in fact they might be more valuable. Because really, what’s more “skate” than being a professional that barely gets by? Never mind that Apple commercial he starred in, Riley Stevens is a BCP all the way. Pros that strike me as BCPs: Robbie Russo, David Gravette, Andrew Allen, Yonnie Cruz, Anthony Shultz, E-man, Ryan Reyes, Tony Cervantes, Lee Yankou, Sebo Walker, Willis Kimbel, Zach Wallin, Riley Stevens. I’d like to get a call from one of them though saying, “No way man, I’m White Collar!” Which reminds me of the upriver debate that Kalis and Dill had a few years back. Kalis is BCP in spirit. RyRey…Now THIS is Blue Collar. I can tell you this though, while my life as a BCP was usually heaps of fun and not something I wanted to trade for the world, it was almost never easy, and definitely not glamorous. That said, it seems better than the life of the Ditch Digger Pros (DDPs), more on them some other time. - Paul Zitzer