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The San Diego Union-Tribune

The flip side: Stairways to heaven (PDF)

Local landmarks have gained national fame in videos, games and photos as street-skating spots


March 9, 2006

In the early '90s, before skate parks were scattered throughout San Diego County, skateboarders took to the streets, using handrails, curbs, stairs and high school campuses as their urban playgrounds.

To non-skaters, these spots were nothing special. But to skateboarders, they became legendary locations, some achieving national prominence.

The biggest skate magazines sent photographers to capture pros riding local handrails. Videos documented tricks on stairs. Famous spots were incorporated into video games. And prominent brands have used the images to advertise their gear. Plus, skaters from across the country traveled to San Diego to challenge them.

Among street spots, these gained the most fame:


One of many North County high school hot spots.

In the beginning, skaters could session this Carlsbad High gap with little risk of getting kicked out (and as with most of these spots, there was always that risk because the spots were on private or public property where skateboarding was discouraged).

The tricky uphill landing is what sets this apart from other gaps of similar size, and skaters must hit the transition with timed precision, or risk being thrown off their boards.

Today, the Carlsbad Gap, which spans the length of 11 stairs, can be jumped with the flick of a wrist in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video games or seen in the latest ads from DC Shoes of Vista.

One of the first pros to push the envelope on gap jumping was Kris Markovich of Carlsbad. He set the standard at the Carlsbad Gap when he kickflipped it in 1993, landing the cover of Transworld Skateboarding. More recently, Johnny Layton of Murietta switch 360 flipped it, following the timeline of progression.

“That spot had been there for a while,” Markovich said about the early days at the gap. “We used to skate the steps and the handrail and nobody really thought about ollying the gap.”

Then one day, he just went for it, and from that point the spot gained fame and everyone wanted to skate it.

“At first it was the biggest skateable gap and because it was getting in the magazines it was the proving ground,” Dave Swift, editorial director of The Skateboard Mag said. “With all the pros that were living in San Diego and coming down from L.A., once somebody did something, then somebody else would want to do something better. It just kept going, and they would all go to Carlsbad, because that was the gap that everybody knew about.”

And if you did the same trick at a different gap, same size, same difficulty level?

“It would be cool, but it wouldn't have immediate recognition,” Swift said.


The demise of this rail was inevitable. It became known in the '90s from coverage of pros Jamie Thomas and Matt Mumford skating it. Nestled in the hallways of San Dieguito Academy in Encinitas, not even skateproofing could keep the skaters away from this accessible spot, named after its 10 steps.

“If you were going to do a trick on a handrail, you would go to that rail,” Markovich said. “People knew the difficulty of it. Perfectly smooth. Downhill landing. Forgiveness of the slide. Definitely one of those spots you would hear somebody did something gnarly.”

Eventually, school officials tired of deterring skaters and cut the thing down around 2001, and the skaters mourned the loss of a monument. Flowers were left at the site and kids wrote notes to the missing rail on the stairs with markers.

Enter Jeff King, a skateboarder and welder from Cardiff who replicates the metal rails and stairs of local street-skating spots through his company King Rails.

He was devastated the night he went to skate the rail and it was gone.

“We have so much respect for this place because it has shown us so much respect,” King said. “It has given us heroes. It's created careers. It's an amazing spot, and we want to give it respect and give that back to it. It was a real sad event when they took it out.”

He acquired the actual rail that was cut down, without specifying how – other than that “angels” delivered it to him. He holds events locally and sets up the displaced rail so skaters can once again pull tricks on this local landmark.

“If it's some other rail, just some ten-set King rail, it would be cool, but it wouldn't have that edge behind it, that fame,” King said.


It's three sets of stairs, four steps deep and separated by flat landings. The top double-set is the acclaimed spot, good for technical tricks. For those who dare, some attempt to clear all three sets, such as Jeremy Wray, who was filmed ollying the entire length in a skate video.

San Diego native Peter Smolik, 28, a pro skater and owner of Sk8Mafia brand, remembers his days as an early teen skating round-trip from Clairemont to the Sports Arena just to ollie the double-set he saw in videos. To this day, he still goes back.

“In skating the Sports Arena, you have that degree of limited time. You need to go there, handle your business and leave before you get kicked out,” Smolik said. “That increases the value of doing the trick that you do.”

He was kicked out four times in a row trying to land a fakie hardflip. While attempting the technical trick, he hit his head hard on the ground three times.

“It's actually a battle between you, the obstacle and the trick,” Smolik said. “Because you are trying to accomplish something. When you hit your head, of course it hurts, but you get up and handle it.”

 Michelle DeCrescenzo: (760) 476-8221;

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