Pioneering professional skateboarder Patti McGee, along with a San Diego teenager, dies at 79 – San Diego Union-Tribune

Stand atop Pacific Beach’s Loring Street hill, one of San Diego’s steepest hills, and find yourself transported back to the early 1960s, when children and teenagers were flying down steep slopes on makeshift skateboards and the ocean was widening. distance ahead.

These were some of the early adopters of skateboarding; It was the children who helped pave the way for future generations for a sport that was widely viewed as a social menace and fringe subculture for decades.

Among these skaters was Patti McGee. For the Point Loma teenager, skateboarding on Loring Street was another way to kill time when the afternoon surf was over and he wasn’t ready to go home to do homework.

Loring Street “was a challenge. It was like surfing a big wave if you could make it,” McGee said. he told skate magazine Juice. In 2017.

Defying the odds and staying active was one of the things that drew him to skateboarding. But it was also a natural progression for McGee, who died Oct. 16 at his home in Brea at the age of 79 after suffering a recent stroke.

Considered the world’s first professional female skateboarder, McGee made a name for herself at a time when the sport was dominated by men. Today.

His career started with first place at the national skateboarding championship held in Santa Monica in 1964, and he clinched the victory with his unique trick, a handstand on the skateboard.

This move later went down in cultural history when, in May 1965, he graced the cover of LIFE magazine, rolling under the board with his feet in the air.

After the win in Santa Monica, McGee signed a brand deal with skateboard manufacturer Hobie and traveled the country promoting his skateboards.

HE, Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2010. That year, San Diego’s then-Council Member Kevin Faulconer gave him a special tribute honoring his accomplishments.

But being a pioneer for women in skateboarding wasn’t McGee’s goal; San Diego Evening Tribune In 1965, she stated that she wanted to act or be a “movie stunt girl.”

“She was a sweet angel, but she was also a wild woman,” her daughter Hailey Villa, 46, told the Union-Tribune last week. McGee is survived by his son Forest Villa, 45, as well as his two grandchildren and brother Jack.

“She did a lot of different things in her life,” Villa said, pointing to her mother’s time working in turquoise mining, leather goods and even a casino. “Skateboarding was a minor thing.”

McGee was born at Fort Lewis in Washington state on August 23, 1945, and his family moved to San Diego when he was about 5 years old. His parents separated when he was young, and he was mostly raised by his mother, who worked at Montgomery Middle School.

McGee’s youth was, in many ways, quintessential San Diego.

Like many skaters in the 1960s, he started out as a surfer; He first surfed in 1958 and surfed spots like Newport Street, North Beach and Ocean Beach, as well as La Jolla, the coast and Windansea.

At 16, he said, he ventured ashore for more; To Tamarack, Oceanside, Doheny and County Line. Skateboarder magazine in 1965while on the cover.

As president of an all-girls surf team in 1963, McGee described herself as a “bad surfer”; As one of the few girls in the water, she’s not afraid to be aggressive, “guys would push you out of the way or throw you out” right up to your ankles like ‘My wave’ He told Juice.

McGee first found his way into skateboarding in 1962 through a DIY project: His brother Jack stole the wheels from his roller skates and attached them to a wooden board he made in shop class.

He then rode a Bun Buster equipped with the same wheels as his roller skates.

He and his friends wandered the streets of San Diego, even the parking lot of the Concourse (his self-described Mount Everest) in downtown San Diego.

They were rebellious and always got into trouble.

“Thank you for helping pave the way for all of us in the 1960s, when skateboarding was seen as nothing more than a ‘threat,’” Tony Hawk wrote. Latest Instagram post in memory of.

McGee was also a member of the Pump House Gang, a group of young surfers who gathered around a sewage pump house on Windansea Beach in the 1960s. Author Tom Wolfe later wrote an article about the group and named his 1968 essay collection after it.

However, the championship he won in Santa Monica in 1964 changed his life inexorably.

His one-year, $250-a-month brand deal with skateboard manufacturer Hobie took him around the country, demonstrating skateboarding to audiences of mostly children at department stores and malls.

The LIFE cover took McGee to another level of recognition. Shortly after the iconic shot, “What’s My Line?” He took part in the competition program called. and “The Mike Douglas Show” and taught Johnny Carson to skate on “The Tonight Show.”

At the time, mainstream culture was still deciding what skateboarding felt like. Originally seen as a fun new fad for kids, often referred to as “sidewalk surfing”, by the late 1960s and 70s it was seen more as a nuisance, something that wasn’t good for kids at all.

McGee and his generation saw this shift firsthand, and filmmaker Haley Watson, who was working on a documentary about McGee before he died, said it was one of the reasons why skateboarding became so closely associated with punk.

“Skateboarding as we know it would not be what it is today without Patti,” Watson said.

McGee returned to San Diego after his national tour in the mid-’60s but didn’t stay long.

She soon moved to Lake Tahoe with her first husband, Glen Villa, where they mined turquoise and manufactured leather goods. She later moved to Cave Creek, Arizona, where she raised two children and led tours for gold-seeking tourists. There, she met her second husbandWilliam Chace, who died in 2015.

But Villa remembers that there was little concrete in their rural town and few places to skate; his mother would take him and his brother to a nearby elementary school to skateboard.

When he was in third grade, his mother brought a skateboarding team to his school to perform. Among its members was Tony Hawk.

“I think that was the day I realized my mom was more special in the skateboarding world,” Villa recalls.

Villa became a skater herself, and she and McGee founded the Original Betty Skateboard Company, which formed its own all-girl skating team and sponsored young skaters, some of whom went on to compete in the Olympics.

For Watson, the family connection was clear.

“It was very clear to me that he truly loved his family and had a very special bond with his daughter,” the filmmaker said. “They had so much of their own language.”

McGee’s story began when Orange County author and school librarian Tootie Nienow wrote, “That’s Patti McGee!” He reached a younger and wider audience in 2021 with the publication of his children’s book. The Story of the First Female National Skateboarding Champion,” illustrated by Erika Medina.

Nienow became close to McGee while writing the book.

Nienow said McGee could make a person feel as if they were the only person in the room; That sentiment was echoed by McGee’s friend and fellow skateboarder Di Dootson Rose, who was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame earlier this year.

Rose called him “magnetic,” recalling how McGee connected with people, sometimes putting his hands on their faces and actually looking into their eyes. “People would let him in.”

The skateboarder’s charm and talent captivated his friends, family and the entire world.

Rose points to McGee’s 1965 LIFE cover; He said it was a far cry from the magazine’s more serious covers at the time.

“Then one day they showed up with a sky blue blonde, upside down (doing a handstand) in white capris and a red sweater,” Rose said. “If that’s not a breath of fresh air, I don’t know what is.”

The nonprofit Exposure Skate will host a ceremony for McGee at its annual skating event for women and non-binary skaters in Encinitas this Saturday at 5 p.m.