back in the day, this dude was supposed to be the "east coast guy mariano". i remember a particular trip out-of-town to a skatepark (back before they were seemingly on every block) and all the older skaters there were talking about waldman and how ill he was. i was mad jealous of guy after ban this (every kid was)... and i jocked shut skates already... so the possibility of an underground east coast child prodigy that could take-out mariano had me crazy geeked.
immediately upon my return home, i told everyone i knew about how this future legend would soon by taking over the world (showing them that super good kickflip picture posted above) and they got pretty excited as well. once we heard the news he switched to world industries a few months later, it was a done deal: dude was a terror. we couldn't wait to see him skate.
then this came out. good thing i was still a little kid at the time cause some of the older dudes from around my way probably would've loved to have beaten on me. still don't know what happened with that part of his but it took a while for me to live that one down.
...felt like such an asshole.
...felt like such an asshole.
15 comments:
hah hah nice story man loving your site.
ps anytime from now bust out a jb gillet mid ninteys post!
Went to NYC for the first time in '03, and Waldman followed us around for two or so days...he knew someone in the crew that had lived out there...and the harder I try to think about it, I can't remember anything else. Whatever.
Shut Street Shark in kickflip photo?
I hate reggae music, I hate it!
I rank this as one of your best posts. Totally forgot about this guy. He's even got his own entry on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0907050/
forgot that section of rubbish heap had that section at the golf banks. skated those in '88, about when that was filmed. ahh jersey.
also a couple of years ago, i had recently moved into the apartment where i now live in harlem, and discovered one of my neighbors skated. nice guy, prep school art teacher. one day he mentions that his friend billy was always trying to get him to score drugs for him up in our neighborhood, and started telling me how sketchy this dude was. turns out, he was talking about waldman!
Oh Billy... What a lot of people don't know is that Billy was actually a very smart kid, he just dealt with a lot of addictions. Funny thing is that he had a grip of footy for Rubbish Heap, but Rocco only used what you saw. That was the begining of the end for Billy. Last I heard he's living in Costa Rica and is a father. Either way, stoked on this post. Wish I could find his part in RB's "Heads". If anyone has it I would be hyped if it got youtubed.
Pole jam indy pic is tight.
crazy. Didn't hear anything about him between Rubbish Heap and Kids. Then nothing until that BB photo. And then nothing until today.
thanks guys, wasn't sure how this one was gonna go over.
bobjohn, not sure. at first i thought so because of those weird crinkle cuts towards the front foot but i just remembered that a few of their boards had those.
and thanks for the stories, too. super good. weird how some kid that essentially had one shitty video part and barely any magazine coverage made such an impression on people that he's remembered 20 years later.
I always heard he was actually really good - maybe not as good as Mariano at the time - but still acceptional for his age - way better than what was in Rubbish Heap. He sold my friend a complete around Astor Place in 1995 - right around the time KIDS came out. Looking back, he was probably strung out even then.
Yeah, he was living here in SF for a long while. It was weird when I first started seeing him around (sometime in the mid 90's) and him being all strung out. He was basically begging for change whenever I saw him and it was really sad. After a while though, it became kind of annoying cause he was always around my neighborhood asking for change and you can only take so much when it's the same dude all the time. I remember people saying he moved back to NY and got clean and started skating again. I think that was around that time of the pole jam photo. That was so long ago now, that I can't remember. Hopefully he got his life together cause it was a pretty sad site seeing him all strung out.
As SPRNTRL mentioned, he has some solid footage in RB's Heads.
I also used to see Billy in the streets in San Francisco asking for money. I first meet Billy in Boulder Colorado around 1994 or so when he was still clean. It was a trip hanging out with Billy. Then I ran into him in SF around 1995 and I didn’t even recognize him at first, he didn’t even recognize me either. Billy was so strung out at that point it was kind of sad. I hope he is doing well right now. Those were the days.
I hope he's doing well, as one person Said in this comment section, crazy how we're all still talking about him and thinking about alllllllll these years later. A literal lifetime later, that's the power of World Industries
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