The hype surrounding The Bones Brigade will likely continue well past the time they all become bones, but that’s okay because we never get tired of hearing the old stories of the crew that changed skateboarding forever. Here’s this story:
In 1987, Powell Peralta released The Search for Animal Chin, its third video. In it, the Bones Brigade—Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero, Tommy Guerrero, and Mike McGill—embarked on a journey to find Won Ton “Animal” Chin, a mythical skater who had gone missing. The film concluded with the Bones Brigade skating what became known as the Chin ramp—a vert spine outfitted with an escalator, extensions, channels, a mini ramp on one of its decks, and a hidden tunnel. While it was said to be south of Guadalupe, in Mexico, between two junkyards, it was actually built in a field in Oceanside, California. The Bones Brigade skated it for a matter of days, in 1986, before it was torn down.
This past September, Tim Payne, who built the structure, quietly made his way to Woodward West, where he created a near-identical Chin ramp 30 years later. The original members of the Bones Brigade reunited at the camp for a series of sessions on perhaps the most famous vert ramp in skateboarding’s history.
With commentary from Payne and the skaters, the video above shows how it went down. This is 30 Years of Animal Chin.
