Head Of The Board

STEVE CABALLERO, the skateboarding legend, is not a guy prone to sobbing. But last week that's what I heard when I retrieved his message on my cellphone. The only words I could distinguish between the tears were, "Fausto is no longer with us."

We all knew him only as Fausto. He needed no last name. Fausto Vitello (above)--the outspoken, cantankerous entrepreneur who died on April 22 of a heart attack--was born on Aug. 7, 1946, in Buenos Aires. He moved with his parents to America at age nine. His interests in cars and motorcycles led to his joining Team Harley-Davidson as a mechanic in the late '60s. Along the way, he became interested in the technology and culture of the emerging sport of skateboarding.

By 1979, when the boom that catapulted skateboarding onto Wide World of Sports and launched a multimillion-dollar industry had gone bust, skateboarding enthusiasts like me and Fausto were left struggling to imagine the way forward. The prominent skate manufacturers of the '70s--Bahne, GT, Sims--had promoted skateboarding as a wholesome, safe, American sport. Fausto was among the first to figure out that skateboarding's future lay in its celebration of its outlaw roots. Fausto was the only skateboard company owner (aside from myself) who for a decade managed to attend every contest held across America no matter how podunk. He was a businessman with a skater's heart, and he never shied away from hopping fences, sneaking into backyard pools, ditching cops or thumbing his nose at the establishment. He was one of the first to see that skaters were aligning with the ethos of the punk movement. And he perfectly captured that rebelliousness in Thrasher, the trendsetting magazine he cofounded. His mantra, "Skate and Destroy," became the slogan for one of his companies, Independent Trucks, which, along with Thrasher and other firms he built, not only helped save skating but also reinvented it.

I clicked off my cellphone after listening to Steve's message. I was knocked out. I got my gear and went to skate at my local park in Santa Monica, where I thought about the times Fausto and I shared building this young sport in the '80s. While standing at the edge of the pool between runs, I said something to a few of the older guys about Fausto's passing. They were all just as devastated as I was. Then some young kids asked, "Who was Fausto?"

The only explanation I could think of was, "He's one of the reasons you're skating right now."

> Stacy Peralta is the director of Dogtown and Z-Boys.