Leo Romero #17.

"There was this man living out of his car in the parking lot of this famous rail. He went on and on about all the people he's seen skating it. When we got this trick he got excited. He couldn't believe that someone had gone up the rail when everyone else he had seen jumps down it. On the way home, we thought of the next group to go skate there and what this guy would tell them and how they would probably think he was crazy or something. Leo Romero breaking new ground. 50-50 up a rail." - John Bradford

Although Leo wasn't the first to go up a handrail, he did generate a lot of buzz when he went the wrong way up an eight stair. The trick was his ender in Emerica's Stay Gold. I picked this one because of how gnarly the grind was. It's an image that has staying power. I'm guessing Mark Gonzales or Natas Kaupas were the early pioneers of skating rails backwards. It also might have been Matt Hensley or somebody else on H-Street who used the boredom of being at skate camp as motivation to try going up an obstacle. Jeremy Wray, Paul Sharpe, Ed Templeton, and probably somebody on Shut have all dabbled in the field, too. A few years later Leo's fellow Tum Yeto employee Cole Wilson would 50-50 up a double kink for the cover of Transworld.

John Bradford was the photographer.

Skateboarder - May 2009 Volume 18 Number 9