At 21, Top S.D. Skateboarder Is Sport’s Old Man

Tony Magnusson likes danger.

He likes the feeling of uncertainty that goes with being on the edge. But the edge has not always been kind to Magnusson. He has two less fingers and half a thumb because of it. He has scuffs and scars and a face wizened beyond its years.

Magnusson, 21, is a skateboarder.

Believe it or not, a professional skateboarder. In a culture where surfers and hang gliders also are professional, skateboarders see a fight for acceptance as legitimate and long overdue. They may be men in a boys’ world, but they’re as serious as a 16-foot fall onto concrete.

Magnusson, who does most of his skateboarding at the Del Mar Skate Ranch, in the shadow of Interstate 5, is at a crossroads. He looks around and sees boys--competitors--much younger. He still craves the sense of danger, but his wife and a son nearing his second birthday give pause to a man’s zest for splashing onto concrete.

Questions such as What am I going to do with my life? crop up more and more, sometimes when the only surface staring him in the face is a slab.

Magnusson is not a rich man, but he does make a healthy living manufacturing and selling skateboards. These days even that gives him pause. How much longer can this go on? he asks. Five more years on the business side, he says, no more than two in the rarefied air of skateboard competition (less a lark than one might think). Then it’s on to college and “getting serious.”

Already, skateboarding has given the diminutive Magnusson (5 feet, 3 1/2 inches, 135 pounds), a platform for recognition and style. In his native Sweden, which he left in 1980, he appeared in a movie (“King”) made by the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Magnusson played a troubled adolescent--a part with relevance to his own checkered past.

Magnusson was born in Stockholm, the only son of a house painter and a newspaper circulation clerk. Magnusson started skateboarding at 13 and became, in less than three years, the best in Sweden. At 16, he left for the bright lights of America; specifically, California, where he knew skateboarding would not be looked down on or reviled. Well before his prowess was established--for him, skateboarding is a fitting symbol of stylish rebellion--he was expressing himself in ways both mischievous and independent.

“My mom always let me do what I wanted,” he said. “You could say she was almost careless in the way she raised me. But, ultimately, I see it as a kind of responsible carelessness--if that’s possible. In my case, I think it was.”

Magnusson’s mother bitterly resisted his move west as well as his growing proclivity for what she saw as a puerile endeavor (skateboarding, much less as a professional). Mother and son were at odds before that, albeit in a loving, free-spirited way.

Mrs. Magnusson’s reaction to her son’s injuries in an elevator shaft accident only worsened the problem. Overwhelmed with a feeling of loss ( If only I could have kept him from it ), she also harbored a quiet rage ( How could he have done such a thing? ). Magnusson’s reaction was, however, more important. He decided to vent daredevil peregrinations in a more socially acceptable way (i.e., skateboarding).

Magnusson was 14 at the time of the elevator incident. He and a friend were climbing the wires of a long cylindrical shaft when Magnusson decided, hey, why not rest on the ledge and grab hold of this big wheel here? A tiny hand was soon being gobbled by modern technology, an ordeal that caused Magnusson tremendous pain.

Doctors applauded his determination at hanging in and said, yes, he’s lucky he didn’t lose the entire hand--but even luckier he didn’t die. Surgery saved the index finger and half the thumb, but the two middle fingers were amputated to the knuckle. Only the pinkie remained unharmed.

The incident has stayed with Magnusson in all sorts of strange ways. It’s given him a handicap, which remains--not always to his liking--a conversation piece, and a symbol for the kind of power life can wield when fear and loathing of authority mix with the innocence of youth.

It also affects his skateboarding. A gloved hand reaching down for board is not nearly as effective when more glove than hand reaches board. It keeps him from doing certain tricks and from being effective at others.

Magnusson says of skateboarding, “It’s danger, it’s freedom, it’s a big rush, like walking on the edge of an out-and-out disaster.”

But it is also brutally competitive and serious stuff to the man-child heroes who don the equipment and risk its indiscretions.

In a recent afternoon workout, Magnusson--heavily padded and sweating--fell repeatedly. He promises there’s a trick in knowing how to fall. It’s one that the teen-agers and grade-school scrubs who fell along with him would do well to master, and soon.

He claimed not to be bothered by the precociousness of acne-pocked and punkish shadowers who attempted the same tricks, with results far more ordinary and bloody. He claimed not to be bothered by his own gruesome dives.

Much more impressive--and horrifying to watch--were the tricks done successfully, which outnumbered falls maybe 25 to 1. He would roar down the side of a concrete well--a “pool” 10 feet deep. He would all but fly up the other side, leaping five, six feet high, fastened to the board by centrifugal force and hours of tireless practice.

Even gutsier was the leaping, turning in mid-air and landing-on-the-side-of-a-wall move--while facing down from a 90-degree bend. Then came a run at the other end, where the process repeated itself with stomach-churning regularity.

With short, compact legs, a shock of unruly brown hair and a gaunt, intense face, Magnusson looked the part of an expatriate skateboarder. But a quiet maturity and soft-spokenness set him apart from the legions who watch his moves and comment in awed approval.

John Torok, a 16-year-old from Mira Mesa High School, watched Magnusson faithfully.

“What appeals to me about it? Just a feeling. Excitement. Danger,” Torok said. “I’m not as good as these guys like Tony, but I hope to be before it’s over. And whether I am or not (he sounded here like another 16-year-old must have in getting ready to leave Sweden) it beats sitting around with nothing to do. Keeps us out of our mothers’ hair.”

Torok comes to the Skate Ranch, one of two still left in Southern California (the other is in Upland, not far from Los Angeles), both for his own skating and to watch. He especially likes those “who have mastered the art.”

They include Magnusson, who candidly admits he is not the best, even in San Diego County, and Tony Hawk, a 14-year-old whiz kid from Solana Beach, who may be the best (not only here, but anywhere). Magnusson said five skaters from the county are in the top 10 nationally. Another is Billy Ruff, who like Hawk and Magnusson markets his own board, the kind kids gobble up faster than the latest single from Prince.

The county has played a leading role in the history of skateboarding in other ways. Tom Sims, a close friend of Magnusson’s based in Santa Barbara, is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of skateboards. Sims points out that Frank Naisworthy of San Diego adapted the much safer, much faster urethane wheel to skateboards, and that Bill Bahne of Encinitas was, for a while, the leading mass producer of skateboards in the world. (Sims’ wooden board later surpassed Bahne’s fiberglass model as the preferred model for pros.)

San Diego County also has mirrored, Sims said, “the rise, fall and rise again” of skateboarding across the world. The boards themselves were invented in the 1800s, but didn’t give way to a sport, he said, until roughly 1963. Two years of a small boom gave way to a swift decline, picking up again in 1969, then “really going crazy from 1976 all the way to ‘81,” he said. “Then we have this huge drop-off. Why? The sensationalism of the media hurt it tremendously.

“Media overemphasized certain elements, the more radical turns and maneuvers. Skateboard parks ceased being a place to learn and play--a recreational place--and became an expert bowl for daredevils. In ‘82-83, a slight resurgence took place, then a steady climb in ‘83-84, followed by a steeper curve that we’re enjoying even now.”

Seven skate ranches once spanned San Diego County (at the height of the boom in the late ‘70s). Now only one site remains, with no plans for others.

“Still, I would say the dollar value today,” Sims said, “is close to that of ’79. I would call it a three-, four-million-dollar industry. It’s more of a grass-roots thing but climbing on a solid basis. It’s not just competition. Again, that’s the part the media crave.”

Sims said the beauty of skateboards is how functional they are, for anyone. “A lot of sales now are strictly for transportation, ramp riding, etc. Let’s face it, it’s a fun, cheap way to get to school. It’s inherently too much fun to die. People, I think, can see that now.”

It does have a mean competitive bent, however, one that Sims, 34, follows closely. He says only two in San Diego skate better than Magnusson. He lists Hawk, Ruff and Magnusson as being in the top 12 nationwide.

Sims has seen age crawl up on more than a few skateboarders, most recently Magnusson. He compares the 21-year-old to being like Pete Rose or Graig Nettles in baseball, the equivalent of a 40-year-old who still has grace under pressure, albeit in fading measure.

“Tony’s an old man (in skateboard circles),” Sims said. “Maneuvers in competition have to be so . . . bionic , that unless you’re young and agile it’s almost impossible to maintain an edge.”

Sims has never seen a skateboarder, no matter how fresh-faced, reach the top unless his ego--and arrogance--border on the extreme. Magnusson may be lacking in the hubris department, a fact his wife corroborates.

The former Jill Darrow, 22, says she’s married to one of the world’s most modest men, one who never tells anyone (unless asked) about the Ingmar Bergman movie, nor discusses with ease his relative fame as Sweden’s top skateboarder.

“They called him ‘Apan,’ for Monkey Man,” she said. “He had his picture on bubble gum cards all over the country. He was a star .”

And in her mind, he remains so. He’s also a father, one who gives 1 1/2-year-old Cheyne skateboard lessons as often as he can stand it.

Magnusson feels his body “getting old, more sore; his knees are a mess ,” his wife judges. With a wistful sigh, she added, “He’s realizing the impact on concrete could do devastating damage to bones, especially in later life. He’s sizing things up, more and more.” Still, he’ll “probably skate ‘til he’s 50 or 60. He has to. Artists paint. My man skates.”

While choosing to do so, though, how will he fight the feeling, the fear, that lingers: that he remains, after all, a man in a boy’s game?

“ ‘Man’ is only a label,” she said. “And my man wears it well . . . Better, in fact, than anyone I’ve known.”