Andy Kessler R.I.P.

[sbkds]

R.I.P. Andy.  You will be missed!

[dubstar]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/ny...13kessler.html

August 13, 2009
Andy Kessler, Skateboard Hero, Dies at 48
By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Andy Kessler, who banded with graffiti artists to help give a distinctively New York spin to the nascent sport of skateboarding and then helped popularize it by designing skate parks, died on Monday near Montauk, N.Y. He was 48.

His sister, Jody Kessler, said he was stung by an insect while surfing off Montauk, had an extreme allergic reaction and suffered cardiac arrest.

Mr. Kessler was an early New York hero of skateboarding, a sport that probably began in California after World War II, when surfers looked for something to do when the waves were flat. It started to catch on in the early 1970s when boards were made with polyurethane wheels, improving traction. When, during droughts, local authorities prohibited the owners of swimming pools from filling them, skateboarders could not resist turning the steep concrete caverns into skating courses.

A little later in the 1970s, the sport tiptoed into New York. Its first adherents were a loose-knit community of skateboarders and graffiti artists known as the Soul Artists of Zoo York. The renegade image developed by California skateboarders using empty swimming pools was more than maintained by New Yorkers, who illegally spray-painted subway trains.

The alliance between skateboarders and graffiti artists was not declared, and in fact first involved two separate groups. But famous graffiti artists like Zephyr also skateboarded; another, ALI, coined the name Zoo York. Not a few youngsters were involved in both activities.

In an article about the scene in 2005, New York magazine called Mr. Kessler “its most prominent rider,” though others might have had at least equal skill.

Seth Affoumado, who skated with Mr. Kessler when almost nobody else was pursuing the sport, said in an interview on Wednesday that Mr. Kessler was “the catalyst for skateboarding in New York City.”

Glen E. Friedman, a photographer who has extensively covered skateboarding, said, “He pursued making it something important in New York City.”

But New York skateboarding was never as important in either sport or cultural terms as it was in California, where scrappy, expert skateboarders like Jay Adams and Tony Alva created a style, ultimately a legend, that came to be called Dogtown. Significantly, when such West Coast luminaries came East, it was Mr. Kessler they sought out, Mr. Friedman said. Many plan to attend his funeral.

Andrew Kessler, who was adopted with his sister in Greece, was born in Athens on June 11, 1961. His mother, Ruth, said he asked for a skateboard for his birthday and other gift-giving occasions without fail. She said that she bought him his first when he was 10, and that she gave him at least 50 over time.

“I just remember him always being on a skateboard,” his sister said.

New York magazine said that the loose-knit Zoo York collective skated all over the Upper West Side, where Mr. Kessler grew up. He and a group of youths of various races and income levels pioneered the art of city skating, grinding their axles on flower planters and attempting a complete spin, or a 360.

They particularly liked to skate around the band shell in Central Park, and in the winter would shovel out swimming pools in Brooklyn. They first skated on ramps specifically built for skateboarding in 1976 on Long Island.

Mr. Affoumado said the youths were very conscious of building a new kind of culture, one combining graffiti, skateboarding and hip-hop. “We all dabbled in art,” he said. “We all dabbled in music. We all dabbled in drugs.”

By the early 1980s, the Soul Artists of Zoo York were disbanding, even as the Dogtown riders were becoming professionals and starting companies. For five years, Mr. Kessler worked in fields as diverse as flea markets and massage therapy.

He became seriously caught up in drugs, including heroin. He recovered with the help of Narcotics Anonymous, his friends said, and afterward was dedicated to helping youthful addicts.

Mr. Kessler long nurtured an ambition to build a park for skateboarders and roller-bladers, and in the mid-1990s he proposed the idea of building one in Riverside Park, near where he grew up. The New York City parks department accepted the idea, and Mr. Kessler recruited a group of disadvantaged youths to build it. He later built more parks on Long Island and elsewhere.

Mr. Kessler is survived by his mother and sister.

In 2005, he fell while skating and incurred a $20,000 medical bill. He had no insurance, so friends held a benefit in SoHo to pay for his treatment.

In a 1999 interview conducted by Masha Falkov, a high school student, that was posted on the Internet, Mr. Kessler related what he would want God to say to him at the Pearly Gates: “You’ve done a good job, but you left a few things out, so we’re sending you back.”

[johnnylzr]

any info on any memorial/ benefits in his honor?

[Royal With Cheese]

R.I.P brotha

[Johnny Copp]

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/the-end-of-falling/

R.I.P.

[dubstar]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/nyregion/17skate.html?_r=2&hp

August 17, 2009
Generations of Skaters Gather to Pay Tribute to a Legend of the City
By COLIN MOYNIHAN

The noise of skateboard wheels thrumming on wooden ramps echoed near the Brooklyn waterfront in Greenpoint on Saturday night, where a semisecret skating spot called the Autumn Bowl is located inside an old brick warehouse.

Photographs of the New York City skateboarding pioneer Andy Kessler decorated the walls inside the warehouse, and bouquets of roses sat on a table next to handwritten messages addressed to Mr. Kessler, who died last week at age 48 after an allergic reaction to an insect sting.

In another sort of tribute, dozens of skaters took turns whizzing around a 2,500-square-foot, 7-foot-deep birch skateboarding bowl, as a boom box blared songs by the Beastie Boys and the Who.

Among the 200 or so people who showed up to remember Mr. Kessler was Tony Alva, a champion skater from Santa Monica, Calif., who many believe epitomizes West Coast skating and who said that Mr. Kessler embodied “the spirit of New York.”

“He carried that flag higher and bolder than anyone,” Mr. Alva said as he stood in a wide alleyway next to the warehouse. “He skates with me today.”

More than 30 years of skating the homemade ramps and rutted streets of New York City left plenty of marks on Mr. Kessler, including scrapes and scars from bone-shattering collisions. And in many ways, Mr. Kessler left an equally strong impression on the city.

They called him the Godfather, and as a teenager on the Upper West Side in the 1970s he skated at places with names like the Death Bowl, an abandoned pool in the Bronx, and Suicide Hill, a steep slope near the banks of the Hudson River. He also became a member of a group of graffiti writers and skaters who called themselves the Soul Artists of Zoo York and who helped define East Coast skating.

“Andy was like the president, the king,” said an artist called Zephyr, who was part of the group.

As a teenager Mr. Kessler skated on the fringes of the city, using planks pilfered from construction sites to create makeshift ramps. Later, after wrangling with the New York City parks department, he designed and helped build one of the city’s first sanctioned skate parks, at 108th Street and Riverside Drive. It opened in the mid-1990s at a spot where he had first skated 20 years before. Other skate parks followed.

The renegade roots of that time seemed distant on Saturday morning as a handful of young skaters there signed forms that exempted the city from liability, then — wearing helmets, elbow pads and kneepads — rolled briskly along. One young skater, wearing a red helmet, paused at the mention of Mr. Kessler’s name.

“Who doesn’t know him?” asked the skater, Anthony Rojas, 11, from Washington Heights, adding that he thought the park “needs some more ramps.”

There was more talk of Mr. Kessler that evening at the Autumn Bowl, where young skaters who wanted to acknowledge his legacy gathered with longtime friends who had rolled with him as teenagers through nighttime streets. Skating luminaries from California mingled next to Mr. Kessler’s mother and sister, who had recently arrived from Florida.

“He had a wonderful heart,” said Mr. Kessler’s mother, Ruth. “If anybody ever needed anything, Andy would help them.”

But underlying that generosity, friends said, was a blunt willingness to sometimes ruffle feathers.

“We loved him for his straight-up candor,” said J. J. Veronis, 46. “That boldness was like an avenue he would open up right in front of you to follow.”

For some time Mr. Kessler traveled a path of passionate abandon, friends agreed. But after giving up drinking and drugs more than 20 years ago, he declared his dedication to others seeking sobriety, answering the phone late at night to offer counsel, or taking struggling comrades on trips away from the narcotic temptations of the city.

Sometimes, during those journeys, he would cite skating as a simile for a healthy life. And some friends extended that thought on Saturday while analyzing Mr. Kessler’s skating style. Steve Olson, a well-known skater from Los Angeles, called him “a soul skater.” Mr. Veronis, who grew up with Mr. Kessler in the 1970s, called him “the artful dodger.”

Mr. Kessler never stopped skating, but it was more or less inevitable that would he slow down somewhat as he aged. Five years ago, while skating in SoHo, Mr. Kessler wiped out. In the resulting crash, he dislocated a femur, damaged his pelvis and broke a kneecap.

More recently, he had been surfing in Montauk, N.Y., partly in an effort to spare his body further battering, friends said. Mr. Kessler was on a surfing trip there last Monday, when he received a sting from a wasp that resulted in cardiac arrest.

The news staggered friends, and they began gathering at the KCDC Skateshop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the shop owner, Amy Gunther, planned Saturday’s memorial along with Mr. Kessler’s far-flung friends.

Common experiences emerged. For everyone he had aided within the world of skating, it seemed, there was also somebody who credited Mr. Kessler with helping him or her steer clear of drugs or alcohol.

Harry Jumonji, 41, from the Lower East Side, said on Saturday night that Mr. Kessler took him to Montauk last week to get him away from the heroin he was in the midst of quitting.

“He saved my life,” Mr. Jumonji said. “I wish I could have saved his.”

[C H U C K]

^ Good read! Thanks.

[THAT KID RICH]

ANDY WAS A GOOD FRIEND AND I HAD THE HONOR TO SK8 WITH HIM MANY OF TIMES @ DIFFERENT PLACES BUT MOSTLY THE AUTUMN BOWL WICH HE LOVED, HE WILL BE MISSED BY MANY FOR THE KIND PERSON HE WAS AND WHAT HE ACCOMPLISHED IN THE SKATE SCENE!!!!  THANX BRO!!!!!

THIS IS A PHOTOGRAPH I TOOK OF KESSLER RIPPIN IT @ OWLS HEAD SK8PARK BROOKLYN NYC

PHOTO TAKEN BY:RICH ZOELLER AKA THAT KID RICH

http://www.danteross.com/blogs/dante/files/2009/08/2n1xv6s.jpg