Steve Cabalerro
Story/interview & Sk8 photos by John Baccigalupi
Snowboard photo by Bryce Knaigts

When something you love doing, like music, art or maybe skateboarding becomes your profession and your sole source of income, it is easy for your profession that you worked hard to achieve, become a job and your love for you art to disappear.

When something you love doing, like music, art or maybe skateboarding becomes your profession and your sole source of income, it is easy for your profession that you worked hard to achieve, become a job and your love for you art to disappear. The first step is usually a certain jadedness wherein a lot of things about your profession really suck and there are a lot of people in your profession who are nowhere nearly as good as you are and don't deserve the success they have. Pretty soon you don't want to play music, paint or go skating because it's work and you'd rather do something else. Eventually you quit your career as an artist, musician or skater, and the whole thought of your past profession leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The real sad part is that you forgot the reason that you started in the first place, because it was more fun than anything else you'd ever done.

Steve Caballero is 28 years old and has been a professional skater for 16 years and not only does he still love to skate, but he doesn't show any signs of slowing down either. In a sea of flavor of the month pros with attitudes bigger than their pants, Steve is a refreshing oasis of positive attitude with nothing bad to say about anybody. He just wants to skate.

I first met Steve at last summer's NSA Donner Ski Ranch contest and did a short blurb on his band Shovelhead for the Cattle Club rag, Alive & Kicking. When I heard that Shovelhead would be playing at the Cattle Club, I gave Steve a call to see if he wanted to get together and skate and do an interview for Heckler.

I met Steve and the rest of Shovelhead in the parking lot of the Cattle Club as they were getting ready to do their soundcheck. After the soundcheck, I played chauffeur and tourguide to Steve and the rest of the band, Chris Landon, John Haugh, and John Testani. John H. was real interested in Sacto and after the obligatory Taco Bell drive-thru, we toured East Sac, midtown, downtown, the Governor's Mansion, and Dorothea Puente's old pad. We ended up at my studio where we cranked some tunes on our new Genelec monitors and Steve John and myself skated the the ramps and obstacles. Skating with Cab was cool cause even though he was 10 times better than me, I didn't feel any vibing or attitude. Steve even gave me pointers on trying to slide an armchair I was having trouble sticking. When we finished skating, I rolled the tape for an interview. The questions don't really matter, so here's the answers:

SKATEBOARDING

"What's rad about skating now is the progression of the sport, how rad the tricks are, how difficult they are. What's rad about 5 years ago is how big it was. There was room for a pro to make a living at it. What was rad about it 10 years ago was there weren't that many skaters and not that many tricks were invented and we were all doing the inventing. Skating has it's ups and downs and right now it's a downer. It's really flooded with all these companies and how small the sport is. Tons of new companies coming out so it's really hard for a pro skater to make an honest living being a pro skater. There's no that much money in it right now. I'm sure it'll come around again and there'll be room for people to make money. Right now, people are just making it. The whole economy is just making it.

Skating is still aggressive in some ways, but it's really technical in others and a lot of people can do both,... can be technical and aggressive, and a lot of people just stick to technical. I like the aggressive part. Vertical skating is really aggressive because you just can't hop on a board and learn to skate ramp. It takes years to learn how to skate ramp.

As far as street skating these days, kids are learning the hardest trick first. They wanna catch up to everyone real quick. That's cool for them. If they're having a good time doing it, then more power to 'em. Street skating's cool because you don't have to build a ramp or find a pool, you don't have to rely on other people or spend money to do it. I dig it, I miss riding ramps, but I enjoy what I'm doing now and that's just hanging out with a bunch of friends and driving all over the place going skating. Going to Santa Barbara or up to the City.

I only skated the Daily Grind once. Me and Tim Brauch, Alan Peterson, and Salman Agah did a demo in a casino in Tahoe. We snowboarded the next day and skated the Daily Grind on the way back."

SNOWBOARDING

"I've been snowboarding ever since it started, back in the Lonnie Toft days. I have my original yellow Sims snowboard, the one that you had to put a skateboard on top. I have a Sims Bert Lamar too. I used to got to Tahoe and ride the Tahoe 1/2 pipe. Tom Sims would come out there and every year he'd have a new snowboard. The first snowboards were wood and then they started to come out with P-tex and after P-tex was the metal edges and so on and so on.

I like just catching a lot of air and going through powder. Powder's like the best feeling. I would like to be more technical, but I don't spend that much time snowboarding. It's just a fun type thing.
I think to be a pro snowboarder, you have to really work at it. I'd have to move to Lake Tahoe, it's a four hour drive for me. Snowboarding's just another hobby, a fun thing to do."

I've been riding for Powell since 1979. My roots are there and they're still helping me out and give me a lot of support. I almost quit Powell to try to start my own company, but then I thought about it and if you start your own company that means you have to quit skating and be a real businessman and I don't wanna be that, I still wanna be a skater, travel, and play music."

This band is the most serious band I've been in because this is the one I've done the most to promote and make something out of it. It goes both ways, sometimes I spend a lot of time on the band and sometimes I'll spend a lot of time skating. I hope something will come out of this cause I've taken a lot of time out of skating to make this work."

I guess that's it. Just keep skating and don't be narrow minded, have an open mind and give everything a chance. Don't try to skate to be a professional, skate for fun and if it happens that you become good enough to be a pro then fine. Don't be a follower, try and be a leader.

November, 1993