September 28, 2021 • 53 mins
For the sixteenth episode of Charges, Rex brings Christian Hosoi on the show to talk about his skateboarding career and his battles with addiction that lead him to prison. Rex & Christian discuss: What skateboarding means to him, Being a Father, Turning Pro at a young age & his first board, his friendship & rivalry with Tony Hawk, fame & drug use at a young age, the culture surrounding skateboarding, getting into harder drugs, missing the first X Games, running from the police, being arrested & sentenced to jail, turning his life around & more. This episode is not to be missed!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Charges. That's created by Portalais and Control Media. It's produced
by dB Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. This
time a former Son's player who you might remember as
t Rex. More video in just a moment, but this
is Rex Chapman's mug Shaun, and we are learning a
lot more about the charge up Charging. You're arrested a
(00:22):
pound and a half of crystal meth on you. When
did it set in, like I'm probably going to jail.
I did acid at twelve, I did mushrooms at thirteen.
I was addicted to cocaine at fifteen, and I had money,
and I was famous. I had pictures in the magazines.
It's a lot of pressure for a young kid. I'm
a good person. I'm not like my friends that kill
(00:44):
people for fun. Welcome to Charges. I'm your host, Rex Chapman.
Today on the show, we're joined by a legend, a
name in person so synonymous with skateboarding and it's rise
to prominence that it might shock you if you don't
know it. Christian Hossi was at the front of a
(01:05):
revolution that took place on the black tops across America
and in the world in the late seventies and early eighties.
Oh and he was a pro before he was even
able to get his learners permit. But like so many
other young stars in the City of Angels, the demons
would come for Christian and his fall from grace and
ultimate redemption are why we're here talking today. This his charges. Christian,
(01:37):
welcome to the show, and thank you for being here,
my friend. Thank you very much. Rex, and uh, I
do appreciate the intro. And um, you know, these badges
of honor that we have of success stories is you know,
it's not always the case, and so being that we're alive,
being that we have this second chance, it truly is
(01:58):
something that I'm grateful for or and I don't want
to take life for granted ever. Again, I'm with you,
all right. Well, Christian, look, I'm not gonna lie to you.
A lot of my audience probably isn't. It's familiar with
the newly minted Olympic sport of skateboarding, which we'll talk
about later on. So for someone who doesn't know, explain
the world of skateboarding. When you were starting out, how
(02:19):
did you fall in love with it? Well, my father
was a surfer in the fifties and sixties, Hawaii, and
so he met my mother in college and they moved.
They got married in Vegas, moved to l A. He
went to art school, she went to work in Beverly
Hills as a secretary in business, and so I grew up.
(02:41):
I was born and raised in l A, Hollywood, and
skateboarding in the late sixties and early seventies was hot.
It was the sidewalks surfing, you know. It went from
kind of like surfers on the beach cruising around no
waves to the earth thing Wheel came out in seventy
(03:02):
three and that revolutionized skateboarding, and that's when skateboarding took off.
And guys like Tony Alva, j Adams, Show Go Cuba,
all the z Boys, the Dogtown guys were from Venice,
Santa Monica area, Malibu. And I was part of that
whole scene because my dad was part of the art scene.
And so as a young boy at five years old,
(03:25):
even when I was born, his friend Jim Ganzer gave
him a Macaha board because he was, you know, distributing
and he was a rep for them. So at six
months old, I was being pushed across the kitchen floor
on a Macaha board before I could even walk. And
when the youth thing Wheel came out was when things changed,
(03:45):
and when the surfers and skaters of the day like
Tony Alva went to backyard swimming pools. You went from
carving the bottom the scum line. We call it scum
line because that's when there's water, there's water in a
pool and it creates it's a dark line, and that's
the scum line. Well, you could only go to scum
line with like clay wheels. You could barely go over
(04:08):
the light right, and so now all of a sudden
they're getting to the tile, they're getting to the coping
and then they're in the air. And so that's when
I came in. I came in at six seven years
old and the year Thinge wheel came out and we
were like, this is incredible, smooth Cadillacs. They were even
called Cadillac wheels, and so we were just ecstatic about
(04:32):
how it felt at the school yards, down at the beach,
Venice Beach, cruising down the boardwalk. And then the you know,
skate park started opening up during that time, and there
was a skate park called Marina del Rey Skatepark that
my dad ended up managing right after you know, we
went there, you know when it opened. It only lasted
(04:53):
probably three years the park's existence. But during that time
was when I sharpened my teeth, got involved in skating,
and went from just a little grammat two and a
gramat is a little peep squeak, a little you know,
beginner to that year got a full page in Skateboarder magazine.
(05:15):
How old were you? I was eleven, so nine. I
went to the skate park ten Marina opened eleven, I
got my picture in Skateboarder magazine. Twelve, I won the
biggest amateur contest and then I turned pro at fourteen
years old, and so that's kind of like my career.
But skateboarding was like surfing on land, and for me,
(05:39):
that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be
a surfer, wanted to be Jerry Lopez, wanted to be
Larry Berteleman, wanted to be those guys and buttons and
dank kaloha and so surfing, you gotta get up early.
It's freezing cold, like the waves sucked. There's a million
people out. I was like this, there's no reward in this,
(06:03):
like you know, but I knew that my friends at ripped.
There was this passion that they had that I knew.
But when I got on my skateboard, I just emulated surfing,
and so I got my surfing fixed on land and
that's what drove me to skate every day to become
who I obviously became in the skateboard world of the day.
(06:24):
But even today, you know, skateboarding is still like in
my blood. I gotta go, like yesterday I went. Today,
I gotta go. I gotta practice for another event this weekend.
And so I'm fifty three years old and still got
to go out and perform in front of five thousand people.
And I tell you, when you're rusty, you're like, I
(06:44):
need to like practice, man, that's amazing and fifty three
and I know that. And you're about to be fifty
four next week because I'm fifty four on October five
as well. My friend, are you serio? What birthday? Buddies?
(07:05):
That's right, let's go, let's go. That was a great
day in sixty seven. There we go, there we go.
Uh yeah, but I was I was brushing up on
you and noticed that what what what a cool thing.
But anyway, so I'm fascinated. Obviously, we we all are
with sort of people that do things at a young age,
(07:27):
and you were you're essentially a prodigy at least considering
to how skateboarding was at the time. Did you know
you were that good or was it just second nature?
I assume you had and have perfect balance and you're
compact and that has to help. But what made you
(07:48):
so good and did you know you were that good?
I think there's a lot of circumstances and a lot
of things that attribute to being at the right place
at the right time, you know, having a father and
a mother that was supportive, you know what I mean,
and my dad going, you want to go skateboard? I
want to go every day and he's like every day.
He's like, dang, ten bucks every two hours every day. Oh,
(08:10):
I need a second job. And then he was like
he's like, you know what, I'm gonna work here and
then you'll skate for free. And so he became the
manager of the Marina del Rey skate Park and it
was my backyard, and so that was a sacrifice that
that I take into consideration when I look at all
my kids. I have four boys, and just to you know,
(08:32):
see the sacrifice that he made for them, you know,
and for me, you know, is what I want to
do for them. And that's something that really is uh important.
You know. I believe that, uh we as fathers have
to you know, kind of like um, figure out what
(08:53):
those ingredients are per each kid. You know, I have
multiple kids, and so each kid is differently and so
when I'm thinking thinking about how my father kind of
like guided me, told me, hey, you have what it takes.
And then my peers or my my mentors like Jay
Adams and show Go and those guys that were at
the skate park, they were like Christian, you got, you
(09:15):
got what it takes. And those words, those words light
of fire underneath your bottom that no one can put
out but yourself. It's only you who could lose confidence.
Only you can lose the ability to believe in yourself.
And and there is an element of talent, there is
(09:35):
an element of balance, there is an element of my size.
But really those are just obstacles and you have to
learn how to go over those and you can. But
it just takes passion. It takes to dedication, it takes discipline,
it takes um dreaming, it takes having goals, and so
when I was a young boy, I had big goals.
(09:57):
So my father was always shoot for the moon, you
know what I mean, And and uh, the only thing
that's gonna happen is you're gonna hit a star, you
know what I mean, Because if you missed the moon,
you'll nail a star because there's a million of them
out there. But I aimed for the moon. I didn't
settle for a star, and I was gonna go for it.
And Bruce Lee was my idol when I was young,
(10:20):
and all I thought about was either being Bruce Lee
or Elvis Pressley. I was gonna be a movie star
singing to girls, you know, playing my guitar on stage,
or I was gonna be beating everyone up with no
shirt on, like clowning them, rubbing my nose, going come on,
what you know what I mean? You ain't got nothing,
you know what I mean, on the big screen. And
(10:41):
so for me, those were my like, you know, that's
what I was aiming at. And with my father and
all those people around me saying, man, you got this,
you got what it takes. I think that's the uh
ingredients every kid needs, every you know, child needs to
be able to become a champion. What do you remember
(11:04):
your fourteen and making a decision to turn pro and
what does turning pro in the world of skateboarding mean?
At that point, you know, turning pro is everything in
a skateboarder's career because it's the moment that you're validated,
you're confirmed, you're basically awarded that. It's like a degree
(11:25):
right in school, you get a degree and there's an
accomplishment there that has taken place. And for us back
in the eighties, a signature model was the pinnacle of
turning pro. You had your own skateboard, You designed your
own shape, you had your own graphic, and it had
your name on it and it represented who you are.
(11:45):
When you showed up to an event, you had your
flag and it was your board. It's like, you know,
Ford in his car, Ferrari in his car. It was legit.
But could you imagine if the driver could design their
own car and have their name on it. That's what
it would be like. And today it's when you got
that first board. What did you feel like when you
(12:06):
saw it? Oh, it was a dream come true because
you know you you dream about it since you first
picked up a magazine, and now it's happening, and you
just can't believe it because it's it's it's almost like
winning the Hall of Fame. It's like almost winning that
one thing that you can only win once in a lifetime.
It's a lifetime achievement. And then you know, today skateboards
(12:31):
with your graphics or your name on it aren't as
sought after as they were back in the day because
the career of an amateur is way longer now. So
you could win professional contest as an amateur and stay amateur.
We're back in our day you could not receive any
money if you received if you received a dollar, you
(12:53):
were now professional. So so we would not receive money
until we finally decided to term. That's why it was
such a big deal. All of a sudden, you couldn't
turn it down. It would get you know, at some
point you couldn't just couldn't afford to turn it down, right, Well, no,
you could because you're I was fourteen years old, ye,
(13:14):
but but at some point for you you were gonna
be too good, you know. But but that's what's happening today.
Kids are skating amateur and getting paid so wide term
pro you know, all of a sudden you turn pro
and it's almost like your exit out. It's like, now
you're pro, and you got to compete against real the
pro pros, right or no, yes, yes, there there's an
(13:36):
element of now you've got to really step it up
and fit in and become a a legacy. Now it's
not just your getting your wings. It's not just you're
you're the rookie of the year. Now it's like you
need to make your stamp. You need to really come
and let your presence be known in the skateboard world.
(13:56):
And it's always with your peers. Like for me, it
was never with the crowd out. It wasn't with I
always wanted to impress my peers. I wanted to skate
with better people than I was. You know, me and
Tony Hawk would compete and it was great competition because
we were so different in our styles of skateboarding, whether
it was technical ability to power and height and you
(14:18):
know what I did, and you know I came from
that school, he came from the other school. And we
battled and that pushed us to be better at both
our crafts in the style of you know, how we
approach skateboarding, and that's what will push you. You will
never be pushed if you're the best, you know what
I mean. You could end up becoming a teacher, you
(14:39):
become a mentor. But will you grow? Will you will
you have something a higher bar to aim at? Most
likely you'll relax, you'll step down and next thing you know,
the rest comes up and passes you by. And that's
not what we wanted to be. We wanted to be
on the cutting edge and that was proven through you know,
almost a decade and a half half of skateboarding. We
(15:01):
weren't stopping, we were competing. And then the street revolution
came in and changed the face of like popularity of skateboarders,
and then we had to fight for our own again.
You know that vert is the elite skateboard discipline over
street or street is oververt, and we're like, no, skateboarding
(15:21):
is skateboarding. We do it all. And that's why I
street skated and vert skated, backyard, pool, ditches, flat ground.
We did it all just because it wasn't about one
or the other. We wanted to be the best at everything,
and that's what created our culture and why skateboarding is
so unique because it's not just a sport, it's a lifestyle.
(15:44):
It's something you do on and off the board, you know,
And that's the special factor about skateboarding. How many people
there Tony hot Well let it all any day, Chrissie,
I saw Chris, Sorry right now, I siding himself up
(16:06):
for all the run to the day. This is it
do a guy for both scares, for all the marvels
for for fifties six for us on everything you know
I read about you or seemed to come across about
(16:28):
you as you linked with Tony Tony Hall, just as
as far as the timing and the ability and all
of that. What was your relationship like back in the day.
What was it like when you guys were young with
one another. Well, it's funny that me and Tony is
the only skaters that had their fathers fully involved in
(16:50):
their careers. So Tony Hawk's dad was running the ns
A contest and organizing that. My dad was running my
business and helping do all the graphics, the designs. We
would hand screen the boards in a garage, two thousand
boards ourselves, and we would do all the ads ourselves,
and just that whole process. But to think that our
(17:14):
fathers were the really the only ones that I can
remember being there showing up to support their children, and
then we became who we became is not a coincidence.
I really believe there's an element of encouragement and support
that you know, our fathers brought to us that no
(17:35):
one else did, you know what I mean. And that's
something that I cherish. That's something that I'm always you know,
thinking about when it comes to like mine and his career.
Because of course we had to show up. Of course
we had to practice. Of course we had to put
in the work, we had to compete, we had to
(17:55):
put on the paths, we had to you know, get hurt,
we had to do all those things. But we needed
that confidence and our fathers really gave us confidence in
that support. That is something worth more than any you know,
um degrees, any type of money. There's some things you
(18:16):
can't buy in a career, and I think that that
was one of them. And of course he was born
and raised at del mar Skate Park. I was born
and raised at Marina del Ray skate Park. He had
his mentors, I had mine. It was just the right
place at the right time. And then when we competed,
We were friends, we had no issues, but the fans
(18:39):
were just so aggressively rivaling against each other that it
was just intense at contest and we we ate it
up because it pushed us to fight for something. It's
like when your fans in football are out there and
you're like, we're losing in Our fans are here, they're
all pay it. They're freezing with no shirts on and
(19:02):
it's snowing. I need to win for them to you
know what I mean, There's this element of you got
something else to fight for other than yourself. And I
believe that me and Tony had that you know in
our fans rivalry that you know is something that you know,
I'm really starting to put together in my head to
put a documentary of that together, to create it sounds fantastic,
(19:26):
and I'm putting that kind of like a script together.
That's exactly what I was just thinking of in my
mind because I'm thinking about, you know, you've got your
home skate park, did you skate better on the road,
did you skate better at home? All of that stuff
and your fans, Man, that would be golden sign me
up already. Yeah, I think people would want to know
the nuts and bolts of the backdrop, you know what
(19:48):
I mean. Kristen Hosi is a pioneer of bringing skateboarding
into the public eye, being sponsored by his idols at
age eleven in a foreign on set to most. But
it's the only life you had to lead. Tony Hawk
helped bring skateboarding to the mainstream. They were friends and
competitors coming up together. It should have been Christian Hosi's
(20:10):
name hoisted right next to Hawks. Unfortunately, a pattern of
drug use emerged and led Christian down a dark road ahead.
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
So here on charges. Of course, we talked about the
(20:32):
good times, also focus on the dark times as well.
Can you tell me about the first time you did drugs? Yeah,
a matter of fact, I was probably say seven eight
years old, asking me and my friend Aaron Murray, pro
skater friend of mine. We grew up since we're babies.
You know, our fathers are they're playing blues guitar in
(20:55):
their living room, their artists, they go to art school,
you know what I mean. We grew up in that
generation to where it was sex, drugs, rock and roll,
and so for us, you know, as kids were like, hey,
we want to smoke some weed. They're like, here you go,
here's some weed. Here, here's how you don't You don't
roll a pregnant joint, you roll it. You know. They
taught us how to roll a good joint at eight
(21:17):
years old, you know what I mean. And so that's
my first you know time. And then like you know, weed,
smoked weed probably if we could every day every day.
So by ten and eleven, I was smoking weed every day.
By twelve, I'm dealing you know, dime bags at the
skate park and you're in school, and you're in school, right, Yeah.
(21:40):
I was in school, you know, going to junior high,
you know, seventh grade, and my dad ran the Marina
del Rey skate park. I mean, I'm smoking weed with
all my mentors. You know, Ja does your dad know?
I was smoking weed with my dad? Okay, Okay, So
that's why he gave us the weed. And he's like,
if you're gonna do it, do it right. Well, no,
(22:02):
He's like, do the good stuff, you know, don't go
out and do some bunk and get yourself in trouble.
And you know, I see a lot of parents doing that. Today,
they're like, you know what, if you're gonna do drugs,
do it at home. And I'm like, that's not the
best way to do it. You know, that's the kind
of like, you know what, I'm gonna kind of condone
you doing this. So for me, it's you know, I
(22:24):
don't condone it. I'm not gonna let you do it.
You're gonna not do it at my house. And if
you do it, that's on your time, and I'm just
gonna encourage you not to do it. What you do
at your friend's house when you're not at home. I
cannot control My parents could not control me, and I
knew that, and I had to take the chance, you
know what I mean, of doing whatever. But I just
try to educate my kids on drugs, what they are,
(22:47):
what they look like, what they do to you, how
they affect you, and the dangers of it. And then
all right, have a good day, son, be good, be good,
be good. And I think that that's how our father's
back and that day kind of did it. So they
kept us close, taught us how so they don't have
to worry that we're gonna do something, you know, stupid.
(23:08):
Smoked some angel dust and not know we're smoking angel dust,
you know what I mean? What was the culture around
drugs and skating Because I'm I'm not saying it's right,
but certainly I think there was a perception about the
culture of skating, uh and what came along with it. Well,
there was definitely no perception. It was reality, right, it
was you know, from my crew, the surfer skaters and
(23:33):
the punk rockers really quickly became the ones that were
the risk takers, the ones that were getting crazy. Because
then there was the jock you know, the the freestyle
guys that did skateboarding and they did the three sixties
and the handstands, and they wore the short shorts and
they got the you know, the the uniforms, you know
what I mean, and they were like goody to shoe people. Well,
(23:55):
we were the opposite. We were the radicals. We were
smoking weed, were drinking how all chasing girls were on
the beach. Were there successful skaters who didn't, well, none
that hung out with us, because you know, we considered
those people kind of like cooks or Barney's, you know
what I mean, because it was a lifestyle. We weren't
(24:17):
we weren't trying to be professional. We're trying to just
live it up and to be the best while living
it up. So you know, there was a lot of
you know, collateral damage. There was a lot of people
that were dying. There was a lot of people that
were you know, their dreams were getting you know, dashed,
you know, to the ground because they got into drugs.
(24:38):
And then there was people who would lose it because
they didn't you couldn't handle the neighborhood, you know what
I mean. And all those factors were the ones that
we like to break through to be a survivor, to
be a person that can make it happen. You know,
I can come from nothing and become a rich person.
And that's really you know, I came from nothing. You know,
(25:00):
we didn't have money, you know what I mean. We
were okay, you know, Mom had money to pay our
bills and give me twenty bucks every day, you know
what I mean. But I was not a well to
do kid. I fought for everything that I had. And
then when I started making two thousand a month at fourteen,
fifteen years old on my own, because when I realized
(25:21):
that I can do it, you know what I mean,
that that I can be a professional business person, and
then I started my own company at seventeen. And you know,
along with all that pressure and fame and being around
your mentors, you end up doing things you really don't
you're peer pressured into doing. I smoked more weed, I
(25:42):
drank more alcohol. I did cocaine at thirteen, I did
acid at twelve, I did mushrooms at at thirteen. I
was addicted to cocaine at fifteen, quit at like seventeen,
So you know what I mean, doing like how many?
I mean my friends were ads, were doctors in Beverly Hills,
(26:02):
you know, hanging out with the Paul Shores, and all
these crazy kids were young, just like free, no parents anywhere,
doing whatever we wanted. And I had money and I
was famous. I had pictures in the magazines. It's it's
a lot of pressure for a young kid. I have
no brothers and sisters, so there was no one to like,
(26:23):
you know, kick you into you know, shape, or or
to pull you down or pull you up. It was
just me figuring it out. And I'm glad I had
mentors that were like, you need to be the best Christian.
And that's what kind of kept me from going down
into gang affiliation, um, being a drug dealer, a hustler,
(26:45):
being a person who would give it up for a
quick dollar. I had a goal. I had a goal
and that was and that saved it saved my career.
It's the only reason why I have accomplished everything that
I accomplished is because you know, Bruce Lee was, you know,
a man of conviction. He was gonna do it. Nothing
(27:07):
got in and I studied his life. I studied his work,
work ethics, and you know, I did his stretching before contest,
and I wanted to just be that elite of an athlete.
And you know, when it started happening and manifesting and
I started becoming that, it was surreal because you know,
as the person, everybody hear the guy. You're on this pedestal,
(27:30):
you're the man, you're dominating, you're winning this, and you're cool,
you're you know all this stuff, and I'm just like,
it's such a like a sigh of relief, all that
hard work you put in. But then you gotta reproduce
that again next month. You gotta do it again. The
next month. You gotta go and you gotta come do
and if you don't do it, you feel lesser than
(27:52):
next thing. You know, people are chomping at your heels
and you're just like, wow, Okay, this is a real
game to play, and that pushed me to continue to excel.
The perils of pressure for a professional athlete presents enough
problems as it is. Christian was facing all of that
and was a drug addicted preteen in the spotlight. It's
(28:16):
hard enough for an only child to try and find
themselves in adulthood under normal circumstances, but nothing about Christians
life and those who surrounded him was regular. My addiction
issues with opioids have been well documented on this show,
and we've had all kinds of amazing guests tell their
tales of overcoming adversity, but none like this. Unfortunately, no
(28:36):
one can see what was coming next. We'll be right
back after a word from our sponsors. Well, I know,
I think you know. I had a problem with opioids
for fourteen fifteen years, painkillers, rehab three times, and so
(29:01):
I asked these questions with all due respect. H I
knew from the moment that I and I didn't my
whole playing career, I didn't take drugs, I didn't do drugs.
But the second I took a painkiller late in my career.
I knew something was different and something changed. I want
to know what that experience was like for you, And
(29:23):
if that the first time you had crystal meth or
any other drug that really sent you to a place where,
oh this is different. This is something I don't know
that I can do without. Yeah, I had that experience.
I mean I did speed, I did Black Beauties, you know,
back when I was you know, in my fifteen you know,
(29:43):
doing cocaine and all that. You know, we smoked cocaine,
you know, free base, we did qua ludes, you know,
I mean, we did so much of that. Yeah, I
was fifteen years old doing all this stuff, you know
what I mean. And I would stay up all night
and enter a contest and then I'd I'd get second place,
and I'd be like, how did I get second place?
(30:06):
I could have smoked those you know, you know, and
and then I realized I can't do that anymore. That
was kind of like one of those moments where me
and me and Jay Adam stayed up all night party
in doing coke with a bunch of people, and I'm like,
I got this contest in the bagless stay up all night.
I'm gonna go skate this contest and win anyway, And
(30:27):
I went and I basically fell on an easy trick,
and I was like, and I should have won, but
I fell on an easy trick, and I was like,
I'm never gonna do that again. And so no, no,
I was pissed because I know how good I was.
You know what I mean, When you know that you
could just beat people when you could stay up all
(30:48):
night and on drugs, I mean, you're pretty confident, right,
You're you're thinking I could do this in my sleep,
one handed tied behind my back. But then I was like, Okay,
I'm not superman. I need to really focus and not
allow that to happen. Because that's when I started winning
contest was right around then. I was already a prodigy
(31:09):
at twelve. Right Everyone's saying I'm gonna be the best,
And so it took me a minute to get there
in competition because those guys were already the best, and
there was a good competition, and I had to like
step in and become you know, uh kind of refined skateboarder.
And so none of those drugs really did it for me,
(31:29):
you know, marijuana. I smoked weed every single day. I
saw Bob Marley twice. I saw him when I was seven,
saw him when I was eleven, you know what I mean.
So I was a Rastafarian through and through. I thought,
if there was spirituality, I'm like, definitely highly Selassia, you
know what I mean. I and I right and so um.
But then later on in my I think it was
(31:51):
like nine one. I had a girlfriend, you know in Hollywood,
lou Roll's utter and for three years, and then we
broke up. And then I was a single guy running
rapp at crazy in Hollywood, like single life, playing the
player life. And then everybody's doing freebase crack cocaine is
(32:15):
big with all the models, the actors and all the
industry people and all the parties. And I was still
not into it. I was like, I'm like at a
therapy session. All I would do is sit there and
have to like talk talk them off the cliff of depression,
talk them off the cliff of like, you know, relationships.
And it never affected my brain the way that it
(32:37):
affected a lot of my friends, where they'd get paranoid,
they would get you know, schizophrenic, you know what I mean,
cocaine did a number. Ecstasy. I did ecstasy a fifteen
years old when it was over the counter, and and so,
you know, for me, drugs wasn't a big deal because
I really didn't lose my mind when I took acid.
(32:58):
Nothing melted. When I did my shoms, I just laughed.
So I was fortunate not to have that, you know,
well unfortunate because then I'm a functioning user. So now
I can use drugs and it just didn't affect me.
But then when I started doing speed and I moved
down to Orange County. In Orange County was like kind
(33:19):
of like, we're a lot of the bikers, and in
the underground scene was like they were smoking speed, they
were shooting speed, they were eating speed, and it was
all different kinds of speed. And when I tried that,
all I did was snorted, and I was like, dang,
I'm ripping. I'm like killing it. Well, all right, this
(33:40):
is like coffee in a in a in a line,
and it doesn't make me feel like and I'm not
having to like basically therapeutic. Everyone around me, we all
just want to go out and and do stuff longer, faster,
and more days in a row. I mean I'd be
up for two three days at a time, you know,
(34:01):
I mean trying to, you know, find that euphoria of it.
But really I was just a social person. I was
into girls, and I would love to talk, and I
love to go out, and I love to do things.
So it's what kept me kind of going. Yeah. Yeah,
the X Games, the first X Games. You know, from
(34:22):
what I've read, it seems like it was going to
be a big, you know, pretty big deal, you and
Tony back together competing again. But then you don't go.
You don't go to the X Games. A why and
then what in your mind were the consequences of you
not participating in those first X Games, because you know,
the speculation seemed to be that you didn't go and
(34:45):
therefore somewhat missed out on your rightful place in the
minds of people who were, you know, first learning skateboarding
was a sport. Well, here I got a possession charge, right,
having a pipe with some speed. Now I have a Mr.
Meaner drug charge. Then I got another misdemeanor drug charge
with it being on probation, and now that is more severe.
(35:10):
Now I have a bench warrant out for my arrest,
right and so here, I am going to Japan. We're
about to go to Rhode Island for the first X Games.
I got a bench warrant. I'm not gonna go. I'm
running from the cops. I'm running from bench warrant. And
I was like, you know what, I don't need the
X Games. You know what, it looks kind of dorky. Anyway,
(35:34):
it's gonna be whatever. And then I saw it on
the TV and I was like, yep, there it goes
kind of dorky skateboarding, you know what I mean. I'm like,
I'm too cool for school anyway, you know what I mean.
I'll come back when I when I when I get
my bench warrants taken care of. Well, I never got
my bench warrants taken care of. And I ran from
the cops from all the way to two thousand when
(35:55):
I got arrested. Ran from the cops. No idea on
me running around town, you know, oh yeah, And I
had a ninety day sentence to do that I ran from.
Then now I needed to do a six month sentence
because I ran from that. And now I'm just like,
I'm not going. And what was I thinking? I was thinking,
(36:21):
you know what, I'm living this thrilled life. And this
is where the romance comes from, when it comes to underground,
when it comes to like taking risks. You know, I thought,
I've never been a bad guy. I've never been a
kid running from cops. In my life. I paid, I
spent twenty to forty thousand a month on my credit cards.
I traveled the world with my team. I you know,
(36:42):
I never had an issue with money, and here I
am now kind of having issues running around the streets
trying to play this. You know, like I'm having a
fun time, and you think you are, you know, having
a fun time because you're doing things that are like risky.
I'm running from cops. You know. I feel like I'm
kind of like Bonnie and Clyde, you know, gonna go
(37:03):
rob another bank and can't we get away with it?
You know what I mean? And I really thought I
was having a good time. But as I look back,
I can see the despair. I could see the wanting
knowing who I was, but not being able to get unstuck.
I was stuck in a rut. And that's the two
(37:25):
lives that a lot of people live when it comes
to this, this addiction lifestyle. You you you get addicted to
drugs or alcohol or anything. You could get addicted to money,
and next thing you know, it consumes you to the
point where you'll sacrifice everything for it. You know, my
list of priorities was family, friends, skateboarding, then parties, then
(37:49):
drugs and and all that that list turned upside down.
It was drugs, then it was parties, and then it
was business, then it was family, friends and family at
the because you're so shameful, you're so you know you're guilty,
and you're just not the person you and when you
know what's good and you know what's right, and you've
been there, done that, You've been on pedestals, you've been
(38:10):
a world champion. I know what it takes. But at
the end of the day, I was missing something. I
didn't have my own identity. If you'd been arrested for
the same thing in state cort albeit in California or Hawaii,
he would have looked at immediate probation or something close
to it, even with prior convictions. And it makes some
(38:31):
difference you're involved in the case, whether you were a
courier or you're a minimal player, or you were a
significant distributor. It really depends on how the government he
uses you in the end, and the only way to
avoid end the federal system is you cooperate. His response was,
I'm not going to write anyone out. I'm not going
(38:52):
to point the finger at anyone. Uh and he paid
the price. The ultimate irony is that everyone else around
him granted him about everyone else around him had no
problem pointing the finger at him. So when push came
to shove, he was left out in the cold. Let's
talk about the Honolulu airport. What was happening in your
(39:14):
life at that point? You're arrested a pound and a
half of crystal meth on you. When did it set
in like, oh shit, I'm I'm probably going to jail.
Um And what happened to you as a person at
that point. I've traveled to Hawaii a million times, right,
carried as much weed as I could carry everywhere. I've
(39:34):
taken it everywhere around the world, two places where you'll
get kicked out of country's forever for life. And so
you know, I just thought they're never gonna check me.
You know, they've never checked me before, Why would they
check me now? And then little did I know I
was set up and that they were waiting for me,
and all these you know, agents were waiting for me,
and I didn't know. I just thought they were like
(39:55):
hand picking me out of the bunch, you know what
I mean. I was like, you're crazy, I don't know
what you're talking about. You know this is illegal. You
can't search me. How old were you? Thirty one, thirty
two years old? And so I'm just sitting there and
you know, I didn't know i'd go to jail for
ten years, you know what I mean. I just didn't think, so,
you know what I mean. But no one informed me
(40:17):
of the circumstances. No one informed me of the repercussions.
No one informed me that how to deal with a
situation when agents come up to you. Because now I'm
a professional now, if they would have done that to
me today after going to prison, I would have known
what to do and they wouldn't have been able to
catch me, and I wouldn't have been busted, and I
probably would have been dead or eventually in jail again anyway.
(40:43):
So I'm just fortunate that I didn't have that information
because it led me to this path that I'm on
right now. And I'm here on the you know podcast
with you talking about you know, the charges, and and
when they're sitting there telling you, you know, look, Christian,
you're not a drug dealer. You're we know you're christianssy
(41:04):
and you need to you know, tell us you know
where you're going, who you're to. And I'm like, you're crazy,
I can't do that. You do the crime you're doing
the time. They're like, well, no one retaliates. I'll go, well,
I'm from Venice Beach and snitches get stitches and you know,
haven't you watched all the movies And they're like, you
(41:24):
know what, that's the movies. And I'm like, well, they said,
has no retaliation. Well, I told them I fit into
the two percent because if I were to tell on me,
it would be a problem. And I'm a good person.
I'm not like my friends that kill people for fun,
you know what I mean, just because you don't pay up,
you know what I mean. And so I just was
(41:47):
like sorry, and they were like, well, you're gonna do it,
and that at that moment, you know, it didn't really
sink in until I went in and I walk into
the pod where they have all the inmates and these
kids from Christians, soy, what's up? So you're a celebrity
right when you walk in? Yeah? Yeah right, and they're like, dude,
saw you on the news. You were on the news.
(42:09):
And I was like, what's up? And I was like sick.
I was like, so what are you here for? He goes,
I'm here for murder. I'm doing a double life sentence.
And I'm like, oh, sick, nice to meet you, right,
just a kid twenty one years old, right, And he's
I'm like, so what's the deal with my case? They're
saying I'm gonna do ten years, and he goes, yeah, bra, easy,
(42:29):
kind Bra, You'll be out no time. Ten years, Bro,
I got a hundred and seventy years. And I was
like looking at him and I was like, ten years
is good compared to one seventy, you know. I was like, wow,
you put it that way. You put it that way, dude,
I'm out no time. But in my heart I was
like sinking, like this is true. And that's when I
(42:52):
really started to like think what is going on? And
you know, why me? Why me? When you showed up
to prison though, what was it like being finally forced
to well, to get clean and how did you how
did you manage that? Are their programs? You really don't
(43:14):
even think about that when you're under this kind of
pressure and stress of like, oh my addiction and do
I need a fix or do I need to or
am I gonna have any withdrawals? That was the farthest
thing from my mind. But I was never a person
who had withdrawals with anything, you know, in my life
(43:37):
and with speed, you just go to sleep, you wake
up and you're fine, you know what I mean. I'd
stay up for two days, I'd go to sleep for
twelve hours, I'd wake up, I'd be a little groggy,
sleep the next night and I'm back to one, you
know what I mean. Because that drug comes in and
out of your system within twenty It's like comes in
and goes out, and so we're opiates. It's it's a longer, alcohol, longer.
(44:01):
All those are just such a longer um recovery, you know,
in your say withdrawals, right, So I really didn't have
any because I cried out immediately. I'm like, what happened?
And then my girlfriend at the time saying, you know what,
we just got a trust in God. You know, God's
gonna help us through. And that's when I went, I
need to get a Bible. Went and got a Bible,
(44:24):
and it was like the first time I'm going to
open up a Bible in my life. I've been in
a million hotel rooms. I've stashed my weed underneath the
Bible in the drawer, going protect my weeds so that
the maids don't steal it. You know, Hey, that's about
as much as you know of the Bible. I knew
like I opened up at one time. I believe in
(44:45):
my whole life. And I saw columns and numbers with scriptures,
and I was like, what it's like an index? So
what a weird, weird book. I guess it's a bunch
of like you know, Buddhism, Taoism, you know, we're of
wisdom things. And and I just didn't read one word,
never read a word in the Bible, never sat there
(45:05):
and said what does this say? And here I am
opening it up for the first time. Second day in jail,
and that's when I had that encounter with God. And
it was me reading in the Book of Kings where
King David was about to die and he's charging his
son Solomon, and he said does. If he'll follow the
Lord all the days of his life, it will prosper
(45:28):
him that they'll never be a king, not on the throne,
and you'll you'll succeed. And I just went where have
I been? How come nobody speaks of these words of wisdom?
What was it like for you? You know, you've skated
your whole life. I assume they didn't have a skate
(45:49):
park in the yard. What was it like going to
prison and not being able to skate and then you
get out and you can skate again? What was that like?
And once you got out? What were your playing ends?
Immediately right when you got out? Well, you know what
I told God while I was inside, I was like, God,
you know what, I'll give up skateboarding. I'll give him
my family. I'll go to the uh, you know, to
(46:10):
the desert. I'll go to the jungles, I'll go anywhere
you send me. You know what I mean, I'll sacrifice
my life and immediately the Holy Spirit. I'm on my
triple decker bunk bed by the way San Bernardino County Jail,
and I'm sitting there underneath my blanket where I get
with my Bible, and I'm sitting there and all of
a sudden, the Holy spirits like I gave you your talent,
I gave you your family, I gave you your gifts.
(46:31):
And I went like it, Wow, I said, you know what,
I'm gonna be the best skater. I'm gonna be the
best father, I'm gonna be the base husband, I'm gonna
be the best everything. And then I will also go
anywhere you send me and do anything you want me
to do. It's like this, you know the charges with Rex.
You know what I mean, Like here I am Lord
(46:52):
send me, I'll go here. I am stepping into where
God will send me to go. And that that was
that moment where I was like, you know what, I
need to just do what God has called me to do.
You know, Christian so so well. Put. I want to
circle back to sports. Um, something I'm just fascinated by.
(47:13):
You know, I was fortunate in sports and had some success,
but growing up, you know, your dream of being on
the USA team, on the Olympic team. I was a
basketball player. I ended up playing on the USA team,
but basketball was in the Olympics from well beyond when
(47:34):
I was you know, from the time I was born.
It's been going on forever. What in the heck is
it like for you to have I mean, you came
along at the invention of a sport and to see
where it's gone from from when you were nine years old, nine, eleven,
twelve years old, two, now almost fifty four that what
(47:58):
you you were doing in backyard pools and in Santa
Monica is now an Olympic sport. How does that feel?
How does that make you feel? Well, you know, it's
incredible because you know, when I was fourteen, I remember
saying we should be making as much as basketball players.
We should be in the Olympics. And you know, that
(48:20):
was big dreams back then because we were just a
rough around the edges sport, barely like getting new equipment,
all the equipment, whether it's wheels, trucks, boards, Everything was
advancing really quickly, the protective gear and all the maneuvers.
I mean, everything was advancing so quick from to like
eight seven nine. It was astronomical. But to look back
(48:45):
and to think about how I felt then, I still
feel the same way. I thought that we are the
dominant lifestyle sport in the world because it brings in
all the other cultures into it. Because we are connected
to music, were connected to fashion, We're connected to surfing,
We're connected to snowboarding, were connected to um almost like
(49:07):
it's it's living. It's not something we pick up and
put down. And nothing against basketball, football, soccer, you know,
or any of these other sports that you know they
do because some of them are passionate. They go and
play after work and they do their thing. But skateboarders
are like lifers. It's like you're all in. You bleed
(49:31):
for this. And you know, when I when I think
about it being in the Olympics this year, I always
thought that, you know what, the Olympics need skateboarding, not
skateboarding needs the Olympics. That's been my mentality since I
was a kid, Like they wish we were in there,
but we we we you know, we we we do
our own thing. You know what I mean. You can't
(49:52):
you can't tame this. You can't put us in a box.
You can't control us, you can't conform us. We are
non conformed, arming and we're gonna be rebels, We're gonna
be radical. And then how did that do me? While
I went straight to prison with that lifestyle, you know,
and a lot of my dreams were down the drain,
and and and but God revived them. God supernaturally healed
(50:16):
my body, healed my mind, and to come back out
and to see skateboarding the way it was and how
things were going in the early two thousands to where
I actually wanna two gold medals at the X Games,
you know in the Legends divisions the only two years
that they had them, and then multiple contests you know,
(50:36):
in our in our careers of just you know, the
Legends or they called the Master's Divisions and all that.
But for it to finally make it and to even
have a rider from Brazil, Dora Varella was one of
my riders that she was a woman who made it
into the Olympics in my Brazilian you know HUSSOI Team
Hassi division. It was something special because up, I saw
(51:02):
you light up right, you just got yeah. Because you know,
I'm a competitor, Like competition is in my blood. Like
if we're gonna play pool, I'm gonna want to beat you.
I don't care if you know, you know you need
some sympathy. I'm gonna smoke you and I'm gonna talk
smack doing it, and I'm gonna do a triple bumper
(51:26):
shot just to like rub it in. And that's just
the school I come from. And so the Olympics is
that stage. It has nothing to do with personality. It's
got nothing to do with anything. It's a little bit
you know, difficult when it comes to the process where
it's like the qualifications leading up to it. All that
(51:48):
stuff is a little bit unusual for a skateboarder because
skateboarders are usually a little more formal. Right, It's just formal,
very formal, very controlled, and you have to want it.
And if that happened when it was my day, I
would have quit smoking weed. I would have went for it,
and I would have done everything that I could to
(52:08):
get that gold medal, because that's that's just who I am.
You should be. I'm thankful that you're here. Uh. I
can't thank you enough for joining us today. Man. While
I might not ever be able to do uh any
cool tricks on a ramp, I want you to know, man,
I do think you're a well, you're an icon, your legend.
(52:29):
I think what you've achieved in the sport UH is
absolutely incredible. My door is always open to you. Thanks,
my friend. I appreciate that Rex, and it's a great
and honor to be on your show and I can't
wait to do it again, and uh meet you in
person and UH give you a fat hug and say
thank you same here, thanks for joining us Christian Charges
(52:53):
Less and the tennis and balls and charges the Celebrity
Ganks charge if we came along with from Living Long
Charge severing a Runnians with the law charge Ship Lee
send the Tanis and ball is a charge is celebrity
gang forms Charge we came along with from Living Lawless Charge.
Charges is created by port Lay and Control Media is
(53:15):
produced by DV Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit i Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
Charges. That's created by Portalais and Control Media. It's produced
by dB Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. This
time a former Son's player who you might remember as
t Rex. More video in just a moment, but this
is Rex Chapman's mug Shaun, and we are learning a
lot more about the charge up Charging. You're arrested a
(00:22):
pound and a half of crystal meth on you. When
did it set in, like I'm probably going to jail.
I did acid at twelve, I did mushrooms at thirteen.
I was addicted to cocaine at fifteen, and I had money,
and I was famous. I had pictures in the magazines.
It's a lot of pressure for a young kid. I'm
a good person. I'm not like my friends that kill
(00:44):
people for fun. Welcome to Charges. I'm your host, Rex Chapman.
Today on the show, we're joined by a legend, a
name in person so synonymous with skateboarding and it's rise
to prominence that it might shock you if you don't
know it. Christian Hossi was at the front of a
(01:05):
revolution that took place on the black tops across America
and in the world in the late seventies and early eighties.
Oh and he was a pro before he was even
able to get his learners permit. But like so many
other young stars in the City of Angels, the demons
would come for Christian and his fall from grace and
ultimate redemption are why we're here talking today. This his charges. Christian,
(01:37):
welcome to the show, and thank you for being here,
my friend. Thank you very much. Rex, and uh, I
do appreciate the intro. And um, you know, these badges
of honor that we have of success stories is you know,
it's not always the case, and so being that we're alive,
being that we have this second chance, it truly is
(01:58):
something that I'm grateful for or and I don't want
to take life for granted ever. Again, I'm with you,
all right. Well, Christian, look, I'm not gonna lie to you.
A lot of my audience probably isn't. It's familiar with
the newly minted Olympic sport of skateboarding, which we'll talk
about later on. So for someone who doesn't know, explain
the world of skateboarding. When you were starting out, how
(02:19):
did you fall in love with it? Well, my father
was a surfer in the fifties and sixties, Hawaii, and
so he met my mother in college and they moved.
They got married in Vegas, moved to l A. He
went to art school, she went to work in Beverly
Hills as a secretary in business, and so I grew up.
(02:41):
I was born and raised in l A, Hollywood, and
skateboarding in the late sixties and early seventies was hot.
It was the sidewalks surfing, you know. It went from
kind of like surfers on the beach cruising around no
waves to the earth thing Wheel came out in seventy
(03:02):
three and that revolutionized skateboarding, and that's when skateboarding took off.
And guys like Tony Alva, j Adams, Show Go Cuba,
all the z Boys, the Dogtown guys were from Venice,
Santa Monica area, Malibu. And I was part of that
whole scene because my dad was part of the art scene.
And so as a young boy at five years old,
(03:25):
even when I was born, his friend Jim Ganzer gave
him a Macaha board because he was, you know, distributing
and he was a rep for them. So at six
months old, I was being pushed across the kitchen floor
on a Macaha board before I could even walk. And
when the youth thing Wheel came out was when things changed,
(03:45):
and when the surfers and skaters of the day like
Tony Alva went to backyard swimming pools. You went from
carving the bottom the scum line. We call it scum
line because that's when there's water, there's water in a
pool and it creates it's a dark line, and that's
the scum line. Well, you could only go to scum
line with like clay wheels. You could barely go over
(04:08):
the light right, and so now all of a sudden
they're getting to the tile, they're getting to the coping
and then they're in the air. And so that's when
I came in. I came in at six seven years
old and the year Thinge wheel came out and we
were like, this is incredible, smooth Cadillacs. They were even
called Cadillac wheels, and so we were just ecstatic about
(04:32):
how it felt at the school yards, down at the beach,
Venice Beach, cruising down the boardwalk. And then the you know,
skate park started opening up during that time, and there
was a skate park called Marina del Rey Skatepark that
my dad ended up managing right after you know, we
went there, you know when it opened. It only lasted
(04:53):
probably three years the park's existence. But during that time
was when I sharpened my teeth, got involved in skating,
and went from just a little grammat two and a
gramat is a little peep squeak, a little you know,
beginner to that year got a full page in Skateboarder magazine.
(05:15):
How old were you? I was eleven, so nine. I
went to the skate park ten Marina opened eleven, I
got my picture in Skateboarder magazine. Twelve, I won the
biggest amateur contest and then I turned pro at fourteen
years old, and so that's kind of like my career.
But skateboarding was like surfing on land, and for me,
(05:39):
that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be
a surfer, wanted to be Jerry Lopez, wanted to be
Larry Berteleman, wanted to be those guys and buttons and
dank kaloha and so surfing, you gotta get up early.
It's freezing cold, like the waves sucked. There's a million
people out. I was like this, there's no reward in this,
(06:03):
like you know, but I knew that my friends at ripped.
There was this passion that they had that I knew.
But when I got on my skateboard, I just emulated surfing,
and so I got my surfing fixed on land and
that's what drove me to skate every day to become
who I obviously became in the skateboard world of the day.
(06:24):
But even today, you know, skateboarding is still like in
my blood. I gotta go, like yesterday I went. Today,
I gotta go. I gotta practice for another event this weekend.
And so I'm fifty three years old and still got
to go out and perform in front of five thousand people.
And I tell you, when you're rusty, you're like, I
(06:44):
need to like practice, man, that's amazing and fifty three
and I know that. And you're about to be fifty
four next week because I'm fifty four on October five
as well. My friend, are you serio? What birthday? Buddies?
(07:05):
That's right, let's go, let's go. That was a great
day in sixty seven. There we go, there we go.
Uh yeah, but I was I was brushing up on
you and noticed that what what what a cool thing.
But anyway, so I'm fascinated. Obviously, we we all are
with sort of people that do things at a young age,
(07:27):
and you were you're essentially a prodigy at least considering
to how skateboarding was at the time. Did you know
you were that good or was it just second nature?
I assume you had and have perfect balance and you're
compact and that has to help. But what made you
(07:48):
so good and did you know you were that good?
I think there's a lot of circumstances and a lot
of things that attribute to being at the right place
at the right time, you know, having a father and
a mother that was supportive, you know what I mean,
and my dad going, you want to go skateboard? I
want to go every day and he's like every day.
He's like, dang, ten bucks every two hours every day. Oh,
(08:10):
I need a second job. And then he was like
he's like, you know what, I'm gonna work here and
then you'll skate for free. And so he became the
manager of the Marina del Rey skate Park and it
was my backyard, and so that was a sacrifice that
that I take into consideration when I look at all
my kids. I have four boys, and just to you know,
(08:32):
see the sacrifice that he made for them, you know,
and for me, you know, is what I want to
do for them. And that's something that really is uh important.
You know. I believe that, uh we as fathers have
to you know, kind of like um, figure out what
(08:53):
those ingredients are per each kid. You know, I have
multiple kids, and so each kid is differently and so
when I'm thinking thinking about how my father kind of
like guided me, told me, hey, you have what it takes.
And then my peers or my my mentors like Jay
Adams and show Go and those guys that were at
the skate park, they were like Christian, you got, you
(09:15):
got what it takes. And those words, those words light
of fire underneath your bottom that no one can put
out but yourself. It's only you who could lose confidence.
Only you can lose the ability to believe in yourself.
And and there is an element of talent, there is
(09:35):
an element of balance, there is an element of my size.
But really those are just obstacles and you have to
learn how to go over those and you can. But
it just takes passion. It takes to dedication, it takes discipline,
it takes um dreaming, it takes having goals, and so
when I was a young boy, I had big goals.
(09:57):
So my father was always shoot for the moon, you
know what I mean, And and uh, the only thing
that's gonna happen is you're gonna hit a star, you
know what I mean, Because if you missed the moon,
you'll nail a star because there's a million of them
out there. But I aimed for the moon. I didn't
settle for a star, and I was gonna go for it.
And Bruce Lee was my idol when I was young,
(10:20):
and all I thought about was either being Bruce Lee
or Elvis Pressley. I was gonna be a movie star
singing to girls, you know, playing my guitar on stage,
or I was gonna be beating everyone up with no
shirt on, like clowning them, rubbing my nose, going come on,
what you know what I mean? You ain't got nothing,
you know what I mean, on the big screen. And
(10:41):
so for me, those were my like, you know, that's
what I was aiming at. And with my father and
all those people around me saying, man, you got this,
you got what it takes. I think that's the uh
ingredients every kid needs, every you know, child needs to
be able to become a champion. What do you remember
(11:04):
your fourteen and making a decision to turn pro and
what does turning pro in the world of skateboarding mean?
At that point, you know, turning pro is everything in
a skateboarder's career because it's the moment that you're validated,
you're confirmed, you're basically awarded that. It's like a degree
(11:25):
right in school, you get a degree and there's an
accomplishment there that has taken place. And for us back
in the eighties, a signature model was the pinnacle of
turning pro. You had your own skateboard, You designed your
own shape, you had your own graphic, and it had
your name on it and it represented who you are.
(11:45):
When you showed up to an event, you had your
flag and it was your board. It's like, you know,
Ford in his car, Ferrari in his car. It was legit.
But could you imagine if the driver could design their
own car and have their name on it. That's what
it would be like. And today it's when you got
that first board. What did you feel like when you
(12:06):
saw it? Oh, it was a dream come true because
you know you you dream about it since you first
picked up a magazine, and now it's happening, and you
just can't believe it because it's it's it's almost like
winning the Hall of Fame. It's like almost winning that
one thing that you can only win once in a lifetime.
It's a lifetime achievement. And then you know, today skateboards
(12:31):
with your graphics or your name on it aren't as
sought after as they were back in the day because
the career of an amateur is way longer now. So
you could win professional contest as an amateur and stay amateur.
We're back in our day you could not receive any
money if you received if you received a dollar, you
(12:53):
were now professional. So so we would not receive money
until we finally decided to term. That's why it was
such a big deal. All of a sudden, you couldn't
turn it down. It would get you know, at some
point you couldn't just couldn't afford to turn it down, right, Well, no,
you could because you're I was fourteen years old, ye,
(13:14):
but but at some point for you you were gonna
be too good, you know. But but that's what's happening today.
Kids are skating amateur and getting paid so wide term
pro you know, all of a sudden you turn pro
and it's almost like your exit out. It's like, now
you're pro, and you got to compete against real the
pro pros, right or no, yes, yes, there there's an
(13:36):
element of now you've got to really step it up
and fit in and become a a legacy. Now it's
not just your getting your wings. It's not just you're
you're the rookie of the year. Now it's like you
need to make your stamp. You need to really come
and let your presence be known in the skateboard world.
(13:56):
And it's always with your peers. Like for me, it
was never with the crowd out. It wasn't with I
always wanted to impress my peers. I wanted to skate
with better people than I was. You know, me and
Tony Hawk would compete and it was great competition because
we were so different in our styles of skateboarding, whether
it was technical ability to power and height and you
(14:18):
know what I did, and you know I came from
that school, he came from the other school. And we
battled and that pushed us to be better at both
our crafts in the style of you know, how we
approach skateboarding, and that's what will push you. You will
never be pushed if you're the best, you know what
I mean. You could end up becoming a teacher, you
(14:39):
become a mentor. But will you grow? Will you will
you have something a higher bar to aim at? Most
likely you'll relax, you'll step down and next thing you know,
the rest comes up and passes you by. And that's
not what we wanted to be. We wanted to be
on the cutting edge and that was proven through you know,
almost a decade and a half half of skateboarding. We
(15:01):
weren't stopping, we were competing. And then the street revolution
came in and changed the face of like popularity of skateboarders,
and then we had to fight for our own again.
You know that vert is the elite skateboard discipline over
street or street is oververt, and we're like, no, skateboarding
(15:21):
is skateboarding. We do it all. And that's why I
street skated and vert skated, backyard, pool, ditches, flat ground.
We did it all just because it wasn't about one
or the other. We wanted to be the best at everything,
and that's what created our culture and why skateboarding is
so unique because it's not just a sport, it's a lifestyle.
(15:44):
It's something you do on and off the board, you know,
And that's the special factor about skateboarding. How many people
there Tony hot Well let it all any day, Chrissie,
I saw Chris, Sorry right now, I siding himself up
(16:06):
for all the run to the day. This is it
do a guy for both scares, for all the marvels
for for fifties six for us on everything you know
I read about you or seemed to come across about
(16:28):
you as you linked with Tony Tony Hall, just as
as far as the timing and the ability and all
of that. What was your relationship like back in the day.
What was it like when you guys were young with
one another. Well, it's funny that me and Tony is
the only skaters that had their fathers fully involved in
(16:50):
their careers. So Tony Hawk's dad was running the ns
A contest and organizing that. My dad was running my
business and helping do all the graphics, the designs. We
would hand screen the boards in a garage, two thousand
boards ourselves, and we would do all the ads ourselves,
and just that whole process. But to think that our
(17:14):
fathers were the really the only ones that I can
remember being there showing up to support their children, and
then we became who we became is not a coincidence.
I really believe there's an element of encouragement and support
that you know, our fathers brought to us that no
(17:35):
one else did, you know what I mean. And that's
something that I cherish. That's something that I'm always you know,
thinking about when it comes to like mine and his career.
Because of course we had to show up. Of course
we had to practice. Of course we had to put
in the work, we had to compete, we had to
(17:55):
put on the paths, we had to you know, get hurt,
we had to do all those things. But we needed
that confidence and our fathers really gave us confidence in
that support. That is something worth more than any you know,
um degrees, any type of money. There's some things you
(18:16):
can't buy in a career, and I think that that
was one of them. And of course he was born
and raised at del mar Skate Park. I was born
and raised at Marina del Ray skate Park. He had
his mentors, I had mine. It was just the right
place at the right time. And then when we competed,
We were friends, we had no issues, but the fans
(18:39):
were just so aggressively rivaling against each other that it
was just intense at contest and we we ate it
up because it pushed us to fight for something. It's
like when your fans in football are out there and
you're like, we're losing in Our fans are here, they're
all pay it. They're freezing with no shirts on and
(19:02):
it's snowing. I need to win for them to you
know what I mean, There's this element of you got
something else to fight for other than yourself. And I
believe that me and Tony had that you know in
our fans rivalry that you know is something that you know,
I'm really starting to put together in my head to
put a documentary of that together, to create it sounds fantastic,
(19:26):
and I'm putting that kind of like a script together.
That's exactly what I was just thinking of in my
mind because I'm thinking about, you know, you've got your
home skate park, did you skate better on the road,
did you skate better at home? All of that stuff
and your fans, Man, that would be golden sign me
up already. Yeah, I think people would want to know
the nuts and bolts of the backdrop, you know what
(19:48):
I mean. Kristen Hosi is a pioneer of bringing skateboarding
into the public eye, being sponsored by his idols at
age eleven in a foreign on set to most. But
it's the only life you had to lead. Tony Hawk
helped bring skateboarding to the mainstream. They were friends and
competitors coming up together. It should have been Christian Hosi's
(20:10):
name hoisted right next to Hawks. Unfortunately, a pattern of
drug use emerged and led Christian down a dark road ahead.
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
So here on charges. Of course, we talked about the
(20:32):
good times, also focus on the dark times as well.
Can you tell me about the first time you did drugs? Yeah,
a matter of fact, I was probably say seven eight
years old, asking me and my friend Aaron Murray, pro
skater friend of mine. We grew up since we're babies.
You know, our fathers are they're playing blues guitar in
(20:55):
their living room, their artists, they go to art school,
you know what I mean. We grew up in that
generation to where it was sex, drugs, rock and roll,
and so for us, you know, as kids were like, hey,
we want to smoke some weed. They're like, here you go,
here's some weed. Here, here's how you don't You don't
roll a pregnant joint, you roll it. You know. They
taught us how to roll a good joint at eight
(21:17):
years old, you know what I mean. And so that's
my first you know time. And then like you know, weed,
smoked weed probably if we could every day every day.
So by ten and eleven, I was smoking weed every day.
By twelve, I'm dealing you know, dime bags at the
skate park and you're in school, and you're in school, right, Yeah.
(21:40):
I was in school, you know, going to junior high,
you know, seventh grade, and my dad ran the Marina
del Rey skate park. I mean, I'm smoking weed with
all my mentors. You know, Ja does your dad know?
I was smoking weed with my dad? Okay, Okay, So
that's why he gave us the weed. And he's like,
if you're gonna do it, do it right. Well, no,
(22:02):
He's like, do the good stuff, you know, don't go
out and do some bunk and get yourself in trouble.
And you know, I see a lot of parents doing that. Today,
they're like, you know what, if you're gonna do drugs,
do it at home. And I'm like, that's not the
best way to do it. You know, that's the kind
of like, you know what, I'm gonna kind of condone
you doing this. So for me, it's you know, I
(22:24):
don't condone it. I'm not gonna let you do it.
You're gonna not do it at my house. And if
you do it, that's on your time, and I'm just
gonna encourage you not to do it. What you do
at your friend's house when you're not at home. I
cannot control My parents could not control me, and I
knew that, and I had to take the chance, you
know what I mean, of doing whatever. But I just
try to educate my kids on drugs, what they are,
(22:47):
what they look like, what they do to you, how
they affect you, and the dangers of it. And then
all right, have a good day, son, be good, be good,
be good. And I think that that's how our father's
back and that day kind of did it. So they
kept us close, taught us how so they don't have
to worry that we're gonna do something, you know, stupid.
(23:08):
Smoked some angel dust and not know we're smoking angel dust,
you know what I mean? What was the culture around
drugs and skating Because I'm I'm not saying it's right,
but certainly I think there was a perception about the
culture of skating, uh and what came along with it. Well,
there was definitely no perception. It was reality, right, it
was you know, from my crew, the surfer skaters and
(23:33):
the punk rockers really quickly became the ones that were
the risk takers, the ones that were getting crazy. Because
then there was the jock you know, the the freestyle
guys that did skateboarding and they did the three sixties
and the handstands, and they wore the short shorts and
they got the you know, the the uniforms, you know
what I mean, and they were like goody to shoe people. Well,
(23:55):
we were the opposite. We were the radicals. We were
smoking weed, were drinking how all chasing girls were on
the beach. Were there successful skaters who didn't, well, none
that hung out with us, because you know, we considered
those people kind of like cooks or Barney's, you know
what I mean, because it was a lifestyle. We weren't
(24:17):
we weren't trying to be professional. We're trying to just
live it up and to be the best while living
it up. So you know, there was a lot of
you know, collateral damage. There was a lot of people
that were dying. There was a lot of people that
were you know, their dreams were getting you know, dashed,
you know, to the ground because they got into drugs.
(24:38):
And then there was people who would lose it because
they didn't you couldn't handle the neighborhood, you know what
I mean. And all those factors were the ones that
we like to break through to be a survivor, to
be a person that can make it happen. You know,
I can come from nothing and become a rich person.
And that's really you know, I came from nothing. You know,
(25:00):
we didn't have money, you know what I mean. We
were okay, you know, Mom had money to pay our
bills and give me twenty bucks every day, you know
what I mean. But I was not a well to
do kid. I fought for everything that I had. And
then when I started making two thousand a month at fourteen,
fifteen years old on my own, because when I realized
(25:21):
that I can do it, you know what I mean,
that that I can be a professional business person, and
then I started my own company at seventeen. And you know,
along with all that pressure and fame and being around
your mentors, you end up doing things you really don't
you're peer pressured into doing. I smoked more weed, I
(25:42):
drank more alcohol. I did cocaine at thirteen, I did
acid at twelve, I did mushrooms at at thirteen. I
was addicted to cocaine at fifteen, quit at like seventeen,
So you know what I mean, doing like how many?
I mean my friends were ads, were doctors in Beverly Hills,
(26:02):
you know, hanging out with the Paul Shores, and all
these crazy kids were young, just like free, no parents anywhere,
doing whatever we wanted. And I had money and I
was famous. I had pictures in the magazines. It's it's
a lot of pressure for a young kid. I have
no brothers and sisters, so there was no one to like,
(26:23):
you know, kick you into you know, shape, or or
to pull you down or pull you up. It was
just me figuring it out. And I'm glad I had
mentors that were like, you need to be the best Christian.
And that's what kind of kept me from going down
into gang affiliation, um, being a drug dealer, a hustler,
(26:45):
being a person who would give it up for a
quick dollar. I had a goal. I had a goal
and that was and that saved it saved my career.
It's the only reason why I have accomplished everything that
I accomplished is because you know, Bruce Lee was, you know,
a man of conviction. He was gonna do it. Nothing
(27:07):
got in and I studied his life. I studied his work,
work ethics, and you know, I did his stretching before contest,
and I wanted to just be that elite of an athlete.
And you know, when it started happening and manifesting and
I started becoming that, it was surreal because you know,
as the person, everybody hear the guy. You're on this pedestal,
(27:30):
you're the man, you're dominating, you're winning this, and you're cool,
you're you know all this stuff, and I'm just like,
it's such a like a sigh of relief, all that
hard work you put in. But then you gotta reproduce
that again next month. You gotta do it again. The
next month. You gotta go and you gotta come do
and if you don't do it, you feel lesser than
(27:52):
next thing. You know, people are chomping at your heels
and you're just like, wow, Okay, this is a real
game to play, and that pushed me to continue to excel.
The perils of pressure for a professional athlete presents enough
problems as it is. Christian was facing all of that
and was a drug addicted preteen in the spotlight. It's
(28:16):
hard enough for an only child to try and find
themselves in adulthood under normal circumstances, but nothing about Christians
life and those who surrounded him was regular. My addiction
issues with opioids have been well documented on this show,
and we've had all kinds of amazing guests tell their
tales of overcoming adversity, but none like this. Unfortunately, no
(28:36):
one can see what was coming next. We'll be right
back after a word from our sponsors. Well, I know,
I think you know. I had a problem with opioids
for fourteen fifteen years, painkillers, rehab three times, and so
(29:01):
I asked these questions with all due respect. H I
knew from the moment that I and I didn't my
whole playing career, I didn't take drugs, I didn't do drugs.
But the second I took a painkiller late in my career.
I knew something was different and something changed. I want
to know what that experience was like for you, And
(29:23):
if that the first time you had crystal meth or
any other drug that really sent you to a place where,
oh this is different. This is something I don't know
that I can do without. Yeah, I had that experience.
I mean I did speed, I did Black Beauties, you know,
back when I was you know, in my fifteen you know,
(29:43):
doing cocaine and all that. You know, we smoked cocaine,
you know, free base, we did qua ludes, you know,
I mean, we did so much of that. Yeah, I
was fifteen years old doing all this stuff, you know
what I mean. And I would stay up all night
and enter a contest and then I'd I'd get second place,
and I'd be like, how did I get second place?
(30:06):
I could have smoked those you know, you know, and
and then I realized I can't do that anymore. That
was kind of like one of those moments where me
and me and Jay Adam stayed up all night party
in doing coke with a bunch of people, and I'm like,
I got this contest in the bagless stay up all night.
I'm gonna go skate this contest and win anyway, And
(30:27):
I went and I basically fell on an easy trick,
and I was like, and I should have won, but
I fell on an easy trick, and I was like,
I'm never gonna do that again. And so no, no,
I was pissed because I know how good I was.
You know what I mean, When you know that you
could just beat people when you could stay up all
(30:48):
night and on drugs, I mean, you're pretty confident, right,
You're you're thinking I could do this in my sleep,
one handed tied behind my back. But then I was like, Okay,
I'm not superman. I need to really focus and not
allow that to happen. Because that's when I started winning
contest was right around then. I was already a prodigy
(31:09):
at twelve. Right Everyone's saying I'm gonna be the best,
And so it took me a minute to get there
in competition because those guys were already the best, and
there was a good competition, and I had to like
step in and become you know, uh kind of refined skateboarder.
And so none of those drugs really did it for me,
(31:29):
you know, marijuana. I smoked weed every single day. I
saw Bob Marley twice. I saw him when I was seven,
saw him when I was eleven, you know what I mean.
So I was a Rastafarian through and through. I thought,
if there was spirituality, I'm like, definitely highly Selassia, you
know what I mean. I and I right and so um.
But then later on in my I think it was
(31:51):
like nine one. I had a girlfriend, you know in Hollywood,
lou Roll's utter and for three years, and then we
broke up. And then I was a single guy running
rapp at crazy in Hollywood, like single life, playing the
player life. And then everybody's doing freebase crack cocaine is
(32:15):
big with all the models, the actors and all the
industry people and all the parties. And I was still
not into it. I was like, I'm like at a
therapy session. All I would do is sit there and
have to like talk talk them off the cliff of depression,
talk them off the cliff of like, you know, relationships.
And it never affected my brain the way that it
(32:37):
affected a lot of my friends, where they'd get paranoid,
they would get you know, schizophrenic, you know what I mean,
cocaine did a number. Ecstasy. I did ecstasy a fifteen
years old when it was over the counter, and and so,
you know, for me, drugs wasn't a big deal because
I really didn't lose my mind when I took acid.
(32:58):
Nothing melted. When I did my shoms, I just laughed.
So I was fortunate not to have that, you know,
well unfortunate because then I'm a functioning user. So now
I can use drugs and it just didn't affect me.
But then when I started doing speed and I moved
down to Orange County. In Orange County was like kind
(33:19):
of like, we're a lot of the bikers, and in
the underground scene was like they were smoking speed, they
were shooting speed, they were eating speed, and it was
all different kinds of speed. And when I tried that,
all I did was snorted, and I was like, dang,
I'm ripping. I'm like killing it. Well, all right, this
(33:40):
is like coffee in a in a in a line,
and it doesn't make me feel like and I'm not
having to like basically therapeutic. Everyone around me, we all
just want to go out and and do stuff longer, faster,
and more days in a row. I mean I'd be
up for two three days at a time, you know,
(34:01):
I mean trying to, you know, find that euphoria of it.
But really I was just a social person. I was
into girls, and I would love to talk, and I
love to go out, and I love to do things.
So it's what kept me kind of going. Yeah. Yeah,
the X Games, the first X Games. You know, from
(34:22):
what I've read, it seems like it was going to
be a big, you know, pretty big deal, you and
Tony back together competing again. But then you don't go.
You don't go to the X Games. A why and
then what in your mind were the consequences of you
not participating in those first X Games, because you know,
the speculation seemed to be that you didn't go and
(34:45):
therefore somewhat missed out on your rightful place in the
minds of people who were, you know, first learning skateboarding
was a sport. Well, here I got a possession charge, right,
having a pipe with some speed. Now I have a Mr.
Meaner drug charge. Then I got another misdemeanor drug charge
with it being on probation, and now that is more severe.
(35:10):
Now I have a bench warrant out for my arrest,
right and so here, I am going to Japan. We're
about to go to Rhode Island for the first X Games.
I got a bench warrant. I'm not gonna go. I'm
running from the cops. I'm running from bench warrant. And
I was like, you know what, I don't need the
X Games. You know what, it looks kind of dorky. Anyway,
(35:34):
it's gonna be whatever. And then I saw it on
the TV and I was like, yep, there it goes
kind of dorky skateboarding, you know what I mean. I'm like,
I'm too cool for school anyway, you know what I mean.
I'll come back when I when I when I get
my bench warrants taken care of. Well, I never got
my bench warrants taken care of. And I ran from
the cops from all the way to two thousand when
(35:55):
I got arrested. Ran from the cops. No idea on
me running around town, you know, oh yeah, And I
had a ninety day sentence to do that I ran from.
Then now I needed to do a six month sentence
because I ran from that. And now I'm just like,
I'm not going. And what was I thinking? I was thinking,
(36:21):
you know what, I'm living this thrilled life. And this
is where the romance comes from, when it comes to underground,
when it comes to like taking risks. You know, I thought,
I've never been a bad guy. I've never been a
kid running from cops. In my life. I paid, I
spent twenty to forty thousand a month on my credit cards.
I traveled the world with my team. I you know,
(36:42):
I never had an issue with money, and here I
am now kind of having issues running around the streets
trying to play this. You know, like I'm having a
fun time, and you think you are, you know, having
a fun time because you're doing things that are like risky.
I'm running from cops. You know. I feel like I'm
kind of like Bonnie and Clyde, you know, gonna go
(37:03):
rob another bank and can't we get away with it?
You know what I mean? And I really thought I
was having a good time. But as I look back,
I can see the despair. I could see the wanting
knowing who I was, but not being able to get unstuck.
I was stuck in a rut. And that's the two
(37:25):
lives that a lot of people live when it comes
to this, this addiction lifestyle. You you you get addicted to
drugs or alcohol or anything. You could get addicted to money,
and next thing you know, it consumes you to the
point where you'll sacrifice everything for it. You know, my
list of priorities was family, friends, skateboarding, then parties, then
(37:49):
drugs and and all that that list turned upside down.
It was drugs, then it was parties, and then it
was business, then it was family, friends and family at
the because you're so shameful, you're so you know you're guilty,
and you're just not the person you and when you
know what's good and you know what's right, and you've
been there, done that, You've been on pedestals, you've been
(38:10):
a world champion. I know what it takes. But at
the end of the day, I was missing something. I
didn't have my own identity. If you'd been arrested for
the same thing in state cort albeit in California or Hawaii,
he would have looked at immediate probation or something close
to it, even with prior convictions. And it makes some
(38:31):
difference you're involved in the case, whether you were a
courier or you're a minimal player, or you were a
significant distributor. It really depends on how the government he
uses you in the end, and the only way to
avoid end the federal system is you cooperate. His response was,
I'm not going to write anyone out. I'm not going
(38:52):
to point the finger at anyone. Uh and he paid
the price. The ultimate irony is that everyone else around
him granted him about everyone else around him had no
problem pointing the finger at him. So when push came
to shove, he was left out in the cold. Let's
talk about the Honolulu airport. What was happening in your
(39:14):
life at that point? You're arrested a pound and a
half of crystal meth on you. When did it set
in like, oh shit, I'm I'm probably going to jail.
Um And what happened to you as a person at
that point. I've traveled to Hawaii a million times, right,
carried as much weed as I could carry everywhere. I've
(39:34):
taken it everywhere around the world, two places where you'll
get kicked out of country's forever for life. And so
you know, I just thought they're never gonna check me.
You know, they've never checked me before, Why would they
check me now? And then little did I know I
was set up and that they were waiting for me,
and all these you know, agents were waiting for me,
and I didn't know. I just thought they were like
(39:55):
hand picking me out of the bunch, you know what
I mean. I was like, you're crazy, I don't know
what you're talking about. You know this is illegal. You
can't search me. How old were you? Thirty one, thirty
two years old? And so I'm just sitting there and
you know, I didn't know i'd go to jail for
ten years, you know what I mean. I just didn't think, so,
you know what I mean. But no one informed me
(40:17):
of the circumstances. No one informed me of the repercussions.
No one informed me that how to deal with a
situation when agents come up to you. Because now I'm
a professional now, if they would have done that to
me today after going to prison, I would have known
what to do and they wouldn't have been able to
catch me, and I wouldn't have been busted, and I
probably would have been dead or eventually in jail again anyway.
(40:43):
So I'm just fortunate that I didn't have that information
because it led me to this path that I'm on
right now. And I'm here on the you know podcast
with you talking about you know, the charges, and and
when they're sitting there telling you, you know, look, Christian,
you're not a drug dealer. You're we know you're christianssy
(41:04):
and you need to you know, tell us you know
where you're going, who you're to. And I'm like, you're crazy,
I can't do that. You do the crime you're doing
the time. They're like, well, no one retaliates. I'll go, well,
I'm from Venice Beach and snitches get stitches and you know,
haven't you watched all the movies And they're like, you
(41:24):
know what, that's the movies. And I'm like, well, they said,
has no retaliation. Well, I told them I fit into
the two percent because if I were to tell on me,
it would be a problem. And I'm a good person.
I'm not like my friends that kill people for fun,
you know what I mean, just because you don't pay up,
you know what I mean. And so I just was
(41:47):
like sorry, and they were like, well, you're gonna do it,
and that at that moment, you know, it didn't really
sink in until I went in and I walk into
the pod where they have all the inmates and these
kids from Christians, soy, what's up? So you're a celebrity
right when you walk in? Yeah? Yeah right, and they're like, dude,
saw you on the news. You were on the news.
(42:09):
And I was like, what's up? And I was like sick.
I was like, so what are you here for? He goes,
I'm here for murder. I'm doing a double life sentence.
And I'm like, oh, sick, nice to meet you, right,
just a kid twenty one years old, right, And he's
I'm like, so what's the deal with my case? They're
saying I'm gonna do ten years, and he goes, yeah, bra, easy,
(42:29):
kind Bra, You'll be out no time. Ten years, Bro,
I got a hundred and seventy years. And I was
like looking at him and I was like, ten years
is good compared to one seventy, you know. I was like, wow,
you put it that way. You put it that way, dude,
I'm out no time. But in my heart I was
like sinking, like this is true. And that's when I
(42:52):
really started to like think what is going on? And
you know, why me? Why me? When you showed up
to prison though, what was it like being finally forced
to well, to get clean and how did you how
did you manage that? Are their programs? You really don't
(43:14):
even think about that when you're under this kind of
pressure and stress of like, oh my addiction and do
I need a fix or do I need to or
am I gonna have any withdrawals? That was the farthest
thing from my mind. But I was never a person
who had withdrawals with anything, you know, in my life
(43:37):
and with speed, you just go to sleep, you wake
up and you're fine, you know what I mean. I'd
stay up for two days, I'd go to sleep for
twelve hours, I'd wake up, I'd be a little groggy,
sleep the next night and I'm back to one, you
know what I mean. Because that drug comes in and
out of your system within twenty It's like comes in
and goes out, and so we're opiates. It's it's a longer, alcohol, longer.
(44:01):
All those are just such a longer um recovery, you know,
in your say withdrawals, right, So I really didn't have
any because I cried out immediately. I'm like, what happened?
And then my girlfriend at the time saying, you know what,
we just got a trust in God. You know, God's
gonna help us through. And that's when I went, I
need to get a Bible. Went and got a Bible,
(44:24):
and it was like the first time I'm going to
open up a Bible in my life. I've been in
a million hotel rooms. I've stashed my weed underneath the
Bible in the drawer, going protect my weeds so that
the maids don't steal it. You know, Hey, that's about
as much as you know of the Bible. I knew
like I opened up at one time. I believe in
(44:45):
my whole life. And I saw columns and numbers with scriptures,
and I was like, what it's like an index? So
what a weird, weird book. I guess it's a bunch
of like you know, Buddhism, Taoism, you know, we're of
wisdom things. And and I just didn't read one word,
never read a word in the Bible, never sat there
(45:05):
and said what does this say? And here I am
opening it up for the first time. Second day in jail,
and that's when I had that encounter with God. And
it was me reading in the Book of Kings where
King David was about to die and he's charging his
son Solomon, and he said does. If he'll follow the
Lord all the days of his life, it will prosper
(45:28):
him that they'll never be a king, not on the throne,
and you'll you'll succeed. And I just went where have
I been? How come nobody speaks of these words of wisdom?
What was it like for you? You know, you've skated
your whole life. I assume they didn't have a skate
(45:49):
park in the yard. What was it like going to
prison and not being able to skate and then you
get out and you can skate again? What was that like?
And once you got out? What were your playing ends?
Immediately right when you got out? Well, you know what
I told God while I was inside, I was like, God,
you know what, I'll give up skateboarding. I'll give him
my family. I'll go to the uh, you know, to
(46:10):
the desert. I'll go to the jungles, I'll go anywhere
you send me. You know what I mean, I'll sacrifice
my life and immediately the Holy Spirit. I'm on my
triple decker bunk bed by the way San Bernardino County Jail,
and I'm sitting there underneath my blanket where I get
with my Bible, and I'm sitting there and all of
a sudden, the Holy spirits like I gave you your talent,
I gave you your family, I gave you your gifts.
(46:31):
And I went like it, Wow, I said, you know what,
I'm gonna be the best skater. I'm gonna be the
best father, I'm gonna be the base husband, I'm gonna
be the best everything. And then I will also go
anywhere you send me and do anything you want me
to do. It's like this, you know the charges with Rex.
You know what I mean, Like here I am Lord
(46:52):
send me, I'll go here. I am stepping into where
God will send me to go. And that that was
that moment where I was like, you know what, I
need to just do what God has called me to do.
You know, Christian so so well. Put. I want to
circle back to sports. Um, something I'm just fascinated by.
(47:13):
You know, I was fortunate in sports and had some success,
but growing up, you know, your dream of being on
the USA team, on the Olympic team. I was a
basketball player. I ended up playing on the USA team,
but basketball was in the Olympics from well beyond when
(47:34):
I was you know, from the time I was born.
It's been going on forever. What in the heck is
it like for you to have I mean, you came
along at the invention of a sport and to see
where it's gone from from when you were nine years old, nine, eleven,
twelve years old, two, now almost fifty four that what
(47:58):
you you were doing in backyard pools and in Santa
Monica is now an Olympic sport. How does that feel?
How does that make you feel? Well, you know, it's
incredible because you know, when I was fourteen, I remember
saying we should be making as much as basketball players.
We should be in the Olympics. And you know, that
(48:20):
was big dreams back then because we were just a
rough around the edges sport, barely like getting new equipment,
all the equipment, whether it's wheels, trucks, boards, Everything was
advancing really quickly, the protective gear and all the maneuvers.
I mean, everything was advancing so quick from to like
eight seven nine. It was astronomical. But to look back
(48:45):
and to think about how I felt then, I still
feel the same way. I thought that we are the
dominant lifestyle sport in the world because it brings in
all the other cultures into it. Because we are connected
to music, were connected to fashion, We're connected to surfing,
We're connected to snowboarding, were connected to um almost like
(49:07):
it's it's living. It's not something we pick up and
put down. And nothing against basketball, football, soccer, you know,
or any of these other sports that you know they
do because some of them are passionate. They go and
play after work and they do their thing. But skateboarders
are like lifers. It's like you're all in. You bleed
(49:31):
for this. And you know, when I when I think
about it being in the Olympics this year, I always
thought that, you know what, the Olympics need skateboarding, not
skateboarding needs the Olympics. That's been my mentality since I
was a kid, Like they wish we were in there,
but we we we you know, we we we do
our own thing. You know what I mean. You can't
(49:52):
you can't tame this. You can't put us in a box.
You can't control us, you can't conform us. We are
non conformed, arming and we're gonna be rebels, We're gonna
be radical. And then how did that do me? While
I went straight to prison with that lifestyle, you know,
and a lot of my dreams were down the drain,
and and and but God revived them. God supernaturally healed
(50:16):
my body, healed my mind, and to come back out
and to see skateboarding the way it was and how
things were going in the early two thousands to where
I actually wanna two gold medals at the X Games,
you know in the Legends divisions the only two years
that they had them, and then multiple contests you know,
(50:36):
in our in our careers of just you know, the
Legends or they called the Master's Divisions and all that.
But for it to finally make it and to even
have a rider from Brazil, Dora Varella was one of
my riders that she was a woman who made it
into the Olympics in my Brazilian you know HUSSOI Team
Hassi division. It was something special because up, I saw
(51:02):
you light up right, you just got yeah. Because you know,
I'm a competitor, Like competition is in my blood. Like
if we're gonna play pool, I'm gonna want to beat you.
I don't care if you know, you know you need
some sympathy. I'm gonna smoke you and I'm gonna talk
smack doing it, and I'm gonna do a triple bumper
(51:26):
shot just to like rub it in. And that's just
the school I come from. And so the Olympics is
that stage. It has nothing to do with personality. It's
got nothing to do with anything. It's a little bit
you know, difficult when it comes to the process where
it's like the qualifications leading up to it. All that
(51:48):
stuff is a little bit unusual for a skateboarder because
skateboarders are usually a little more formal. Right, It's just formal,
very formal, very controlled, and you have to want it.
And if that happened when it was my day, I
would have quit smoking weed. I would have went for it,
and I would have done everything that I could to
(52:08):
get that gold medal, because that's that's just who I am.
You should be. I'm thankful that you're here. Uh. I
can't thank you enough for joining us today. Man. While
I might not ever be able to do uh any
cool tricks on a ramp, I want you to know, man,
I do think you're a well, you're an icon, your legend.
(52:29):
I think what you've achieved in the sport UH is
absolutely incredible. My door is always open to you. Thanks,
my friend. I appreciate that Rex, and it's a great
and honor to be on your show and I can't
wait to do it again, and uh meet you in
person and UH give you a fat hug and say
thank you same here, thanks for joining us Christian Charges
(52:53):
Less and the tennis and balls and charges the Celebrity
Ganks charge if we came along with from Living Long
Charge severing a Runnians with the law charge Ship Lee
send the Tanis and ball is a charge is celebrity
gang forms Charge we came along with from Living Lawless Charge.
Charges is created by port Lay and Control Media is
(53:15):
produced by DV Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit i Heart
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