Readers' Poll: Best All-Around SkaterRiders' Poll: Best Vert Skaterby Joel Patterson
In May of 1995, a young, almost completely unknown Brazilian vert skater wearing tube socks pulled to his knees showed up at the Slam City Jam contest in Vancouver, Canada and spent the weekend changing the course of vert skating forever. Seventeen-year-old Bob Burnquist and his switch frontside airs, disasters, and 50-50s left those in attendance as confused about what had transpired as they were excited about the future. He had personally nudged vert skating a step closer to the technicality of street, incorporating entirely switch-stance lines and bringing a sense of renewal to a sport still reeling from the sudden fall in popularity it had experienced four years earlier.
Bob has emerged as one of the most influential skateboarders of the second half of the 1990s, but not only in the realm of vert skating. Video and photos of the lanky Brazilian skating everything from handrails to empty backyard pools have demonstrated his ability to shake off the idea that a skater must be limited to one terrain. His intensity as a performer¿yelling during contest runs, wildly cheering for those he's competing against, and often skating to the point of total exhaustion¿have made him a global crowd favorite. In the process of becoming a success on the world stage, Bob's unwittingly become a sort of pied piper to Brazilian skateboarders, opening the proverbial flood gates to a country with seemingly endless amounts of gifted skaters.
Bob feels a sense of responsibility toward his homeland, writing in a recent e-mail exchange: "Brazil needs support, and whatever I can do to make things work down there, I will. It's our time now, no throwing opportunities away. I have gotten to a point where I feel I can do a lot to help."
He's been instrumental in bringing notoriety to a country seldom acknowledged by the skate community five years earlier, and it could be justly supposed that the success of Brazilian skaters such as Carlos de Andrade, Lincoln Ueda, Diego "The Butcher" Bucchieri, and recent Brazilian phenomenon Rodrigo "TX" Teixeira can be attributed in part to Bob.
At only 23, Bob quantifies his experiences as a skateboarder in personal terms: "Skateboarding gives me direction. It gives me motivation to live. I just know that with skateboarding I can accomplish anything I set my mind to. It's a way to express myself, an outlet to release what I feel."
Bob's contributions haven't gone unnoticed. In the past few years he's been featured in interviews in almost every major skate magazine in the world, he was named Thrasher magazine's Skater of the Year in 1997, inTransWorld's 1998 Riders' Poll Bob's peers voted him the Best Vert Skater and Best Overall Skater, and Rolling Stone magazine chose him as one of their "Athletes of the Year" for 1999.
This year Bob's name appears on both the Readers' and Riders' Polls, winning Best All-Around Skater honors from the readers and repeating as the Best Vert Skater in the Riders' Poll, making Bob the first to repeat in a particular category. The honors serve as further acknowlegement of his contributions to skating and their impact on every layer of the sport he claims gives him direction.
The past year has been the biggest in Bob's young life. Not only did he leave his longtime sponsor Anti-Hero to ride for Lance Mountain's company The Firm and purchase a home in northern San Diego County, but in early April of this year he became a father when his girlfriend, fellow professional skater Jen O'Brien, gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter they named Lotus. Bob describes the event as "magical."
"I feel as if I'm more focused on what I do," Bob says of his new role as provider. "I need to be more focused for Lotus, for Jen ... for my family! It's quite a change. There's a lot more to it now¿I got a house, had a kid, and I'm about to build a ramp! I'm very thankful foor all these things that God's allowed me to cherish for this lifetime."
