Reggie Barnes (skateboarder)

Barnes is from Cary, North Carolina and attended Cary High School, graduating in 1979.[6][4][2]

Barnes became interested in skateboarding after seeing an article in Sports Illustrated about Gregg Weaver who skated in empty swimming pools in California.[6] In 1976 when he was fourteen years old, Barnes purchased his first skateboard, a Super Surfer with clay wheels, from a neighbor for $2.[3][1][7] That was quickly replaced with a used skateboard with metal wheels—one that he says worked better on asphalt.[3] He became a member of the Wizard Skate Team, an amateur team supported by the Wizard Skate Park in Raleigh, North Carolina, but moved on as he progressed.[4]

Barnes' specialty became freestyle; this form of skating that paired music with handstands, wheelies, and kick-flips suited Barnes who enjoyed being a show-off.[4][8] He spent "hours on end" alone with a boombox, practicing his routines.[3] One of his favorite places to practice was the open air basketball courts at nearby North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina.[3][9]

Two years after he began skating, Barnes had become one of North Carolina's top skaters, taking sixth place in freestyle in his first National Skateboard Association Contest, the U.S. Open Skateboard Competition in Jacksonville, Florida in March 1978.[4][10] Barnes "caught the attention of the seasoned professionals" when he skated at the Oceanside Amateur Freestyle Contest in June 1978, despite only coming in fifth place.[11]

Barnes joined the team for Powerflex, a skateboard wheel company based in California, getting equipment and travel expenses in return for participating in demonstrations and competitions.[4][12] Powerflex offered a salary, but Barnes preferred to remain an amateur because he wanted to make the 1980 Summer Olympic exhibition team.[4]

In September 1978, Barnes participated in the Pepsi/Nova Team Challenge as par tof Tem Powerflex.[12] He had "a dynamic freestyle routine" earning 285 points and placing 1st in the age 16–19 Freestyle contest. Rodney Mullen, generally considered the best freestyle skateboarder of all time, placed 1st in the 13–15 category with 263 points.[12][13]

Once Barnes learned to ride on his hands, his reputation grew; he was considered a virtuoso on the East Coast by 1979.[2] In the spring of 1979, Pepsi called his parents and asked if their son could tour the country, giving demonstrations as part of the Pepsi-Cola Pro Skateboard Team.[2][3] Although the call from Pepsi was a complete surprise, it was the era of the cola wars and Pepsi executives thought skateboarding was a good fit to their Pepsi Generation ad campaign.[14][3] With just a few months of his senior year remaining, Barnes decided to graduate first.[2][3]

Barnes became a professional skateboarder in June 1979.[2] He skated with the Pepsi Pro Skateboard Team on their second tour, performing as many as five demonstrations a day and 100 demonstrations across the summer.[2][15][3] Pepsi was among the first to pay skateboarders well, but getting paid made Barnes a pro which would keep him out of the Olympic Games and other amateur competitions.[3][16] However, Barnes says he did not feel like a "real pro" because he had yet to win money in competition."[3]

When the summer tour ended, Barnes took the money he earned from Pepsi and moved to Huntington Beach California where he hoped to compete against "real' pros" and win prize money.[3] However, Barnes had picked a challenging time to go pro.[3] Editor of the National Skateboard Review, Di Dootson explains, "By early 1979, the insurance industry had effectively closed many skateparks across the country."[17] This negatively impacted retail shops, competitions, and companies like Barnes sponsor Powerflext which had shut down.[3][18][17]

Barnes had to wait six months before there was a flatland contest.[3] Without Powerflex's backing, he had to personally pay the $50 entry fee (equivalent to $178 in today's money) for his first pro competition, the Oasis Freestyle Contest in San Diego in 1980.[15][19][3] He came in fifth place, earning just $50/[15][19][3] However, for Barnes, it was about the other competitors rather than the money.[3] Other skaters at the event included standing world champion Chris Chadwick who placed third, and Rodney Mullen who placed first in his first-pro event. Admittedly homesick, Barnes felt he had accomplished his goals and returned to North Carolina.[3]

Barnes signed with sponsor Walker Skateboards in 1980. Bruce Walker was a noted East Coast pro, and his Florida-based company was the first of its kind to be owned and operated by a skater.[18][20] Walker paid for Barnes to fly to California for competitions, allowing Barnes to live in Wilmington North Carolina where he could focus on both skateboarding and surfing in his home state.[2][21][3]

Although he performed many demonstrations for Walker Skateboards, Barnes only competed three times during his first three years as a pro because of the limited number of contests.[8][15][3] His second pro event was in 1981 at Magic Mountain where the main attraction was the pro-freestyle event.[15][22] Barnes came in third place and told Thrasher magazine, "Good energy and crowds, back east they don't have much going on like this, so it's good fun for a change of sceneries. Lots of fun."[22][15]

The third time he competed as a pro was at the 1984 Sundeck Pro-Am Skateboard Challenge in Kona Skatepark, Florida.[23][15] Barnes came in first place even though they played the wrong music for his first routine.[15] Later that year, he placed second at the NSA Finals at the Del Mar Skate Ranch in California.[24] However, according to Thrasher magazine, he almost ended up in the third place—a miscalculation of the scores by the judges was caught by Barnes' girlfriend and corrected.[24]

In 1986, a group of skateboarding magazines selected Barnes as one of the top five American freestyle skateboarders.[9] That same year, Barnes was a featured demonstrator at Expo 86, the world's fair held in Vancouver, Canada.[4]

Barnes placed third in freestyle at the World Cup, Münster Monster Mastership, in Germany in 1987 despite the distractions of starting and running Eastern Skateboard Supply and Endless Grind retail store.[1][4] In a 2010 online conversation, pro-skating superstars Joachim ‘YoYo’ Schulz and Stefan ‘Lillis’ Akesson recalled this competition: Schulz, who came in seventh, wrote, "Check out the results page—a who is who in skateboarding. Some names are still around to this day! Even Reggie Barnes made it over. Stoked!." To which Akesson replied, "4th place for me... I really like the skating of Reggie, and he is a super nice person!"[25]

In 1989, Barnes' rank had slipped to seventh best freestyle skater in the United States.[8] Yet, at the NSA's Savanah Slamma in May 1989, Thrasher noted, "Reggie Barnes, for a man who hadn't skated since the Arizona finals [in December 1988], ripped."[26] The decline in his freestyle skating was a mix of his now being a businessman and his increased interest in street style, which emerged as a modified version of freestyle that was better suited for urban settings.[21] Barnes indicated that it was difficult to complete effectively in freestyle when he was actively demonstrating street style—the two styles even required different skateboards. Barnes competed professionally until 1991.[6]

After retiring from as a pro, Barnes continued to demonstrate and supported new skateboarders through Endless Grind and Eastern Skateboard Supply.[2][27][28] November 1, 2000, Barnes was one of three judges for the Freestyle World Championships Contest and Reunion, the first Pro/Am freestyle event in almost ten years, held at the Embarcadero, San Francisco, California.[29][30] One outcome of this event, which also served as a reunion of former skaters, was the creation of the World Freestyle Skateboard Association.[30]

This incomplete list includes known NSA and international competitions in which Barnes competed.

In the 1980s, Unreel Productions produced a series of videos documenting the National Skateboard Association's championship competitions.[47] Released in 1986, Skateboard: NSA '86 Summer Series Volume 4: Oceanside Street Attack showed highlights of the Oceanside, California Freestyle Contest, including Barnes' entire fifth place routine.[47]

In 2006, Pantheon Home Video released License to Skate!, a five-part series of how-to videos that featured Barnes and other early pro skaters with Walker, including Chris Baucom, Chuck Dinkins, Joe Humeres, Jim McCall, Tim Morris, Bill Robinson, and Paul Schneider.[48][49]

Barnes was a stunt double for several films produced in Wilmington, North Carolina, including David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive (1986), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) where he doubled for Donatello riding a skateboard.[50][8]

Barnes is featured in the East Coast Motions volume 1, a 2018 documentary that features Steve Caballero and Barnes in the 1986 Endless Grind / Bones Brigade Skateboard Showdown in Raleigh, North Carolina, along with the 1985 Record Bar Pro-Am ASP Surf Tour at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.[51]

In the early 1980s, Barnes returned to North Carolina and attended the Cape Fear Technical Institute (now Cape Fear Community College) where he majored in business.[2] He stayed in Wilmington after graduating, and supported his surfing lifestyle with his carpentry and construction business.[2][3] Soon after, he opened Eastern Skateboard Supply and Endless Grind, both which continue as successful businesses.[53]

Barnes currently lives in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, which is adjacent to Wilmington.[1][6] He has two children: daughter Lindsey and son Mason who is a professional surfer.[52][3] Barnes tries to surf every day, runs marathons, and competes in the downhill skateboard slalom.[1]

Although not known as an innovator like his contemporary Rodney Mullen, Barnes did influence others and many of the next generation of East Coast skaters:

• Skater Tommy Harward's first freestyle exposure was at Barnes's school demonstration in 1987.[20] Barnes not only encouraged young Harward to keep skating but also gave Harward one of his skateboards.[20] Later, the Tommy Haward pro model skateboard by Outlook was based on the Reggie Barnes' Freestyle model by Walker.[20]
• In the 1980s, amateur skater Bill Robinson (known today as Dr. Skateboard) decided to go to college because the skateboarding industry declined.[59] After college, Robinson contacted Barnes who helped "resurrect" the former's skateboarding career; soon Robinson was a pro-skateboarder signed with Barnes' sponsor Walker Skateboards.[59] Robinson eventually won three Masters Freestyle championships and was inducted into the Freestyle Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2010.[59]
• In 1985, Chuck Dinkins lived in Memphis, Tennessee and worked for a skateboard shop.[60] In conjunction with a festival at the fairgrounds, his employer arranged for pro skaters, Barnes and Jim McCall, to demonstrate freestyle.[60] Dinkins says, "Jim and Reggie arrived and killed it. I had never really seen freestyle too much in person and was super stoked to have those guys come up. Both of them were super cool and professional. They even invited me to join in and I got to skate and showcase my flat land street style, plus launch ramp skills...I was skating with pros and had to step up my game...Reggie was smooth and stylish with Ollies, throwing in sweet G-Turns, etc...I didn’t know how impressed they were with me until a few weeks later when I got a call at the shop from Bruce Walker offering me a full sponsorship simply based on the word of Jim and Reggie."[60]
• Former professional skater Kevin Shelton tells a similar story. Shelton was from the small town of Mars Hill, North Carolina, and went to California in an unsuccessful attempt to turn his skating hobby into a career.[18] When he returned to North Carolina, Shelton ran into Barnes who hired him to travel through the East Coast, demonstrating street style for Endless Grind. In 1986, Barnes gave Shelton his "big break," a chance to skate before Bruce Walker. Two years later, Shelton was a professional skater with full sponsorship by Walker Skateboards.[18]
• Founder and curator of the Morro Bay Skateboard Museum Jack Smith said "I declared myself 'professional' so I could enter the freestyle event at the Trans-World Skateboarding Championship—one of the largest international tournaments in sport's history, held in conjunction with the World Exp in Vancouver, Canada...Reggie Barnes...was amongst the first to introduce himself and encourage me during the Vancouver freestyle event."[61]
• Mike Sinclair, skating's most famous team manager who also ran ESPN's Real Street, got his start through Barnes' Endless Grind.[27][28] Sinclair says, "I skated for Endless Grind skate shop for a long time when I lived in North Carolina. Reggie Barnes who owns it asked me if I could manage the team for him since Eastern Skateboard Supply was taking off and he was focusing on that. My duties were mainly keeping track of whose entry fees got paid for when we went to contests. I think everyone from our area just said they were on Endless Grind and tried to charge it to Reggie at all the local contests. Reggie paid me $100 a month to do this for him. I was beyond hyped! Later, I worked at the shop and just did it for free or until the contest scene died out in the mid-'90s."[27][28]
• In 2006, Swedish pro-skater Stefan "Lillis" Akesson recalled attending the Münster Monster Mastership (World Cup) in 1987.[25] He wrote, "We (me, Shane Rouse and Reggie Barnes) stayed in Christian Seewaldt's apartment...Reggie was working on his board, putting on sho-goo [sic] on the tail and gave me some secret tips on how to do it, something Shane always refused to help me with."[25] In the competition, Rouse came in 2nd, Barnes 3rd, Akesson 4th, and Seewaldt 5th.[42]

• Eastern Skateboard Supply