Film pays tribute to icon of skate- and snowboarding

By Marc Ramirez
Seattle Times staff reporter

ERIN T. GAVIN Scott Stamnes catches big air off the ramp he built on his father's fishing boat, the Chichagof, while in Seattle. Oftentimes Stamnes would tie his shoelace to his board so he would not lose it in the water.

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You've probably never heard of Scott Stamnes. But when it came to skate- and snowboarding, he was as beloved an icon as John Lennon or Kurt Cobain were to music, doing it less for fame and fortune than because it was his nature.

Tonight, a skateboarder film playing in Seattle honors Stamnes, who, when he wasn't carving up a ramp, was probably flying down a mountain. Though he never quite reached the level of the pros who embraced him, he formed a soulful bridge between the best and those who admired them from afar.

He spent winters in Glacier, Whatcom County, where he snowboarded every day. Spring and summer were aboard his dad's fishing boat, the Chichagof, named after an Alaskan island, atop which he'd built a ramp so he could ride his skateboard no matter where they were.

His mastery of the swords, as he called them, allowed him to carve back and forth between the two worlds on snow and land, making indelible impressions with his warmth as much as his skill.

Pamela Kyle never quite realized the reach of her son's life until more than 400 people flooded a Bellevue church four years ago for his memorial service, where a skateboard, snowboard, guitar and fishing boots adorned the altar. Afterward, the open-mike session of song and memories lasted more than two hours.

She says: "A lot of them he met just hitchhiking."

In December 2000, Stamnes, then 30, was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Marseilles, France, where he was traveling with friends. But his legend lives on — in an Orcas Island skate park named for him and financed by ski-film guru Warren Miller, in skateboards and snowboards issued in his name, through magazines and skater-shop displays devoted to his memory.

A tribute in film, words and music "Chichagof," dedicated to the memory of Scott Stamnes and featuring the Volcom skate team, plays tonight at The Premier, a club and concert hall at 1700 First Ave. S. in Seattle. Live music and spoken word are also on tap. Doors open at 8 p.m. for the all-ages event. Tickets are $5. More information is available at 206-382-7870. You can also see a trailer of the film at www.volcom.com

Friends and family have scattered his ashes from here to Kilimanjaro, and tonight the skater film "Chichagof" (CHICH-a-goff) comes to Seattle as part of a national tour with an opening tribute to Stamnes' memory. The film highlights the skate team representing one of his major sponsors, Los Angeles-based Volcom Clothing.

Stamnes was a true ripper who'd skate until he was dredged in dirt to learn a new trick, says Pete Saari, marketing director at Mervin Manufacturing, owner of Lib Technologies, Stamnes' other major sponsor. At the same time, he approached kids too shy to come to him and offered to teach the least skilled among them.

Skaters who asked for his autograph got asked to sign his jacket in return. Skateboards, snowboards, trophies he won in competition — all of it seemed better off with others. And in Alaskan fishing villages where the Chichagof would tie up for the night, Stamnes taught street tricks to local kids on homemade skateboards.

His behavior stood out in a sport full of scrapes, bruises and egos. "He added love to the whole thing," Saari says.

"The thing about Scott is that anyone else would seem like an acquaintance," says Erin McNamee, 24, who was 16 when Stamnes gave her a ride home from Stevens Pass. "But he felt like an old friend."

	COURTESY OF MIKE STAMNES Scott Stamnes and his dog, Ms. Billy Rainbow in 1999. Stamnes died after a hit-and-run accident in France in 2000.

Laughter and cheers filled the air around the fire as the young boy's uncle approached him with a box. Without knowing what it was the boy held up and gazed upon the most magical thing he had ever seen. Shaped like a sword, a rainbow blazed across the top. "A sword with wheels!" he thought. See-through Red Rim Riders spun in the moonlight.

— From "The Gift," by Scott Stamnes, published in 3rd Hit magazine, December 1999

It was the Christmas before his family relocated to the Bay Area, where Mike Stamnes — Scott's father, an appraiser at the time and now a Seattle fishing-boat captain — had been transferred. Stamnes was nearly 7 years old.

"Every time we stopped for gas, he would get out and practice," his mother says. "From that point forward, I don't think he was ever without a board."

It was a time when skate parks were largely unheard of, when waves of wheeled rebels instead surfed concrete oceans outside the shops of angry merchants, earning reputations as public nuisances.

Once he came home teary-eyed, accompanied by a policeman. He and a friend had been kicked out of a supermarket parking lot, but found a ladder and decided to try their luck on the roof. "They didn't think about how much noise that would make inside the store," his father says.

	PHOTO COURTESY OF MIKE STAMNES Scott Stamnes

In 1984, soon after his parents divorced and his mother brought him and his brother to Renton, he knew what he wanted for Christmas this time — a dozen sheets of plywood, so he could build his own half-pipe in the garage.

He and his growing crew of wheeled swordsmen, as he called them, filmed each other there or found empty swimming pools to carve up. He was already winning local contests, but it was on video that his mother realized how good he was. There, one second, was her boy on a teetering skateboard at pool's edge, and then — whoosh — he had plunged down a vertical groove.

"I didn't realize the physical dexterity it took," she says.

Scott competed, but amid the clash of egos seemed to challenge only himself. In his late 20s, he twice won Northwest qualifying events sponsored by the Vans Warped Tour, the country's best known skateboard and alternative-music festival, and each time placed among the top 10 at the Vans Amateur World Skateboarding Championships that followed in Los Angeles.

The year Scott won the Vans regional in Portland, Ore., Mike Stamnes suggested his son prepare for the title round by skating with California's best for a few weeks. "Instead, he went to Mount Baker and snowboarded," Mike Stamnes says. "The competition thing wasn't what he was about at all."

Speaking Italian is fun. I'm going to stay longer and hopefully train through southern france and into spain, to find a warm beach to heal up on for the winter.

— Scott enjoying Rome in one of his last e-mails to his father, November 2000

The constant pounding took a toll on his otherwise rock-hard body, and doctors decided to outfit his left arm, the one he broke time and again to cushion his falls, with a steel rod.

It was a long-term solution for a 30-year-old who had smashed against pavement and hard snow for more than two decades. While the arm healed, Stamnes decided to see Europe with friends.

Mike Stamnes had returned home from a Christmas party when he checked his phone messages. A companion of Scott's "said he'd been in a real bad accident," he says. Within hours he and his ex-wife were on a plane to France, where their son lay in a coma, the victim of a hit-and-run.

A month after they agreed to let doctors pull the plug, they started the Scott Stamnes Give To Kids Fund, which his mother, Pamela Kyle, says has raised more than $10,000 to finance sports and arts-related activities for needy children, and which donates to youth-oriented medical charities.

What would Scott be doing now? He had plans to create greeting cards with a friend. Just before he left for Europe, he'd passed the test for his 200-ton-vessel master's license, a proud nod to his grandfather, who'd fished all his life.

"He's remembered for all the right things," says Mervin Manufacturing's Saari. "Maybe people treat each other a little better. I know he runs through my head from time to time, when I'm making a decision, to take the high road and do the right thing."

Fellow snowboarder Keri Clark says losing Scott changed her for the better. "It took me a while to figure it out. But Scott gave his love freely, openly, without expectations. He taught me it was OK to express your love without feeling weird about it."

Adds father Mike Stamnes, who still senses his son's presence: "I believe Scott was a teacher. That was his purpose here on Earth. His message was to be kind to everyone and to love everybody."

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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