"Michael Brooke: Editor Concrete Wave Magazine Blog Quote: "Rick's shop, Cal Streets has quite a legacy in Vancouver (and beyond!). His shop wasn't just a skate shop, it was a meca. It was perhaps one of the greatest, most successful skateshops on the planet.

Rick promoted CalStreets with a huge amount of marketing and through an extraordinary amount of hard work and perseverance it became the number 1 skate shop in Canada - but I am getting ahead of myself."

2.. Where did the idea come from?

When the first CalStreets opened, skating was in the early stages of getting popular. The only place that sold boards were places like Sears, and the department stores, where they were sold mainly as toys. There was no place that sold real boards that serious dedicated hardcore skaters wanted. Cal Streets had to get the word out! So we became a distributor, retailer, and mailorder house so that skateboarding could be jumpstarted once again. I wanted the retail entity to be a place where boarders could visit and socialize with other real boarders, not simply sales clerks.

Consequently, with CalStreets REGENERATION as an online entity, I did it not as just another marketing website, I built it to reach out to skateboarders everywhere on a social basis. With CalStreets.com now published in 9 languages I have exceeded my wildest goals. Trying to equate the great early years of skating for fun with friends as a lifestyle and proving to the masses it can be done. Fortunately I still have all my skateboard memorabilia, as well as all kinds of photos from my· skateboarding days, so I had a base of good material to draw from in building the site. With the astounding success of the site, I know that my original skateboarding concept was a valid one and is appreciated by other boarders.

3.. How do you source all the vintage ads?

While working for NorthWest Skateboard Distribution I wanted to know all I could about supplying my market with the best boards for the price and who I needed to know, and how I could connect. I was only 17 while I stategized about opening my new shop so grabbed all the industry mags· I could lay my hands on, and I simply stored them away for future reference. Using Photoshop skills I refurbished 1000's of vintage skate ads from my era for the CalStreets.com Regeneration.

4.. What is it about skateboarding that interests you so much?

I think it's the freedom - knowing that you are free to do whatever you are physically able to. Its a very one to one sport, you only have yourself to· blame if you succeed or fail. It's a very physical thing, its the adrenaline and terror that every real boarder understands. I have been dedicated to skating since I was a teenager doing martial arts, my previous passion, which I still try to keep up with. I don't want to get all intellectual and talk about it being a Zen thing, but it is in a way. When you are on a board there is only one thing that matters - what you are doing at the moment - and the knowledge that if you allow your mind to stray, you could be courting some serious (and unexpected) road rash, ah yes old school...


5.. What excites you as a skater these days?

The fact that we're back! CalStreets.com is breaking new barriers with my passion for longboarding and downhill. Skating is in me again and I really love the new people involved with the Longboard Industry.· It takes me back to the simple times. Another exciting trend is the amazing technological advances that have been applied to skateboard manufacture. I hope to keep skating till I'm 70.

Thanks to Dom Alessio - The Brag Magazine (Arts & Associate Editor) for this great opportunity to spread the word that Longboarding and Freestyle are back!

Contact Rick Tetz @ Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Happy 50th Mike Weed - Weed Wheels, Hobie Skateboards

Happy 50th Mike! It was Mike Weeds 50th birthday celebration this month and CalStreets/RFX were honored to be able to take a small part in an old teammates half century celebration. We were contacted by one of Mike's close friend's Rob Hawes who was helping get things setup for Mikes party. Rob asked if we could supply any of our archived HI Res refurbished skate ads of Mike Weed (Hobie Team California) from the past.·

I said YES, of course, no problem!I informed Rob that I used to skate for Hobie Team Canada back in the 70's. Unfortunately I was never able to meet Mike in person, but I was happy to send up the requested RFX adwork.· Looking forward to hearing more about the party, cheers and Aloha from everyone here at CalStreets Mike.

Check out the photo from Warren Bolster's gallery of Mike Weed. Mike Weed Peaks Out in the San Juan Capistrano Pool It was a deep, clean, pool - but with gnarly coping. Mike turned me on to the spot and naturally got great coverage for himself, his sponsor Hobie, and the sport.

It’s been less than a year since Rick Tetz and I crossed paths. I remember his shop called CalStreets that was located in Vancouver back in the 1980s. Rick had a huge amount of success with the shop, but it’s technology where Rick is creating the biggest buzz right now. His website CalStreets.com offers an· extraordinary amount of material. Up to 10,000 people a day are spending countless hours discovering all of the site’s treasures – but more on that later.

Technology has always been a part of his life, Rick says. “I have always have been into high-tech solutions.” Back in 1979 Rick built his Chevy skater van. “It featured computers, TV, Beta· hi-fi, police radio, Ghost Lights (blue undercarriage spots), even an emergency strobe… [and] custom digital readouts for engine info!” Rick says.

I asked Rick how he made the transition from skater to computer guru. “Back in 1985, CalStreets had a full UNIX network for our point-of-sale system. Each store used 300-baud modems to inform [the] head office [in] North Vancouver of sales and inventory levels. My office, CSI (wholesale) downstairs, and sales floor / mail order were all networked,” he said. Believe it or not, CalStreets even had e-mail (very unusual at that time) via Compuserve, and had bar-coding and computer inventory before the supermarkets of that time. Rick knew instinctively that by using cutting-edge· technology he would have an advantage over his competitors, whom he regarded as mostly Luddites when it came to computers. Rick knows first hand the power of the Web and how it has changed skateboarding. “I grew up in rural British Columbia and, like many, tried to learn new tricks via SkateBoarder magazine. By the time I received the magazine, the tricks were already three months old,” he says. The only way to know what was cool was to travel to California, explains Rick. “So that is when Stephen Marguet and myself convinced his mom to take us to the Concrete Wave skateboard park in Anaheim, California.” For Rick, the power of the Web is its immediacy. “The Internet allows anyone to see a trick anywhere. It gives you light years more experience than you might acquire in a small town. I just wish it had been possible during my time growing up in Cranbrook!”
CalStreets is but one part of a huge number of initiatives that Rick is working on. Besides designing websites, Rick has invested quite a bit of time in the area of Internet security.” I really can’t blame the website owners for the problems of computer hackers. Many companies don’t understand how easy it really is to deface websites.” Banks, governments and skate companies are all vulnerable to hacks and defacement. As Rick explains, “It is the recovery protocol you have in place that represents the professional IT company, large or small, that is back in business minutes after an attack. It is important to have a company watch out for your Internet well-being. That is part of what WebLabX is about.” Rick’s goal is to help skate companies use the Web in the best ways possible. “I hope to be able to add another level of professionalism to the standard skate website,” says Rick.

Rick’s talents don’t just end with security issues. He’s been able to tweak things in such away that skateboard searches in Google seem to lead folks to his calstreets.com website. In the area of language translation, Rick has been able to offer visitors up to nine languages at his site. When it came to displaying back issues of Concrete Wave, Rick puts up HTML versions, making the· need to download a PDF of the entire magazine completely obsolete. But it was his work with the Evolutions DVD that really impressed me. He streamed the entire three hour,1.3 gigabyte DVD· via Vimeo, and it loads instantaneously. Even more than his work with Concrete Wave has been his tireless efforts to chronicle the history of skateboard advertising. It would take you weeks to go through all his archive of print ads.

I asked Rick where he felt we would be in five years. “I see less dependence on regular television. You’ll download and stream your own high-definition content directly to your home theatre via optical/wireless Internet.” Rick also envisions holographic 3D telecommuting by IVisit.“I call you and we talk and interact in real time, live in your office. With the tactile option we could shake hands. With enough bandwidth anything is possible.” Rick Tetz.