Sidewalk Surfer

The Shop

  

I’m sixty five years old. I’ve lived a life of adventure, many different sports, a lifestyle, hanging out at the shop. I got my gear here, my clothes, I meet friends, planned, I even spent the night in the Kite Shop next door that shared a phone through a hole in the wall. That was at the original location.

There were a lot of firsts for me here and for the whole of Arizona skateboarders.

I grew up, had kids, backed off from the sports I did. I went back to the shop to do it again, this time for my kids.

Yesterday, I spent some time with an old friend inside this building. I pulled out a recorder and we talked about day one of its opening on to its current location. Sidewalk Surfer will be 49 years old this October. I’m hoping to see the 50th year. We are all getting older. This shop represents my youth and I’ve known the core people who own it, run it and have hung out there since day one. If you were not mentioned in the piece I’m about to make available, do not feel like you were forgotten, you are not. My story is my personal perspective. This will be the story of my experience with the shop. Your story is yours to tell. That’s how life works.

What follows is a conversation between Tim Douds and I. Tim runs Sidewalk Surfer. He started hanging out there after I did. As a kid, he lived down the street from my (first) wife and her brother, they were kids at the time too. I lived just up the road from Tim. All of us near the local empty pool we skated, Howard’s Bowl.

After a lifetime of adventure, and still going in to Sidewalk Surfer now and then, it gives me a really cool feeling to spend a little time with Tim talking about the past. 

I’m an amateur photographer and decided to take the pictures with film. I used my Nikon F6, a fisheye lens for the skater vibe and a 35mm lens as well as a 16-24mm zoom. As a writer, I decided to do the story with a Dictaphone and use that for talk to text.

Sidewalk Surfer didn’t pay me and I didn't receive anything for doing the photos and story. Their story is my story. They have the gear I used and often times if they didn’t have it, I told them about it and they ordered it. And then they sold it from then on.

My job is in Cardiovascular Medicine, I spent my money here. I no longer skate but I’m a skater, I don’t surf anymore but I’m a surfer, a snow surfer, a skim-boarder, a skateboard slalom racer, an alpine snowboarder and a soaring pilot and many many more things you will read here at my home on the web. I got my ground based gear from Sandie and Tim, Dave and crew.

Now I’ll turn my attention to them and to my old friends.

Let’s get started.

Today is August 7, 2026.

The words that follow were from the recorder placed on my iPad using “talk to text.”

Here we go.

Adam: Ok, it appears that it is working.

Why don’t you give me the statistics of the store? What you remember from Sandie telling you when it opened who owned it that sort of thing 

Tim: I just remembered first coming to the shop probably in 1979 or 80 when it was in the Civic Center in the very first location that faced the UA 5 movie theaters. The Kite Shop was next-door to the right and there was a hole in the wall because they only had one telephone so whoever was working at Sidewalk (Surfer) or the Kite Shop would answer the phone, “ Kite Shop, Sidewalk Surfer”

Adam: Cool 

Tim: But that was the first time I was coming in there as I was a kid.

Adam: Wasn’t that Tim Wood? That’s Greg Wood‘s brother? That owned the Kite Shop?

Tim: Yeah, exactly.

Adam: So I was there a little bit before you. I remember I was there for the first day or some grand opening. I remember some flyers and seems to me I remember a bus on the flyer but anyway…

Tim: October 15th 1977 was the first day Sandie opened.

Adam: Ok, got it, so who owned it?

Tim: Sandie Hamilton and her husband Jiggs. She basically put money up when she was driving Scottsdale school district school bus, she was working at Motorola. She basically gathered up a few hundred dollars.

Adam: So one of the things I didn’t tell you when we were talking before I turned on the recorder was that I will run this by Sandie before I hit publish just out of respect for her.

I don’t know what her relationship is with Jiggs, is he alive, I haven’t talked to her in a long time.

Time: Jiggs passed away a few years ago.

Sandie has four kids, Brett, and then Shane, Shannon and Rochelle. Brett passed away a few years ago.

Adam: Yeah I just forget names but I know who they are. So after that…

Tim: What else do I remember?

Adam: Just the high points, anything you wanna tell me.

Tim: You know just growing up going to the Civic Center, going to the shop…

Adam: That’s about the time you and I meet, about that time. You were a young kid, how old were you?

Tim: I’ll be 60 in January.

Adam: Come on help me out, how old where you when we meet?

Tim: I was like 14 or 15.

Adam: You were like, I don’t think you were driving. You were getting a ride when we were like skating and hanging out with somebody else and 

Tim: You and Paul and Theo, Mike Muir, you were like my big brothers.

Adam: So let’s talk about the core group as I remember it and you know I’m 65 so I’m a little bit older than you but sort of the same age.

So I’ll go, Ron Theobald, Mike Muir, Paul Seroka, Stewart, what’s Stuart’s last name? Stuart Anglin. Evan Jones for sure he was around. He lived just down on Indian School. 

Tim: Todd Stanfield

Adam: Yeah, I know Todd was there.

These are the people that I just named were the people that I know that when I was hanging out, they were always there in and out or something like that but keep going cause I don’t want to miss anyone. 

Tim: I think that’s the core.

Adam: Yeah.

Tim: Todd Stanfield, his brother. But I always remember you guys, like I said, you always seemed older than me.

Adam: Yeah.

Tim: A lot older than me, ten years, and traveling with Ron Theobald, Mike Muir and hanging out with you, it’s like now, we are so close in age but back then it seemed like that ten year difference… but that’s what I remember, between you, Theobald of course, Mike Muir, Mike was always in and out, I didn’t see him as much but Ronnie was always around, you were always around, Evan was always around.

Adam: I lived close. I was like a couple miles away, 69th Place and Jackrabbit. That was pretty close to Howard’s Bowl.

Tim: Yeah, I lived right by Howard’s Bowl, I lived on 66th and Exeter and Howard’s was between Invergordan and 66th on Camelback.

Adam: So you probably remember my… Laura Reicher and David Reicher?

Tim: Of course.

Adam: Because they were really close.

Tim: I went to school with Laura.

Adam: Ok, so you remember my first wife. Yeah, she’s doing good, she is around, David, same thing.

Tim: I hear from David once in a while.

Adam: Yeah, he bounces in.

Tim: Yeah.

Adam: Exactly. Ok, so let’s move to the timeline of the shop, where the shop moves from.

Tim: so, the first location faced the UA 5 Movie Theaters and then they were putting a restaurant in and they asked Sandie to relocate into the middle of the mall.

Adam: Around the corner.

Tim: In the center.

Adam: Yeah

Tim: And Backstage was above, and she was there for a few months, and then she moved to the last location that faced the parking garage.

Adam: What was the name of that record store?

Tim: Roads to Moscow

Adam: Yeah, Roads to Moscow, yeah, that was cool, I remember that.

Tim: That’s where Todd Joseph worked.

A older guy and gal walks into the shop through the back door and looks at Tim and I…

Hey, is that your dad? Tim says sorry, we are recording something. The guy smiles and I tell him that’s ok and he walks into the store. I ask Tim who that is and he tells me that’s Russel and his wife Amy.

Adam: Ok soo, then moved to…

Tim: Hayden and Thomas until we got kicked out of there and then Sandie bought the (permanent location) building in 90’s as an investment from Flip Webber.

Adam: What did it used to be?

Tim: It was a Pacific Window Tint and uhh, Sleep Time Water Beds.

Adam: Ahh, oh cool. 

Tim: It was like two separate shops. Sandie called Ronnie down, Ron was living in Sun Valley (Idaho) at the time.

Adam: Mike Muir was up there, he had uh…

Tim: Go Big

Adam: Yeah, Go Big

Tim: That was in Park City.

Adam: That’s where was a shop kinda like this one in Park City (Utah) owned by Mike Muir, keep going…

Tim: Ok then Ron came down here for a few months and worked on this with a guy named Tom.

Adam: Finishing out

Tim: Finishing out the store which was a big process.

Adam: Ron is a construction guy, he is really good with that stuff.

Tim: So then we moved in here, June of 1992

Adam: So same spot since 92.

Tim: Since 92.

Adam: So now I want to loop back around to the beginning where I’m not real specific on dates but I remember uh High Roller Skate Park that’s where we all went and the local pools skating and that’s where I bought one of the first batch of the Sims snow board. There were five and John was working there and I got one of them. I don’t know who the others went to. The reason why I know this is because my High School photography class, I graduated in 79 and my final was a (Super 8) movie that I made called, “Balanced Expressions” That was all those movies that I would show at parties and stuff like that. But I bought that first one from John Sachen at High Roller. And then the next year I found out about Winterstick and I told Sandy about it and I got her to order, I think it was a Roundtail and then my Dad wanted one for some reason and we bought two Swallowtails. That was kind of a first, we kicked off snowboarding.

I found out I introduced Michael Cornelius to snowboarding.

Tim: Oh wow!

Adam: I’ve known him forever, he was like Adam, “you were the guy, you introduced me to it. I’ve been going every year since then.” (Michael is a founding member of JFA)

So Big Surf, you guys had surfboards in here.

Tim: At the Thomas shop we had surfboards and at the Civic Center too.

Adam: Yeah yeah exactly. So you were a surf shop, a snowboard shop um, roller skating was huge there was a surge I don’t remember the dates it doesn’t matter but you guys served that community.

Tim: We rented roller skates…

Adam: The scooter community, what I’m trying to do is hit all the high points of youth culture fun stuff.

Tim: Yeah we had the roller skate (rental) van, the beige van and we would go, Jiggs would drive me to El Dorado Park, I wasn’t old enough to drive. He would drop me (…and the van) off and I would rent roller skates to people all day long.

Adam: Awesome

Tim: …and again that was the culture. The whole Civic Center thing, not to get off track.

Adam: Get off track, that’s where the good stuff is.

Tim: That was the place to hang out. Friday and Saturday nights, that was the place to go, drink beer in the parking garage and skate the parking garage, rent roller skates and skate around the mall, kids would come and break dance in front of the movie theater. 

Sandie was open 10 to 10, 7 days a week. And all of a sudden she decided on Friday and Saturday nights we would stay opened till midnight and it didn’t last long but we did it because that was such a hot bed for kids to come and hang out.

Adam: Your customer base was out at that time.

Tim: That was it and Roads to Moscow was there and a friend of ours, her and her mom

Adam: Was Roads to Moscow open late too?

Tim: Roads was open till ten also. And there was a little girls shop that sold like leggings and punk rock clothing next door, Sheila Livesay, she worked there.

Adam: Oh yeah, I know her. Ok, so have we hit, I think we are almost done then because I just want to make sure I hit all the youth cultural waves of cool things.

You guys were big into the scooters for a while. I know that there was some trouble for a while with the City of Scottsdale.

Tim: With the gas powered scooters?

Adam: Yeah, gas powered scooters.

Tim: There was a noise ordinance thing and um the police didn’t know how to handle it. They didn’t know if it was a motor vehicle…

Adam: Did they ever come and pressure you guys or anything like that?

Tim: They never did but we would get calls but it was just more of parents coming in…

Adam: You guys were just involved because you were selling them.

Tim: Yeah yeah

Adam: Anything else?

Tim: There is a lot else but that covers the basics

Adam: I want the high points, I want to write this in the style that I do my things, I pack it all in, I don’t want to drag it out.

Tim: It’s not a novel.

Adam: Right, it’s not a novel, it’s an Internet based thing and it’s basically like a diary but I want to do a good job because you guys have always been there for everything for me to have fun and then when my kids became my age I would support them through you guys so…

Tim: Dave and I have worked here for forty five years.

Adam: There you go.

Tim: Sandy worked her butt off and she is retired.

Adam: Yeah, let’s talk.

Tim: She has been retired for 23 years now.

Adam: She lives in Coronado. Yeah, when ever I’m over there I’m thinking of her.

Tim: Dave and I have been here since, January…

Adam: 45 years. I just finished 20 years at Biltmore Cardiology. My work is cardiovascular.

Tim: I can remember you went in the Army, I’m not trying to tie this in but you went away and you were into hang gliding, you were always into that and you got into fishing and tenkara and I’ve always looked up to that. You have always been grounded in what you like to do snowboarding, Turner Summer Ski. You always had the coolest stuff, you and Mike Muir always had the coolest stuff.

Adam: Yeah, that is a part of me that people just don’t know. I learned the Internet early on and I helped support the slalom skateboard racing world with my association with John Gilmour and Jani Soderhall of the ISSA. I was early into the Internet and basically just made forums where we could all gather. 

If slalom skateboard racing makes it into the Olympics, Jani will bring that about, what I’ve done. That’s one of the things I’ve done and am really proud of. There just wasn’t a lot of slalom or downhill here.

Tim: There are people that still do it here, they have events. It’s not like the Capitola event every year. I think that’s some good info.

I turned the recorder off. It’s done. It took me three big sessions, about six hours of one finger pecking on my iPad. The talk to text was ok but it would not differentiate between Tim and I so I essentially had to listen, type, listen. Retype, edit, retype.

As I’ve said, I wanted to shoot this in a specific style with film and lenses. 

I’ve got one more session of fixing syntax and formatting. Then I’m done. I usually get these done in one day but this one was lots of hours, it had to be word for word.

And then it gets sent to Sandie.

Sandie, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to me. Supporting my interests, finding and ordering me the coolest things I could find. Thank you for taking care of me, you are legend in the world of Sidewalk Surfer.