Landsharks on Goat Hill

If you’re driving on Potrero Hill this summer and a kid passes you by like they just got shot out of a cannon, you’re not hallucinating. The world’s fastest skateboarders are pushing the envelope on the Hill’s slopes, trying to break the sound barrier, or at least look like it on YouTube clips.

Skateboarding trends move in cycles, with skaters constantly re-making stunts that were cool decades ago, going higher, further and faster. Downhill skating is presently all the rage after a lengthy hiatus. San Francisco’s world-famous grades, including on Potrero Hill, are being conquered by stunt wood pilots seeking fame and fortune through board sales and shoe endorsement deals.

Fueling the madness is the all-seeing eye of the skateboarding media machine, a.k.a. Thrasher Magazine, the skateboarders “bible.” The publication and its video channels put certain hills into the global spotlight by showcasing the daredevil antics of fast and fearless “bombers” who lay it all on the line attempting to be the first one to slay virgin slope.

The fuse was lit several years ago by an unassuming laid-back lightning bolt named Frank Gerwer, who burned a new chapter into the ever-expanding book of skateboarding pioneers by becoming the first person ever documented to blaze down North Beach’s Kearny Street from the top going across Broadway Street.

Anti-Hero Skateboards, which sells boards with Gerwer’s name on them, released the now famous promotional video clip showing him flying down Kearney on the brink of disaster, sliding across an intersection at the bottom, coming to a stop under the cameraman’s tripod, beaming with a classic “did I do that” smile. The yackity yacking went viral almost immediately when a commentor took notice that the hill was so steep it has a staircase instead of a sidewalk.  The web’s blah blah grapevine then dissected every trivial detail of the 15 second missile launch, down to whether Gerwer’s windbreaker had a zipper and, if not, did he have five or six buttons on it or was it Velcro. Bombing hills was back on the front page. 

Gerwer’s defeat of Kearny Street was the first shot fired in the current battle to see who can go down the world’s biggest, fastest and scariest looking slopes and live to tell about it. Baxter Street, the second steepest hill in Los Angeles, was the next massive peak to fall, successfully bombed by Don “Nuge” Nguyen.  After that came explosive videos from GX 1000 and Deathwish skateboards featuring Sean Greene, Jeff Carlyle and Tristan Funkhouser, who should start charging rent on Taylor and Quintara streets; for all practical purposes they own them, two of the most fearsome mountains in the entire range.  

It’d be criminal not to mention Pablo (P-Spleef) Ramirez (R.I.P.), one of the most talented people to ever touch San Francisco streets with a skateboard. In the mid-2010s he pretty much owned any hill west of Twin Peaks and several others while spreading the kind of vibes skating just can’t get enough of. 

In the present day a guy who lives up to his name, Deshun Byrd, has people in the know talking about his successful flights down both Elizabeth and Duncan streets in Noe Valley.

In Potrero Hill in 2024 Frank (Frontside Frank) Gallagher cemented his place in the history of San Francisco hill bombing by going down De Haro Street from the top unscathed.
Gallagher’s Instagram post, besides putting people on the edge of their seats, shifted the down hilling focus from Downtown to the Hill. Now, every fast skater in the world looking to make a name for themselves wants to be the first person to drop in on one of the neighborhood’s many terrifying slopes. De Haro, Arkansas, Carolina and 23rd streets, among others, can be like gigantic concrete waves that’re highly photogenic, with Victorian “painted ladies” and the City’s skyline in the background.

San Francisco is known for its 43 different hills, each with its own character. To skaters the City is a 49 square mile public skatepark that’s open 24 hours a day, a virtual Baskin and Robbins of different flavored chutes and ladders that range in difficulty from green square bunny slopes to triple black diamonds that can test even the best riders. To a skater the City’s hills seem like gigantic hundred-foot waves begging to be ridden. Much like a hundred-foot wall of water they can crush you like an aluminum can. 

Streets such as Elizabeth, Taylor, Kearny, and De Haro have only been successfully bombed by a handful of skaters and have left more than a few wannabes with painful road rash souvenirs from getting tossed like a salad or put in the spin cycle from going splat to the flat.

Daredevils skating down hills is nothing new in the City; it’s been going on since the most famous pro, the legendary Tommy Guerrero, and the C.B.S. crew started using Muni busses as urban ski lifts to get to the top of Ninth Avenue in the early-1980s. These days the aces have pushed bombing hills to another level by doing difficult maneuvers at the top of the slope and then flying down the hill in a victory ride that can be terrifying to watch for the uninitiated.

Jumping urban cornices and taking Satan’s slingshot down the City’s steepest grades isn’t for the faint of heart. With speeds greater than thirty miles an hour, there’s no room for error. It requires the confidence of a base jumper, the balance of a high wire walker and the hunger of a Peregrine falcon on the hunt. One false move can send a person to the hospital.

“Part of the allure is the danger” said veteran downhill skater Bill Harper, who moved to San Francisco from Redding specifically to skate the hills and recently became the first person to shoot 23rd Street from the top all the way down to Potrero Avenue. “The best way to bomb hills is to not even think about falling. You just gotta envision yourself high fiving your friends at the bottom and go all in and commit to it.”

Harper knows what he’s talking about. He’s paid his dues and has road rash scars from a crash on Dolores Street when a combination of faulty equipment and wet pavement caused him to get the dreaded “death wobbles,” which cause a rider to lose your stability and get tossed face first from seemingly out of nowhere.

According to Harper, what makes skaters today different from the pioneers is that the entire death or glory operation is “filmed from at least two angles, and more importantly people have friends blocking the intersections to avoid collisions with cars” which could be fatal. 

“In the old days guys would just cross their fingers and roll the dice, but after a couple high profile automobile deaths, especially the tragic Pablo Ramirez incident, you don’t really see that happening anymore,” he said.

He added that while 23rd Street might look borderline suicidal to some people it’s just a matter of being confident. And “the bright side is that General Hospital is at the bottom and open for business 24 hours a day.”