NOBODYS - JEFF FERNER
Film
"I still have a poster size drawing of his that he did in high school." —Jessie Van Roechoudt
from Color 3.2 (2005) interview pages 59-64
by Kyle Shura, words by Sandro Grison
"[Jeff] was one of the 'good guys' when I was just getting started about 15 years ago." —Jon Bunyan
The most confusing time in a typical boy’s life was for me the most simple and concise period I can ever recall. Age fourteen was the first time I felt free to do whatever, and it was the last time I didn’t have to work to get by – just be home for dinner and the moms was happy. Looking back on memories filled with the scent of vintage clothing stores and Slurpees, I’m reminded of what it was like to skate for a consecutive eight hours and still have the energy to watch videos all night, then do it all over again.
Summer at fourteen involved taking the city bus into town every day at 11:10am to our quaint skatepark on the lakefront/beach. Shaded by the ancient, giant Cottonwood trees that once stood before the epic windstorm, I’d show up to the park with an abrupt entrance where the bricks ended and the concrete began sending you forward when your front wheels hit the raised concrete – for some reason I’d always be drinking a slurpee, failing to remember this crack. Kyle Shura and his video camera would be sitting on the top of the 3ft bank with his legs out, so you had to avoid that area; Simon – who you could have sworn was raised by skateboarders the way he handled his BMX – would be in some nose wheelie stall on the pyramid; Aaron Loyie sweating it out in his XL crew neck sweater during 35 degree temperatures; Dickie-dee (who got his name from when he’d ride his Dickie-dee ice cream bike to the park and make a killing off all us skaters) shredding around looking like the young Steve Olson in polyester pants three inches too short; Bunyan, Aamon, Derrick and his brothers; Mike Balogna – post gym days – looking like Schwarzenegger; Danny Knorr and the 540 guys, launching huge backside airs off the first pyramid – everyone staying clear of Les for reasons of his temper; Mike Harding and his nollie hardflips... everyone would be in sequence every day. Around 1:00, Ryan Smith would show up for an immediate, non-stop, charging destruction session for about 30 minutes where you’d get to witness all the new tricks that just came out on whatever World, Toy Machine or Plan B video was currently in rotation. Around 1:30, the park was safe to skate again and Ryan would join Rheal, Kurt and his other Rutland homies on the bank with Kyle and commence to unintentionally intimidate every little kid who entered. It never seemed to faze Pablo though (or “Pepsi” as Kyle would call him, citing an episode of The Simpsons). He skated consistently for 10 years, and in that time I did not witness a single sign of progression from probably the first day he stepped on the board. But it didn’t seem to stop him from trying frontside bigspin heels over the pyramid, though... if that’s what you’d call it. Every day of the week, just around 3:00, Mike McKinlay would pull up in his green Austin Mini – fresh off work from his job at the local juice plant – to perform a flawless routine of trickery that would blow any mind who didn’t have the privilege to see it go down every single day. Yes, there was no shortage of characters. But while these seemingly scheduled spectacles would take place every day, only one subtle element would go noticed if it would have been absent. He was the guy who was friends with everyone, but needed nobody. Worldly, but went nowhere, said nothing, yet made you smile. A role model without reason, Jeff Ferner is the only fine detail that personifies the free and easy time in my life where I discovered that everything I really needed could be found in skateboarding, and he reminds me of this every time I see him back home at the park.
Check back next week when we look at Mike McKinlay's part – the week leading to Ryan Smith's first video part... the finale. Click here to view all Nobodys entries and check back every monday for additional parts.
