growing up....


So, being my first post on this new, hip, and fantastic site...i guess the simplest thing to do is start with a small intro.
Growing up in SoCal, and moving to the Bay Area in 1999, may have been the single best decision I made in my life. Although my roots are firm in LA, my life and headspace is all about the City. How can I put my entire childhood in just a few short sentences...Grew up in an ultra-white neighborhood, surfing, swimming, fishing, boating, martial arts, playing the sax(ama)phone. Parents were pretty strict, but now when I look back, I appreciate all that they did for me, even if I thought they were gnarls. My early childhood was paradise. I used to go fishing/scuba diving with my dad every other weekend for about 8 years. I surfed daily, even if there were no waves just so i can get in the ocean. On small days, we would paddle out with our hawaiian slings and catch fish to cook on the beach...what more can a kid ask for?
Had some identity problems growing up in such a $$ driven neighborhood where every kid got a brand new BMW or Mercedes when they turned 16. You had to be cool! Then I got shit from the asian kids that just moved to the area after their parents made some cash...got tons of shit, even though I can read, write, speak my language. Then high school came and I pretty much was a complete stuck-up, conceded, jerk!
I was known as the super party guy that always knew where to go on the weekends, and was exposed to a lot of different kinds of "partying".
Being a swimmer though, I was given the chance to attend college with some assistance from the school. I chose ASU of all places, which ultimately was a disaster waiting to happen. Take a kid from high school that loves to party and put him at Arizona State University...um...yeah.
Left that school after a year and took off on a multi-month adventure through China and Korea, then Europe.
I went to China because I had some "lost" family that nobody in my family had ever met. When the japanese invaded Korea, my grandparents, their siblings, and pretty much anybody that coould, feld to Manchuria, China to be safe from the invading japanese. After years of being away from their homeland, my grandparents spent several months walking...yes, literally walking back to their home in Korea. My father's mother ended up having to leave all her siblings behind in China because they didn't feel that they would survive the hundreds and hundreds of miles back to KR. Ends up, in the late 1980's, one of my grandmothers sister got in contact with us through several years of searching...as well as China finally being a capitalist society. I went the China to find the rest of the sisters and her brother. I found all her sisters, and found out her brother was in North Korea and stuck in a communist civilization that is probably one of the most horrible places on Earth. At the time, it was probably one of the hardest as well and rewarding things I ever did.

I ended up coming home on a Friday night, by Sunday I was off to Paris, France. Travelled Europe and could easily write a 4 volume novel on my experiences there...so we'll just say that this trip had the biggest impact on my life as a person, to this day. The people I met in Europe and later ran into at shows, schools, other parts of the world, etc...just shows me how small this world is.

Went to Jr. College for a year and a half, got back into competetive swimming and finally enjoyed my childhood passion again. Played water polo again too...which is the best sport ever!
Ended up getting in awesome shape, and since I enjoyed swimming again, I pretty much tore shit up. Made a lot of school records, achieved everything I set out to do, and had a great time doing it.

Since I was living in LA again, I decided to have corrective eye surgery so I can become a Los Angeles County Lifeguard. Growing up as a competitive swimmer and surfing, I was lucky to be extremely comfortable in the ocean. The swim test was the coldest water temp in the history of the LA Co. Lifeguards, at 53 degrees! 400+ people tried out, about 150 didn't even make it to the first bouy, and I ended up getting 3rd. After interviews, finished with the highest score going into "THE ACADEMY".
Spent the next 6 weeks getting my ass handed to me for 13 hours a day. If you pissed off and instructor, we would do run-swim-run-swim-run-swim-run until they felt like we had enough. Came out of "rookie school" into the South Bay top of the class and was the first rookie to be put to work. So STOKED!
First day was at Ainsworth Tower in Redondo Beach. Had the whole tower to myself...awesome day. Didn't even have to rescue a single person! There were only about 6000 people at the beach that day, so I was happy to have not gotten wet. 7:45 pm rolls around and I start to close my tower. Get a phone call from a friend asking how my first day went, when I noticed someone running to me waving their arms frantically in the air. Did I miss something? Whats going on? Did someone drown?
I hangup the phone, dial 911 into HQ, ran out of my tower towards the guy running towards me. He yells, "Some guy just drowned down the beach!". All of a sudden, i had tunnel vision and saw the lifeless body, getting pounded by the Redondo Beach shore pound. Worst part...the guy was faced down. Pulled him out with his head stable just in case the shore pound hurt his back, and immediately went into the steps of CPR. No pulse...no breathing....SHIT! I reach in my pocket for my pocket mask, negative. Time to SUCK FACE as we say. After 4 mins of CPR, my backup arrived with O2 and a difib. Didn't need to defib cause I ended up getting a pulse and he started to breathe on his own.
After 3 years of lifeguarding on a full-time schedule, I moved to SF.
Since being here, I have made the most amazing group of friends. None of them surf, none of them understand any of my slang, but we all share a passion for music, and most importantly, love each other tremendously. The SF story begins in my next post....