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more than 50 miles per hour. Whether standing up, lying down or on their knees, competitors, who wore dazzling leather suits and helmets, barreled down the hill for the fastest times. The hill, which the speed run’s founders described as a “rollercoaster,” was also famous for the Model T Hill Climb in the 1920s. Despite the danger, however, the City of Signal Hill permitted the skateboarding competition that was first staged and promoted by Skateboard and Hang-Glider magazine publisher Jim O’Mahoney, now owner of the Santa Barbara Surf Museum. The run was started as part of the Guinness World Records TV show, and the contest went on to become an annual event with dozens of competitors, drawing crowds of 5,000 people and receiving coverage by television news crews and Sports Illustrated. Guy “Grundy” Spagnoli, who later became a professional surfer, completed the first attempt down the hill without any practice runs, clocking in at 50.2 miles an hour. One year later, Sam Puccio Jr. rode down on his back on a homemade skateboard, passing the finish line at 54 miles per hour. That skateboard would become the unofficial prototype for what is used today in “street luge” races. The speedsters eventually started bombing down the hill in “skate cars”– metal, enclosed, aerodynamic skateboard contraptions that required parachutes for stopping. Some of the risk-takers, however, ended up careening into the crowd and open traffic, since the skate cars were hard to steer. Some racers wiped out in injurious falls and neardeath accidents, which caused the City to eventually close the books on the contest. “Basically, the accidents started adding up, and the City of Signal Hill decided in 1979…to not give out a permit again for another speed run,” Horelick said. “That was sort of the death of the speed run there, but skateboard racing still continues and did move on to other places.” For some racers, however, injuries were life-changing. Tina Trefethen, a champion hang-glider, was 21 years old in 1978 when she crashed into a pole coming down the hill at approximately 58 miles an hour. The major accident landed her in the hospital after breaking her wrists and several ribs, and she had to have a lung removed. Watching the series of events unfold on the big screen was “very emotional,” she said in a phone interview. “It was pretty hard for me to watch some of that,” said Trefethen, who said she stays busy today fabricating and engineering ultra-light airplanes and racecars. “It‘s very amazing I’m alive… I appreciate every day… I wonder, ‘What if that never would have happened to me?’” Filmmakers Horelick and Corenoy first came across vintage skateboard photos of the run after purchasing a skateboard shop and the Tunnel Skateboard brand in 2005. Horelick, an author who graduated with a master’s degree in screenwriting from USC, and Corenoy, who has worked as
Thursday, February 14 at 5:30 and 8:30pm
director for the reality-TV series The Real World after graduating from New York University, then both approached the City of Signal Hill and the Signal Hill Historical Society to be involved in the research and making of the documentary. For years, that part of the city’s history has gone relatively overlooked, except for artwork in Cherry Park that commemorates the skate cars. Signal Hill City Manager Ken Farfsing said that an article in the L.A. Times written by Horelick in 2007 noted that the City had not properly honored the race. Although the City has highly honored the City’s wellknown oil history, there were no plaques or monuments about the speed run, which is why Farfsing said he wanted to make sure the City collaborated with the directors on the documentary. In 2010, the City’s redevelopment agency awarded the directors a contract to produce the film, and the rest was “history,” he said during the screening. “They didn’t realize in the late 1970s that they were really giving birth to a brand-new sport,” said Farfsing, who added that “street luge,” although not yet an Olympic sport, was added to the X Games in 1995. He said the speed run is also considered the launching pad for downhill skateboarding and other extreme sports, such as big-wave riding and snowboarding. “You really are pioneers,” Farfsing said. The documentary is the fourth film about Signal Hill’s history sponsored by the City. Other documentary films include: Signal Hill, a Diamond in the Rough (2006); History of the Hancock Refinery Fire (2008); and Successes of the Redevelopment Agency (2009). Horelick said The Signal Hill Speed Run is showing again at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Saturday, Feb. 2, and then at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival in March.
Photo by Chuck Saccio
Mike McCreary participating in the 1977 Signal Hill Speed Run
NEWS
FEBRUARY 1, 2013
Don ‘Waldo’ Autry remembered as old-school skateboarding ‘legend’
Sean Belk Staff Writer
Don “Waldo” Autry, a Long Beach native and local hairstylist, who passed away last Tuesday, Jan. 22, is remembered by friends, family and patrons as an old-school skateboarding “legend” and “super-nice guy.” He was 55. Autry was scheduled to attend a private screening of the new documentary The Signal Hill Speed Run, in which he was featured for competing in the 1976 downhill skateboarding speed contest in Signal Hill. However, he died just days before the film’s debut. According to Gail Krause, spokesperson for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Autry was found dead in his van on the 200 block of Main Street in Seal Beach, nearby where he worked as a hair stylist at Upstairs Downstairs Beauty Salon. Although an autopsy of the body has been conducted, Krause said his cause of death is still pending toxicology reports and biological studies. She said results aren’t expected to be released for several weeks. The coroner concluded that he actually died the day before his body was found, Krause added. With a more than 25-year skateboarding career, Autry was featured on the cover of skateboarding magazines and revered for inventing signature moves riding in riverbeds, pools, pipes and tunnels. He was also featured in the 1972 surf film 5 Summer Stories. Customers noted online that he used to tell skateboarding stories while styling hair. Mike Horelick, co-director of the
Photo by Mike Horelick
Don “Waldo” Autry, seen here with his signature green hair, passed away on Tuesday, Jan. 22, just days before a local screening of the new documentary The Signal Hill Speed Run, in which he was featured. Signal Hill documentary, stated in a message on Facebook that Autry was respected as a “fantastic skateboarder and a legend in the sport.” Autry was a “true character, who had a warm heart and a great sense of humor,” Horelick added. “As a kid, he walked around town with a pet raccoon on his shoulder. As an adult, he continued to compete in street luge, beating out others less than half his age.” During the documentary screening last week, skateboarding colleagues paid tribute to Autry with a moment of silence. Herb Spitzer, a fellow skateboarding competitor in the Signal Hill Speed Run, said he recalled Autry as a “wild man,” who “belonged in Cajun country.” He added that Autry
was a skateboarding innovator and “had a really outgoing personality.” Ed Economy, also a fellow oldschool skateboarder, said he met Autry while skateboarding in riverbeds as a teenager and they stayed close friends for 30 years. Economy said he remembered Autry disappearing for months at a time and people would say, “Where’s Waldo?” One time they went down the hill in Signal Hill on a bike together and ended up in the hospital, he said. Afterwards, he recollected Autry saying, “Wasn’t that rad?” Economy said, “I always called him Waldo Knievel. He was afraid of nothing,” adding that Autry was “one of the best skaters of the time,” who was “doing things nobody else ever did.”
Photo by Bobby Smith
Don “Waldo” Autry is seen bombing down the Hill Street slope during the 1976 competition of the Signal Hill Speed Run.
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