SLO LIFE Winter 2010

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| Meet your neighbor Meet Kevin rucks In this installment of our “Meet Your Neighbor” series, <strong>SLO</strong> <strong>LIFE</strong> Magazine sat down to talk with Kevin Rucks. He is formally a professional skateboarder, who lives in San Luis Obispo with his wife, Jennifer, and their two kids, Drake and Milla. In addition to co-owning and operating Salisbury Vineyards with Jennifer and her parents, John and Maridel Salisbury, Kevin is a freelance artist who owns a small skateboard hardware company, Cannibolts, and is actively learning the art of BMX with his son. Here is his story… Who were your role models as a kid? My heroes growing up were Spider-Man, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Evel Knievel. My biggest influence was Evel Knievel because he always said things like “guys will cheat in car racing and use nitrous oxide, and their car will run really fast for a couple of laps then blow up. If you take drugs in life you’ll run really fast for a while, then you’ll fall apart too.” In other words, you can’t cheat the system - there’s no easy way to do it. He had integrity. He’d say that he wanted to live his life “jumping through the air with sunshine on his face.” I remember the first time I saw him say that; it just grabbed me, and I said that’s what I want. I didn’t care about being rich or having a mansion or a yacht, I wanted to be like Evel Knievel, jumping through the air with sunshine on my face because he’s living free and being his own guy and being dangerous. That was cool. That’s not something you could buy or go to college for. You had to earn it. You either did or you didn’t. Why Spider-Man and the Six Million Dollar Man? I liked The Six Million Dollar Man because he was always trying to do the right thing and be honest, and he didn’t like guns. Spiderman was the same way but he used sarcasm to put down the bad guys by making these great little wisecracks. When someone would pick on me at school, I would try to do the same thing. I figured out that if I could embarrass somebody for trying to bully me or my friends, then they usually left us alone, and sometimes they’d start buying my artwork. Let’s start from the beginning, Kevin. give us some background. My dad was an electrical engineer from Arkansas who worked in the aerospace industry. We bounced around a little bit growing up. We lived next to Cape Canaveral when I was little, so I got to see spaceship launches. Just before I started elementary school, he was transferred to Orange County, where I grew up. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and I have two older sisters. I started skateboarding when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I found out I was pretty good at it and decided to enter some competitions. I was 14 when I got my first sponsor, Santa Cruz Skateboards. What did your parents have to say about that? At the time, they really didn’t understand what it was all about. I remember once in high school they sat me down to ask if I was doing drugs. I was the lead singer in a punk band and had this huge Mohawk and was really into animal rights and being a vegetarian; I even started a magazine called “Why?” which was all about why we shouldn’t be eating animals. They said, “There are all these random people coming to the house all the time, and you always have cash.” I took them through my bedroom and showed them all my drawers and my closet, which were full of tons of free stuff from my sponsors, companies like Santa Cruz, VANS, Airwalk Shoes, Converse, and Independent. I would sell everything that I didn’t use. That’s where the cash was coming from. They were pretty blown away. 16 | slo life magazine huh? By the third or fourth grade, kids were buying my artwork… they’d say, “Can you draw me a zombie? I’ll give you a quarter, or you can have my chocolate milk at lunch,” or they’d trade me for something. I never went to school for art, but I ended up doing a lot of skateboard graphics and concert posters for people. Half the time I’d get ripped off and never get paid, but I didn’t care because I loved doing the work. How did you get into art in the first place? My grandmother was an artist back in Arkansas. She painted fine china. So when I would go back there to visit, she would teach me all of these really cool techniques using oil paints. I’ll never forget when she taught me how to paint a dragon. She put this blue paint down then used a Q-tip to roll out the scales of the dragon. I was blown away. Then she showed me how to make the teeth by using a toothpick to carve it out. I can still recall the smells of oil paint and those old arts and crafts shops she would take me to. it sounds like you had fun at grandma’s house. On those same visits, I would go to this little comic book shop - the same one my dad went to as a kid. My dad would tell me, “Kevin, you can go in there, but you have to buy something. You can’t just go in to look at everything and leave.” He was very adamant about supporting the store. So, I would walk two miles from my grandmother’s house down to the little town center of El Dorado, Arkansas. I’d spend all day in this comic book shop just soaking it all in. The little old lady there was so nice. She’d let me sit in the middle of the floor with a huge stack of comic books, just flipping through them all day long. continued on page 18
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Page 5 and 6: contents Meet Your Neighbor: Kevin
Page 7 and 8: Hear for the Holidays Sleigh bells
Page 9 and 10: slo life magazine | 9 Do you have a
Page 11 and 12: Over 15 different styles of Patagon
Page 13 and 14: Below is an exerpt of Barbara Stick
Page 15: There is a sadness that permeates F
Page 19 and 20: economy and with the way that thing
Page 21 and 22: Home We Fix Computers anywhere on t
Page 23 and 24: Experience the frasier fir sPeCial
Page 25 and 26: intRoducing ER Watch Real time info
Page 27 and 28: SLO Moped Gets a Makeover Even in t
Page 29 and 30: understand that ‘SLO’ stands fo
Page 33 and 34: San Luis Business Center Furnished
Page 35 and 36: “We have a car, but don’t drive
Page 37 and 38: TiMeLeSS filled with books, photos,
Page 39 and 40: Our approach to real estate is abou
Page 41 and 42: | REaL ESTaTE ask The Experts Where
Page 43 and 44: Kitchen was born. The menu featured
Page 47 and 48: December 18 Event CMC Holiday Speci

SLO LIFE Winter 2010

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