Boys Will Be Wetboys

Saba is 25 years old but could pass for twenty, with a reddish shock of scarecrow hair set atop a matching ragged frame. When he, Twiggs, Trevor and Sweets rolled up to this spot, they could tell it was a virgin (un-skated) because no gray skid marks marred its pristine white surface. This is a rare find for the Wetboys, who've had their way with just about every skate-worthy patch of concrete in town since they announced themselves on the Denver skate scene six years ago. The only thing that's kept this patch off the radar so long is its location in a ghettoized enclave huddled against a freeway and railroad tracks on the northeast end of the city.

Saba watches Sweets push furiously, then ram his board in an arch up the cinderblock while planting his hands on the ground below, like a surfer turning in to a wave.

"Nice!" Saba says. "I've never seen that one before."

"First time I ever tried," Sweets says, straightening his fedora and admitting that he was inspired by a recent re-re-re-viewing of the '70s skate/surf styles in the Dogtown and Z-boys documentary. As he skates away, white paint flakes flutter in the afternoon breeze, which also carries a faint whiff of boiling animal fat from the nearby dog-food factory.

As Trevor, a wiry twenty-year-old in black vato sunglasses, squeaks his board into a frontside wallride — "Aw, yeah!" — Saba's brain returns to thoughts of filming, television producers, boom mikes and contracts. Liquid Theory, an L.A. production company, wants to film a pilot for MTV focusing on the crazy lives of a group of Colorado skaters. Local skater/acrobat/stuntman William Spencer and members of the Wetboys have been tapped as featured characters for the proposed reality show. The working title: Hollerado, a play on a two-year-old video.

But as the unofficial point man for the skate crew, Saba has had trouble balancing the needs of the production company with the opinions of his fellow Wetboys, who regard MTV as the pinnacle of corporate pop-culture lameness. Saba himself cringes at the thought of the Wetboys getting stuck in reality show-type reality with real/fake dialogue and real/fake adventures. "It would be cool if they would just let us do our thing," he says to his friends. "Not try to set us up on stupid little tasks or make it into some extreme-sports thing."

"Sounds to me like it's just the Real World: Denver, but with shitbags," says Twiggs, who's skating nearby, dressed in a filthy white undershirt and cut-off slacks that show off his blurry, homemade tattoos. As the crew's contrarian in residence, Twiggs has made it known that he wants nothing to do with MTV or any efforts to turn the Wetboys into professional skate retards a la Jackass, Jackass: The Movie or Jackass 2, the sequel.

Third. There's nothing professional about a Wetboy's life. It's not all about skateboarding, drinking and drugs, of course. Sometimes it's about chicks. Sometimes it's about music and art. But mostly it's about friends and fun. That's the one thing the hating-ass-haters out there can't deny when they watch one of the Wetboys' skate videos floating around the Internet: These dudes look like they're having fun.

An amorphous concept — fun. It's what people allow themselves to have when they're not trying to look cool or mature. Or serious. Seriousness killed skateboarding. Blame the corporations, blame ESPN, blame the well-meaning skatepark builders and YMCA camp directors, blame a society that took a perfectly worthless, childish diversion and turned it into something legitimate. Into an activity that people would consider to be — blehh — a sport.

For the Wetboys — about two dozen guys spread across Colorado and Arizona but mostly in Denver — skateboarding has been a kind of four-wheeled fountain of youth, a font of fun. When they all lived under the same roof — in a series of exceptionally filthy residences known as "the Wethouses" — they could use their boards to fend off the dour expectations of adulthood. But now, lacking a common pad, it's been much more difficult to round up the dudes for a good old-fashioned, waste-of-the-day skate session.

From the curb, Saba grumbles that even with this MTV pilot supposedly coming up, they seem to be skating together less than ever. Still, the show could represent one last chance for major fun. If it gets picked up, there's talk of setting the Wetboys up in some sort of warehouse near downtown. "We could drag in couches, set up some random ramps, instead of MTV finishing it with what they think is cool," says Saba. And then they could film at spots like this and show the world how the Wetboys roll.

Micah Hollinger, the original Wetboy, could fly up from Tucson. "Naughty could do his wacky foot-plant thing," says Saba, admiring the wall. "William could fly off the side and ride off the fence. It'd be crazy."

Get wet with Sweets: I'm from Denver, grew up on the west side and the north side. When I was really young, I lived on an Indian reservation with my dad, in Arizona, but mostly I've lived in Denver.

I started skating when I was eight years old. I'm 27 now. In 2000, I was living with Paul and Saba and like ten other dudes in a two-bedroom apartment across from the old 303 skate shop in Arvada. We had two guys sharing each room, and then everyone else slept wherever they could. Some of the guys were still in high school, just living on their own. None of us really had parents we could go to, so we kind of like took care of each other. Some of the guys, their moms were into drugs or alcohol, so we figured a lot of these kids were better off staying with us. We all lived together just so we could go skating and not worry about anything else. We weren't the Wetboys or anything then. Just super-tight friends.

To pay rent, a bunch of us worked at this telemarketing firm selling timeshares. Paul isn't the most outgoing dude in the world, but he was crazy good at selling timeshares. Saba and I sucked so bad, it was pathetic — we hardly sold shit. Then one day there was this skateboard demo going on at the Denver Skatepark, and we told Paul we were going to quit so we could go to it. He didn't want to lose the job because he was so awesome at it. But then he just said, "Fuck it, let's go," and we all quit together and went skating.

Fourth. The Wetboys are not a skateboard team. Nor are they a skateboard club. They are a crew. Homies who like to skate and party, that's all. You cannot join. No offense, bro. You might be a really awesome skater, maybe the best in your city. It doesn't matter. While the ranks of the Wetboys comprise some really great skaters, some of the top street skaters in Colorado, they are not interested in having the best and brightest as part of their lineup, the way a skateboard company or shop team would.

Consider Tall Kan, that big, lovable mope from California — he doesn't even skate, and he's like the Wetboy mascot. Or the not-to-be-identified graffiti writer who became an honorary member of the Wetboys a couple of years back and started spray-painting the odd name across the city, baffling taggers and property owners alike. And then there are the random associates and groupies who float around the circle, people who look wet, skate wet and party wet but not are not technically members.

Ask — as many have — and you'll get this reply: "You've got to kill a Wetboy to be a Wetboy."

But in reality, explains Adam Crew, a Wetboy needs to "just be a dude that we're down with." Ask what, exactly, this means, and you'll get a blank stare, maybe a shrug. The particular Wetboy you put the question to will slouch into the couch, stare into his cigarette or disappear into the kitchen in search of a fresh drink. Still, you can figure out much of the formula yourself: Mix one part personality with one part skate skills, a dash of don't-give-a-fuck and shake. Oh, and don't forget this:

Fifth. You have to make out with a Wetboy to be a Wetboy.

Make out, as in close your eyes, part your lips, lean in and just do it. Meaning you set down your beer, grab some hair and, like, stick your tongue in another dude's mouth.