The Hesh Chronicles - Chapter One: Darren Navarette

My recollections of the Rumble in Ramona are in bits and pieces. I remember the hour and a half drive from San Clemente. I clearly remember the seemingly bottomless cooler of ice cold Budweisers that was on the deck of the vert ramp. Barring that, my memories are drunken fragments.

What stuck out was that every person that skated the Rumble couldn't wait for next year. This wasn't a contest. This was a vert ramp session with a big group of friends involving plenty of beer and shit talking. Copious amounts of alcohol were consumed, weed was smoked and a shroomed Hewitt fell asleep on the ramps deck. I may or may not have farted about a foot from Pedro's head and it's possible that I may have failed to own up to it.

Burgers and dogs were grilled while Nihilist and JFA provided the sounds. There may have been other bands there, but I'll be dammed if I can remember. If that weren't enough, Lucky 13 Apparel had a pin-up girl contest. Once the Rumble ended , everyone headed to the bar (Ramona's in the middle of fucking nowhere so there's not much else to do) and ended the night back at the ramp with a couple more cases of beer.

"8.6 is what I ride on everything. 14.5 wheelbase. Indy 149's, 60mm Spitfires and Bones Swiss." -Navarette

The Ramona ramp is going to be around for a while.
Big method.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, Ponts and Partanen got in a fistfight resulting in a pair of shiners for Al (they eventually got over it), one of the Creature dudes hooked up with a pin-up chick and Darren Navarette agreed to let me interview him. Nice.

A few weeks later, I get off of work around 5 PM, drive south on the 5, stop off at the 7-11 to grab a 12 pack of Tecate and head to Darren's house in Mission Beach. It's a small San Diego beach community where lots of bars, single women and tons of other fun shit are all crammed into one small strip of land. They even have a fucking roller coaster. The best way I can describe it is that it's similar to the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach with less douchebags in Affliction t-shirts, cheaper drinks and cooler chicks.

Navs lives in a small beach house close enough to the water that you can hear the waves crash. When I arrive, he's noticeably tired from skating the Ramona ramp all day. Since its completion, sessions have been going down on a regular basis.

I can tell he's pleased by my choice of beer. "Once we finish that, we can work on the 18'er of Tecate I got in the fridge," he says as he tosses a pack of American Spirits onto his coffee table. We sit down, crack some brews and over the course of the evening, we proceed to get very hammered. Darren opened up about women, life in San Diego, the Hesh Crew and his labor of love: Creature Skateboards.

"One of the things about being Hesh Crew is that you have to do half cabs on vert. Hewitt's Hesh Crew. Definitely. There's a lot of dudes that think they're Hesh Crew but you have to do a half cab on a vert ramp. That makes you Hesh Crew." -Navarette

The interview would have been much longer, but this pic shows you what our beer count was at 30 minutes after I arrived.

A while ago, I read an interview with Navarette in Juice and it made me think that he was really impressed with himself. A little too cocky. The Darren I hung out with couldn't be farther from that. He's funny and likable. He's down to earth and self deprecating at times. When he talks to you, you can tell that he's genuinely interested in what you have to say.

When we walk to the liquor store to grab a fresh pack of smokes, he sees a group of friends he knows and they invite us to go have a beer at their place nearby. We join them, but not before Darren buys a fresh 18 pack of beer. We get there, Navs drinks only one of the beers and we chat with them for a few minutes before getting up to leave. "You almost forgot your brew!" Navarettes's Mission Beach neighbor points out as I open the door. "I got those for you guys", he says with a smile as we depart. That's Darren. A nice guy with a good heart.

It began with the Hesh Crew. In the mid through late 80's, Navs had been riding the streets and vert ramps in and around where he grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and driving out to Wisconsin to grind the pool coping at The Turf in Milwaukee. His skate sessions would forge long lasting friendships with two other local transition crushers; a young Sam Hitz and the older by a few years, Al Partanen.

"The original members of the Hesh Crew are Jay Iding and "The R". They were the overlords. 2nd in Command was Donny Deitrich and Al Partanen; I like to call him Pardinsky. 3rd in command is Sam and I", Darren says between cigarette puffs.

For years this tight knit group skated and smoked herb to a Bad Brains soundtrack as Al, Sam and Darrens skateboarding carreers begain to take shape.

Al and Sam were picking up various sponsors and doing some traveling while Darren left for California. "I had this hustle going to where I was able to get together enough cash to live off of for a couple months so I bought a van and took off for California. I met Russ Pope at the NHS booth at a trade show and he was like, "Why don't you ride for SMA?" I was hyped! They were my first big board sponsor."

"Blender or Grosso would be the first Creature guest model I'd want to do. Hosoi? In seconds. Kasai? In seconds." -Navarette

Hurricane in the slippery and gnar as fuck Vans combi.

After the cash ran out, Navs headed back home to Minnesota. Once he got there, he got a call from Russ Pope. "He was like "Yeah, we're not doing the SMA shit any longer." I was like "FUCK MAN!" I ride for SMA! I'm hyped! SMA's legendary!" He said, "We're starting this new thing called "Creature". Look at your nose! You look like a monster! You're perfect for Creature!" I was like "Yeah, I know." but I didn't know if I wanted to be that guy.....turned out to be the best thing that could have happened."

The original Creature team was Russ Pope, Jason Adams, Barker Barrett and Darren Navarette. They were the first generation. When Scarecrow was starting up, people started bailing and trying to get Navs to go to Scarecrow. "I was like, dude this is NHS, this is big. They're sending me to Europe next week!", Darren says as he takes a nother drag of his cigarette. "So I told them I'm going to stay with Creature".

Around '95/'96 NHS recruited Darren to put a new team together. "So I called Al Partanen. Parts ends up on the team..then Sam Hitz...then Chet Childress."

With NHS's money, I get the impression that they had a lot of fun while it lasted. I try to ask Darren about why Creature went under in the late 90's and he's clearly uncomfortable. "There's many reasons, but basically it just ended."

He doesn't elaborate.

The Hesh Crew went their separate ways with Navs joining Neil Heddings, Peter Hewitt and Chet Childress on 151 Skateboards, Hitz had a pro model out on Scum and Partanen was starting Illenium Skateboards.

"Around the time Hewitt went to Anti-Hero and Heddings went to do Roll Model, we were still trying to keep 151 going but it started to suck. That's when I started going up to NHS."

After several trips up north to NHS, he eventually convinced the powers that be to re-start Creature. "The one thing about Creature is that even though it was in the graveyard, it could be resurrected. We can dig it back up." Shit didn't work out for Al with Illenium so at the time Pardinski was riding for Dog Town. Hitz was riding for Hackett's Deathbox and Darren gave them both a phone call. "As soon as I got the door open of course the Hesh Crew is coming in."

The third generation of the Creature team began with Sam, Al, Darren, former 151 team rider Cody Boat and handrail monster Josh Perkins with Navs and Lee Charron sharing the duties of running the team and the creative direction of the company. "Everyone contributes, you think we can tell Hitz that we don't want to do a Blader Hater board? Fuck it, we'll use it."

Ideas are thrown around, people butt heads and people don't always agree. Darren felt that David Gravette had earned the spot as Creature's newest pro, Lee pushed for Livingston, Scotland hooligan Stu Graham's board to come out first. "I dunno. Stu turned pro. He's gnarly. He can hit shit nobody else can hit, he can slam like no one else can. He's a fucking beast. He seems to have the basics and everything. He's not a street pro, he's not a vert or bowl pro. He's just a professional skater."

Things look good for the current incarnation of Creature. Board and soft goods sales are doing well, a new movie, titled "Hesh Law" will be released sometime this year and the team is growing rapidly. Neil Heddings joined the pro roster shortly after being released from prison and Darren's got his eye on some more prospects. "(Sammy) Baca and (Emmanuel) Guzman.....we'll see if it happens. You never know."

Darren has to call his girlfriend and mine begins texting me reminding me I have work early the next morning. As I leave, Darren gives me a board and some Creature gear and thanks me for driving down to see him. He's got to get to bed, tomorrow's another session at the Ramona ramp.

(Special thanks to Ray "MRZ" Zimmerman for the photos)