Ride Channel recently caught up with Keith Hufnagel and a few others to discuss the skateboard scene surrounding the famous Embarcadero plaza in San Francisco. Topics of discussion include the skateboard scene in SF in the early 90's, the innovation going on within skateboarding at the time, as well as the crime that plagued the spot and ultimately caused the place to be shut down. Click here to read the full interview.

Smith: If you skated good and you were mellow and you kept to yourself and were quiet, you would earn respect. Greg Hunt, Huf, Jeron Wilson had been coming down there back in the day and just murdering it and had everybody’s respect immediately. Eric Pupecki was one of those. There was quite a few people that came there and had the ultimate respect.

Smyth: Some of those guys came and fucking killed. And that was awesome. We loved it when those guys came around. We were like, “Dude, these guys are sick.” L.A. guys that fucking killed, and they came down and were respectful and all they wanted to do was skate hard.

Smith: Once the New York guys came, we were a little bit taken aback, because we were like, “Wait—these guys are just like us, and they’re from New York, and they’re kind of, like, gnarlier than us.” Not skateboarding-wise, because I don’t think they were better skaters, but they were from New York.

Keith Hufnagel: I think the first day we showed up, we didn’t really know where it was at. So we rolled up, and I think there was 100 kids skating around this whole plaza area, and it was extremely intimidating.