Not Friends

Later-in-life surfers usually have pretty modest expectations about their newfound interest in wave riding. They hope for some communion with nature while experiencing a lifestyle they’ve always dreamed of, probably securing a mid-length, a soft top, or a traditional log to cruise along little waves of joy. Elissa Steamer is not one of those people. The storied professional skateboarder and star of Toy Machine’s mid-’90s videos Welcome to Hell and Jump Off a Building had other ideas. “When I started surfing, I was convinced at any moment I’d be fucking destroying the lip!” she says, laughing.

The polite and “cruisey” 48-year-old is a skateboarding legend, and when we spoke she was jet-lagged from a trip to Paris “for some Olympic skate stuff.” Most people will recognize her name from her character in the 1999 video game Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, often credited with bringing skateboarding and punk rock into suburban living rooms around the world. One of 10 characters you could choose to play, Steamer was the only woman—something she was very accustomed to growing up. “I always saw the rebellious look and vibe of BMX and skateboarding in the ’80s,” she says. “Those were the people I started running with, and most of them were males. I never really had any female friends until high school.”

Steamer shipped herself from Florida to California after high school to pursue skateboarding, even though a clear path for women to skate professionally didn’t exist. She impressed some heavy hitters right away, joining Ed Templeton’s Toy Machine brand, which included respected and renowned characters of the time Chad Muska and Jamie Thomas, who heavily backed her. Steamer became a recurring subject in some of Templeton’s most famous photographs from the era—young Elissa in a rundown van or motel during a skate trip, with beers, joints, and cigarettes littering the frame. The images documented the rough-around-the-edges lifestyle that skating enjoyed at the time—one that ultimately would put her on a path to sobriety and, eventually, surfing.

A noteworthy aspect of the skate culture Steamer came up in was its repulsion of surfing. Despite the fraternal nature of the two boardsports—surfing birthing skateboarding, skating loaning progressive elements to surfing—neither wanted anything to do with the other in the ’90s. Skaters were dirty, and surfers wore sandals too often. That seemed to be more than enough to keep the two very distant, despite constant crossover. “I always lived in surf towns, too,” Steamer says. “Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Los Angeles…but there was a hard line in the sand between the two.”

Seemingly now born again a surfer, Steamer lives in Ocean Beach, San Francisco, just a few blocks from the sand, where she founded her own surf brand, Gnarhunters, and regularly hunts lips to thrash. Her journey from skater to surfer-skater is as unlikely as it is authentic.

TF You grew up in coastal Florida. How were you introduced to boardsports?

ES Yeah, Fort Myers, Florida. Gulf Coast. It became popular when it got leveled by that hurricane [in 2022]. That’s where I grew up. BMX must have been bigger at the time, because I’d see BMX magazines in the grocery store and in the back of those I’d see skateboarding. On TV late at night I would see this “Psycho Skate” commercial. Then there was an INXS music video for their song “Devil Inside,” and someone back-boards a bench in it. I remember that vividly.

TF Fragments of skating you stitched together. 

ES In the ’80s, you really hung onto those few images.

TF Who would you have been influenced by at the time?

ES I remember seeing in [Powell-Peralta’s 1988 video] Public Domain these two segments where they were actually shredding street. There was also a part of Lori Rigsby and a couple other girls skating, and I remember being like, “I can fucking do that! If I just had a video camera and an address to send the tapes to…” 

TF Were you getting support from friends and family for your skateboarding?

ES The only pushback I ever got was regular old bully shit, not because of skateboarding, but, like, “Oh, your clothes are funny-looking.” My parents were super supportive. My dad encouraged me to be different and do what I want—shave my head, dye [my hair] pink or whatever.

TF As a female skater at the time, there was no official path to going pro.

ES No. I just took the blueprint of everybody else and applied it to myself. 

TF Did your introduction to surfing come much later?

ES Oh yeah. But one time I was in Huntington Beach at the US Open of Surfing for a skate contest, and I saw Bob Burnquist walking with a surfboard. I was like, “Can I try that?” I forget the warning he gave me, but I didn’t heed it at all. It was probably, “Be careful. It’s kinda gnarly out there.” [Laughs.] I instantly popped myself in the face with the board and didn’t try again until I was 32 years old.

TF So after your first surf, you were not hooked?

ES No. [Laughs.]

TF In the ’90s, surfing and skating were—

ES Not friends. [Laughs.]

TF Did surf culture ever cross your path at that time?

ES No, not at all. I was strictly on the streets. Surf culture wasn’t a thing to me.

TF When did surfing get your attention?

ES I had a friend who surfed, and one day he was like, “Let’s go surfing. I’m gonna get you a wetsuit.” Somehow he convinced me to try to paddle out that day. I sat up on the board, and he was like, “Whoa, some people can’t even do that!” I think I was like, “Okay, whatever.” 

TF Did you have a spiritual ocean moment?

ES No, not at all! I thought it was cool, but I was always terrified of the water and the animals in the water, so I never really stayed for more than five minutes. So to be that far out was exhilarating…but a spiritual moment? I mean, it was nice to be out there feeling something different—the cold air on my face. 

TF Different than sweating behind a grocery store in the Midwest, skating a loading dock? 

ES In the fucking gutter with tweakers everywhere… It was just different. Felt clean, actually. [Laughs.]

TF You kept going after that session?

ES That first day I paddled out, I didn’t catch a wave, but I got a belly ride coming in on the foam, and I remember how fast water felt. You know when you’re on a boat and you feel like you’re doing 100 mph but you’re only going 25 mph? That’s what the belly ride felt like. I felt like I was cooking. I was like, “I’m gonna get a wave.”

TF Was this all happening in San Francisco? Not the friendliest spot to learn…

ES Yeah, my friend Lucas—I love him to death, but he didn’t really have my best interest in mind and started me on a 6-foot board. I didn’t have the experience of being a kid learning on a longboard or anything. It was straight into ice-cold San Francisco on a shortboard. It took me a long time.

TF Did you eventually adopt different equipment and get into board design?

ES I traded a bunch of skateboards at this shop in Pacifica called the Log Shop. It’s not there anymore, but they were hella cool, and they let me trade, like, 30 skateboards in, and I got this fucking—Lucas, bless his heart—plastic Bertlemann Santa Cruz twin-fin Rasta-looking reissue board. Some fucking slippery-ass, thick-ass-epoxy twin-fin. [Laughs.]

TF So no one really helped you get proper beginner equipment?

ES No, and even if they were, I wasn’t hearing it. I was like, “Nope, I gotta ride a shortboard because that’s cool.”

TF So mid-’90s of you.

ES Eventually I started broadening my horizons, but I never connected with longboarding. My goal was always just to attack the lip. [Laughs.]

TF Did you ever get a board that suited you?

ES I got Manny Caro to shape me this stubby little egg-looking thing with a single fin, which was my first real board designed and shaped for me, and it was fucking amazing.

TF Were you a student of surf videos?

ES Oh yeah, absolutely! I would watch Dane [Reynolds] and Marine Layer, and I’d fucking check in with that every day and hope for a new video.

TF Dane did a lot for reuniting surfing and skating after the ’90s. Have you hung out with him?

ES One time I was walking my dog with a couple friends when Dane walked out of the water, and all my friends were like, “Oh, hey!” I got all weird and started playing with the dog because I was so starstruck. [Laughs.] Then I met him at Sandspit in Santa Barbara another time, and he was so cool. I emailed him to ride for Gnarhunters back in the day. He was really nice about it but said Quiksilver wouldn’t let him do that.

TF What led you to start your own surf brand?

ES My thing was to poke fun at surfing through skateboarding—all while enjoying surfing. My friend suggested we make a movie: “You should call it Gnarhunters 6—like there were five before it.” I was like, “Oh, I like that!” We started tagging Gnarhunters on our shit—surfboards and skateboards—and we made T-shirts. I lost all my endorsement deals around that time, and I was like, “I’m just gonna fucking surf.” I started surfing a lot, and that became my focus. I had all this extra time and energy to do something different, so I started messing around with Gnarhunters and making content, clothing, towels, leashes, and all kinds of shit.

TF Have you done any proper surf trips?

ES Oh yeah—plenty. I’ve been to Nicaragua, El Salvador…I went to a skate contest in South Africa and fucking flew down and then drove to J-Bay by myself and stayed there for three days just to surf. 

TF Getting sober comes up a lot these days in surfing and skating. Why do you think that is?

ES [Partying is] a younger man’s game. Some people can continue, but for me, and I’ll speak for myself, it was always really celebrated. The way I drank and did drugs and behaved was celebrated at the time. It was never a problem for my career. It just became a problem for my internal life. Alcohol is a depressant, so if you fill your body with it all the time you’re going to end up miserable and depressed.

TF Hard to surf and skate when you’re miserable. 

ES Hard to skate hungover, too. I’m the type of person who blacks out, pukes, fights. Then I’d wake up and not be able to move for a day or two because I’m so hungover.

TF Did life improve after you cut it out? 

ES Oh yeah. Surfing was a product of me getting sober, for sure.

Eventually I started broadening my horizons, but I never connected with longboarding. My goal was always just to attack the lip.

TF What’s it like to be a video game character in one of the most popular games of all time?

ES It’s not as crazy as you would imagine it might be. You see a picture of yourself, you see a video of yourself, and then you see this video game of yourself. The only thing about it is people you’d never expect recognize you. Shit went bonkers when that [game] came out.

TF What’s it like for you to see women’s skating where it is—in the Olympics and having such a moment?

ES It’s cool. But there’ve been women who came before me who must even look at my career and think, “Whoa, look how far we’ve come!” Wow, fuckin’ evolution, you know?

TF Do you like to watch skate events—the Olympics, the contests? How close do you stay to it?

ES I watched the Olympics because I was rooting for my friend Alexis [Sablone]. I’m still immersed in it. I know what’s what and who’s who. Skateboarding is such a great thing. It’s such a great way to connect with the world and other humans. It’s fucking sick.

TF Do you have a shark philosophy with how much you surf up north? 

ES My philosophy is you should be so lucky! What a noble way to go! If there was a way to go, that would be the one.

TF But kinda horrific to think about.

ES It will spook you for sure. It happens to me. I’ll be out and get an eerie feeling.

TF Do you venture to sharkier spots or keep it local at OB?

ES I used to drive up and down, back and forth, all over. I was just talking to my partner, Rachel, this morning, and I was like, “Surfing is a full-time thing. It takes all day to surf.”

TF Gnarhunters!

ES It takes so much time to find where you’re going to surf. I used to go to Waddell [Creek]. That place is scary and weird. Año is weird. There’s plenty of places where you’re like, “This is awkward.”

TF Sharks become one of the only surf topics I talk about with non-surfers.

ES Yeah, they’re like, “Isn’t it cold? Sharks?”

TF What kind of conditions do you prefer to surf in?

ES Every time I’m surfing at home, I’m like, “God, I wish I was in Hawaii.” But then I get there and I’m all slippery and sunburned and sand fleas and weird shit happening, and you get back home and you have your [Allen] Iverson sleeve over your whole body and it’s tight and feels good and the water is refreshing and it’s not cold anymore. I like that.