Legendary Aerial Pioneer Joe Crimo Passes Away At 47
If Stab High was 25 years ago, Crimo would have won.
Joe Crimo is an aerial pioneer who did all sorts of tweaked skatey airs in the mid 1990s, long before airs were the norm. He is widely regarded as the don of the shuv-it.
Chas Smith wrote: On land he lived fast and loose and started his fast living much earlier than yours or mine. “I started smoking lots of rock cocaine at age nine. It’s just what we did,” he says. After growing up in East Los Angeles and seeing his brothers in gangs and going to jail, he moved to San Clemente, starting surfing and cleaned up. Not before getting shot.
The wheels fell off, eventually, and he traded rock cocaine in for meth and went to jail many times. He learned to tattoo, during the dark years, and tattooed his own face while looking in a mirror or sometimes not. “Sometimes I just did guess shots,” he says.
Crimo later had most of the ink surgically removed from his face. “In the early years he was always humble, polite and thankful,” said Lost’s Matt Biolos. “He was really a sweetheart of a guy.” Joe leaves behind a son Jacob who could benefit from support following his untimely passing.
You can donate to his funeral fund here.
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