Jay Adams

Jay J. Adams was an American skateboarder, born on 3 February 1961 in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles and died on 15 August 2014. As a teenager he was the youngest member of the Zephyr Competition Skateboarding Team, the Z-Boys, and his spontaneous freestyle style, inspired by ocean surfing, helped innovate and popularize modern skateboarding; his aggressive vertical tricks make him one of its most influential stylists, and he has been called the original seed of skateboarding. The only child of Robert Adams and Philaine Herring, he grew up with his mother and stepfather Kent Sherwood, who worked at Dave Sweet's Surf Shop, where he was introduced to skateboarding. He began skating and surfing at four, was influenced by the surfer Larry Bertlemann, and in 1974 at thirteen joined the Santa Monica Zephyr surf team of Jeff Ho Surfboards and Zephyr Productions.