Tony Alva

Tony Alva, born on September 2, 1957, in Santa Monica, California, to Dutch and Mexican-American parents, is an American skateboarder, entrepreneur and musician. He is a pioneer of vertical skateboarding and one of the original members of the Zephyr Competition Skateboarding Team, the Z-boys. He began surfing and skateboarding around 1967 at the age of ten, and in 1974 he joined the Zephyr team along with Jay Adams and Stacy Peralta. He is credited as the first skateboarder to successfully pull a frontside air, a moment captured by the photographer Glen E. Friedman, and Transworld Skateboarding ranked him eighth in its list of the 30 most influential skateboarders of all time.