RONNIE CREAGER THE SILENT ASSASSIN OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

That was the whisper on the street. The kind of trick that lives in legend, executed with such ghostly smoothness you’d swear it never happened—unless you were lucky enough to see it with your own bloodshot eyes.

When I bailed out of the chaos of San Francisco and landed in Costa Mesa, I found myself dropped into a living circus—maybe a dozen soon-to-be street skating icons packed into a couple of ramshackle apartments like sardines in a beer can. After the nightly rituals (drunken warfare, late-night video premieres, questionable takeout), the floors looked like the aftermath of a punk show—bodies on couches, under tables, snoring from inside closets. A beautiful mess.

But not Ronnie.

Ronnie Creager had a room. A real room. A bed. Privacy. Sanity. While the rest of us were losing our minds in the name of skateboarding and bacchanalia, Ronnie kept it dialed. Quiet. Kind. Almost too humble. He'd hang out, always smiling, soft-spoken, never trying to outshine the noise—but every time he stepped on a board, the noise stopped.

You’d blink and he’d already landed something so slick, so impossibly technical, it looked fake. Like a hologram. Like the board was an extension of some higher force. The man could rewrite physics with his feet—and he didn’t even think it was good enough to shoot.

That was the only thing that ever drove me nuts about him. The humility. I'd see something insane—some combination of grace and sorcery that belonged in a museum—and when I’d beg to shoot it, Ronnie would shrug: “Eh, I don’t know, it’s not that good.”

Bullshit.

Every single time I managed to wrestle him into letting me press the shutter, the photo got published. Every damn time.And not because I’m a genius—because Ronnie is a magician in skate shoes.

The industry knew. The pros knew. Your favorite skater knew. He’s the guy they studied when no one was looking. The humble assassin with tech wizardry that left jaws on sidewalks.

Also—let it be known—I crashed at his place for months while hunting for an apartment. He probably wanted to kill me half the time, but he never said a word. Just smiled. Kept skating. Too nice for this world. Too smooth to ever catch. And we love him for it.

God bless you, Ronnie Creager. Long may you noseblunt.

• 10 mil (0.25 mm) thick
• Slightly glossy
• Fingerprint resistant
• Paper sourced from Japan