Back To The Feature: Don ‘Nuge’ Nguyen

Words and photos by Andrew Peters

Don “Nuge” Nguyen has been such a legendary part of modern street skateboarding, it would almost be fitting for him to redo one of his own classics.

Originally he wanted to pay tribute to his friend and one of the greatest to ever do it, Julien Stranger, by tail sliding the Santa Monica out ledge. He’d skated it a few years back himself, nosegrinding it to fakie, so we felt it would be familiar enough. Unfortunately by the time we got to the spot they had completely skate-stopped the runway with three sets of obstacles. Torey Pudwill came through with a sign but it was still practically unskatable and once the offshore wind kicked in, it was a wrap. We joked about trying to redo his 20 stair ollie down the famous El Toro if we couldn’t figure anything else out.

Round two we decided to keep it more local to Nuge. The Kings School in Silverlake has seen its fair share of skateboarding the last 30 years and we could skate there from his house. The 6-rail has been knobbed now, but the stairs are still intact and there was a Powell Supreme ad of local legend Paulo Diaz doing a Fakie Stalefish down them, which is a pretty unique and seldom seen manoeuvre.

It was looking a little iffy to start with and we weren’t sure if we’d chosen the right trick again. If he didn’t make this trick we were gonna throw him back down Baxter St. So he managed to sack up, pull it together and learn a new move. Now he’s just gotta take that one out to a new spot for Baker 4!

For more adventures through the skate-space-time continuum check out other Back To The Feature episodes with Eli Reed, Mike Anderson, Aaron Herrington, Louie Lopez, and  Tom Remillard.