Riding low, fast and hard, the Zephyr team took the existing version of gymnastic, handstand based skateboarding, fuelled it with the aggression of the streets, and things would never be the same again. At first, an alternative to surfing when the waves were flat, skateboarding soon took priority for a group of skate/surfers eager to prove themselves. Hitting the local schools in an attempt to mimic the big wave surf styles of their idols, the Zephyr team, or Z-Boyz as they came to be known, quickly developed into a phenomenon in their own right.
The phenomenon continued as California found itself in the grip of record droughts, causing many residents to empty their swimming pools. The Z-Boyz saw an opportunity, and dove right into these newly exposed playgrounds, sneaking into people’s back yards, skating as long as they could, and then running to avoid the inevitable police presence. The embodiment of an opportunistic, anti-establishment sentiment that remains evident in skateboarding to this day.
The finest example of this being Jay Adams, not only a 1st generation Z-Boy, but regarded as one of the best skateboarders ever, due in large part to his carefree aggressive style of attacking pools and streets. The nature of skateboarding eventually took its toll on some of the Zephyr team - and in 1976 Kent Sherwood, Jay Adams’ step-dad, broke away from Zephyr and started EZ-RYDER with half of the original Zephyr skaters including Jay Adams and Tony Alva.
6 months later EZ-RYDER changed its name to Z-Flex
