It took two weeks of leaving pages and trading phone messages before skate video ace Wing Ko and I actually roll up to his place. He's always out skating. Walking up to the porch we can see a bunch of pro skaters (Mike Carroll, Scott Johnson, and Aaron Meza) watching the Lakers clobber the Nuggets on a big-screen.

The Lakers win, the guests split, and the tape recorder starts rolling in front of the elusive Eric Koston. Pause. Mike York, another pro skater, shows up at the door, hungry. Eric travels too much to stock up his kitchen, so we walk two blocks to talk over Indian food on Melrose Avenue. He warns me, "Watch out for the spice."

As we dig into the front booth, the soft-spoken skater tells his story. Born in Bangkok to an American Air Force man and a Thai mom, his family moved to California when he was 9 months old. He settled in San Bernardino when his parents divorced. He was 4 or 5.

Koston began skateboarding at 11 when his older brother handed him an old Mark Gonzalez board with mismatched trucks. He picked up on skateboarding just like that and began sessioning on the driveway. His first trick: "Put the wheels in the crack of the sidewalk and ollie straight up." His second trick: "Ollie to the side." Did skating come easy? "I don't know. Maybe it took a couple days."

He doesn't think too much about the tricks that he masters, refines, and combines with other tricks these days, either. Stabbing a vegetable samosa, he says, "It could easily be years since I've learned a trick. You always want to learn new tricks, but it's almost like everything's been done."

Koston's either a mediocre skater who fools people with stunt doubles and Photoshop or he's just modest. I call him out on the latter and he admits, "There's more to be done. You look at things way differently than the average person would. All skaters do. If it's possible to skate it, you look at it differently."

Conversation stops as the entrees are served. We pass around the rice and riata and everyone digs the hip-hop tabla music.

Koston continues his story. He was a purely recreational skater until Eddie Elguera (Skater of the Year, 1980) hooked him up with free boards from H-Street. "I met him from living so close and skating around,Ó explains Koston. ÒThen right after the tenth grade, I went to this summer skate camp in Wisconsin where Eddie was director." Getting a staff position at the skate camp was a turning point for Koston, who then realized he could make a living by skateboarding.

Dropping out of school, he relocated to a 5-bedroom house in San Diego where H-Street skaters lived. He left H-Street to skate for 101 before moving on to become a charter member of Girl Skateboards in Los Angeles. "Rick Howard brought it up one day," he remembers. "A bunch of skaters wanted to quit their teams and start their own company. Rick and Mike Carroll already came up with the name, Girl, and I was into it."

Eric feels better off as part of a company comprised of skaters and friends. With H-Street or 101, he says, "you rode for them, and that was that." With Girl, he is more knowledgeable about what's going on and more involved with the businessÐincluding the Fourstar Clothing division. Pointing to the Fourstar shirt he's wearing, Koston says, "It's for skaters, but it's also a little bit better. Make the colors you like to match the shoes you've got."