Jerry Gurney - Mortuary Skates
by Chris Gregson
Over the past two days my girlfriend and I drove from Park City, Utah to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Parking lots in between these parts feature flatbars instead of curbs. On native land south of Moab, we leave a gas station, turn left uphill and bump our way across a beige median I hadn’t seen. I focus on the five hour drive ahead and see, cresting the top of the hill toward us, a skater. Upon the crusty, dusty, gravel and rock salt mixed with snow along the road shoulder to our right, he’s pushing regular stance facing us down this large descent turning steeper for him soon toward destination at least the Junction we just left. I would have been viewing cars as adversaries in his position so I don’t honk or try to distract him. He’s wearing a jacket with the hood down, hat on backward, fifteen years old I guess. My girlfriend and I cheer him from inside, feeling heartened as we crest the top of the hill and see him descending in our rearview. I look at the homes we pass and wonder which one he lives in.
Now that I’ll be in Santa Fe for 5 days, Jake the Jeweler hooked me up with his friend Kody. There is no snow here, I have been doing daily knee therapy for weeks and feel ready to skate. We have my girlfriend’s cruiser and my street board so I feel prepared, though these Western spaces and spots fit different from New York and the Midwest. We passed over the Continental Divide today. To watch Jerry Guerney for Mortuary Skates sounds like hard charging inspiration. He hasn’t dropped a part since pre-Covid and Thrasher says he’s been spending time at the Flower Shop. I’m drinking an Aura Bora Cactus Rose can and smoking a weed vape we bought from the Doobie Sisters in 4 corners. Play on:
Grainy footage show Mortuary logo in Megadeath font stickered underneath the top truck, then on chest t-shirt, then stamped onscreen as feedback buzzes. Palm scrapes and spray paint shots scrapbook style then JERRY GURNEY appears in red, sliced like wrist slit blood. In black and white, sunglassed Jerry rides a plank laid across a pool’s shallow end until his front truck pinches woodgrain and pitch him forward into the deep end. Next clip shows him hunched on his knees in front of a daylit piano, rubbing his palm across all keys from high to low. Jerry does pushups on his fists amidst rubble while Navarette with a tall Pabst in right hand, Montana Can in his left, strums air guitar as the real guitar starts to pulse. Jerry now stands alone, yelling in reverb, “Satan, Father, Help me from the Grave!”
At alcohol free Washington Street skatepark, Gurney drops in and pumps to flyout frontside wallbash down from the WSVT ironbound on the chainlink. Blood on elbows, in leather jacket on ramps, handsy skating in gloves, he twirls 720 tailback atop a quadrant pillar with wavy skatepark fencing nods along with the dolphin twirling double angles, second in color. Next spot is a deep, bright graffiti covered DIY buildingside bowl channel, where Jerry tweaks big air grab frontside then double pumps around to crouch above front smith, at which point he grabs onto a horizontal pipe and holds against momentum for a second before release. He celebrates by running up the ramp and grabbing the same pull up bar for a couple more without board. In the end of the bowl, he extends frontside rock as deep as possible before a gravity bending backside turn. He smiles for camera in Mortuary tee and now is in the streets, on some campus with steep brick quarterpipes. Jerry gives this attractive spot a six clip thrashing with some help from a blue barrel and timed grunting. He blasts a grab in black and white, shown again color to start a line through someone’s cobweb painted multilevel backyard concete park.
At a treated Jersey barrier along frontage road, Jerry shatter sounds a slam before he succeeds in sliding back lip from quickcrete across to unmodified bank dismount. He airs above a camouflage painted alleyside quarter pipe to touch feet on the building jump back to tail drop in. Double cut angles of the long hair rocker rollaway, then Jerry twists his shoulder while not succeeding in a shallow end stair span, quiver murmurs “Wrestlemania Five,” now layback grinds the shallow stairs frontside, follow up with backside feeble revert over. Filmer Chris Gregson and Jerry share a confirmation pound and Jerry states, “This is why we skateboard, for the perseverance.”
Fittingly, we return to the plank across the shallow end, where his first hang up clip repeats. In color, this time he rides the plank across the pool with the smooth silence of no inadvertent contactt until he reaches the far side, turns backside into 5050 on pool coping, then grabs out into the waterfall deepend. Screen shows some celebratory and Mortuary promo cuts, then we’re back to the colorful bowl for a line with a spread eagle ceiling tap. He wears Converse black high tops in more clips at the backyard spiderweb complex, including a second exhibition of his maximum exposure double 360 tail block spin. Gurney airs out onto a piece of warped plywood that spanks him on first attempt; next try plywood falls down properly flat as he powers away into the bowl. His leaves this backyard paradise via hand plant 270 bowl to bank transfer and now he’s at China Banks, ender time, for a backside nosegrab carve over a shorter bench confidence boost, time for longer block frontsidecarve to layback 5-0 out past bench and in. Mortuaryskates.com shows in their bloodslit font at Jerry bangs his fists on those piano keys and sucks a spent cigarette.
Against the grain of depraved demonic self induced Mortuary metal music branding, often shirtless Jerry looks healthy and appears to be enjoying himself greatly on board. This part, in editing and skating style, would fit right into Label Kills, where Jerry casts himself as muscle man video vixen to Randy Uchida Group’s “Crazy Bomber” soundtrack. Jerry grew up in Yuba City, California, home to the smallest mountain range in the world, which helps explain his mastery of such spaces as he has shown us here.