Bob Biniak, daring skateboarder, dies at 51

LOS ANGELES
— Bob Biniak, whose daring and innovative
skateboarding style as one of the original Dogtown Z-Boys helped
revitalize the pursuit in the 1970s, has died. He was 51.

Biniak died at Baptist Beaches Medical Center in Jacksonville Beach, Fla.,
on Feb. 25, four days after having a heart attack, said
his wife, Charlene.

To his fellow Z-Boys — a ragtag group from Dogtown, a
rough beachfront area in Southern
California wedged between Venice and Santa Monica —
Biniak was simply “the Bullet,” a nickname that saluted his affinity for
speed.

“Bob Biniak was a major legend,”
said Michael Brooke, publisher of Concrete Wave
magazine. “He was absolutely one of the key Dogtowners … and really
set the stage for aggressive skateboarding. He was fierce.”

As he pioneered vertical skateboarding in the
then-new terrain of empty swimming pools, Biniak’s favorite spot in the
mid-1970s was a pool behind a Beverly Hills mansion that was called
keyhole, for its shape. It was one of dozens the skaters essentially
commandeered.

“He was very cool and really fun to be with,” said Stacy
Peralta, a filmmaker and fellow Z-Boy who chronicled their
exploits in the 2001 documentary “Dogtown and Z-Boys.”

Their skateboarding “was an extension of surfing, and
because it was so new, we certainly wanted to see what we could do,”
Peralta said. “We were all driven by wanting to be the best.”

In the film, Biniak put it more bluntly: “We were all
punk kids, we were tough kids, and we wanted to be something.”

Robert Edward Biniak was born June 2, 1958,
in Chicago
and moved to Santa
Monica with his mother after his parents separated when he
was young. His mother owned the Billiard Inn on Venice
Boulevard.

Already a surfer, he started “skating seriously,” he
later recalled, in 1974 with the Z-Boys, as the team put together by Santa Monica’s
Zephyr surf shop came to be known.

When they debuted in 1975 at the major skateboarding
contest Del Mar Nationals, the Z-Boys — which included one girl — and
their revolutionary riding style clashed with the status quo.

In the documentary, Biniak described it as “like a
hockey team going into a figure skating match.”

The resulting fame was unexpected, and Biniak was
never entirely comfortable with it. He got out of skateboarding “kind of
early,” Peralta said, and pursued a career as a professional golfer.

“Turned out he was pretty good,” his wife said.

As a golfer, Biniak toured South Africa and Europe, according to his
wife, and as recently as 2008 played in the sectional qualifying round
of the U.S. Senior Open.

Since the 1990s, he had been a salesman and at one
point owned his own business, which sold golf equipment to companies in Asia.

When the 2005 feature film “Lords of Dogtown”
fictionalized the Z-Boys’ tale, Biniak appeared as a restaurant manager.

In 2007, he moved from Santa Monica to Benicia in the San
Francisco Bay area, partly to escape the skating scene, his
wife said.

He liked to say he never lived more than six blocks
from the beach, and in his bathroom the irreverent Biniak hung these
words by Thoreau: “My life is like a stroll on the beach … as near to
the edge as I can go.”

In addition to his wife of 12 years, Charlene
Capitolo-Biniak, his survivors include his daughter Brianna,
5; mother Dolores Levy of Encinitas, Calif.; and two sisters, Mary
Ellen Barnett and Kathy Higgs.

—

(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.

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