Jay Smith

Jay Smith is a Southern California skateboarder and a 2022 Skateboarding Hall of Fame inductee. He came up in the late ’70s park-and-pool era and became a touchstone for style, especially the fully extended layback that showed up in photos from Marina del Rey’s keyhole and other SoCal spots.

Smith is often cited among the early Powell Peralta Bones Brigade riders, and his late-’70s/early-’80s photos and clips helped define what graceful, powerful vert skating looked like. You still see him highlighted in Hall of Fame materials and community posts that revisit those runs.

The imagery from that period, frontside grinds and laybacks shot by photographers like William Sharp at Marina and Mondo’s, became part of the era’s visual memory, and Smith continues to surface that history through appearances and archives.

That focus on line, speed, and form kept him central to the SoCal pool/vert scene, and it’s why his influence still reads in today’s skating.

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