Dogtown’s Bob Biniak helped reinvent skate style

Published 4:00 am Sunday, March 7, 2010

Bob Biniak, a member of the Zephyr Skate Team, a California group whose aggressive, surfing-inspired approach to skateboarding during the 1970s reinvented the sport and was celebrated in two films, died Feb. 25 in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., where he was visiting friends. He was 51.

Biniak died at Baptist Medical Center Beaches four days after having a heart attack, said his wife, Charlene Capitolo.

Until moving to Benicia, in Northern California, two years ago, Biniak lived most of his life near the Santa Monica-Venice Beach neighborhood called Dogtown. Growing up there during the ’70s, he and other members of the Zephyr team — operating out of the Zephyr surf shop in Santa Monica and known as the Z-Boys — began by treating boarding as a cross-training activity for surfing.

“We all started skating at Bicknell hill, trying to get real low,” Biniak said in “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” a well-received 2001 documentary that had a wide theatrical release. “We would be like looking at the surf and riding this hill, and dropping in and sliding like we were riding a wave.”

Biniak was known as Bullet for his fast, fearless approach.

“The basis of his strength was to go as fast as you could, and do it with grace,” said Tony Alva, a Z-Boy and a three-time world champion in skateboarding.