My name is Jim Gray. I am an LA born kid who like many moved to Orange County when I started 3rd grade in the 1970’s. I grew up on the Westminster/Fountain Valley Border, and moved to the beach as soon as I was 17 and graduated High School in 1980. I was fortunate to have become a competitive skateboarder in High School and eventually traveled the whole country skateboarding, and it led to do everything I’ve done and do, but I always loved having home based in Orange County. I lived in Huntington Beach for a few years, a short stint in Santa Ana by South Coast Plaza, then ended up in Corona Del Mar in 1985. I have lived in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach in the Newport Heights area since 1987. I am currently living with my girlfriend Beth in the Bluffs in Newport.
Q. Please tell us a little about your family.
I Raised three kids in Newport Heights who all went to Newport Heights Elementary, Ensign, and Newport Harbor. Hunter will 31 in March, Skyler is 29, and Brooke is 25, and are all still in Orange County. I loved raising my kids in the wonderful bubble that is the Newport/Mesa community.
Q. Please tell us about your current, past or future career. What do you love most about what you do?
Career wise, I got my real estate license when I was 18 and going to Cal State Fullerton. I ended up starting my work life in the Mortgage Business and was the Underwriting Supervisor for a Mortgage company in Tustin when I was 21. Always more interested in doing business myself, by age 23 in 1986, I partnered with one of my skateboarding sponsors who owned Transworld Skateboarding Magazine and Tracker Trucks, a skateboard products company. We formed a corporation called Brainstorm Designs. I sold the ads for the skateboarding magazine, launched a snowboard magazine with them, and designed and had products manufactured for the skateboard brand. In 1989 my now ex-wife Michelle and I opened up Temptations Salon on 17th Street in Costa Mesa, and I helped her operating that as well for about 30 years. The salon is now in Newport in Cannery Village and doing well. In 1991 I started Acme Skateboards in Costa Mesa on the Westside. We made skateboards, wheels, trucks, and clothing under the Acme Brand name and several others. In 1995, I built a skateboard manufacturing plant off Placentia Ave. We built several million skateboards there up until 2008, when Chinese pressure and pricing made it too difficult to keep operating profitably. Between 1995 and 2008, we employed a couple hundred people, and had a great time manufacturing skateboards for ourselves and many major brands of skateboards. We also had been printing stickers in our skateboard factory for many years, and when we closed the skateboard factory, we kept printing stickers. The most successful local surf/skate company Volcom was our biggest sticker customer and they started out in an office in the same complex as Acme Skateboards. Their business grew so much, it helped us setup a new shop to print stickers called Inkgenda when my skateboard factory had to stop operating. Today, Inkgenda, here in Costa Mesa, prints stickers for Volcom, RVCA, O’Neil, Black Label Skateboards, and dozens of other surf, skate, clothing, beverage, and footwear brands. So, printing stickers is my primary business! I also do a podcast called “Bleav In Skateboarding”, the Powerflex skateboard wheels brand, and some other projects in the skateboarding world.
Q. What are a couple of your favorite restaurants in our community?
My favorite restaurants span a pretty wide variety. Banzai Bowls, and Wahoos Fish Taco’s both owned by locals and friends are great choices. I love Baja Fish Tacos and Catalina Fish Kitchen both on 17th Street. True Food Kitchen, R&D Kitchen, and Lemonade at Fashion Island are a few favorites. There is so much great food I could go on forever. On the penninsula, you can’t beat The Cannery for happy hour! I love Bear Flag Fish Tacos, and their partner restaurant Wild Taco, as well as Sessions West Coast Deli, and love a good breakfast at Alta Coffee (my daughter Brooke has worked their off and on). In CDM I love Bandera, El Ranchito, CDM restaurant, and Gulfstream. Between the peninsula, 17th Street, Fashion Island, Corona Del Mar, etc… we have so many choices.
Q. How long have you lived or worked in our community?
I moved to Corona Del Mar in 1985, and have lived and worked in Newport and Newport Heights in Costa Mesa ever since, so almost 40 years.
Q. Who is the most interesting person you have met here in our community?
The most interesting person I have met in the community is an impossible thing to answer. I have met so many interesting people here and that is what makes the Newport area so amazing. Newport Beach and the surrounding area of Costa Mesa employees hundreds of the most creative artists, designers, and entrepreneurs. There is such a variety of old money, new money, high brow, low brow, and everything in between taking place locally. All of those businesses, brands, and categories all have their own culture. Most people don’t even realize how many creativity produced products are designed here locally in Costa Mesa in the surf clothing market alone. These products are exported and recognized globally. Most also don’t know that for much of the last few decades nearly half of the worlds skateboards were built here in Costa Mesa as well, and shipped all over the world. Within those two cultures I have met so many fascinating business people, athletes, designers and artists, I wouldn’t know where to start in picking a most interesting. I’ve been fortunate to know dozens of the most interesting people on earth. And any day out and about town, I meet someone interesting in Newport.
Q. What is one of your favorite movies? TV shows?
My favorite movie of all time is Animal House. It was definitely pushing it on all levels for it’s time. I love Austin Powers and Zoolander too, because I love to laugh. I always love a good James Bond movie, and I am a sucker for most Romantic Comedies. As far as TV show’s I don’t watch much TV anymore, but my lifetime favorites from growing up were The Brady Brunch, Gilligans Island, Hawaii 5-0, and Saturday morning cartoons. In recent years, I’ve binge watched and enjoyed a few things like Peaky Blinders, Six Feet Under, Breaking Bad, some of Ozark, and we are currently watching New Amsterdam.
Q. What advice would you give to people?
Best and most honest advice I’d give to people is “stop and smell the roses” if you don’t enjoy what’s around you while it’s there, you miss out. I try to stop and take in something beautiful, different, or interesting every day. Doesn’t take much time, but makes life a lot more enjoyable. It could be a neighborhood, a lake, a stream, a view, a sunset, a flowerbed, a window display, a sign, a bicycle or anything that makes you happy when you see it.. Stop, look, enjoy and smile….
Q. If you could travel anywhere in the world right now, where would it be and why?
I’d travel across Europe and enjoy each country, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, etc… I’ve sold products all over the world and know people all over the world through skateboarding, but I have not ventured out into as much of the world as I’d like. I need to experience more of what’s out there.
Q. If you could choose anyone that is alive today and not a relative; with whom would you love to have lunch? And where locally would y’all meet for this lunch?
I’d have lunch with artist and designer Sterling Ruby (google him). He was a kid from Pennsylvania when I sponsored him to ride my Acme Skateboards in the early 1990’s. He might have been 16 or 17. He was a great skateboarder at the time, and he went on to become a very successful artist, doing shows in major museums all over the world, as well as selling art pieces and installations all over the globe. He does paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and even high fashion. He was even hired to redesign Calvin Klein’s New York flagship retail store a few years ago. I lost touch with him after the early 1990’s and came to find out about 10 years ago of all his successes. I would like to sit down with him and hear his story first hand, and learn about the various paths that got him to where he is. I’d always wondered what happened to him after we lost touch, and I found out when a fellow skater told me I should google him and see what’s he done. I used to enjoy chatting with this interesting, very kind, sweet kid from Pennsylvania, and I’d love to see how it would be to chat 30 plus years later and with all that success under his belt. If we had lunch around here, I’d take him to somewhere like Billy’s at the Beach, where I’d get a booth in the corner away from the loud bar, with a nice view of the water, and be able to share stories with few disruptions.
Q. What is your favorite thing or something unique about our community?
I think the most unique thing about our community is the variety, from tacos to 5 star restaurants, from dive bars to private clubs. Getting to enjoy such a vast array of people living different, sometimes complimentary, sometimes diabolically opposite lifestyles side by side makes for a very flavorful community. You can enjoy the harbor from a ferry boat ride with your bike, on your paddleboard, kayak, in an electric boat you own or rent, or in your yacht. The best part is everybody gets to enjoy the same beauty, temperature and view. You just don’t find that everywhere.
Q. Where do you see yourself in 5 to 10 years?
In 5 or 10 years I hope to be riding my bike or exercising every day, eating well, staying fit, and enjoying the beauty around me with my girlfriend Beth (hopefully my wife by then), traveling and enjoying the world and all the interesting people in it, and always coming home to this beautiful area. I want to always be participating in my community in some form keeping it a nice place to live, and helping others locally and around the world.
Q. (Even for friends or family), what is something interesting that most people don’t know about you?
I write poems is something that most people do not know about me.
Q. What you rate 10 out of 10?
Real Love is a 10 out of 10. Maybe an 11
Q. Who inspires you to be better?
Lot’s of people inspire me to be better, my children, many of my friends too, and I get inspiration from the many, many people I’ve had the privilege of meeting in my life, but most of all today, I get it from my girlfriend Beth. She is a bad ass athletically, eats healthy, is completely down to earth, is kind to everyone she meets, is an amazing party hostess, has a extra soft heart for the elderly, is an amazing mother and grandmother, and is gorgeous inside and out. She inspires me to push myself to always be better in every way I can be.
Q. Finally, what three words or phrases come to mind when you think of the word HOME?
Comfort, Warmth, Safety
