Formerly known as Payaso Slotown in the 90's, Slotown Trademark Skateboards was established as a college day partnership in 1992. The partnership was abandoned in 1995 as one partner moved on with his life. The other, Tim Oates (CPU'93) continued the skateboard line as a sole proprietorship.

I came to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the Fall of 1988. One year before graduation, my new business partner and I, launched The Surfskate Surfing Simulator. Trademarking and Patent processes were followed in Winter and Spring of 1992. By the time school started again in September, there were parts and supplies ready for 100 complete Surfskates. Small batches of Cal Poly students were out quietly slashing and carving driveways and banks. Meanwhile, the skateboard industry was turning out tinier and tinier boards; smaller trucks on less riser, wheels barely bigger than the bearings inside, and kick-flip sticks that resembled shoe box lids. The Surfskate was a massive 5 foot boards with a width of 15". The wood was very hard to acquire and the board morphed into a trimmed model sub-named The Slim Cat. This is the board that I made so as to “not infringe on my own patent” as the partnership sank.
The one great success of my time at Cal Poly was the work that I did for my senior project. As a Physical Science major, and fresh new entrepreneur, I selected to work on the cross-linking of polyurethane. I certainly made no advances in the field, but I was able to make my Roadie Racer skateboard wheel. The wheel was so well liked by the locals, that even a new start-up competitor was putting them on his boards.
The skateboard industry was on the rocks. Surfshops wouldn’t carry skateboards and skateshops were proving nonviable. Add the legal straight jacket and lack of skate parks, and skateboarding was to be in hibernation until the early 2000’s.
Then came the return of slalom racing coupled with the extreme sport of luging and speedboarding. Nearly all street racing wheels had a hard outer-rim edge while the Roadie Racer was a wheel that delivered controlled slides instead of eliminating them. They are currently only available right here at slotown.com. The yellows are 84a and the reds are 80a.
It was 1997 when my work with skateboards diverged with the future mainstream. I knew that skateboarding of this type would be very popular in the future, however, it was not paying any bills in the present. At that point, I had created four very different boards using the Surfskate mold, The Long Bow, The Flying Spear, The Pocket Rocket, and The Bowl Slayer.

Here is Cayle Broome, a snowboarder who skipped over traditional skateboarding, and started with straps!

My work with surfboard fiberglassing had me ripping off surfboard fins to sand and put on new boards. This inadvertently ended up with a buckled, but not broken, board taped to an old Quiksilver (metal/wood lam). Well, a company called Xtreme Wheelz was making off-road wheels and we traded each other for some goods. They wheels came with foot clips, known to many as "Sky-Hooks", and the rest is history. The end result is ten years of strapped-in skateboarding. Originally, the thought of riding with straps was bone-chilling. However, I had started with only two clips (one front/one back) and then added an opposing clip for the front. Soon they were strung together, and pipe insulation for padding. My main territory was streets and sidewalks. Skate parks were fun to ride, but the big and slow Roadie Racer was not performing on the smooth slick surface. It took six years before the transition to Powell {Special Park Formulas}

The videos below are around the same time, 2002, just before commiting to hard wheels in the parks. The dual rear truck assembly allows and intense stick and a centripedal whip that varies with the rise and tilt of the deck, of course, which is not possible without straps. So there it is, I have made boards that strike fright in darn near the whole skateboard population.

Please view my sandboarding page