R.I.P. Gerry Hurtado AKA “SkateMaster Tate”

UPDATE: Benefit board for his family.

UPDATE: Sad news, in the few short days since this was posted, Gerry has passed away.

Gerry Hurtado AKA “SkateMaster Tate” was Diagnosed with Inoperable Liver Cancer, and is being cared for at home by his elderly mother in her 80’s. Gerry’s friends are trying to raise money for hospice care, something his mother in her advanced age just can’t do for him. You can donate on GoFundMe. All this after a recent resurgence for Skatemaster Tate, who has a model on Flood Control and a flexi-disc release in the new issue of Pure Fun.

UPDATE: This post dates back 2013 and a lot of the content and comments have to to with Skatemaster Tate (Gerry Hurtado) who didn’t really have an internet presence at the time. Gerry did eventually surface in the online skating world through social media (actually commenting on this site too) as well as having a skateboard released through Flood Control and a flexi-disc release in an issue of Pure Fun. Sadly, within a week of being diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer, he passed away on October 13th, 2015.

I’ve been sitting on some recorded rebroadcasts of SK8 TV from around the turn of the millennium. I’ve been hesitant to post them online because I figured between Viacom and Stacy Peralta, I wasn’t in a hurry to get kicked off of Youtube again. In my head, these belong to the 80’s but according to IMDB, the first air date was in 1990. SrArcade has a channel and blog mostly dedicated to restoring and playing old video arcade games, but he’s also uploaded a healthy chunk of the old Nickelodeon show. There are 51 uploads to date, each a segment instead of a whole episode, but all of them are included in one playlist for easy viewing. It looks like his masters are a lot cleaner than my VHS dubs – dubbed to digital 8, and then again to mini DV – that’s how long I’ve been sitting on them! Nickelodeon has made some of their vintage shows available for download in the iTunes store, but SK8 TV wasn’t one of them. I wonder if Stacy was shrewd enough to be able to retain the copyright on these episodes. If not, why they aren’t being rebroadcast or sold as a DVD set? That show was corny as heck, but it had it’s moments, and nostalgia sells. I’d look forward to watching the hell out of SK8 TV on the couch with my kids on a Saturday morning. SrArcade has had some of these up for a year, so maybe they’ll last. If not there’s another guy selling individual episodes as a download. Say hello to Matthew Lillard and Skatemaster Tate.

There’s an article being recycled by different newspapers about how a rap act know as The Pack is helping the worlds of skateboarding and hip hop come together, as if that is something new. The research department only went back a couple of years because completely absent from the article are such bands as the Beastie Boys, Urban Dance Squad and oh, I don’t know, who else but Skatemaster Tate, a guy who based his whole schtick on it back in the late 80’s. That’s Tate above hosting Nickelodeon’s SK8 TV with Mathew Lillard. Bottom right is a shot from a video shoot for The Pack’s new EP Skateboards 2 Scrapers. Early skate-rap connections, video links, a Skatemaster Tate roundup and more after the jump.