Jungle Bowl, circa 1998

This is a picture of my friend Toby Burger that was taken at Jungle Bowl during a Levi's shoot in the late 90's.  I wasn't living in LA then, but we came here for the shoot with the plan that we would street cast all of the talent for the campaign.  We met Toby at the Van's Skatepark in Orange where we had gone to find guys who could skate pools because I thought that would make for some great pictures and it was so iconographically California to me at the time.  We pitched our ideas to Toby and he ended up taking us up to this amazing spot up in the hills and after a bit of convincing even put on some Levi's wardrobe (and knee pads for the lawyers back at corporate HQ) and sessioned the pool for us.  I was just thinking about him today and went to check out his website.  Toby is a great photographer/ videographer himself and has what could very likely be the largest archive of pool and pool skating photos and video footage in existence.  His pool skating video "Under the Influence" is a cult classic.