The rise, fall and comeback of pro skateboarder Brandon Turner

Episode 39: Brandon Turner Transcript

Julia Dixon Evans: Brandon Turner is famous for big air — a former skateboarding prodigy known for his jumps. But his most dangerous jump of all, one that he thought would kill him, didn't involve a skateboard. It was in Mission Bay, San Diego, and he was just 17 years old.

Brandon Turner: We were having a bonfire down off of the Ingraham Bridges, and we were having a huge party, so the cops were coming in.

There was only one way to get out, and then I was on the bridge, and I seen lights coming up the bridge, and I was just like, if I go and hop over the center divider and just run down the other side, they can't make a U-turn on the bridge, the cops, you know? So I just hopped over the wall and then realized it was an illusion and the other bridge was, like...

they weren't connected. And then that's when I just started falling.

Evans: He fell 50 feet through the air.

Turner: And the first thought was like, it's over with. Like, it's done. Like, I'm like, I'm definitely dying. And then the second thought was like, my parents aren't gonna know what really happened. They're not gonna know that this was an accident.

Evans: Brandon somehow survived the treacherous fall with just a broken leg, and it wasn't the only time he came close to death. At the time, he was known as Lil B, a skateboarding prodigy in San Diego on the covers of magazines and traveling the world on tour. From the outside, it looked like he had it all, but things were out of control. He was surrounded by chaos.

Turner: It just seemed like this wasn't reality because everything was happening so fast. And I was multiple places all at once, traveling, meeting so many different people — too many to name or to even remember. And I'd experimented and that experimentation invited, you know, a flock of people who might not have had my best interests.

Evans: He ended up in prison. His career seemingly gone for good, but he made it through, and along the way he gained some real wisdom. And today, he's making a difference.

Turner: Because I've really been through everything and I can relate.

Evans: Yeah.

Turner: So I'm able to help people through that. If I can go back to my past self and say something, I would just say, good luck.

Evans: Brandon Turner's story is almost like a psychological study of the perils of childhood fame. It's also a story about losing control and getting it back by letting go.

Turner: Control is a mindset and sometimes the best form of control is doing nothing.

Evans: From KPBS Public Media, this is The Finest, a podcast about the people, art and movements redefining culture in San Diego. I'm Julia Dixon Evans.

[Theme Music]

Evans: Brandon grew up in San Diego's Clairemont neighborhood, just a couple of miles from the beach.

Turner: And so how I started skateboarding is I would, there was this surfer who skated by our house every single day, but I would just hear the sounds of the sidewalk. I would go out there every day or my parents would bring me, and one day he stopped and put me on the front of the board and that was my first memorable release of endorphins.

Evans: How old were you, like roughly?

Turner: I was two.

Evans: Two? Oh my goodness. And you remember the sound of the wheels?

Turner: Yes. That's when I woke up.

Evans: Yeah.

Turner: Skateboarding's always came natural to me. It's always been a part of me, I mean, since I can remember. That's one of my first memories.

Evans: Have you ever tried to unpack why it is that you took to it so well?

Turner: I think it had to do with the freedom. And it was up to you and nobody was helping you. It was balance. It was the feeling. It was, it was movement. It was my first experience of a sense of control.

Evans: When Brandon was 6, his father — who was in the Navy — got stationed in Japan. The family prepared to move overseas. But before that move, a move that was already gonna upend his way of life, his family told him something that changed everything.

Turner: My first traumatic experience moving to Japan because I just found out my parents were actually my grandparents. And, you know, my brothers and sisters are my... weren't my brothers and sisters. They were my aunts and uncles, and actually one of them was my mom, so she was at the airport. That all came to. So I kind of moved to Japan as like I didn't have a sense of identity. Said simply, I just didn't know what was real because all you know is your parents and what you're taught and what you're told. So when that's kind of pulled out from under you, you just don't know what's real.

Evans: Brandon's whole world was shaken and now he was in a new and distant land. New language, new culture, new food. But he still had his skateboard.

Turner: I just ventured out to a beach next to where I lived and seen some skaters down there and went up to them, and they're all older. One of them ended up being my mentor in skating and all that.

Evans: Japanese skater Tomonari Hongo took him under his wing. He taught him basic tricks and helped him learn to navigate life in Japan. It's hard to imagine a teenager befriending a young kid from another country who doesn't speak the language. But that's the power of skateboarding.

Turner: As long as you have a skateboard, you always have a friend because we have an unspoken language of connection and community, and also trust because of how hard skateboarding is. And, you know, we became friends. And he taught me, you know, the Japanese cultures, the language, and it was, it was on from then.

Evans: Brandon's family moved back to San Diego when he was 12. By then, he was already really good. He quickly caught the attention of top skaters in the scene.

Turner: One of the most biggest guys in San Diego's name was Peter Smolik, and he was older than me, too, and he was one of the best skaters, and I linked up with him immediately. And I ended up starting a team with another big professional skateboarder, Ken Russell from San Diego.

And I did my trial in-person demo with them and ended up getting on a team almost right away.

Evans: Brandon was a phenom, a 7th grader hanging with the professionals and turning heads. This is when he got the nickname Lil B. Videos from the time show a fearless kid in baggy pants kick flipping over benches, grinding rails and concrete ledges and launching down huge flights of stairs as older skaters cheered him on.

Turner: Yeah, I ended up getting endorsed and recognized after my first sponsor by Chad Muska. He was doing a new team called Shorty's Skateboards. It's an icon company from the '90s, early 2000s.

Evans: The Shorty's team was a big deal back then. They took Brandon on tours, skating in front of huge crowds. There were established big-name skaters like Chad Muska, and then there was Brandon — the breakout star representing a new wave of the sport. Tour videos show a young Brandon waving to screaming fans.

Turner: Going to every event and going all around the world, and it was pretty insane and it was just a dream come true. Everything was taken care of. I was having fun, but we were just getting to work.

Evans: Brandon was making lots of money and gaining attention at a young age. Skateboarding was taking off and the industry was riding high.

Turner: They used to just be like, it was like a whole big party and skaters skating in the parking lot, and big-time skaters just, you know, down at Pacific Beach and it was a whole vibe.

Evans: And the party was part of the brand, part of the culture.

Turner: Drinking and being kind of a rock star and a misfit was marketed back then, so that helped fuel the fire. The biggest the party the company can throw, the more successful they were. So I might have took that too far.

Evans: Brandon, still really just a kid, was in the middle of it all.

Turner: I've had a lot of good influence, a lot of bad influences, but at the end of the day — especially when I was an adult — it was my responsibility of the choices I made. I usually didn't take advice from people. Like, oh, someone telling me the stove is hot, like, I gotta see. Like, I'm, I have to touch it. I have to experience that. So... And that's what I tell a lot of people, too, like, it's not my job to get in the way of your journey. It's up to you to make the choice. I was getting paid from skating since I was 13. I was on my own since then. I was already able to get my own place when I was 15. So I had my car and my entourage and I was traveling in and out of the world. I was basically running my school schedule 'cause I was traveling. Like, I just had it my way, and yeah, it was hard to tell me anything because I was just like, what, what, what can you possibly say to me? Like, I take care of myself. I'm self-sufficient.

Evans: With the money and the fame, Brandon was partying hard. Before the end of his teenage years, he was already a father and had also experienced that traumatic accident at the bridge.

Turner: Recovered from that and then a year later I turned pro and was kinda celebrating going pro, so I wanted to throw a cognac party and all that with all my friends and stuff. And I was out front giving directions, and I just wake up in the hospital out of a coma.

Evans: So within a relatively short amount of time, Brandon had his second brush with death.

Turner: So what happened is I got ran over by someone at the party, and I was wasted, so… But it wasn't that I just woke up. Like, I actually flatlined, like, three times.

Evans: Wow.

Turner: What ended up happening, broke my other legs, fractured my skull, broken wrist, multiple things, had a hematoma compartment syndrome, all this stuff, tubes. My face looked like a balloon. And I remember getting, like, being somewhere else, you know, and being at peace, being surrounded by people. Everybody that you've ever known in your life, if you have kids, mom, dad, anyone you ever loved in your life existed. And I remember them shocking me back to life, and I was just like, no, you think you're helping me, but I just remember being like, it really hurts to live. It was like waking up out of a dream that felt so real.

Evans: You had also gone through so much at this point, and then you're surrounded by this power and the money and the glory. Was there a sense that you're invincible?

Turner: I definitely felt power within me. When I was falling off that bridge, it seemed like life was so short. And so I kinda operated like that, kinda with a fearless mentality. In my 20s, it started to kind of be a problem. I started getting in more trouble. I was more defiant. It's just, I had more money. I just thought I can kinda got for a little bit in the mindset that I can buy myself out of anything. People started having more real conversations with me, not treating me like a kid, actually telling me what was up and putting me in check. But if you try to challenge me, I'm competitive, and I'm self-made, and all this stuff. I, I, I, which ends up turning into the ego, and your ego's not your amigo, you know? So.

Evans: And it did catch up with you where you were incarcerated. Can you talk about that?

Turner: Yeah, it caught up with me where charges ended up stacking, DUIs. I ended up with a gun, getting a gun charge, and wasn't proud about that.

Evans: Coming up, Brandon hits rock bottom in prison and begins to rebuild his life and pave the way for others. Stay with us.

[Music]

Evans: Brandon tried to avoid prison. He delayed court dates and believed his lawyer and his money could get him out of trouble, but eventually his feeling of invincibility was shattered. He was sentenced to three years in prison, and he spent months in isolation. It forced him to confront who he was without the fame, money or distractions.

Turner: Solitary confinement, basically, it's called reception. I was in a cell for four months. And it really let me find out what I was made of and who I was. Everything, all these attachments get stripped, and it... And now looking back, like, yeah, that was one of the best things that's ever happened to me. It had me realize, like, you're no good to anybody without yourself. No matter what, you have to put yourself first. Because if you're operating at, say, 60% of your life and you claim to have a kid or a husband or whatever, and you're doing all these things and not putting yourself first, what percentage do you think you're giving them?

And you know, it's another crazy thing I had to realize, like, you know what? It's like we have this ego thing as a parent and stuff, and whatever your life, whatever, everything will just go on just fine without you. And that, which was a crazy realization to me, like life will go on. And we all... People think they're the glue and they have to do all this, and it, it... So that had really helped me to be a better parent because really it had me realize it's all ego.

But when all that's taken away, it's just like, yeah, basically you're no good to anyone without yourself. It's like the plane thing.

Evans: I was just going to say… yeah, yeah.

Turner: Put on your mask first. And that's, that's facts.

Evans: After that period of isolation, his experience changed. He joined a prison fire crew, one of the most physically demanding jobs available to people who are incarcerated.

Turner: So I was a low-level offender, so I had the opportunity to apply for different things, and one of them was fire camp, so being a firefighter. And then I went to school. They shipped me out to Miramonte.

Evans: That's the fire camp?

Turner: Yeah. Yeah. The fire camp. And I was on part of a fire crew. It's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Respect to all the firefighters and everyone, all the hotshotters and everyone out there. It's really, it's really dangerous, really hard job.

Evans: And you saw actual fires, like fire work?

Turner: Yeah, I was a firefighter. Like, we did the Burbank fire and everything, and it's dangerous and it's scary. We are going into the fire, and we're cutting, cutting line, basically making roads with a whole crew, saws, Pulaskis, all the tools and stuff with the whole crew to make a road so the fire doesn't spread.

Evans: Brandon had gone from skateboarding prodigy to an incarcerated wildland firefighter. His life looked completely different. But after he was released early, there was still the possibility of things going back to the way they were. Then came news that changed the direction of his life once more.

Turner: One of my cousins, like my best friend, and he was a little older than me, and he was like a basketball star and all that, he liked to party, and he liked to do cocaine and stuff. And I woke up, my other cousin told me and said he, you know, they said he passed... He died.

Evans: He saw a possible version of his own future.

Turner: So yeah, it was kind of a ego thing, but it was like, hey, that's the truth. When someone, like, ODs or something, like, no matter what you've done in your, in your life, that's what you're gonna be remembered for.

And right then I made the decision, like, I'm done.

Evans: Brandon got sober and for him that meant doing the hard work of introspection, something he'd been avoiding his whole life.

Turner: So it was, with sobriety, it was having to, like, learn what was inside of me that wasn't healed and why I needed to do this. I thought it was 'cause I just wanna have fun, or, oh, I just wanna have some wine or just have a beer. I like the taste, of course. And it was based off trauma I dealt with when I moved to Japan about that identity thing, and I just went straight into distraction and didn't have the proper therapy or processing to go through that, so... and it caught up with me later.

Evans: He now helps others navigate recovery and opened his own addiction treatment center.

Why did you wanna start Westside Recovery? Like, why did you wanna do this in such a way, like making your own thing?

Turner: Because like rehabs that I was familiar with, like, rehabs just had a negative, like, reputation. Rehab sounds like jail. It sounds something so negative and bad, and I wanted to change the stigma around that.

Everything, like aesthetically, there's– it's just not a sterile place. It's a place of expression and art. Right when you walk into our lobby, you can tell it's like, it's art, it's, it's expression, it's wittiness, it's design. And everyone– my staff is in recovery, so they have their experiences and their stuff to give, mixed with my experience and unlimited resources to get to where you wanna get to in life and how to get past your doubts, fears and insecurities.

Evans: As a part of its program, Westside Recovery uses surfing, Pilates, yoga, MMA and, of course, skateboarding.

Turner: I think skateboarding is one of the best life lessons. It's not if you will fall, it's when you'll fall. But the more important thing of it is, is what you're gonna do when you pick yourself back up, and what did you learn from it? So skateboarding teaches you constant failure. You're gonna fail all the time, and therefore, it's gonna make you stronger in life when you do fail because failure is counterpart of success. You can't succeed without failing.

Evans: The program has seen success even in cases that seem impossible.

Turner: There was a client who I picked up, and he-- brought him to San Diego, and he just didn't even know he was in San Diego. It was just like in four months, and he was just like, his brain was gone and, like, went back to using a bunch of times, and I was just like, you know, this is a wash. But it happened, like, the eighth time. He just-- now he's, he's good. Like, he totally... Something changed. He switched around, got his brain back,

took the suggestions, and now is working and normal citizen in life now. And I've seen that happen multiple times. I've seen, like, miracles happen.

Evans: Brandon sees the world differently today. As a kid, he chased control, first through a skateboard, but also through money, fame and independence. But he says that control was an illusion. It was just running away from things he didn't know how to face. Now, he believes deeply in letting go.

Turner: If something doesn't feel right or it's not working out, don't force it.

It's not supposed to happen. How many times have you forced your will on something you want and it just didn't go your way? You're just like, why did I do that? And how many times have you just let things play out in life and you're like, I'm glad I didn't do anything.

Evans: Brandon has also leaned into this philosophy of letting go with parenting.

Turner: A lot of people like to live through their kids and have a template of what it means to be a good parent, but that's all ego. Being a good parent, like, that's about you. So my relationship with my daughter isn't about that. Like, I am your guide. You can go this way or go that way, and I'll tell you what I know through my experience, and that's it. And of course, I have love and support for you more than anyone else, but it's not about my ego. And she's crushing it, and she's way better off because of that. And me being a skateboarder, like, helped me take myself out of that, and that's everything.

Evans: Brandon is still serious about skateboarding. In the skateboarding world, it's rare to hang on to skating skills and fitness at his age.

But thanks to his new mindset — and a little help from Pilates — he's stronger than ever.

Turner: The crazy thing of it is, when I turned pro when I was 18, at 44 I'm better than I was then. So people always ask me, like, how? And I'm always progressing, and it's health, wellness and never giving up, and love, and changing lifestyles, habits, and constantly learning.

Evans: In 2020, Brandon won Street League Skateboarding's Trick of the Year, becoming the oldest person to ever get the honor.

Turner: Switch hardflip down Wallenberg. It's in San Francisco. It's one of the most famous spots in skateboarding, and I did a trick that hasn't been done down it, so... And I wanted to do that since I was 18.

Evans: This moment was captured in a 2021 documentary called "The Second Coming of Brandon Turner." The film journeys through his tumultuous youth and ends with him attempting this trick in San Francisco. At least five times, he takes off down a large ramp, leaps over a flight of 10 stairs, flips his board beneath him, then crashes down hard into the ground, the skateboard flying. But every time, he gets up, and every attempt, he gets a little closer to landing it.

Turner: What I wanna tell people is when you're going through something in the present, something that doesn't, you don't like or you're, you're bummed about or whatever, just always, there's always a positive aspect of it. And OK, let's get away from that, a positive aspect. There's always something you can learn from it.

Evans: Finally, at the end of the documentary, Brandon lands the jump.

It's the best trick of his career after decades of practice and unimaginable setbacks. And through those ups and downs, skateboarding was the one constant.

Turner: Skateboarding is for everybody, and you'll never know until you try how beautiful, amazing it is, not only that you can do with your kids, you can meet, explore, know different people and travel around the world, and there'll always be a skateboard, and you'll always be accepted. If you ever feel isolated or alone in life, a skateboard will always be there for you.

Evans: A special thank you to Brandon Turner for his help with this episode. And thank you so much for listening. If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a rating or comment. It makes a real difference and helps stories like these reach more people.

The Finest is a production of KPBS Public Media. I'm your host, Julia Dixon Evans. Our producer is Anthony Wallace, who also composed the score. Ben Redlawsk is our engineer, and Chrissy Nguyen is our editor. This episode was written and researched by Anthony and me.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.