In 1966, when he was 3, Wee Wong moved to Vancouver from Hong Kong with his family, and it didn't take long for him to pick up his first skateboard.

"It was '72, I think I was about 9 years-old," he says. "That's when the Cal 240s [find that skateboard here] started coming out, and I got my first one at Woodward's in Gastown."

Wee started rolling with a small, core group of Vancouver skaters that included Skull Skates' PD, Rob Nurmi, Cory Campbell, Niko Weiss, Kevin Harris, and Don Hartley. By 1979, Wee and a few others would appear in Skateboarder magazine. Once vert skating began to slow down in the beginning-‘80s, Wee decided to take a long hiatus from skateboarding in order to build his auto mechanic career and eventually his one-stop shop, Auto Repairs R ‘Wee' [1115 Kingsway, East Vancouver].

However, the saying, "Once a skater, always a skater" holds very true with the 46 year-old, who got back on-board about 7 years ago and ties it into his business.

"Tiles and pool coping, that's my thing," Wee Wong explains during our interview. "I don't grind that much, but I like it to be on pool coping when I do [laughs]."

What did you skate back in the early ‘70s?
'72 was pretty much the beginning of skateboarding. It was the second wave when urethane wheels came out, and we were basically just riding around on the streets. There was the early freestyle tricks we used to do, the stuff that Kevin Harris still does. We used to do the high jump, the long jump, and that sorta stuff – a lot different than skating today. The West Van bowl was built around '75, and it was the first, but it's buried now. Seylynn came along after that, and there was the Skateboard Palace in Burnaby...

Were you sponsored at the time?
I wouldn't say sponsored, but I used to get a lot of stuff from this shop called Nippon Cycles downtown on Denman and Georgia. They'd give me boards and stuff to test and try out. Now I'm sponsored by BLVD Skateshop. Kevin [Kelly] comes here and supports me, so I try to support him however I can. Keep things within the friends, you know?

Wee Wong, frontside tail-block – late-'70s.

How did your photo in Skateboarder come about?
We were in the January '79 issue of Skateboarder [click here to see the photos]. Jim Goodrich came up from California to cover the 1978 annual Canadian Skateboard Championship at the PNE. He ended up doing a write-up on Niko Weiss, and I was in there too. The photo was shot at the Nelson halfpipe, which was downtown from about '77 to ‘79, right behind St. Paul's hospital. That was a wooden ramp, about 11-foot, with no flat and big, long transitions. There's some footage of it in PD's video, Resist Control [Skull Skates, 2004].

What was the state of skateboarding after that?
We only had about 4 years of riding vert, from '76 to '80, then everything just kinda shut down. The group of us that liked to ride vert at that time, we just went on and did other stuff. I stopped in the late ‘70s-early ‘80s – I went from skateboarding to cars [laughs].

How long did it take for you to become a mechanic?
I've been in the trade since High School. I was a jockey at a gas station pumping gas, then I moved up from there. I took my apprenticeship and became a licensed mechanic around '85. I worked at various other shops in the past, and the time came to do my own thing. I've had my own shop for 11 years now, and it seems to be working out pretty well.

How long was your hiatus from skating after you stopped in the early ‘80s?
I stopped skating for around 23 years. In '03 I bumped into Don Hartley and Cory Campbell at Hastings bowl, and I was pretty stoked they were still skating [laughs]. My oldest son Tyler was just getting into skating and parks were popping up everywhere the last 10 years, so I got back into it.

How does skating tie into your business?
Once I got back into it, I got to meet more skaters. One-by-one they start coming by to get their cars fixed. A lot of them are repeat customers. Some people that come by are Kevin Harris, Steve Denham, Seb Templer, Michelle Pezel from Antisocial, and Chris Parry...he works on the EA Skate games and his character actually wears one of my Auto Repairs R ‘Wee' shirts in Skate 2 [laughs].

Can you explain the interesting "business cards" you were making for a while?
I had a bunch of boards made that were like business cards, and I'd give them to my customers who skate. It's a nice, big board that I'd buy uncut and shape myself because I can't seem to find the size I want – a bigger board with a square nose and tail.

What services does your shop offer?
I have 5 people working here and we offer one-stop automotive servicing: oil changes, brakes, exhaust, tune-ups, transmission repairs, front-end, tires...just about everything. What we can't do, I can point a person in the direction of someone who can. We also have shuttle service, and courtesy cars.

At 46, how has your approach to skateboarding changed?
The key for me being able to still skate is by wearing knee pads – I wear all my safety equipment all the time. I can't run out on the tranny at my age, so it's safer to knee slide on a big tranny when you fall. As I'm getting older, I find that skateboarding helps keep my back loose and frees up the body. I try and skate for at least an hour every day if I can. On most dry weeknights from the end of September, I bring a generator to light up the bowl at Bonsor. We get some pretty good sessions going, and the guys that come out are the ones that really wanna skate.

--------------------------------
Related:
In The Park: Seylynn
Open House: BLVD Skateshop