Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Hosoi My Life as a Skateboarder Junkie Inmate Pastor by Christian Hosoi From a jail cell to a church. Long before he was legally old enough to drink, the skateboarder nicknamed “Christ” was a stud on the pro circuit who was touted as an emerging rival to the legendary Tony Hawk. Hosoi’s fame brought him a lot of money, parties and girls, but he also rode his board into a downward spiral of substance abuse that eventually landed him in prison. The skateboarder known for his “Christ Air” move has since reformed himself as a Huntington Beach resident and pastor at The Sanctuary church in Westminster. Now 44, he’s come out with a tell-all autobiography, titled “Hosoi: My Life as a Skateboarder Junkie Inmate Pastor.” At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Hosoi will sign copies of his book at Barnes & Noble, 7881 Edinger Ave., No. 110, in the Bella Terra shopping center. In the memoir, Hosoi recounts his life as a youth skateboarder and celebrity. He learned to skateboard at a Marina del Rey skatepark and turned pro at 14. His biggest competition was Hawk, who was around his same age. Hosoi grew close with pro skateboarders Tony Alva and Jay Adams, and graced the cover of Thrasher Magazine several times. Even though he was underage — as he was for most of his career — he could get immediate access to any nightclub. Then he started to drift into drugs. When Hosoi was 8, his father introduced him to marijuana. From there, Hosoi tried “every drug under the sun,” including cocaine, acid, Ecstasy and, eventually, methamphetamine. In January 2000, reality caught up to Hosoi when he was arrested for carrying a pound-and-a-half of meth aboard a flight from California to Hawaii. He was placed in a windowless cell in Hawaii, where he was told he would spend the next 10 years. Hosoi’s then-girlfriend Jennifer — now his wife — encouraged him to remain optimistic and told him to put faith in God. “What’s God going to do for me?” Hosoi remembered telling her. “I need a lawyer! I need an attorney! I need bail!” Despite his apprehension, Hosoi picked up a Bible a few days into his incarceration. “That’s when my journey began,” Hosoi said. “It was like almost when I wanted to be a pro skater, when I first tasted skateboarding . I said, ‘That’s what I want to be, a Christian.’” While in prison, he not only discovered God but got married and earned his GED. “I went from living in prison my whole life, living in sin and trying to find my identity in money, fame and girls,” Hosoi said. “I was never satisfied or content. Then I finally got in a prison cell, and by the power of God’s love, forgiveness, mercy and grace, I felt content in that prison cell. I was free for the first time in my whole life. “I felt the weight of the pain, guilt and hurt fall off my shoulders.” Hosoi was released after four years in June 2004 and decided to live a life dedicated to God. He became an associate pastor at The Sanctuary, the “raddest church,” as soon as he was released. The Sanctuary aims to be a place for anyone to come. A sign outside the church welcomes drug addicts, prostitutes, pimps and others whom many religious institutions may look down upon. The Sanctuary recently opened a church in downtown Los Angeles, where Hosoi said he is excited to preach at in the near future. However, while Hosoi has dedicated his life to Christ, he has not forgotten his roots. He said he still skates all the time, including in competitions. He also recently reopened his company, Hosoi Skates. He is also working with a team to build the largest skatepark in the world. “I’ve really been through some stuff,” Hosoi said. “But now I can say that I’ve come full circle from when I was a young boy, passionate about doing something great, being somebody who could fulfill his dreams and then going through a full life of ups and downs. And now I’m here, getting to live my life and having a second chance.” Skateboarding 2014. A mix of Tony Hawk and Brian Welch comes together in skateboarding legend Christian Hosoi, who reveals everything about his rise, fall, and redemption, in this amazing tell-all—from being named the greatest skater of all time to bottoming out on drugs to finally finding redemption through God. Fans of Slater Kelly’s Pipe Dreams and Brian Welch’s Save Me From Myself , and followers of Tony Alva, Jay Adams, and Steve Caballero, will be captivated by this extraordinary, star-studded story, a gripping read that ranges from the heart of the 1980s skateboarding scene to the inside of a prison, from Hollywood parties to intense prayer sessions. Hosoi: My Life as a Skateboarder Junkie Inmate Pastor takes readers to the heart of one little-known world after another—and he portrays them in all their gore and glory for all the world to see. Christian Hosoi Net Worth. Christian Hosoi Net Worth 2021: Wiki Biography, Married, Family, Measurements, Height, Salary, Relationships. Christian Hosoi net worth is $500,000. Christian Hosoi Wiki Biography. Christian Hosoi was born on the 5th October 1967, in California, USA, and is a professional skateboarder, best known as a winner of such contests as NSA (1985), Thrasher Savannah Slamma I (1987), Titus World Cup (Germany) (1988), and Japan Slam Jam (1989). Hosoi’s career started in 1981. Have you ever wondered how rich Christian Hosoi is, as of early 2017? According to authoritative sources, it has been estimated that Hosoi’s net worth is as high as $500,000, an amount earned largely through his successful pro skateboarding career. In addition to being a skater, Hosoi also appeared in a few movies, which have improved his wealth too. Christian Hosoi Net Worth $500,000. Christian Hosoi is a son of a Caucasian mother and Japanese father from Hawaii, and grew up in Los Angeles and Hawaii. He began skating when he was seven years old, stating that Shogo Kubo, Tony Alva, Jay Adams, and Stacy Peralta were his idols. His father, Ivan, became a manager of the Marina Del Rey Skatepark, and Christian dropped out of the school to develop his talents. In 1979, Power Peralta sponsored Hosoi, refused to turn him pro, so he left for the Dogtown Skateboards. However, Dogtown closed the business soon after, so he moved to the Sims Skateboards and turned pro at the age of 14. His first win at the professional level was in the NSA Summer Series #5 in Vancouver, Canada, in 1985. Two years later, Christian won the Thrasher Savannah Slamma I, while in 1988, he recorded three big wins in Vision Skate Escape, Ramp Riot Bells beach (Australia), and Titus World Cup (Germany). Hosoi ended the ‘80s with victories at the NSA Savannah Slamma III: Arena Street Style (1989) and Japan Slam Jam (1989). His career took a hit in the early ‘90s, when the recession was a big problem and he even faced bankruptcy when his drug addiction grew. Hosoi only returned to skateboarding in the late 2000s, winning at the 10th Annual Tim Brauch Memorial Contest Grandmasters Event (2008) and Etnies GVR Skull Bowl – Masters in Lake Forest, California. His latest wins were at the X Games 15 Skateboard Park Legends contest in 2009, and the X Games 16 Skateboard Park Legends contest in 2010. Christian Hosoi has also appeared in such movies as “Thrashin’” (1986) starring Josh Brolin, and “Hardflip” (2012) alongside Randy Wayne, John Schneider, and Rosanna Arquette. Regarding his personal life, Christian Hosoi has been married to former nightclub dancer Jennifer Lee since 2001, and has four sons with her. He was arrested in 1995, but after failing to appear in court, Hosoi declined to compete at skateboarding events in order to avoid arrest. However, in 2000 Christian was arrested when tried to transport 1.5 lb (0.68 kg) of crystal meth from Los Angeles to Honolulu, and spent four years at the San Bernardino Central Detention Center, but was paroled in 2004, despite his sentence of ten years. Hosoi’s wife and her uncle influenced him to become a born-again Christian, and he really changed his ways, and he even released his autobiography entitled “HOSOI: My Life as a Skateboarder Junkie Inmate Pastor” in 2012. Hosoi: My Life As A Skateboarder Junkie Inmate Pastor (EXCERPT) Editor's Note: The text below is adapted from "Hosoi: My Life as a Skateboarder Junkie Inmate Pastor" by Christian Hosoi, with Chris Ahrens. Copyright © 2012 by Christian Hosoi. Used with permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers. You know that saying, “It’s all good”? There’s a book in the Bible called James, which made that same point nearly two thousand years ago. It says it like this: “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials” (1:2). I’ve been running so hard for so long that when someone approached Eddie and asks, “Did you hear what happened to Christian?” he nearly collapses, thinking he’s gonna hear that I’ve died. The body count for people involved in my lifestyle is mounting, not just among my friends but generally, and his reaction is kind of a natural. While my death might not have surprised many people, nobody could ever guess that I would become a Christian. Well, I have always been unpredictable. Most people now, looking back, would list January 23, 2,000—the day I was arrested at the Honolulu airport—as the lowest point in my life. I see it, with the benefit of hindsight, as the time when my real life began. Let’s go back a decade, though, to see what happened after the event. Those first few days after my arrest in Hawaii are the worst. I’ve got nothing and no one to lean on, especially since at first I can’t reach Jen by phone. I’m looking at ten years and have only been locked up for three days; already I’m like a rat in a cage, looking for a place to escape. There isn’t any. When I finally get through to Jen on the phone I express my despair, my fears that I won’t be able to make it through ten years. She’s crying, but she’s strong. “I love you, she says, “and we’ll get through this. We’ve just got to trust in God.” She points out that it could have been a lot worse: I could have died, or it could have been both of us in jail that day, since she was originally going to carry dope with me on that plane. I can’t help wishing that I’d flown the dope somewhere within the state of California instead of all the way to Hawaii. If I’d been caught doing that, I probably would have received only a slap on the wrist and probation. Here, though, there’s nobody I can pay off and nobody to help me. Several lawyers look into my case and there’s nothing illegal in how I’ve been arrested. With no loopholes to squeeze through, I’m stuck wondering how to make the best of the next 120 months. Even though I hate being stuck, stuck is right where I need to be. I’m finally still enough to hear what God has to say to me. I’m off all drugs, though by no choice of my own; and with no weed or speed in my system, I can think straight and start catching up on the years of sleep I’ve lost. Now, for the first time, the events of my life come into focus, and I began to see the pattern of living that’s brought me here. It’s not as if God’s been silent over the years. My girlfriend Jen’s Uncle Chris, a pastor, has been reaching out to her forever, since long before we left California. Even after she started going to church with her grandmother she remained unconvinced, and I’m not even listening. Here we are, a stripper doing drugs and a strung-out pro skateboarder. In the world’s eyes, and in hers and mine, that’s about as far from God as it gets. In God’s eyes, however, she and I are no different from some nice tea-drinking husband and wife who do good and productive work and coach their kid’s soccer team on the weekends. Just before I get busted that final time, we’re cruising around in Oahu when a woman at a gas station asks, “Have you guys ever gone to church? There’s a good one not far from here.” It’s an apparently random comment, one I haven’t heard from a stranger before, ever. God is tapping on our shoulders, but we simply tell the woman, “Yeah, we’ve been to church.” We have no time for that now; we’re doing life our way, and our way is to score drugs. No matter what I do or who I talk to, it looks like I’m serving all ten years; that’s actually the minimum mandatory sentence for my crime. Okay, now I’ve got to do what Jen says: “Trust God.” That’s the reality of life for all people every day, but it takes seeing it through prison bars to get a clear picture. Jen tells me on that first phone call to get a Bible, so I begin asking around for one. A guy in another cell says I can use his. He hands it to me through the bars. Here’s this great big book, all underlined and with notes in the margins, and I have no idea why it should be of any interest to me. I open to the first book in the Bible, Genesis. To me that’s an old Star Trek movie. I flip to the back of the Bible, Revelation. I’ve never had any sort of revelation before, not even drug-induced, so I can’t relate. I go to the middle of the book and puzzle over how to pronounce the name of the book I’ve turned to. P-salms. What is P-salms? A nearby book, Proverbs, sounds like an old-school lecture, and John sounds really boring. I finally stop at the book called I Kings. Kings, now that sounds good. The second chapter of I Kings begins with King David on his deathbed, charging his son Solomon to heed the voice of the Lord and follow that voice all the days of his life. God tells him that if he does that, everything will go right for him. But I then read the story of Solomon, and it doesn’t end that well. Here’s the wisest man in the world and even he’s seduced by the temptations of lust, greed, and fame. The guy has a million times more of everything than I’ll ever have, and he still blows it. I relate to him totally, and by seeing what he should have done, I begin to understand what I need to do. Christian Hosoi: Skate and Redemption. Nothing could slow down Christian Hosoi during the 1980’s. The impossibly slick skateboarder dominated the field alongside rival Tony Hawk , until Hosoi’s hard-partying lifestyle derailed his career in the ‘90s and landed him in jail in 2000 for a 10-year sentence for drug trafficking. After serving several years, Hosoi left prison a converted Christian and now works as a pastor. Life+Times caught up with the skateboarding legend to talk about his new autobiography, Hosoi: My Life As a Skater Junkie Inmate Pastor , as well as his thoughts on the industry he helped establish. Life+Times: In your book you lay out your own personal history. What prompted you to decide now is the time to share this with people? Christian Hosoi : It’s funny. It came out organically because I was talking with a bunch of people who wanted to do a movie. From the documentary [ Rising Son ], they wanted to do a feature film. I was talking to indie people, studio people, you know, big studio people, and I had like five or six people approach me to do a movie. But it just didn’t sit well in finalizing it. And Harper Collins ends up approaching me and saying, “Hey, we’d like to do your book.” And it just happened like that. L+T: Do you find it pretty hard to believe the life you lived? CH : No, because I was the guy living it. It seemed normal what we did. What I thought was kind of weird was if you didn’t do what we did. But I think that if I were to take myself out of the picture – yeah, it’s ridiculous what we did at such a young age. All the drugs that I did. You know, traveling the world by myself – doing whatever I wanted. No real boundaries, no limitations. I would never let my son do that today. But you know things have changed. My mentality has gone from a worldly place where it was all about me, to a spiritual place where it’s all about people. So now I really do care a lot more about not only myself, but about my children, about people, about our culture. I think that’s where wisdom comes, through rock-bottom experiences. L+T: So 12 years ago when you were entering prison did you think you would have the opportunity to be where you are today, to be able to have your book, to have your own company again and to be able to work on other projects in fashion and film? CH : Yeah, matter of fact when I was in prison was the first time in my life where I threw up my hands and said, “What happened? Why am I here?” And at that moment my girlfriend at the time said, “I’m quitting drugs and I’m going to church, Christian.” So at this moment, I’m sitting here in a prison cell and my first phone call couple days after being in there I just said, “Look, I’m looking at 10 years.” And she was like, you know we just have to trust in God. And I was like, “God? Babe, I need a lawyer. I need an attorney. I need bail. What’s God going to do for me?” And she was like, “God’s going to help us. Go get a Bible.” And that night, I went and got a Bible. And I’ve never read a Bible before. My name is Christian. My nickname was Christ on the cover of Thrasher magazine in ’85. I invented a maneuver called the Christ Air right after that, and never read a Bible. And so that night I went and opened it up and read it for the first time. It was almost like the scales fell off my eyes, and I realized there was something bigger than just me and what I was doing in my little bubble of what life was. It was like all of a sudden I realized that I was created for something, that there was a purpose for my life. God had a plan for it. An And it was my choices that got me to where I was at. It wasn’t, “Oh I deserved this, or I did something bad so this is my karma.” L+T: It’s remarkable really. Since you managed to change your life around so completely, you’re still skating competitively. What part of your life does skating mean? Why are you still skating? CH : Well, now I remember telling God, I’ll quit skateboarding. I’ll go into the desert. I’ll go to the jungles. I’ll preach the gospels anywhere, when I got saved. And I just remember the Holy Spirit be like, didn’t I give you your wife, your kids and your skateboarding? I was like, wait a minute, you’re right, forgive me. I’ll be the best husband, the best father I could be. And I’ll skate as good as I can ‘cause I want to represent you. L+T: So you have been in the skate industry for 30 years about? CH : Yeah I’ve been skating for about 38 years now coming out this year, but pro for 30 years. L+T: You’ve seen the industry change for all that time. How have you seen the business of skateboarding change? CH : You know the business has really grown astronomically. When we started it was real small. Real backyard, almost like there was five major companies that did everything and two magazines. So it was very family oriented. Now, like any other business, you don’t know. I don’t know some of the names of the brands and they’re all in skateboarding. I don’t know a lot of the pros, when we were all close friends back in the day. But I think it’s come full circle where the identity and image of a pro skateboarder — somebody who is a lifer or somebody’s who’s passionate about it has come full circle because they do respect it and they love it. They do it regardless if there’s money involved. They want to keep it authentic. L+T: So what is your approach in business with Hosoi Skateboards? CH : My approach is just be real. Be who you are. I grew up with my father, and he graduated with his Master’s Degree in Fine Arts at Berkeley in the ‘60s and so he read about art and history and he knew all about it and so his take was to be original, be an innovator. Don’t be a follower. Followers are wack. So my whole take on life was to do that in everything, whether it be the shape of my board, how I wore my clothes. The carefree attitude that I had, it all went from that. And I think that’s what represents my brand, is to just be who you are. So many people are trying to be somebody else and it never works. L+T: Do you think your skating has also had that same consistency? CH : Well, I’m in my mid-40’s. We don’t heal as fast. We’re not as resilient. We’re not as strong. I’m a family man. I’m a businessman. I don’t skate eight hours a day like I used to. But for how old we are? Man, surprised me. I didn’t think we’d be skating passed thirty. I didn’t think I’d live past 21 let alone skate at 30. And then I’m like, I survived 21. I’m like, man, I’m dying at 27 like Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix . I’ll probably die right around there. I’m a super famous guy. Literally that’s the kind of head you had when you’re like this “wannabe super the best of the world” at something. You’re just told all these things. Now I’m having more fun than I ever had at skateboarding because I appreciate it. I actually don’t take it for granted. L+T: Is it important to win? CH : Well, I’m competitive by nature. We grew up competing. That’s how you became number one, that’s how you get your picture in the magazine. Now, it’s all political, but back then it was built strictly on your performance. And Bruce Lee was my idol. I wanted to be like him. I wanted to smash everybody. I was going to be a martial artist. And then I got a skateboard and I was like, sick. I’ll be the Bruce Lee on the skateboard. I took all of his ethics and workouts and breathing and techniques to skateboarding. And that’s why I think I was so competitive. I wanted to have the reputation. I think that’s kind of like the attitude you need to have. The passion has to be there. The dedication. The perseverance. All that’s got to be there, because there’s going to be people who want to take you out. They don’t want you there because they want to get there too. It’s like King of the Hill – you’ve got to fight for it. And that’s what I was doing. And now I can say I’m very, very humbled with the fact that I reached that place.