The word “phenom” is an often-used term to describe a young
person possessing talent well beyond their years.
In the case of five-year-old skateboarding sensation Julian
Mahrer, that description doesn’t begin to tell the story.
The young Sebastopol resident has been a pint-sized fixture at
Laguna Skate Park over the past several months, drawing equal parts
shock and awe from fellow boarders and aficionados alike.
“I’ve been skateboarding and observing skateboarders since the
days of clay wheels,” said Jack Grant, a local expert in the sport
who wrote the first book on skateboarding in the 1960s. “But I’ve
rarely seen anything as eye-opening as this.”
Grant uttered those words after seeing Mahrer flash his
considerable talent at Laguna Park for the first time, watching him
dazzle the crowd with an assortment of tricks and stunts.
Although having skated for less than a year, Mahrer is already
able to drop in off the steel lip of the front bowl, doing a
variety of “fakies,” with left or right foot forward in the deepest
bowl at the back of the park.
The diminutive five year-old, the son of Greg Mahrer and Gillian
Parker, has been so impressive that he’s already drawn comparisons
to some of the sport’s legends.
“Years ago I was wowed by a guy who could do three-board
handstands,” said Grant, a long-time soccer coach at El Molino High
School. “Then wowed again in the late ’70s by the likes of the
Z-Boys, who did the first 180s out of the bowls and back in again.
But this is equally impressive. If Julian stays with it, he’ll
have a great future in skateboarding, as well as a heck of a lot of
fun.”
