Jimmy Plumer
Jimmy was born March 21, 1959 in Santa Monica California. His parents relocated to Jax Beach when he was five years old. While in second grade at Seabreeze elementary, Jimmy became friends with Mitch Kaufmann. Too young to surf by themselves, they started skating the neighborhood driveways, which would set a path for the rest of their lives.
It wasn’t long before Jimmy’s parents divorced and his dad moved back to Santa Monica. Jimmy’s mom met and married Vic Lloyd, introducing Jimmy to the world of fishing and diving. Attending Fletcher Junior High School, Jimmy became part of a crew of kids that lived to surf and skate, all pushing each other both in the water and on the cement. In the summer of 74, while on his annual trip to stay with his dad in California, Jimmy became friends with a young, unknown Tony Alva, who was already light years ahead on a skateboard. Alva introduced Jimmy and his brother Danny to high-speed bank riding, which Jimmy brought home to share with the local crew. From 74 to 76, he returned at the end of each summer skating better than ever and raising the bar for the locals. He introduced pool riding before the magazines came out and he dominated, with speed, anything with an incline.
In June of 1977 Kona SkatePark wanted to hire Plumer, but as a loyal member of Dave Hart’s Weber team, he was committed to working at Landalee, the skate park at the Jax Beach next to the present day Tacolu, which was built by Emmet Grandy and managed by Hart. Ironically, KONA was perfect for Plumer‘s high speed antics, and he dominated the place along with George Wilson. At the end of that summer of 77, at the first East Coast Professional Skateboard Contest, Plumer won the downhill snake event, took his earnings and moved to Dogtown, where he was born, bred, and belonged. He was already accepted into the echelon, a feat accomplished by less than a handful of outsiders. He soon found himself on the iconic Z Flex team, with his own model, which bore the image of the rat, displaying his Rattown heritage of North Florida. In 1978, the first big United States Skateboard Championship was held at Kona and Jimmy returned with the Dogtown crew. As the local favorite, he amazed the crowd with his mastery of Kona’s oversized terrain, but was ultimately defeated by fellow Dogtowner David Hacket. For the next two years, Jimmy enjoyed a steady rise in fame and notoriety as a world renowned rockstar Skate Icon.
Just two years later, in 1980, Jimmy’s crazy antics finally led to the decision to move back to Florida, where he began his career of fishing and deep-sea diving with his stepfather Vic Lloyd.
Make no mistake…
Jimmy’s energy … charisma.. and penchant for being radical had not subsided with his geographical relocation. Using Hart’s Weber house as Ground Zero, he accumulated quite the following of miscreants, including Doug Gall, one of the most entertaining humans to ever walk the earth… and Dennis Rich, the coolest guy in the world.
Although Jimmy’s craziness didn’t subside, he married Shirley, and had his daughter Ty in May 1983, his only offspring, who in turn made him a grandfather at age 49.
In 1994 while diving, Plumer survived a horrific shark attack which made global news. Jimmy spent the past 40 years as an accomplished diver, fishing out of Mayport, Florida, and never outgrew the rockstar Peter Pan mentality. When the Dogtown documentary and movie breathed new life into Skateboarding‘s legacy years, Plumer enjoyed that resurgence of fame, even getting several re-issue Z Flex Plumer models.
He always attended the events at Kona and maintained friendships around the world. There was never a dull moment around Plumer. He had that Dogtown spontaneity and fearless abandon, and you never knew what was coming. You could only hope that if anyone was going to jail, it wasn’t going to be you. He spent the last couple of years with his girlfriend, Renee, while working on his boat in order to retire to a life at sea before his untimely passing. He will be missed by friends and fans around the world.
