Last week something unusual happened and we were there.

Arto Saari had an idea for this skate session he wanted to shoot. He invited Jay Adams, who’s now 51, and Curren Caples, 16, to his backyard pool in Hollywood to trade runs and kind of rap out. We got to go film it for What Youth.

Curren and Jay are twins on opposite ends of a 30-year gap. They’re surfers, better known for skating but unfairly good at both. Curren is basically Jay reborn a few decades later, after this whole cultural movement kicked off by his Z-Boys had time to mature. It’s like Jay froze himself as a kid and woke up to Fred Rubbles and Life of Ryan.

So at Arto’s this scene was playing out with all sorts of historical meaning, possibly, but at face value some guys were just skating the shit out of an empty pool. Curren was doing five-foot airs in the deep end over the real Craig Stecyk, who was hanging out poolside observing as the final surreal touch.

Later, since Stecyk knows everything more or less, I asked what he thought might be a rad and relevant and unexpected story to tell about modern surf culture. Basically what he’d do if he were sole curator of an empty 9” x 12” two-dimensional space — such as a page in What Youth Quarterly for example. I wanted to know what thrills Stecyk lately. And I really wanted to steal his idea to get credit for it.

He just sort of pointed to the pool, where Curren was frontside smith-ing for Arto’s camera while Jay Adams watched in the background and said, “Probably this.”

Tomorrow you can see the little piece we put together from that day at Arto’s house here on whatyouth.com. And thanks Arto, for having us.