Geoff Rowley says he's “forever in debt” to Ed Templeton: what did a Liverpool kid learn in Huntington Beach in 1994?

On May 27, 2024, Toy Machine posts a photo of Geoff Rowley on Instagram with three lines: “This is happening. @geoffrowley is officially brainwashed. The future is gonna be fucked up.” Rowley is 47. Skater of the Year, a company of his own, twenty-five years of shoes with his name on them. And he signs with the guy who lived across the street from him in 1994.

That guy is Ed Templeton. Rowley has a line for him, from 2012: “I’ll be forever in debt to him.” So what happened on that Huntington Beach street, the year a kid from Liverpool dropped his bags in California?

May 2024: at 47, Geoff Rowley signs with Toy Machine

Rowley left Flip in October 2015, after more than twenty years on the team. He launched Free Dome Skateboards in 2019, shut it down, and went almost a year without a board sponsor, according to Shredder.

He picks Toy Machine. The brand Templeton founded in 1994 and still runs. Same year, the loop starts to show. Also in 2024, Rowley enters the Skateboarding Hall of Fame, class of 2024, alongside Ron Allen and Tony Magnusson. And it’s Templeton who walks on stage to introduce him.

The presenter wasn’t picked out of a hat. He’s the neighbor from 1994. To understand why, you have to go back thirty years, to Main Street.

Huntington Beach, 1994: Ed Templeton launches Toy Machine

Rewind. Templeton was born in 1972 in Garden Grove. He started skating in 1985 in Huntington Beach, with his friend Jason Lee. In 1987 he saw his first pro in real life: Mark Gonzales, who lived nearby. They followed him home “like stalkers,” he says, and the Gonz threw a three-foot judo air on the quarterpipe in the backyard.

Templeton turned pro for New Deal in 1990, a month before finishing high school. Two brands started with Mike Vallely sank fast. In 1994 he started over with Tod Swank’s backing and launched Toy Machine. He was barely past 20, and he drew the graphics himself. His model: Gonzales, the pro who drew his own boards.

Two years later came Welcome to Hell - 1996, with Jamie Thomas, Elissa Steamer, Brian Anderson. Templeton would later say that “something happened in Huntington Beach that pushed street skating forward.” Pretentious? Maybe. But the Liverpool kid who showed up that year would prove him right.

Something happened here, in Huntington Beach, that pushed street skating forward. — Ed Templeton, 2012

“Forever in debt”: what Rowley said, in 2012 and in 2024

Same year, 1994, across town. The Flip riders land from England and Denmark: Geoff Rowley, Tom Penny, Rune Glifberg, Andy Scott. Rowley recalled in 2012: “I’d just turned eighteen, Tom was seventeen. None of us had ever left home. We didn’t know anybody. Nobody. We had no money, no car, just the board we had. We couldn’t afford to break it.”

Picture it. You grew up in Liverpool, where the only skate shop was a record store, Probe Records, with two decks on the wall and zero grip. You rode your first complete for a month without griptape. And now you wake up in California, it isn’t raining, and you don’t know who to call.

The rest of the 2012 quote answers that: “I skated with Ed a lot, like every day, because he lived right across the street from me.” Every day. Then the line from the headline, as reported in his biography: he’ll be “forever in debt” to Templeton, because Templeton opened up to him right away. “As soon as we started talking, it was obvious we’d be friends. We listened to the same music, we were the same generation.”

Twelve years later, when he signed with Toy Machine, Rowley said it again in an interview with Shredder. He’s known “Ed and Deanna since he was a kid fresh off the boat from Liverpool.” And he drops the line that matters most: “Ed and I were better when we skated together. I believe that. It’s always been obvious.”

Ed and I were better when we skated together. I believe that. — Geoff Rowley, Shredder, May 2024

Liverpool, Staples Center, Sorry: what he kept, what he changed

Templeton didn’t teach Rowley to jump down stairs. Rowley already had the gnar when he arrived. Two weeks after landing, an improvised session with a TransWorld photographer ended up on the cover of the mag.

Everyone knows what came next. In 1999, a 50-50 on the hubba at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, in low vulc Vans at a time when everyone wore shoes puffed up like tires. Thrasher Skater of the Year in 2000. Then his part in Sorry - 2002, which Thrasher counts among its classics.

What he kept from Liverpool, he said himself: his Really Sorry - 2003 part runs to “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the Liverpool FC anthem, for his parents and grandparents.

What changed is everything else. In 1992, Jeremy Fox, founder of Deathbox, described him in TransWorld as a kid who “doesn’t care about music or anything that isn’t skating.” Two years later, that same kid made a friend for life over records shared with his neighbor. And the Rowley who followed looks a lot more like Templeton than like Fox’s portrait. Co-owner of Flip. Civilware in 2013, Free Dome in 2019: a pro no longer content to ride for other people.

Without Templeton in 1994, no Rowley at Toy Machine in 2024

So what did a kid from Liverpool learn in Huntington Beach in 1994? Not a trick. Rowley says it straight, and it’s the only sourced answer: he learned you skate better with someone. The California dream he talks about in 2012 wasn’t the sun. It was waking up every morning with someone across the street to go skate with. Templeton was that someone, the year Rowley had nothing.

The second half of the answer is NOSK8’s reading, not a quote. Across the street, Rowley saw a guy barely past 20 who drew his own boards, started his own brand after two failures, listened to the same records and talked about things other than skating. Proof that a skater can be a whole person, and his own boss. Rowley followed the same path.

Hence the “forever in debt.” You don’t owe a career to a neighbor. You owe him the first year, the one where everything can break. Without the door across the street opening in 1994, no daily session, no thirty-year friendship, and no “officially brainwashed” photo in 2024.

What’s left, for you with thirty-five years on the clock and a board in the garage: the friend who took you to the park the first time, you probably owe him more than you think. Rowley took thirty years to sign with his.

And you, who’s your Ed Templeton, the one who took you skating every day that first year? Tell us in the comments ↓