Club Rubber: Where Snowboarders, Motocrossers and Sexy Women Went to Party

REALLY, REALLY NSFW!  I MEAN IT!

Let me preface this section by saying I believe marijuana should be legalized for a variety or reasons, but I don't smoke it.  I'm basically anti-drug.  There are just too many bad things that happen to lots of people when they get into the harder drugs or abuse alcohol.

Oddly enough, my first task at FREESTYLIN', a BMX magazine, in 1986, was to find some information on this new thing called snowboarding.  I called a phone number I was given and told to ask for either Terry Kidwell or Damian Sanders.  To this day, I can't remember for sure which one I talked to.  But I think it was Damian.  I asked him how big snowboarding contests were and he said, "Huge, this weekend we have 750 cases of wine coolers!"  I didn't know it at the time, but that was a sign of things to come for him, both in and out of snowboarding.

I have to add another quick story.  I was riding my BMX bike down Beach Boulevard, on the sidewalk one night in about '92.  I got pulled over by the police, and before I knew it, there were two cars there.  I think my heinous crime was riding a bike without a light.  In any case, one of the police told his buddies, "Last night I pulled over this crazy kid driving a hearse... and the idiot had "666" shaved in the back of his head."  They started laughing, and I quipped, "You pulled over Damian?"  The cop looked at me, "You know that nutcase?"  "Yeah," I replied, "That's Damian Sanders, one of the top pro snowboarders in the world... he's the most famous guy in Huntington Beach."  The police looked at each other in confusion.  About that time they got the info that I had no outstanding warrants, and they let me go with a warning, still puzzled that I knew who the crazy kid in the hearse was.

 That said, Damian Sanders and his friends' parties in the 1990's were a huge part of what drew a lot of people to Huntington Beach.  Young people like to party.  Most of them are going to party whether parents and others like it or not.  Damian and friends started holding rowdy house parties on 17th Street in HB,  and the clips you see at the end of this interview started showing up in Dana Nicholson's Snowboard videos, along with some motocross free riding.  Just like he'd done in snowboarding in the late 80's and 90's in snowboarding, Damian took partying to the next level.  They held a house party called the Pimp 'n' Ho Ball.  It was a rowdy party with lots of beautiful women as you can see by the video clips.  Adding the crazy theme just took things to a different place.  As the years passed, Damian teamed up with Jon Huntington and the house parties grew into production parties, then into a twice monthly night club called Club Rubber, then into a Las Vegas club, then into massive arena parties with thousands of people.

Though I never actually met Damian, I knew who he was from the 1990 Snowboarders in Exile video, which I watched dozens of times.  I saw him around town.  I ran into him and his friends at the 17th Street Liquor store when I lived on 15th Street in the late 90's.  I worked Club Rubber as a taxi driver, and made a ton of money taking those partiers home.  I was never cool enough to get in one of his parties, but I'm not much of a partier, anyhow.  But I had a blast with all the people in my taxi from his clubs.

 While the city council members would definitely not want to say so, the parties and clubs put on by Damian Sanders and friends did a huge amount to give Huntington Beach the reputation as a really crazy and fun place to be in the 1990's and early 2000's.  This is the kind of PR no civic leader would admit to wanting, but, like it or not, partying is a big part of the draw of a creative scene.  Damian not only showed people a good time, he built a career out of promoting other people's parties.