Friends hold fundraiser for a local skateboard legend in recovery from a serious accident.

Pacific Grove native Peter Gunn has been a well known skater in Monterey County, Southern California and Pacific Northwest, as well as a skilled skate park builder sought after around the world. Gunn had a bad crash on Thursday, June 23 while skating, and suffered acute head trauma.

“His recovery is going to be a long, hard one,” his sister Myah Gunn writes to the Weekly.  

But he has a community rallying to his support. “It’s a super-tight community,” Gunn says of his brother and his skateboarding friends. She herself is a surfer, but after all, skateboarding developed in California as a solution to the dream of “surfing” through the city when there’s no water and no waves. “Pete has been skateboarding for over 30 years,” she continues. "He has been one of the best downhill skaters. His skills, also as a park builder, took him all over the world. He lived in Portland, in Colorado; he was featured in magazines and videos."    

“Skateboarding comes and goes in waves,” says world-famous female skateboarder Alex White when asked about how popular the sport is these days. She grew up in Monterey and is the person responsible for the 2007 YouTube upload “Peter Gunn the skateboarder” that will show viewers younger Gunn doing insane tricks if you care to look it up. “We had maybe a 300-percent increase, a real boom after Covid because [skating] was Covid-safe, something you can do without a team.” It takes about a decade to become decent, she says, but it all depends on individual skills.

White herself had a “horrendous” head injury two months ago and, unlike Gunn, wore a helmet. Without it, it would have been much worse, she admits.

White has been pursuing skateboarding for 25 years and, among other things, she was the first Olympic skateboarding commentator when skateboarding became an Olympic sport in 2021. “Since it’s a lifestyle, you are always skating, it’s interwoven into your life,” she says. 

“Quality over quantity,” Jon Wescott, another prominent local skateboarder, says of the local skating community. “Monterey always had [skateboarding].” He recalls the early 2000s and the community that grew around the skate shop in P.G., 68 Skate, that Gunn and White were part of.

Now they are rallying to help support Gunn's recovery with a fundraiser on July 30.

In addition to the event, San Diego-based Crystal White started a GoFundMe campaign; the campaign website also provides information about Gunn’s progress.

“Pete is making wonderful progress,” his partner Cat Seavey wrote on July 19. “He is eating small amounts of purées and thick liquids, he is sitting up and was able to sit in a wheelchair and look out his hospital window for a total of two 45-minute physical therapy sessions today." 

The July 30 event will be a fundraiser for Gunn's expenses, but also a community gathering. “We are putting together a super rad fundraising event," his sister writes. "There are going to be multiple local bands playing, great prizes, art and skateboards for sale and a wonderful community of people rallying for his very loved human.”

Community fundraiser for Peter Gunn happens at 1-5pm, Saturday, July 30 at Other Brother Beer Co., 877 Broadway, Seaside.