Stacy Peralta (born October 15, 1957 in California) is an American director, as well as a former professional skateboarder, team surfer and entrepreneur. He is one of the original Z-Boys. At age 16, Peralta began competing with the Zephyr team, a group sponsored by the surf shop "Jeff Ho and Zephyr Surfboard Productions". His second sponsor was "Gordon and Smith." The Del Mar Nationals was his first competition, a contest with two board skate categories, slalom and freestyle. He nevertheless placed well, sixth or eighth in the freestyle. Following the Del Mar Nationals, Peralta worked to master the conventional maneuvers required of competitive freestyle skating, and within eight months of his first competition became the number three skateboard freestyler at the World Skateboard Championship. He even showcased his talent in the popular television show, Charlie's Angels.
Peralta can lay claim to the invention of the frontside lipslide, although this was on the rolled-over lip of skatepark bowls-it took the young Alan Losi to take it to the coping at the Upland Pipeline skatepark. To help skaters ride this maneuver in, Stacey came up with a device called a "lapper" which was essentially a tough polyethylene flap that bolted to the front of the board's rear truck. These are rarely seen nowadays.
At the age of 19, Peralta became the highest-ranked professional skateboarder. Soon after, he joined with manufacturer George Powell to form the Powell-Peralta skate gear company. With the financial backing of Powell-Peralta, Peralta formed the seminal Bones Brigade, a skate team comprised of some the best skaters at the time, many of whom revolutionized modern skateboarding. He also began directing and producing the first skating demo videos for skaters such as Tony Hawk.
Stacy Peralta is also credited in the 1985 movie Real Genius with Val Kilmer, William Atherton and Gabriel Jarret. Stacy played commander of a fictional space vehicle delivering a deadly laser toward an unsuspecting criminal during the film's opening scene.
In 1992, Peralta left Powell-Peralta to direct and produce for television full-time. His still-lingering love of the board manifested itself in the film, Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary film regarding the legendary skateboard team known as the Z-Boys, and Riding Giants, a 2004 documentary of the history of modern big wave surfing and tow-in surfing. Dogtown won an award at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Peralta also wrote the screenplay for the dramatic retelling of the Dogtown days in Lords of Dogtown (2005).
Peralta's experience as an entrepreneur and skate demo filmmaker was adapted for the video game Tony Hawk's Underground; Peralta played himself in the game.
Divorced in the 1990s, he has one son, Austin.
