Invention helps skaters catch a tow
Inventor Rick Barraza tows Yoshi Komiyama of Torrance and Niki Koomen of Gulf Breeze, Florida using his Gripski retractable tether. Photo by Olivia Kestin Rick Barraza is a renaissance man – an energy healer, a jewelry designer, a garment-company honcho, and now the inventor of Gripski, a lightweight, retractable four-foot tether that a skater can use to get a tow from a bicycle. Barraza, who runs the tether company with his brother Tim, has been hawking his invention ideas on Gripski.com and in impromptu sales pitches with people on wheels as they roll by on the Strand. He said he’s also placed the Gripski in Pier Surf, ET Surf and a surf shop in Venice, and he had a belated launch party last week at Sharkeez. He’s sold about 200 Gripskis so far, he said. Barraza was involved in a skate shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma when he came out west with Tim and another brother, Steve, to join the company that would become LA Gear. Steve would helm LA Gear’s garment operation, and in 2008 Barraza would go on leave to design and sell his Gripski. He dreamed up the retractable tether a year before, as he sat on a porch on the Hermosa Strand and watched the world roll by. The result was a tether made…
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