Animal House: How 7 pro skateboarders came to live under one roof

Seven skateboarders living in one house. What could go wrong? Apparently, very little.

It’s like a teenage fever dream — seven professional skateboarders living together in one enormous house, a home base while they travel the world for contests. Friends, from time to time, crash in the spare bedroom when they come to SoCal to skate.

It sounds like a sequel to Grind, but the scenario is very much real. Pro skateboarders Alex Perelson (27), Sam Beckett (26), Clay Kreiner (21), Mitchie Brusco (21) and CJ Titus (18) live together under one roof in Vista, California, coming and going as they compete in contests and film projects. Recently, Josh Stafford (27) and Norway’s Mats Hatlem (18) joined the crew, maxing out available space in the house.

Sound like a landlord’s nightmare? Maybe, but not when the landlord is Perelson, himself, who bought the house back in 2012 and has since assembled a roommate dream team.

“He’s pretty much the most badass landlord ever,” says Kreiner, who took a break from practicing his skateboard park line at X Games Minneapolis to tell me more about his unique living situation.

“What’s mine is his and what’s his is mine.”

After San Diego native Perelson bought the house, Beckett, who originally hails from Great Britain, moved in. Kreiner, who moved to California right out of high school in 2015, was next.

The transplant from South Carolina had his living situation fall through a month after he moved to the state, and he was faced with the prospect of living in his car as he scrambled to find a place. Beckett gave him Perelson’s number, and the two exchanged texts about potentially shacking up.

“I didn’t even know Alex [Perelson],” says Kreiner, “but I had always looked up to him.”

Kreiner stopped by the house to meet Perelson, and the two sat on the porch to have a chat. Perelson stressed that this wasn’t a party pad; the guys who live there are, if anything, looking for some downtime when they’re home, which isn’t often. About 10 minutes later, Kreiner was making a copy of his house key.

“He’s pretty much the most badass landlord ever.”

A little less than a year later, Brusco joined the assemblage and then, most recently, Titus and Stafford rounded out the group.

Their ages span a decade, and the skaters are all at different levels as they try to make their names in action sports.

Until Saturday, Beckett was the only one with a gold medal to his name, which he earned at the 2016 X Games Austin skateboard vert contest.

But Saturday night at X Games Minneapolis 2018, Brusco brought honor to the house when he took gold in the skateboarding Big Air contest with an eye-popping 1080. Kreiner took silver, and the housemates celebrated together on the podium.

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Kreiner won his first piece of hardware, a bronze medal, in Minneapolis in 2017 in big air.

Brusco is the most decorated inhabitant of the house, with six medals (four bronze, two silver) across the vert and big air disciplines before adding two more this week to make it eight.

And the unofficial head of the household, Perelson, is still looking for his first medal to hang on the wall of his room. Twice he’s finished just off the podium in vert at fourth overall.

Though he has 10 X Games appearances to his name, Perelson is really just getting started; after all, he was the youngest athlete in the field in every skateboard vert contest between 2007 and 2011.

Then there’s newcomer — both to the house and to the skating world — Titus, who is still looking for his first X Games invite.

The house has seven bedrooms, so everyone certainly has his own space. However, Beckett created a little more of it for himself when he renovated the old goat barn — yes, goat barn — in the back of the property.

Now, the tricked-out shack suits Beckett’s “hippie dude” personality, with solar panels on the roof and everything.

And what about the goats?

“We do not have the goats anymore,” Kreiner laughed.

With seven professional athletes living in one house, one might assume there would be some disagreements. And, certainly, all the guys are “so different,” Kreiner says. But for the most part, it’s a harmonious arrangement. “Somehow, we all mesh super well.”

They even train for contests together. Well, kind of.

“It’s a really nurturing environment for all of us,” Perelson told FanSided in Minneapolis. “I’m really stoked on how it’s been going.”

Sometimes, even more personalities are thrown into the mix. “We’ve got a guest room that people come and stay in all the time,” Kreiner explains. Most recently, it was France’s Eddie Damestoy and Rony Gomes of Brazil.

Just call it the International House of Skateboarding.

“Whether they’re just coming out for a trip or to skate, they’ll just hit us up,” says Kreiner. “Before an event, like this [the X Games], a lot of the dudes like to come out to California.”

“Alex has definitely been super open to all of this,” Kreiner says.

An interesting note about the house’s backstory; Perelson says it actually used to house a golf academy for aspiring golf pros. “I honestly thought it was, like, a halfway house when I bought it,” he said. But he said it’s cool to know the house has been home to other athletes in the past. It’s almost like he was meant to assemble this group to live there.

SoCal is the skateboarding epicenter of the country, and even though the house is at capacity, the guys live near plenty of other pro skaters, such as Elliott Sloan, who’s about two miles away. In nearby Cardiff reside some of Perelson’s closest friends, Jimmy Wilkins and Tom Schaar. “Jimmy lives in a way nicer area,” Perelson laughs.

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A majority of the house traveled to Minnesota to compete in this year’s X Games — Perelson, Kreiner, Brusco and Beckett in vert; Brusco and Kreiner in Big Air.

International houseguests of honor Damestoy and Gomes were there, too.

Brusco kicked the week off by representing the Vista House on the podium, earning bronze in the vert final before his gold in Big Air. Needless to say, the boys are bringing home some shiny new decor.

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The guys don’t spend every waking moment together — they’re busy traveling and honing their craft at the nearby skateparks when they’re back in SoCal.

But they do hang quite a bit, and it’s not only for “work.” Sometimes they just enjoy “kickin’ it with each other,” watching movies and enjoying their limited downtime.

“They spend most of their time in the living room, watching skate videos and playing video games,” says Perelson. “If I lived by myself, I would never be this immersed in skateboarding all the time, so it’s good for me in that aspect.”

To wit, I asked if they’ve built any features on their property — most of the guys skate vert, so perhaps a halfpipe?

“We’ve definitely thought about putting something at the house,” Kreiner says, though he explains that it would require a lot of work with the way the land sits.

“We’re all super busy, and when we are at home, we like to be lazy.”

Then there’s the aspect of not wanting to turn the house into a skatepark 24/7. “When you build something to skate…I mean, people are always coming in and out now,” Perelson says. Build a pipe? They’d never leave. But Perelson likes the idea of a small concrete bowl or mini ramp, and those improvements may be in the house’s future.

As for the specifics of the dudes’ domestic bliss, when I asked who cooks the most, Kreiner only laughed. “Oh goodness. None of us cook.” A beat. “Probably Sam, when he’s in town,” Kreiner says. “But he’s hardly ever in town.”

Take-out it is!

And who is the messiest? “Mitchie?” Kreiner says. “I’m gonna catch some hell for saying that, but yeah, I’m gonna go with Mitchie.”

“Mitchie lives in another reality than all of us,” Perelson adds. “But he’s a genius, so we tolerate it and we just watch him do his thing.”

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Maybe it’s just hard for Brusco to keep his eight X Games medals tidy.

Perelson admits that he has a new appreciation for staying in hotels, when there’s only a mess if you’ve made one yourself and you don’t have to nag people to clean up.

“But honestly,” he says, “I think I’m making up for years of never doing anything around the house when I was young and my parents probably did everything.” And he stresses that everyone is “very respectful,” only leaving an odd mess here or there or a dish in the sink when they’re, say, rushing out the door.

As for how long Perelson wants to keep his house open, he says as long as the other guys want to it, he’s down. “I’m not in any hurry to be isolated,” he says.

“I hope when I’m forty that I don’t live with seven dudes, but other than that I don’t want it to end anytime soon,” Perelson says. Who knows — maybe he’ll raise his kids in a skater house?

“Sometimes I feel like I have kids already,” Perelson laughs.

Somehow, this unique living arrangement has, mostly, flown under the radar in the media. At contests, reporters will ask one of the guys what they think about another. The bemused response will be something like, “Well…we live together, so.”

That’s pretty much all you need to know.

Next: From Hawaii to X Games: Pro skaters, close friends

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