My name is Neal Unger, I was born in 1957. I'm a surfer and skateboarder from Anaheim California, the home of the Next Up Foundation. I grew up watching the Disneyland fireworks from my bedroom window.
I started skating when my mother bought me a complete skateboard in 1962. Shortly after that she died, and my older brother adopted me and we moved to San Diego where I learned to surf. I learned to ski as a teen and surfed the Bow River because we moved to Canada. The local news did a story on my unusual sport of river surfing. After graduating high school there I came back to California to surf, and got more serious about skateboarding in 1984. I invented my own tricks, including the Sissy Pop and Sissy Bounce Finger Flip, which went viral on social media; some are calling it the Unger Flip. Skateboarding has taken me places I never thought I would go! I've gotten jobs skating on TV and movies, in music videos, a documentary called Radical Age, ads filmed in Argentina, Berlin, Munich and South Africa. I celebrated the opening of the Corinthians skatepark in Sao Paulo Brazil! |
My wife and I met in Newport Beach at a bereavement support group--both of our previous spouses died. We made our home near Palm Springs California. I love skating in the beautiful Coachella Valley desert where the sun shines 350 days a year. I'm still refining my tricks and learning new ones.
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