Growing up in Oakland, Jeffrey Cheung felt like he lived in two different worlds: in one, he was gay, and in the other, he was a skateboarder. It was clear to him that the two didn’t mix. Nobody else knew he was gay, but when he went to the skatepark, other skaters threw around the word ‘gay’ as an insult.

"I would get called like 'faggot' a lot, or like 'that's so gay' and like 'you're gay'," Cheung tells me. "It’s very homophobic. And not very welcoming. And I remember feeling very ashamed about myself and sexuality."

So when Cheung was 18, he decided to stop skating. It was just too hard to live in both worlds.

Gabriel Ramirez grew up in Southern California, but he also lived in those two worlds. In high school he wanted to try skateboarding, but says he was "too afraid to experience what would happen" if anyone found out he was gay.

Ramirez remembers the day he met Cheung at UC Santa Cruz.