The Name Ribsys Nickel

During the early days of Ribsys Nickel they called themselves “Relish”. They made cheap black & white Kinko’s photo copy stickers that said “Relish 95060” and was ready to go. Their first show would be at The Westside Gas Station Grand opening. A week prior to this show, Corona was hanging out at the Dufour House. The Dufour House was a house on Dufour Street. This house was a gathering spot for all of the Westsiders.  Usually it was because the waves were flat and nobody was out surfing. When Corona told everyone the name of his new band was Relish. Shawn Barney Barron told Corona that there was already a band called Relish. Relish was the name of a Volcom all female punk band from Southern California. Since that was the case, Corona asked the boys to come up with some band names. They all started to yell all kinds of names. They would come up with over 20 names, Stinky Pinkie, The Beef Curtains, and The Bagel Bakers but there was one that stuck out from Josh Loya and Mark Taylor. Guess what band name it was?

 The next day at rehearsal, Corona took the list of names to show Martinez and Smith, now at Smith’s house on North Branciforte Drive. After looking through all the names they both liked the name Ribsys Nickel. They didn’t know the name had an actually story behind it from the late 80’s but only that it had a nice ring to it. So on a sunny Saturday afternoon, sometime in 1997 at Westside Gas on Mission St. marked the beginning of Ribsys Nickel.

The Story of Ribsys Nickel                              

It started back when I was in Santa Cruz High in the late 80’s. A few friends of mine went on a surf trip to Costa Rica and stayed at friend’s house. Our friend Frog had been in Costa Rica living with his parents for the past year. Marty, Garth and Ribsy all came down from Santa Cruz. One day they were all out surfing and it was getting late, the sun was going down and they where all getting hungry. They all went to the house to go get ready for dinner except Ribsy.  Ribsy wanted to catch some more waves. While they were getting ready, they waited for Ribsy. It was a 10-minute walk to the restaurant, so they decided to wait for him. While they were waiting, Garth found a bag of granola and asked who it was? Someone replied back “it’s Ribsy’s he won’t care”. So Garth ate the bag. When Ribsy finally arrived he noticed his bag of granola was empty. He asked, “Who ate my granola”? Well the boyz have been waiting at least 20 minutes for him and where ready to go eat. So Garth said, “I did, come on lets go”. Ribsy said that he needed to pay for that bag of granola and he wanted the money. The bag only cost him maybe 2 dollars at most. So Garth tossed a bunch of change at him and started to leave with the rest of the group. While they were walking towards the door Ribsy counted the change and was a nickel (5 Colones) short. Before they could get to the door Ribsy race over and got in front of the door and shouted, “No one leaves until I get my nickel!!” -Corona