Lost time:

BEFORE the Z-Boys exploded from Dogtown's dirty alleys and torturous waves to recharge skateboarding with raw style and cocky attitude, their reluctant leader, a skinny blond kid named Jay Adams, lived the innocent and bronzed existence of a true California beach boy. He cut barefoot across cracked driveways on a clay-wheeled plank, carved comfortably along waves peeling off Malibu Point and piled into the family wagon for safaris through Baja, Mexico.

Last summer, the now legendary surfer-skater immersed himself in those images as he sat in a cell in Santa Ana Jail, awaiting sentencing after having signed a plea agreement on federal drug-related charges. He drew on memories of his childhood freedom to write the captions for "Jay Boy," a new book of 82 photographs taken by his stepfather, Kent Sherwood.

The stark black-and-white images show Adams and his childhood friends -- including Dogtowners Tony Alva, Wentzle Ruml and Shogo Kubo -- at play along the empty streets and beaches of a rundown Venice and Santa Monica, places now marked by bustling promenades and overcrowded surf breaks. Nostalgia ranks high among the emotions that the collection evokes.

"As a kid, Jay was always a free spirit," Sherwood said recently. "But he started getting in trouble later on. I don't know why."

A self-taught photographer who made a hobby of shooting, developing and printing voluminously, Sherwood was always lugging around a beat-up Russian-made 35-millimeter single-lens reflex and a medium-format Roloflex. Along with Adams' late mother, Philaine Romero, to whom the book is dedicated, Sherwood raised Adams from early on -- just after the boy lost his heroin-addict father to prison -- and introduced him to surfing and skating.

Sherwood, 65, was as surprised as anyone that a bunch of "old dusty family photos" could become a book. "I was just lucky I had a very good subject," he said, speaking from his Inglewood factory, Foam Matrix, where he taps years of surfboard-building experience to craft state-of-the-art rocket fins and wings. "Jay was very photogenic, and he was always moving, so I had to be ready."

"Jay Boy" is a selection from several hundred color and black-and-white negatives and prints Sherwood gave to Adams and his bride, Alisha, on their wedding day, May 14, 2005. A few months later, Adams approached old friend and New York-based photographer Glen E. Friedman, whose mid-'70s SkateBoarder magazine images, along with the photojournalism of C.R. Stecyk III, helped canonize Dogtown's Z-Boys. With their aggressive, flowing surf style, the boys rewrote the rules of skateboarding across the Southland's wide-open schoolyards and bone-dry swimming pools.