John Curley’s old roommate confirms his skating story is ‘100% true’

Occasionally KIRO Newsradio host John Curley will share a story on air that almost seems too good (or too ridiculous) to be true. To fact-check a skating story he shared this week, the John Curley and Shari Elliker Show called up John’s old roommate and long-time friend Mark Fortgang.

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As the story goes, it was the early 80s and John was wearing skates, listening to his yellow Walkman, and coming down a hill when he realized he couldn’t stop.

“I’ll throw myself in the grass over here near the stop sign,” he recalls thinking. “I just didn’t think I’d cross the bridge. The bridge was a cabled bridge, and it was metal, and the wheels — I was going so fast that the wheels got me halfway across the bridge, but then it slowed down enough that they stuck into the metal bridge and I was ejected from my skates, so now they’re just stuck in the bridge.”

“I’m flying across the bridge, tumble and land over in the grass, and I’m lying there,” he continued.

This is where Mark comes in, who — as John tells it — came over laughing.

“I was in some pain, but I guess it just looks so funny and there’s something about it — I don’t know what it is — but when somebody gets hurt, it just tickles you,” John said.

Shari had a lot of questions about this story, and wanted to know what was true.

“Shari, your healthy skepticism about Curley’s stories is warranted, it’s absolutely warranted,” Mark replied. “But in this particular case, this is 100% true.”

Mark says he was watching it all go down from a distance and admits it was amusing.

“He got ejected from the skates — it was hilarious,” he said. “I was laughing, laughing very hard, crying.”

As he approached Curley on the ground, Mark says he realized he shouldn’t be laughing so hard because his friend could really be hurt.

“Mark did apologize for laughing, but did laugh, and my fingers were all cut up and everything. It was horrible,” John recalled.

Listen to John Curley and Shari Elliker weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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