For those of you who didn’t get a copy of PP17 (the Interview Issue), or who can’t read English and are using a helpful algorithm to translate this text; below are the interviews. In order: Scott Bourne, Josh Stewart, Don Brider, Soy Panday.

PP17 intro by Richard Hart:

While the focus of this magazine is usually photography (no pun intended), this issue is somewhat different. It’s an interview issue; not a new idea conceptually but these aren’t pro skaters talking about their sponsors and that thing that happened on tour that one time (there are plenty of other outlets for that sort of thing). These are interviews with old friends who grew up in very different corners of the world, whose lives have been shaped by skateboarding and have contributed a lot, in one way or another. Broadly speaking, these are conversations to do with creativity; an aspect that used to be an intrinsic part of skating but somehow feels a bit endangered lately..

(Note: These interviews were conducted between Nov 2019 - Jan 2020, back when the Olympics were looming and no-one (?) anticipated a global shutdown.)

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SCOTT BOURNE INTERVIEW

As one of the many temporary lodgers at 107 Webster, San Francisco, and on the road with Consolidated, I got to spend a lot of time with Scott. Once described as the ‘Sultan of Sketch’ by Thrasher, in reality, this label fell way below what Scott was like on a skateboard. Raw power and passion; make it or eat shit. Scott taught me how to survive with little or no money, how to negotiate the tram tracks at the bottom of a hill, introduced me to some great friends, and generally looked after me and the many other waifs and strays that passed by that house. Scott had my back on many occasions, and when you were with him, the occasions would come thick and fast. Some 20 years later, I know if the house phone rings it’s going to be my Mum and Dad, or Scott. A man of his word, a friend for life. -Howard Cooke

From Push Periodical issue 17, Spring 2020. Interview conducted by Richard Hart in Paris.

RH: You grew up in North Carolina. At the time, did you feel like you had to be in California to skate?

SB: Certainly, but I was really fortunate in that where I grew up; we had Reggie Barnes’ shop and later distribution, and because he had such influence, he brought like World Industries and lots of teams; whoever was big came through NC on tour, to Endless Grind skate shop. A lot of guys came out of there- Chet Childress came out of there, Kenny Hughes, Neal Hendrix.. and you had a whole younger generation too, like Lennie Kirk, but Reggie really brought the industry to the middle part of the eastern US.

At what point did you realise “I could do this”?

I did have a moment of seeing tours come through our town and thinking “Wow, I’m just as good as that guy” or “I can ollie that high”. I mean, looking at everything in the magazines, it was all fisheye photos. Me and all my redneck buddies are dragging these picnic tables out and ollieing over them and they're hip high, then when we get to California and we realise those ones are knee high! So then you had this reign of east coast kids who were dominating, man; look at Ricky Oyola. Or Donny Barley? He was a powerhouse, man. Kenny Hughes was, too. They would ollie over your mother, they didn’t need a picnic table.

Did the Californians treat you like rednecks?

I mean yeah, sure, you crazy? People were asking us if we had television! This is also a time when we were wearing Dickies, standard flannel shirts, we were farm folks. Throw some Vans under that and you can pull it off until you speak. But we could get out of so much trouble too, ‘cause cops were like “Where you boys from?”

Oh, you could pretend you were visiting? I did that all the time, too!

For sure, I mean we were kids off a farm, you know?

You went straight to San Francisco?

When I envisioned California- you prob’ly thought the same thing- you just thought you crossed the state line and it was skate Utopia. Where I was, Wilmington, there was a sign on the I-40 freeway that said ‘Barstow, California: 2,554 miles’. It’s still in my head, there it is: 2,554 miles. And we go west on I-40 all the way, and get to Barstow and it’s the worst redneck, shit-hole, trailer-park hole in the ground and you get there and realise its a myth, the Californian myth. “This is California?!” Holy shit, we've been swindled! This is worse than the south!

So you made your way up the coast?

Yeah, skating spots and stuff. I remember sleeping at Derby park in Santa Cruz and getting woken up by cops with guns out. But I mean, it was still the time when you'd see a kid skating and you'd go up to them, maybe you wouldn't even ask their name, the first thing would be like “How high can you ollie?” and that’s how everything started; “How high can you ollie?”, remember that?

But that changes in California because there’s more clique-y things going on..

The first time we showed up at Embarcadero, the only guys that talked to us were these guys Sean and Hurley- you know who those guys were. Sean Young and Hurley- the infamous Hurley, who even knows what his first name was? And I remember them coming up to us and being like “Oh, you guys are from the east coast, huh?” ‘cause they were from the north east. Sean was just destroying it and he was riding a longboard, not a goofy modern one, you know. Years later, he and I would become good friends. It’s funny that Hurley and Sean were in with those guys ‘cause they were so nasty, always dirty. They looked like homeless skateboarders, they basically were, but they did get respect ‘cause they were killing it. That was also the Kelch days though, and that dude almost looked homeless too.. And then the second time I went out to SF was with Lennie Kirk, he was 15 and he was a runaway, and I remember distinctly that we went to Embarcadero and no-one spoke to us, and then Lennie switch ollied the Gonz gap and everyone was like “What’s up man?” Because I don’t even know if the Gonz had been switch ollied yet. But he did it with the stinkiest, ugliest style like he was gonna die, then he switch ollied the steps afterwards too, and then people started to talk to us.

I always think that skating opens up travel. Without skating, maybe you would have had the urge to do it, but you wouldn't have the excuse to do it. You wouldn't have gone off to California with no money, for no reason, without skating.

That’s something I’ve put a lot of thought into. When I finally left to move to California, I left town with $5 in my pocket and I spent it before I crossed the state line into Tennessee. But I was leaving town. I grew up in a mill town, a farming community, and if it hadn't been skateboarding, it would have been college or football, but I knew I was leaving. And at the time I was in love with skateboarding and everything looked like milk and honey in California.

Did that implant the travel urge?

I think it’s the ‘Yellow Brick Road’, you know? If you can just get to Oz, everything’s gonna be alright. But then you get to Oz and you realise it’s all a fraud, but what are you gonna do? Are you gonna tap your heels together and go home? I mean, I was able to turn it into something, but I lived on the street for months on end. I had a job before I had an apartment, working at Deluxe (distribution). And my boss Kirk told me I was the only guy that ever got to work before him, and it was because at night, I’d go down to Hunter’s Point and climb over the fence- and it was a razor-wire fence- and sleep under the loading dock, and then when the sun came up, I’d climb back over the fence and wait for Kirk to get there and open the gate. I told him that, years later and he just laughed.

That was a rough neighbourhood back then.

I wasn’t sleeping on the other side of the fence, that’s for sure! Now that’s kind of a posh neighbourhood.

We both lived in SF for a long time, and it’s always been a changing place. But the people used to be a lot more interesting..

For sure; the last time I went there, I only saw one skateboarder and he was wearing a helmet and going uphill on an electronic skateboarding device. I love that my son calls it a ‘handicapped skateboard’- “Look, Dad, there’s a handicapped skateboard!”, “That’s not a skateboard, son..”

Were you always writing?

Well, I came out of high school, ran away to California, came back broke, and my parents said they’d help me go to college, so I went to Cape Fear college for two semesters. I wanted to be a writer. I only learnt to read when I was 13 years old, but ever since I was 15, I’ve kept journals. I still write in a journal every day, to this day. I always wanted to write, I was writing all through the skateboard thing; it happened for me, it was cool, and I always had this idea that I should write things down.

What I wanted to get at with these interviews is that I felt that, with our generation, being into skating encouraged you to do creative stuff- writing or shooting photos or making videos or doing whatever- because it was a creative thing to start with. I’m not sure if it still does, if the mentality is still the same..

I’ve put a ton of thought into this and I’ll nail it down for you right now and you’ll either be like “Wow, Scott really did think about that” or you’ll be like “Ugh, Scott’s lost it.” We’re from a generation of artists and misfits. We didn't fit in, and no-one liked us. You got beat up if you skateboarded. Now, you get beat up if you don’t skateboard. So what’s happened, and there’s nothing wrong with this, but now that it’s ‘cool’, it’s not creative people and misfits; it’s jocks and athletes. There’s nothing wrong wth that, but those were the guys we could never compete with, so we found alternate things to do. But now that those people have become attracted to this thing, we can’t compete with them, they’re just superior, it’s not hard to see. My son is seven years old, he doesn’t know anything about me and skateboarding, and he has recently got into it, he chose it on his own. Whatever attracted me to skateboarding at that time has gone. If I was a kid now, I don’t think I’d be attracted to it for any other reason than it’s cool, it’s popular. What interests me, with all that said, is what will the misfits do next?

Well, I think those kids are still around, it’s just a bigger, more mainstream thing now, but those kids are in a little niche part of it.

I agree.. but they can’t compete as far as ‘professional skaters’ go.

They can compete creatively though.

I hope if I was remembered for anything in skating, it would be the creative side. I never had that technical finesse but I could tank through things.

Was there one incident where the injuries took over?

I got taken out by that wallride, man. It’s the last thing in Strongest of the Strange, a wallride to giant handrail. First try, I almost had it, but two hours later, you see on the make, I tap out of it and I blow my knee out. I’m doing anything to stay on the board but you can see it. And you can hear Joe (Brook) say “Hey man, are you alright?”, and it was straight to the hospital. I’ve now had seven surgeries on my right knee but what got me was that my back got ruined that day, and after that everything was jump ramps or putting a board against stuff ‘cause my pop was gone. I used to have a pretty good ollie but after that, I was done.

When was the last time you actually stood on a skateboard?

Two days ago.

Oh, really?

That’s the first time in ten years! I mean, my kid got a skateboard for Christmas. The funny thing is, because of the atrophy in my right leg, I can’t stand up and push, ‘cause I’m goofy. So I had to skate switch and I’m not super strong at switch but my son’s regular-footed so it’s easier for him to see.

So how did it feel?

I mean, honestly Rich, it made me feel super bummed. All I wanted to do was go really fast and do a slappy. Like, remember when they tried to stop us from skating the DMV and they cut all those ridges in the curbs? But you could still go really fast and ‘Krrrrrrrrrr!” It was the sickest! It was the best!

That’s what you were thinking of?

Yeah, and why do I even remember that? I used to go there with Dennis McGrath and he’d do the best slappies for miles.

So you felt frustrated?

Yeah, I felt like “Oh man, I can’t do a slappy.” I didn't feel like “Oh, I can’t grind the Bastille hubba.” Who cares, man? I just wanted to do a slappy.

Are you always a skateboarder in your head?

Yeah, it’s horrible, man..! I still have a list of spots.

(Laughs) Seriously? What, for other people to do?

Yeah, I see little Kev (Rodrigues) now and then, and I’m like “Hey, I got this spot for you!” and show it to him, and he’s like “Er.. I don't think so!”

It’s always gonna be in your head, huh?

Not even just that. I mean, you know the scenario; you’re with friends who don't skate and you go somewhere and you get lost and someone says “I think we’ve been here before”, and you're like “No, we haven’t”, and they go “How do you know?”, and you go “I would remember that planter over there”, or the texture of the street, “This is a cobbled street”; you notice textures, you look at handrails, at planters, you notice where there’s a crack, even how long a traffic light lasts; stuff like that.

Your brain is subconsciously still noting that stuff.

Yeah, and if I’m with you and I go like “I would remember that handrail”, you’d go “Oh yeah, you're right” and we’d go on our way. But if you're with non-skaters they’re like “What the fuck does that have to do with life?!”

Do you see any parallels wth writing and skating?


Totally, it’s the same thing for me, man. I write like I skate: it’s all like ‘go for broke and hope you get what you’re looking for’. It’s like filming for an hour and a half for a few second piece. You go back and edit it. I puke it all out, then I try to trim it. I beat the shit out of it until I get what I want, make it usable. A first draft writing, I’m not trying to write a perfect sentence, I’m just trying to get it down.

Trying to ‘land’ it?

Exactly, just trying to nail it down. It’s like with a trick; if I land it once, I can do it again. And it’s just like that. You figure out how things fit together.

The same as skating..

Everything I do is shaped by skateboarding. I couldn’t get it out of me if I tried.

Scott’s new children’s book is called An Act of Imagination

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JOSH STEWART INTERVIEW

Josh Stewart, for those that don’t know him personally, is an absolute gentleman. You know, the kind that opens car doors for women and will happily light their cigarettes. His hair is always well kept. I’ve once seen him, in between tries of filming a trick, help an elderly person cross a busy New York City street. Josh has also been making your favourite videos for the past two decades, and yet he’s still probably the most humble person you’ll ever have the pleasure of meeting. -John Baragwanath

From Push Periodical issue 17, Spring 2020. Interview conducted by Richard Hart in New Jersey.

RH: Somebody interviewed me recently and one of questions was ‘Do you think skateboarding will ever die?’ and I said the act of it no, but the essence of it I feel is in danger. And especially now with the Olympics and everything, it’s getting so big.. Do you worry about that? The loss of that creative energy that we were once drawn to..?

JS: Yes, absolutely. I think the Olympics is giving skateboarding another pop boost like the Tony Hawk game did. Then maybe there's the potential that a reaction to that is that it’ll spark an underground kind of scene; to counteract it. I think one thing that’s interesting is most artistically-driven movements in general, they typically start because the participants are disenfranchised for some reason, you know? They're fighting something, to get their movement, their scene or whatever noticed and get some respect for it. But once things are established like “Oh, this is now a mainstream accepted thing”, it kind of kills off a lot of the feeling. Which is exactly what fired me up as a teenager, living in Tampa and our scene never getting recognised, our guys never getting seen, you know I mean?

That was a drive for you; you were consciously trying to do that? Because then skating was very California-based; it seemed like you had to be in California to be a part of it all..

Yeah, and also I’ve always been attracted to the underdog kind of concept.

Why, is it more real?

It's being done for more pure reasons.

You mean if you grow up in Southern California you were aware there was a possibility to make a living from skating then, right?

And in Washington DC in 1999 for example, there was no real outlet, no way for anybody to get paid for skateboarding.

No media, no companies..?

Yeah, I went to DC on a road trip and discovered it was this whole rad scene and I had hardly heard of any of the dudes there, you know? And none of them were properly hooked up. That was one of the first scenes outside of Tampa where I stumbled upon something like that.

Was it an eye-opener?

Yeah, because in that era only Philadelphia was getting shine, you know? Eastern Exposure came out in ’96, so there were a couple years of Philly getting some shine, but passing through DC and discovering this scene.. that there were people doing stuff, there were things happening. And I thought I knew what was going on, but then went there and saw all these dudes that were amazing that I had never seen.. And then London was the next one after that for me; going to London and seeing this rad scene..

How did that happen?

That was later, that was in 2002/2003. So, working on Static 2, I had never been to London but I was always intrigued by the look and the feel of it. And you are seeing nothing out of London at that point.

In America?

Right, and to me I was imagining London as like Jack the Ripper -era London, you know what I mean?

You had your preconceptions of what you thought of as ‘London’?

Right, and I thought that would be such a great backdrop for skating and how I want the Static videos to look. Kenny Reed was one of the first people that was going to be in the video and I was like “I want to go to London and try to film there”. But he only wanted to go to Papua New Guinea or whatever! He was bummed to go there, but he was like “I should introduce you to Paul Shier, he's a sick skater that I think you'd be stoked on..”

Aesthetically, I was always conscious of how boring Southern California can look, all that white cement; nothing is more than 50 years old there, the spots were often not visually pleasing and it was just purely about the accomplishment of the trick, like the ‘hammer’ type of thinking, how many stairs it was or whatever. Nobody really cared what the rail actually looked like or what the surroundings looked like.. I was always conscious of that and I think perhaps you were as well?

I wasn’t always. I think it took me until working on the first Static video. I can't claim I developed that sense myself, it was really being around Jake Rupp and his taste for spots. He is probably the strongest influence on Static 1; his choice of spots.

I’m intrigued because am I right in saying you were attracted to making skate videos over actually skating? That’s pretty unusual. Was it specifically skate videos you liked or was it films as well?

Skate videos. My memory of it is that it was specifically the way well-chosen music mixed with skating made it so watchable; it was intriguing and pulled some sort of emotion out of me. I didn’t skate and I didn't care about the tricks being done but I still liked watching the videos.

So it was that combination of the images and the music that was important to you?

Yeah and I remember specifically, I think it's the opening scene of Ban This, I don't know who it is but somebody’s skating in a ditch to a song that Stacy Peralta made, a beat he made. I would record it on a little tape recorder off the TV and then listen to it in my room. And then when I started filming my friends and then figuring out a way to connect the little VHS camera to my VCR and then figuring out how to add music, I saw how much adding the music to that footage changed it and made it feel so amazing. Because there wasn't the technology available for so long to be able to do that, so it felt like such an accomplishment. It was super ghetto. The music thing first got me interested and then my older brother would try to get me to skate but I wasn’t interested; I didn’t want to do it because my brother did- I kinda wanted to do my own thing, so I avoided it for a long time and then one day I just set up a board of Frankenstein pieces from his closet and started trying to skate in the driveway. But my brother never really took me skating. I wasn’t involved in his side of the culture, I would see his friends…

Yeah, who was coming over? I believe your brother was sponsored by H-Street?

Yeah. It’s crazy how that Tampa Bay scene was at the time, considering how far removed it was; that was in 1988.

Physically as far as it could have been from California?

Yeah which is completely different now, you know what I mean? That distance is almost irrelevant nowadays. But then it was so far removed, but you had like Lance Mountain who would occasionally be over at our house, Bo Turner.. Mike Daher and my brother were kind of like rivals almost in that era, which is funny.

Really, they were both local heroes?

Yeah my brother was good at contests and Daher was more like the stylish guy, you know. But yeah, those kind of dudes.. John Montesi too would be over occasionally. But I just specifically remember Bo because I collected weird shit as a kid and he would come in my room and actually hang out. He would be like “This is sick!”, pulling the replica guns off my wall..

That must have been nice ‘cause normally the older kids would ignore the younger brother. Weird that he was the friendly one because of his reputation.. So then, what about that first Alien video (‘Memory Screen’)?

That had a humungous effect on me.

I think if any thing in skateboarding could be said to be a ‘work of art’ I think that would be the one thing.

Totally, I’ve said almost the exact same thing. That and maybe A Visual Sound from Stereo. But Workshop and Mike Hill created this incredible artistic narrative that you’re trying to figure out, and you can watch it a hundred times.

And it’s so uncommercial. Because they were outsiders anyway, in Ohio, so you think they’d be trying to push just the skating, to be accepted, but they just did not give a fuck and just completely did their own thing.

And there are a lot of people, I’d say it’s almost 50/50, who hated that video because they couldn’t understand it, people were like “Dude that video is so annoying, there’s so little skating!” I feel that there’s no other video ever in skating that comes close to pulling you into a completely different world than that thing did. Literally it transports you. What’s interesting is the opening montage has that weird portal, when they filmed the TV screen and it’s almost like a tunnel of light that you’re going through and it’s like you’re travelling to this other world.

It’s like a drug trip.

As a kid that was one of the earliest videos I actually watched more than once. Then there were the H-Street videos that were fun, you know they had great music, but it’s a completely different experience. I feel like if I was honest I’ve been trying to recreate that experience and feeling of watching that Alien video ever since. In my own way, obviously.

It’s a different aesthetic. I always thought there were three really significant videos around those years: Alien, later A Visual Sound, and obviously Video Days which is a very formulaic skate video but somehow it’s just the best..

Everybody points to Video Days as being the best ‘pure’ skate video of all time. I think Eastern Exposure is the best street skating video of all time. The simplicity, speed and power of it. It’s very similar where it’s very relatable like Video Days- Jason Lee is skating parking lots, just manual pads, but it’s so powerful and sick. The music choices are awesome and stuff, but Eastern Exposure.. it empowered the East Coast.

That was huge in England and Europe in general because the environment was similar. Weathered skate spots.. For your videos, do you start with music?

Music inspires the ideas essentially, I’ll hear a song or even just a sound, I don’t know how to explain it. But basically to..

To create a mood?

It will create an idea. I think a good example; in Static 4 there’s a vignette where it’s transferring from one train to another and it’s going through the different tunnels, like a tunnel through Times Square just showing people in transit, walking, and there’s weird little signs that some artist installed that say “Get Fired” etc. But I heard a song that has that feeling and it inspired the idea. I see an idea through the music and that’s what helps generate most of my visuals.

I feel like you’re very conscious of making the cities a part of your videos as well..

I think a lot of that stems from being a kid going to downtown Tampa. Tampa’s downtown is tiny, but going there as a kid it felt so big. And the visual aspect of it, just seeing the city, especially at night, was so energising and exciting. So the next experience was going to Washington DC.. I don’t know if anybody else feels like DC is creepy, but to me it felt so creepy, dark. I’m trying to capture that, make someone else have that same feeling. See it the way I see it, I guess. But also, going on skate trips- I don’t drink, I don’t party; so we’d get to a city and when we’re finished filming and people go to the bars I just would go off by myself every night. London, we were there for four months; when everyone was done skating, I’d just walk around with my 16mm camera and try to capture stuff of the city.

To capture the vibe you feel?

Right, and in London that was like biggest visual orgy for me, there’s so much about that city that you can capture more easily. Trying to basically figure out a way to give people that feeling I get walking around there. Filming buildings and whatever, like a set of windows, things like that. It sounds silly to say it but I thought it was kind of risky to put those in edits because I thought people were going to be super bored with it, but it kind of became.. not like ‘Oh, this is a theme for me’, it’s just what I like, you know?

All the people you’ve worked with, it seems you’ve specifically chosen them, even some people you didn’t really know. You’ll just see them and their skating will strike you?

Yes.. I’ve told this story too many times of (Jake) Rupp and (Sean) Mullendore; seeing them skate in the Tampa contest. I had the good fortune of being a filmer at the Tampa Am and Pro contests every year since 1993 so I would see everybody. And in the early days it was awesome because anybody of significance would come. I mean, it wasn’t like contest kids, these were full on street skaters coming to Tampa Am.

And those guys stood out straight away?

Yeah absolutely, just seeing 150-200 people skate a contest and then see Jake and Sean skate in a completely different way.. Jake’s style alone…

Not even doing better tricks? Just their style?

Exactly. I know on one of Jake’s runs, all he did was pump the whole course and never did a trick. He went through the whole course and just hit every ramp, kind of liked cruised it in this weird way, you know? Kind of making a joke of it but also just having fun.

But that’s way more memorable then seeing somebody trying to do a kickflip front board.

Totally. And Sean in my opinion has such a perfect form and just was different, I don’t know how to explain it but he was just different. And both of those guys I had never met, I didn’t meet them then and I called them; got their phone numbers, cold-called them back home and nervously asked them to be in my video.

You were like “I was the guy that was over in the corner filming..!” And that’s the first two guys you consciously chose or made the effort to reach out to?

Yeah ‘cause the other guys like (Jeff) Lenoce was local, he was like a local amazing kid, Ed Selego, you know, they were in my sphere already, Forrest (Kirby), but yes those are the first two examples I think of people I sought out.

But then you went straight from Static 1 to making the Adio video, which at the time was a huge budget thing. That came about because of Static or the Selego connection or something?

Both, I went to the trade show to try and get Static distributed, Ed rode for Adio and was in Static a lot.

How was that experience, because that’s a whole different thing. I mean it must’ve been nice not to worry about money and have a budget to travel and so on, but it was probably a lot of pressure as well?

I’ve almost always tried to just do my own thing because I can’t handle working at someone else’s pace. Sometimes I’ll get a video done in a year and a half, sometimes it will take me five years! And the possibility to let somebody down or to fail are really tough for me to have on my shoulders.

What was the most extreme thing with the Adio video? Was there like a crazy filming trip to get one trick or something like that?

I mean yeah, there’s a bunch of them. There was getting permits for Danny Montoya to skate the Long Beach Courthouse rail. He had been there a hundred times trying to get this trick and he’d get like three tries each time, ‘cause it’s the Police station parking lot. Literally.

So then they hooked it up for one afternoon or something?

Yeah for like two hours I think; we had two hours to land this trick. We had to hire off duty police officers as security to be on site and all this shit, two permits- a permit with the city, a permit with the building..

I mean that’s a world away from what we do everyday.

There was also a Tony Hawk thing where they built that giant vert ramp for him, where they would cut it away and he would do tricks from one side to the other. Then there was Bam.. You almost can’t get any more different than a Static trip and then going straight into the Adio thing for two years. The dudes I got to work with, you know, I was a huge fan of everybody on there. And obviously that was a rad experience but at the end of all that I was really ready to go back to doing something more underground.

But it sounds like you got yourself in a huge financial hole making ‘Static 2’ and your life got taken over by trying to make it happen. At some point you must’ve realised you’d never come out ahead financially, ‘cause you were renting an apartment in London for months, going to Egypt and wherever the hell.. So at what point are you just like ‘Fuck it, I’m not actually going to make any money from this but I want to get it done’..?

You know, honestly, I was kind of delusional ‘cause I had done a lot of work for 411 and would be at their offices occasionally and I was also friends with guys like Joe Castrucci who’s doing the videos for Habitat/Workshop and I’m hearing the numbers that those guys do, you know? So I knew that an average decent company video was selling 30,000 copies around that time. This is VHS. Adio did a lot more, ‘cause they advertised like crazy and they had a big name team, they sold over 100,000 copies of that video. But like an average Habitat or board company video: 30,000 copies. So I knew the math; if I could sell that many I could not only make my money back, but make enough money for two or three years worth of work and it would be worth it.

Oh, that’s what you were anticipating..!

(Laughs) I was hoping! But I’m also catering to a niche market that is just never going to get those kind of numbers, but I always thought there was a chance. But I always thought the most important thing is that the video looks how I want it to look and the skaters are able to get the parts they want to have. So yeah, it just always came down to like “well, maybe next one I’ll do better..!”

You could almost gauge the changes in technology and climate through your videos in a way because then it was DVD for ‘Static 2’, but then in the gap between ‘Static 3’ and 4/5, everything changed a lot because of the internet. Then there’s the gap between 4/5 and now, which isn’t even that long. Because how many copies did you make of 4/5?

10,000.

10,000 and that’s quite a lot for then, right? But now if you put one out, what would expect to physically sell?

I would expect 2500 at the most. I have no idea, but that’s what I would expect and I thought 10,000 like you said, for 2014 when Static 4/5 came out, was quite surprisingly high. Because it was expensive as well, because you had all the packaging.

Do you see it coming back around to hard copies and longer videos? Because for a long time now it’s been short edits and people’s attention spans are fucked. But it seems like people are putting out longer things again, and to me it’s nicer to have a substantial thing to watch then some bitty thing; I would go back to watch something longer rather than trying to remember the name of some two-minute part that’s lost in time.. How do you see the current climate of people’s brains and appetites?

The rapidity of releases is so ridiculous now that nothing, nothing is going to ever have staying power, you know? And you don’t have those heroes, those very few skate characters that last. I feel like Jake (Johnson) was one of the most recent, and then Tyshawn is kind of like a phenom that is justifiable, you know?

Somebody that has a little bit of magic to them?

Not even that. Think of our generation, I can name 30 skaters that were like icons who remained relevant for ten years. And now it seems like they’re gonna cycle through people, they last like three years and never rise to that level of ‘hero’.

But is it partly that there’s way more skaters now, so it’s harder to stand out?

I just think the cycle of media means you don’t get a chance to actually, really absorb something. We’re on a trip right now, and it’s prob’ly just because I’m in the car with them, but the guys were talking about which Static video they grew up on, which generation they are, and Christian Maalouf is like “Oh, I’m a Static 3 guy, that was mine.” And I feel like now, there’s no video that kids are like “I’m a.. Away Days guy”, you know what I mean?! Nobody is watching those videos more than once. And so I feel like Spirit Quest might have been the last great skate video like that.

You mean as a sort of ‘milestone’ type of thing?

As something that people kept and re-watched. That’s the downside of online edits, like you said, it’s rare to actually think “Oh what was that one thing, I’m going to type into a search engine and actually look it up and watch it”. Whereas if you have your little shelf above your TV and you have your DVDs sitting up there, you know.. Myself, I have like eight movies I’ll still watch for that nostalgia, I’ve seen them 1,000 times, but I’ll still watch it because I see it on the shelf..

I guess it’s generational, but life is just strange now in general. There’s just so much information flying around. Skateboarding is inundated and it’s just boring flicking through image after image, video after video.. and what stays? I mean I’m trying to make a physical magazine because I feel like it has more of a special place in your psyche, rather than something you're flicking past on a screen. But that’s how people’s brain work now, so I don’t know..

Well I think now, the actual video maker, the editor, is more important than ever. Because essentially right now it’s just a sea, a waterfall of footage. There’s all these edits coming out, but all it is is footage. But if somebody is able to create an experience, that’s the difference. Most edits are like ‘simple intro, random hip-hop music, titles and credits’. But then there are things that are an actual experience, that people remember. If you went to the Spirit Quest premiere, or if you actually bought the DVD, sat down and watched it, you’re going to remember that was an experience; it wasn’t just footage. When I think of the Spirit Quest video I don’t think of specific tricks, I think of the experience, whereas when you think of that Primitive video we just watched, you think “Oh, there was that crazy trick, whatever”. Nothing about the music and the visual, artistic side of it.

What I’m really conscious of is trying to promote the feeling I grew up with, and I think you are as well. That ‘thing’.. What I found so attractive about skating was the creative side of it, it was an inspiring thing, a medium where I felt like you were encouraged to try things and be creative. It kind of scares me how narrow-minded a lot of kids are now. Maybe they always were..

The consistency of videos now that have people landing tricks and 40 people running out, high-fiving, hugging, people pounding beers after they land a trick… That stuff to me is what I would consider jock-like behaviour, and that’s not only allowed but also is welcomed and celebrated now. There are things like that which scare me; it’s more about what people are doing and less about the artistic side of it. But there is this whole other side to skateboarding that has fractured off. There’s so many people making underground videos.

So that’s reassuring.

Yeah, and there’s so many independently published magazines and zines right now, so I feel like it shows that as big as the ‘pop’ side of skating is going to get, more sports-based and jocky; I feel that the underground or whatever you want to call it, is going to thrive because skateboarding is now accepted. Girls think skateboarding is cool which is insane, everywhere you go half the time people think it’s cool. But you don’t have what I think fuels creativity and meaningful movements which is that there has to be something push back against. So now with the Olympics and the jock side of skating, it’s going to give the underground side a reason to say “we’re not that, we’re this”. It’s almost like skating is going to rebel against itself and have these two fractured sides. Which will be weird to see because there’s going to be people who get into skating because of that pop side but some of those kids are going to find the underground side of it and be enamoured by that. I’m trying to capture what’s still beautiful and pure about skateboarding before it disappears. It’s like- hey, skateboarding is probably not going to be like this much longer, so here, let’s capture the spirit of whatever Jahmal is, whatever the spirit inside Gonz is, you know? ‘Cause skateboarding has kind of fed off whatever that energy is; the Quims, Jahmals, Gonz-es; those kinds of characters. And how much longer can it last? Is there anybody similar to that in the past 20 years that’s popped up..?

Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic?

I go back and forth.

You obviously feel it’s still worth to battle to make these things happen. You haven’t given up.

(sighs) I don’t know..!

(Both laugh) I feel the same way half the time..!

I know; like yesterday when you and I were carrying our bags up from the train right here, walking up the stairs and escalator and we had all the camera bags and crap all over; I was about to say, “Are we really still doing this..?!”

Josh runs Theories of Atlantis distribution.
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DON BRIDER INTERVIEW

I grew up in a little village in the English countryside, far from any substantial skate scene and half a world away from the skateboard ‘Industry’. Don B was the first ‘celebrity’ skater I ever saw and, more significantly, the first person to make me realise that skateboarding could be your life. Even from a relatively obscure locale like Southampton, UK. Don is certainly not the type to court attention, so I’m glad to be able to share a bit of his story / a bit of history, with a bit of the world. Ladies and Gents; The Donz. -RHH

From Push Periodical issue 17, Spring 2020. Interview conducted by Richard Hart in Southampton.

Colour photos © Tim Leighton-Boyce, courtesy of the Read and Destroy Archive

RH: The first time you saw a skateboard, you didn’t know what it was?

DB: Yes, my Gran went to Cornwall on holiday and came back in August ’76 and she went “Here, I got you this” and it was a Surf Flyer, a flat piece of wood with roller-skates strapped on the bottom. Black hard rubber wheels. I was with Mark (Abbott), so we went outside, put it on the ground, tried to ride along, then it went into the road, a guy on a moped hit it, stopped, picked it up, gave it back to me. And I don’t know why I remember that so exactly, but that’s how it was.

The first big boom of skating was in ’77, right? What was the first ‘thing’ that you saw to do with skating, the first photos or whatever?

I got the second issue of ‘Skateboard!’ magazine (UK) from the newsagent on the way to school.

You didn't see it on television or anything?

No..! On the two channels of television we had back then..?!

So did that tell you what to do with the skateboard, make you realise what you could do with it?

I s’pose it did, ‘cause we started putting pieces of wood up against the wall and stuff, like a bank. Because I remember there was pictures of Southbank in there, so we tried to make that. Mark lived up on the main road so we’d just try to make it down the road and around the corner.

And then Mark got a board?

Yes, that Christmas, but his sister wasn’t too happy because before that we took her roller-skates apart to make him one! So we went backwards in a way, although we did find out that the one I got off my Gran, the trucks weren’t screwed on straight, which explains why it went into the road..

But there wasn't any culture or scene, it was just a new toy to play with? When was the first time you saw skating?

Well, the first skatepark we went to was Southsea ‘cause it’s nearby. We went there two weeks after it opened and it was crowded ‘cause it was the boom time. You had the badge system; you got a proficiency badge to ride each thing. The freestyle area, you got a green badge and that was the only one I ever had..! There were marshals and stuff..

Quite a sporty vibe.

It was how parks were run in those days- they weren’t gonna let you drop in the ‘black bowl’ first go. But then afterwards when it kind of relaxed a bit, you could sneak up to the snake run and skate that until they kicked you out.

How long do you remember it being that craze-period? A year or two, ’77/‘78? Then what?

I remember one time we were skating down from Southsea train station to the park. I was riding a 7 1/2” wide Santa Cruz with 70mm soft red Kryps.. and we just heard this rattling noise and looked round and saw the Southsea locals coming along, and they've got like 10” wide Dogtown boards with Indys and Bel-Air Lip Bombs, and that was in the space of less than a year, maybe in ’78? Because by ’79.. Well, there were 18 issues of ‘Skateboard!’ magazine and they were monthly, so that’s like a year and a half, and issue 15 is the one with the coffin on the cover and it says ‘Skateboarding is Dead’ on it.

And then it went completely underground.

There was always me and Mark doing it.

Which must’ve made your life easier, having someone as addicted as you were. But how would it work, how did you continue in the ‘Dark Ages’?

Well, the magazine died. You're still skating. And there were two shops in the whole of the country where you could get stuff, mail order: Surrey Skateboards and Alpine Sports.

And then TLB (photographer Tim Leighton-Boyce) was doing the Alpine newsletter?

Yeah, the English Skateboard Association existed but wasn’t as good as the Scottish one. I think we were members of both, but the Scottish one did more newsletters and stuff, they were the people who got Cab and McGill to go to Livingston and Crystal Palace in ’81/’82 or something. You had a series of comps around the country; Farnborough, Crystal Palace, Banbury, Kidderminster..

So there was a ‘circuit’?

Yeah, so people met up at those from different parts of the country. So then you knew other people, but there was probably only about a couple of hundred people in the country who skated after 1980, between then and Back to the Future. If you’d gone to a comp then and killed everybody there, that would’ve been it! That’s all the skateboarders in the country! It’s that cliché of ‘If you saw somebody in a pair of Vans, you’d go across the road and talk to them’ because you knew they were either a skater or a BMXer. Now it’s like, even if they've got a skateboard you don't know if they're a skateboarder! And they obviously wouldn't know that I was, or am.. ‘Cause that happened in town this week. I saw this guy by the bike rack when I went to get mine, and he had a board and I was looking at the board and he looked up like “Why is this old man looking at my board?” And I was thinking “Yeah, I can see where he’s coming from..!”

What I’m interested in, is the beginning of street skating. You were one of the first British street skaters.. How? Why?

Yeah, but everyone did it. I mean, here in Southampton, there’s never really been a skatepark, so whatever we did was in the street. We found a school that had a 30° brick bank in it. I mean, now you can turn on a computer and see everything in skating but then, to us, when a magazine came out, that was it. It’s funny, you watch the old stuff of Skate City and things like that, and there were people doing the old-fashioned kickflips, but it was a freestyle trick. Shane Rouse at Farnborough, he was doing kickflips and stuff ‘cause he was on Powell so he got that eight-minute promo video with Mullen doing a flatland ollie..

But it wasn’t a ‘thing’ yet, there was vert and freestyle and whatever else, slalom was still hanging about; but you’d go to the events and street skate around, right? Go to the ramp but skate around there, even though it wasn’t a ’thing’ yet?

Well, yeah, I mean in Southsea from the train station to the park, you’d get off the train, go to the Navigator’s banks, skate that, go around the corner, skate the transitioned banks at the law courts, and then down to the park. So sometimes you'd have a better session on the way to the park, than you did when you got there.

When did you start to think of street as being its own thing?

We went to Sean (Goff)’s because it was his birthday, we thought we’ll all go to Oxford for the weekend, stay at Sean’s house, just have a little fun comp outside in the carpark with the curbs. Those pictures that are in BMX Action Bike, that was it, and that’s the first time we said ‘street comp’ I think, or ‘street skating’. To us it was always just skateboarding. You just did.. it.

But to start with you're trying to emulate bowls and pools but you just didn't have that..

No, I mean, we did try and build a ramp out the back of my house, but after we killed the neighbour..

What was the story with that again..?!

Well, there was an adventure playground with a ramp, almost how the mega ramps are with a roll-in but a small version, and they were gonna get rid of it and so we said “Can we have it?” And it was about a 7’ transition to vert, so we got it and tried to rebuild it in my garden. But then my neighbour came out yelling “You’re on top of my shed!”, which we weren’t, but what we didn’t know was, he had a heart condition. So he went back in and had a heart attack and died, and his wife came running out into the garden going “You killed him!” and we were like “What..?” and we were only 13 at the time.. and so the ramp didn't get finished..! We did build a little quarter pipe thing at Mark’s house. But it was all something to do between the weekends, when you could try and go somewhere. Every weekend was an adventure. The first actual Powell video with Lance (Mountain) skating around in the street, it was like “Oh, that’s what we do!”; it was just skateboarding but it wasn't labelled ‘street skating’. I mean nowadays you call it street skating, it’s more like handrail skating, that’s pretty much what street skating is now isn't it; handrails?

No, you're showing your age there..! It used to be, for a bit. The way I think of it is that it’s skating things that are not purpose-built. It’s adapting to the environment, whatever that may be; being creative with the environment.

That’s exactly the word: Creative. Because you weren't told what to do.. Then Public Domain comes along, you have the section with Ray Barbee going down the street doing no-complies. We went to London to see the premiere and everyone came out and tried to do no-complies. So it’s what gave you inspiration to try other stuff I suppose..

Did ‘Back to the Future’ make a really noticeable change?

Yeah because it went back to being cheesy coverage on the telly and stuff, back to “There’s this thing called skateboarding.. but it’s a craze, remember kids, so it’ll be gone in a couple of years and then you can get into yo-yos or low-rider bikes or knife crime..”

Suddenly there was a lot more people around skating, a healthier scene? I mean that’s when I got into it, and a lot of other people..

That prob’ly made it so that instead of everyone who skated going to these little comps and that’s where people interacted like “What’s your phone number? Where you going next weekend? OK, we’ll meet up with you”; I s’pose when Back to the Future came along, that’s when it was like that, but on a town level instead of just going to comps. And back then, towns were closed on Sundays- you might get a couple of security guards but that was it, everywhere was empty. You could just skate anywhere.

So then street skating could flourish because there were a lot of skaters and their minds were opened to being able to skate street.

And then it was more in the magazines, and there weren’t really any skateparks any more.

Thrasher was covering street then.. and Transworld was out then, too.. Didn’t Neil Blender send you the first issue?

Yes, because we both did zines and stuff. Because it was like, how do you know what other people are doing, people that are really into it? You didn't just go and play Fortnite after skating, you made a zine or you did something..

This is what I wanted to get at. When I started, I felt like skating encouraged you to do all sorts of creative things- because of, and relating to, skating. And I'm not sure if that’s so true now..

Well, we had to create everything because there wasn't anything. If I was a kid and I saw skateboarding now, I don't know if I would be interested. It depends what you see of it, I suppose.

What was the first thing you made? Was it a zine?

‘Action News’ was the first thing we did, cutting up photos and writing some bits and photocopying it really badly. And we did ‘Jammer’.

And then how would you distribute them? Take them to comps, send them to people?

I can’t even remember now. The later-on ones were like that. We were just taking photos and thinking we might as well put them together as a little zine thing. I s’pose it was like a blog or something.

It is, it’s just a slower one. That felt like a normal thing to do, to make stuff because there wasn't stuff?

Yeah, because there were so few people involved in it, you're all interested in how other things are going, I suppose. Now I don't know, if you are into skating, where you get your news from; there’s so much.

Well, it’s the other extreme, there’s too much information now, about skating or whatever else you're into; you have to pick and choose.

In a way you switch off from everything ‘cause there’s too much. I was watching that guy Jordan Taylor on the Nine Club and he goes “Well, I don't really know what’s going on in skating; I just go skating with my friends.” He’s on that Wknd thing which I didn’t know anything about, and so I watched a few things..

And that’s more the vibe that you grew up with?

Yeah, so that company seems good. I mean, the biggest thing in skateboarding is like Braille and Revive; that’s the most ‘hits’ on the interweb isn't it? But to me it’s just like.. (sighs).. that’s not progressing anything. But then again, what’s progression? Is it trying to do more stairs and handrail tricks, or does that alienate people?

Unachievably dangerous ‘stunts’? I mean, the word that always comes up all the time is ‘fun’ because its supposed to be fun; “That was fun to skate”, whereas that stunt stuff doesn't seem fun, it seems like an accomplishment, but not fun.

Fun? What’s that?! Yeah, seems like it’s almost a job to go and do that. I mean , there’s that Japanese guy.. what’s his name? He’s in Street League..

I dunno, you pay more attention to that stuff than me!

Well, when his video part came out, there was stuff in that where you go “What? What was that?”; different things, new stuff. Whereas you get a certain guy winning Street League all the time and it’s just boring, he might do things perfectly but.. Then the Japanese guy does NBDs which to me is more important. ‘Cause to us, we had nothing, we knew nothing when we got a skateboard and then it’s like “Oh, somebody’s doing this thing where you take your front foot off and you grab the board and you jump in the air!”- GSD doing a boneless on the front of Thrasher; you're like “Oh, that’s new”, but now, I don't know..

To you it was always about the creative thing?

Yes.. but you don't think of it like that, at the time.

At one point you even made boards, right?

Yeah, but just because we didn't have any money. Although we were just copying Sue Hazel because she made boards.

Did she really?!

Yeah. But we couldn't get maple, so we used birch which has the same properties probably. But you couldn't get single veneers, so I think we got three ply and five ply- you could bend that enough- and used yacht glue to keep it together. We made the jig and just used studding to squeeze it together.

When is this?

Er.. before Back to the Future.. We called it Soft-Core Boards because of the birchwood being softer.. We hand-painted the graphics. It’s funny ‘cause John Lucero and Spidey came over to Farnborough and saw them, and they were like “Oh! Can we come and see your factory?” And we made them in a shed next to Mark’s house which was prob’ly less than four feet wide; that’s where we had the jig. We prob’ly made less than two dozen boards.. We did do some with fibreglass in and stuff..

High tech!

Yeah, we thought we’d try it.

Concave?

Kicktail and concave; didn't have a kick nose ‘cause that wasn't a thing yet.

So, did Lucero and Spidey come over?

No, ‘cause we sort of went “Well, we make them in a shed” and they were like “Oh, okay!” But everything was like that then.

A very DIY era..

Yes, but then that’s when there were only two shops. Probably less than a dozen brands actually made it over here.

And you were making zines at that time, and what else? Video cameras were too expensive but you were shooting a bit of Super-8?

No, Sean had a cine camera. Then Mark got one of those big video cameras on the shoulder with the lead to the recorder bit.. I had video tapes of skating before I had a video player. Prob’ly everybody in the country copied that eight-minute Powell video off of Shane Rouse’s copy, that’s how it worked. And again, kids just go “What? But my Iphone can make HD movies” and you're like “Yeah, we had to get a piece of stone and carve pictures into it, in our caves..!”

You got sponsored by Brand X in the mid/late ‘80s; how did that happen?

It was through Jeremy Fox (Flip/ Death Box); he went over to America and somehow met Bernie Tostenson (Brand X) and learnt to screen print decks. Then when he came back, he got us on the team, through Faze 7 (UK distribution). I never asked to be sponsored. Then he went back to America but got deported. The story goes that he had his address book with him, as you did in those days, with telephone numbers in, and the immigration guys asked “Are you gonna be working here?” and he said no, but they saw this phone number and called it and asked if he worked there, and they went “Yes, he’s just coming back!” and so he got deported back to England. Which is why he started Death Box.

Never knew that.. So how was that whole era for you, being a sponsored skater, in the magazines; a ‘celebrity’?! Did it feel like that?

No, you were just going skating, and then you were given some boards..

Generally it was just a session and you ended up getting photos in the mags?

We were going to the comps anyway, and travelling about.. it was mainly comp photos in those days, wasn't it?

Well, you had some cool street photos, that’s why I was asking. Would it be that you guys or TLB would talk to each other and say “We’re going to check this spot out” and you’d meet up?

Yeah, I s’pose. Mark worked for a refrigeration company and he had a van with a petrol card, so he could use that on the weekends and it didn't cost us any money for petrol. So you know, if it was raining, we’d just go to Meanwhile II: “Get in the back of the van!” That’s what skating was then, it was just people driving round in vans. It was like “Is there somebody’s floor to sleep on?” Literally driving all day to Aberdeen to sleep on someone’s floor at two o’clock in the morning, someone who you’ve never met before, then going to skate the comp the next day. It wasn’t Street League!

Was there any trick that you feel like you invented, as far as you know; I remember you saying something about the stalefish boneless, you hadn't seen anyone do it before?

Yeah.. and then I think I got a picture of it in a magazine, at the same time Lance Mountain did- in different magazines, but they came out the same time.

How long did that ‘sponsored skater’ thing last?

A couple of years probably. But I mean, nowadays people are like “Oh yeah, I get a couple of boards a week”, but then.. well, at one point, I rode the same board for six months! And I was supposed to be a ‘sponsored skater’.

So it didn't necessarily feel like that?

Well, yeah, ‘cause it was still better than everyone else ‘cause you were getting free boards. “We get free boards? That’s good; we don’t have to save off our Giros!” (unemployment money)

And it seems like you appreciated it; you were making DIY Brand X stickers.

Yeah, we made our own stickers and some shirts and things like that, to promote the company, ‘cause they were giving us decks.

When did you start screen printing, was it through making those stickers?

No, we did stickers with photocopiers; paper stickers.

But weren’t you printing stuff for Death Box?

I used to go there and help them out with boxing everything. I only ever printed one thing there. The Alex Moul ‘Popcorn’ board used to have this one little bit of blue right in the centre and Jeremy used this blue powder stuff that he imported from somewhere which was illegal in Europe. I printed a run of those before the Planet Earth demo at Leamington Spa and they picked me up from the factory and they were like “Whoah, what’s happened to you? Your eyes are just red!” and then Jeremy was like “Yeah, that stuff’s a bit toxic..” So that’s the only thing I screened there. I really started screening when I started Wear and Tear (clothing brand) in 1989 and I didn't know how to do it, it was six months of “Ok, if I do this, then..” I never even had a carousel, and one of the designs was five colours, so I’m thinking: “How did I do that without a carousel..?!”

You learnt the hard way.

You were always trying to achieve something. If something didn’t work, you’d have to figure out why, it’s like the creative process. The deck printing part of it, which came later, that was all a guarded secret then. I mean, one of the things I had to do at Jeremy’s was to remove the labels from Skateboard Plus off the boxes so that nobody knew where the blanks came from. It was all smoke and mirrors.

Do you think the mindset that skating gave you helped you to figure that stuff out, to be creative?

Yes.. but maybe that’s because of the person you are to start with. I mean, you built a mini-ramp in your garden.. and never killed your neighbour..!

I didn’t kill my neighbour, so I’m one-up on you!

Yep. So in a way it could be that we’re just similarly inclined to not be told what anything is. It’s like my Gran going “Here’s a skateboard” and I’d never even heard the word before in my life. What can you do with it? It didn't even twig in my head that it was a sort of surfboard on land, I don’t even know if I knew what surfing was.

How come you never went to California?

I always think what’s the point of going somewhere else; why not stay where you are and make that better? Why not do it here? To me it was all just people skating. It wasn't marketed as a sport, it was whatever you wanted to do with it, it was just doing stuff.

The thing is, you’re really out of context..! Skateboarding here, especially back then, you seem so out of context, so random. You had to be pretty dedicated.

I s’pose, but you didn't look at it like that. People don't know what they are, do they?

But you've always felt like a skater, since the very beginning?

Walking up this road here to Mark’s, one day it was raining and I remember thinking to myself “This feels weird, to walk up the road instead of skate up the road.” ..And then now it actually feels like the opposite, but that’s ‘cause I’m old and broken. But you still think about it in the same way.

And you're still following it, still excited about stuff coming out.

I’ll buy any DVD of skating because I want to see it, and it’s my way of supporting the companies that I like. That’s how it is.

Do you feel the spirit of skating is still alive?

Yes! You're not going to do it if you don't like it, are you? Quoting Devo, it’s your freedom of choice. It’s whatever catches your imagination. So for me, when my Gran gave me a skateboard, it was a blank canvas. All of this stuff that’s happened in the 500 years since, that has all been different and changing.

You've lived through a lot of different eras, what do you take away from it?

I don't think anybody can answer that question because you've only lived this. What if my Gran had given me a pogo stick instead of a skateboard? Would pogo sticks be in the next Olympics? And I’d be there repping, dude! Yo, watch this tailwhip! But: ‘Why am I doing this?’ It’s that question there, that I never really asked until I started being more physically unable to do it.

Do you have an answer?

No.

Don screenprints stickers as Blackmarket

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 SOY PANDAY INTERVIEW

Soyray.. A good friend to me, an inspiration, not to mention the biggest raver I know, for his age! He’s also one of the best artists I know. He makes such complex work that not only looks dope, but every piece has such a connecting depth and meaning. I’m so blessed to be riding his graphics every day. -Glen Fox

From Push Periodical issue 17, Spring 2020. Interview conducted by Richard Hart in Paris.

RH: What first appealed to you about skating?

SP: I guess the coolness and the freedom of it. Did I ever tell you why I started?

No..

We lived in the suburbs outside Orléans where nothing was happening pretty much, and sometimes we’d go to the city centre and I was always fascinated by the centre ‘cos there was a lot more stuff happening: there’s people, there’s shops, there’s homeless... Anyway, at some point I was in the back of my parent’s car in the city centre of Orléans and we were stuck in traffic, and I saw this guy skate by and go from one sidewalk to the other one across the street, crossing between cars. I was 11 or 12 and this guy was prob’ly 15.. so I saw that and I thought “That’s exactly what I want to be.”

Because of that freedom?

Yeah, he’s not crossing the street at the zebra crossing holding his parent’s hands, he’s crossing in between cars! He doesn’t give a shit! And he’s playing around in the city, seeing all these crazy things.

That was the moment, huh?

It’s like I saw a future picture of myself; I wanted to be exactly that. So when I started, everything that touched skating I was super into it. You know, your taste is not refined yet, but then the first time I saw east coast skating and Ricky Oyola, it brought me back to that I guess. The guy was pretty much the Oyola of Orléans. And he also was not skating in a basketball court or a school yard; the first guy who marked my brain was skating in the street in between cars.. and I’m sure that’s why I still like to skate in between cars now..

Did you ever find out who the guy was?

I’m pretty sure I did, it was a guy who influenced me a lot. He was super good. Like a Gonz. And then at that point there was also Luy-Pa Sin who was from Blois, and I’d hear about him and what tricks he’d done. He was a far away legend.

Was Paris the coolest place you could imagine?

Exactly, the big city. Coming from the suburbs, Orléans was ‘the City’ and then later I went to Paris a couple of times to see demos, like a Real/Stereo demo.

When did you tap into the Paris scene? Was it when you moved here?

Yes, I didn’t know too many people then, I knew Benjamin (Deberdt), not so many people, ‘cos I moved in France and settled in Grenoble for college, and I did an internship at Cliché in Lyon.

Were you always drawing, but maybe not taking it seriously yet?

I was drawing since I was a kid- I wanted to be a cartoonist, so at first I was drawing a lot.

Really? I used to make little comic books when I was a kid, super hero ones; I’d make up my own super heroes.. Do you mean like that, or do you mean humorous comic strips? Or things like Asterix, Tin Tin?

Yes, that; that’s what I wanted to do. But then instead of going to art school I studied business.

Did you?!

Yes, Economics.

What happened to that knowledge; that’s just gone now, eh?!

(Laughs) Well, my parents wanted me to do science or something sensible, I was like “I want to be an artist!” and they were like “It’s going to be very difficult, so I would advise not.”

Would you agree with them now?

(Laughs) Yes!

I don’t remember knowing that you drew until Magenta started.

Well I didn’t draw for a long time, I basically quit it. I was busy skating for years. But it was always at the back of my mind, one of my passions. And the trigger to go back into drawing was meeting Stefan Marx at Benjamin’s place; I was looking through his zines of drawings and I was like “These are cool; I used to draw” and he was like “What do you mean you used to draw?” and he gave me a little sketch book and I started drawing again, drawing a little bit on trips, trying to sketch people and stuff that I saw. It’s funny ‘cos it was a completely different way to look at drawing. When I was a kid I would invent characters with speech bubbles, and when I got back into it I thought of it as something a bit more serious, to ‘learn how to draw’. My mind wasn't thinking about being a cartoonist any more.

More in a ‘fine art’ way?

Yes, that maybe I could do something with drawing, and for that I needed to know how to draw. And it was always in my mind to do a company, maybe a T-shirt brand.. I used to write articles for magazines like Sugar, I’d go on a trip then I’d write about it, and at some point there was one article I illustrated and they used it.

Your first published artwork.

Exactly, so then I thought I could go further with that.

Was Magenta the first time you tried doing serious ‘pieces’ for graphics?

I did two graphics for Landscape.

Was that exciting?

Well, the first one I was really excited about, but then Fos changed my graphic- and it was my first pro board! Like c’mon Fos, man! But then we started Magenta and I started to really think about composition pretty much for the first time.

I’ve always thought that boards are a weird shape for art; they’re long and thin and usually the graphic is vertical whereas a canvas is usually horizontal..

I never do a horizontal graphic. It’s weird for me ‘cos when you make it horizontal, you give it a direction too; it’s regardless of if you’re goofy or regular.

You must be so used to that canvas size, that shape now. But then again you don’t normally have art on the nose or tail.

More and more now, I do. At first just in the centre of the board, but now.. Well, now that I think about it, I keep expanding the canvas.

In the 80’s and early 90’s, skateboard graphics were great; they were very often tailored to the specific skater, their character or whatever. There’d be something you associated with that person.. but then there was that horrible period.. I feel like early 2000’s there were a lot of logos, so many board series where they’d all look exactly the same except the name was different.. lazy..

One graphic for the series. Yes, true.

Do you think back to when you started, and the graphics being different?

It’s funny ‘cos I’m obviously really into drawing and doing skateboard graphics but strangely my memory of skating was not really focussed on that. I was more into the skaters, not really thinking about the graphics.

But it seems like you’re pretty conscious of having graphics- even thought they are in series- where the graphics relate, in your mind at least, to the individual skaters.

I make a full series and have a meaning for the series. It’s like a comic strip, and I’ll pick the skater for the graphic that applies more to them.

Do you think skating shaped how you approach art as a whole? In skating, the word ‘freedom’ comes up a lot, we mentioned it earlier with the guy in traffic. Do you feel like you can relate that feeling to how you approach art? I feel like it shaped me, I mean, with photography for instance, I don’t feel tied to rules; I think that’s because I arrived at photography through skating, which was such a free, creative thing.

It’s very possible. That’s probably why I didn’t go to art school in the end, the same way I didn’t want to join a football club or anything organised like that.

You never studied art, technique-wise; you made it all up as you went along?

Yeah, that’s why I don’t really have any technique!

But I think that’s a good way to learn things.

When you're taught, it’s a constraint. You're limited to what you know how to do and a certain process, so whatever you want to express.. in a sense, it limits the choice of forms to express things. It’s maybe easier ‘cos it gives you a sense of frame, but..

Kind of like with skating- it seems weird to me when kids are taught skating, when they get lessons.

And they end up technically much better skaters but they do things the same way, and they're not gonna be your or my favourite skater.

It’s not going to be too creative.

Yeah, I guess a lot of people that go to art school will produce the same styles and someone that doesn't go to that school, their time is gonna be invested maybe in travelling and seeing different things. When you go to school you're all going to see the same things, you're going to nourish your mind on the same things and what’s going to come out of it is gonna be largely similar, for a lot of people.

Does the satisfaction of finishing a drawing echo the satisfaction of filming a line or getting a trick?

I guess so, because the process itself is not always fun. If you’re trying a trick for hours, you're battling for that final result.. and it’s pretty much the same way for drawing. First you have to find the idea. It’s kind of a blurry idea, the same as when you have an idea of a trick in your mind and how you want it to look. And you try and make it happen, and maybe you manage. A lot of people are like “Oh, I wish I knew how to draw” and I’m like “I don't know how to draw!” I don't know how it’s going to come out. It’s not like magic, there’s a lot of tries.

Do you think you would've ended up making art without skating?

I guess so, because that’s what I wanted to do originally, so maybe I would've gone the art school way..

And been a lot more ‘successful’..?!

Maybe not! Because I can’t complain where I am ‘cos I'm doing what I love doing. So it’s a success already. I don't know how long it’ll last, but..

You always reassure me about that; it’s good to be reminded that we’re doing what we want to do, even though we’re not rich financially..

What am I going to do with money anyway? I mean, I need money for my parents basically, but I don’t buy many things, I don’t need many things. My dream is not to go to a beach and sit down. I have enough money to live, and I’m rich in that I enjoy doing what I do. That’s the goal.

You learn so much from the skate lifestyle, about real life and other people’s realities; that’s more of an education than ‘education’ I always think. It’s immersive, you’re on the street all the time, in different countries too..

And you go places where you see the poor and rich neighbourhoods of poor and rich countries, so you get a pretty wide range of experiences. Going places where there’s no reason for you to go otherwise.

I think about that; those weird alleyways that you find yourself in, there’s no reason for you ever to see that if not for skating!

Like when we skated in India, we ended up in streets where no tourist would ever go; there’s nothing there, it’s a pile of rubbish in the middle of the city! And people look at you like “What the fuck are these people? Walking around with some weird plank of wood in their hands!” It’s very surreal..

For everybody!

It also teaches you human relations, ‘cos usually when people go somewhere, they pay for their trip and they pay for their hotel.. everything is a business relationship pretty much. But with skating, you end up meeting someone you don’t know and staying on his couch for a month. And as far as I know this doesn’t happen in football, it doesn’t happen in tennis.. maybe you’re doing the competition thing and you travel and going to hotels and stuff, but the act of just travelling to end up on a couch of someone you’ve never met just because you’re both skaters.. maybe its pretty unique, and it teaches you something. And like I was saying before about art; those experiences of different cultures, different colours, different lifestyles.. The range of what you’ve seen is wider, and the result of what you do is a mixture of everything you’ve ever seen.

Things seem like they’re going in a strange direction in skating. Whereas before it was the weirdo creatives that were drawn to it, now it’s more the sport mentality as it gets bigger and bigger; what do you think?

I used to think that until pretty recently because when I started skating it seemed tiny and it was the creative people, but then I’ve realised that actually skating was huge because for it to reach me in a small French town it had to be huge. There were parks getting built in little shit-hole towns and that means there were enough people skating. The first time I saw skating after I started was at Bercy, a big BMX/skating thing; a demo with Danny Way and Tony Hawk, so you can’t say it was small- it was in Bercy; it was huge actually.

But now it’s in the Olympics..

Now it’s in the Olympics, it’s gonna be completely blown out again, on every commercial, on every storefront. Will it die out again? That’s the question. I know the shops are not super healthy, it’s just a few huge companies making money and everyone else is just surviving..

Did you imagine that you’d still be involved after all these years?

I don't think I imagined that. But I remember when I was 12, wondering what I was gonna be like when I was 20, trying to picture myself and I’m like “Am I gonna wear a suit and tie like adults do?” And then you turn 20 and you look at yourself and you look exactly the same; the same style pants, the same everything, and then you think “Well, yeah, I’m just 20, but when I’m 40? I’m gonna have to have a job and stuff”, and you look at everyone around you who’s 40 and they have a suit and tie, kids, and you're trying to picture yourself at 40. And then you turn 40 and you're still exactly the same- baggy pants, falling on the street..! And so now I’m like “How will I be at 60? At 70?” Starting to be an old man.. But, chances are, I’m gonna be wearing the same pants! And maybe cruising around with soft wheels..

Let’s hope so!

I do hope so.

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