LANCE
MOUNTAIN
INTERVIEW: LANCE MOUNTAIN
By Glen E. Friedman
How long have you been skating?
I've been skating since about fourth grade.
That's about nine years, I suppose. We
built a ramp, it's about five years old. We've
been skating that. I used to skate that with
my friends. You know, when everyone
used to skate. We skated that for a long
time, even after parks opened, we never
went to parks or anything, we sort of like
lived too far away. We skated by ourselves.
What do you do besides skateboard?
I draw a little bit, some, and that's pretty
much what I do, I've done some ads for
Skate City and Variflex, hopefully that will
help me get a job later on, but I'm not too in-
terested in looking right now. I work at
Skate City.
You mean designing ads, layouts and
stuff?
Yeah, everything, designing, illustrations,
drawings and stuff. A long time ago, I made
a cartoon magazine. Once Neil and me put
out some mags which were pretty good,
they were funny. A lot of people liked 'em
but our money ran out and we quit.
Do you feel that you fit into the category
of the "new" skater that does nothing
but skateboard?
Sort of, I've skated longer than most people.
have but I'd never do it in front of people.
Like I said, we had the little ramp and stuff.
I never had entered any contests or seen
any until the Gold Cup times and then....
umh...that's when I got sponsored, people
told me I should get a sponsor. I never
wanted to, I never thought about it really.
When you're at the park, do other peo-
ple ask for autographs?
No, because only skaters are there. Skat-
ers don't care about skaters now.
Does that kind of bum you out?
Well, everyone wishes that skateboarding
would be big. Especially if, like I did, they
got into it a little bit late, contest-wise. The
new professionals aren't big names or
nothing like when...if I skated way back.
when Alva and all those guys did. Everyone
knew about skating and everyone wanted
to know skaters.
What do you think about that whole
time?
It was better. I was a kid, it was a fad and
fads are, I guess, sort of fun.
Don't you have fun anymore?
Me, I do, yeah. It's still fun now, it's just that
not so many people are involved in it. The
public doesn't know how it's changed and
they don't look for how it's going to change.
later on.
You've traveled. What do you think
about traveling?
Traveling is like....about the funnest thing in
skateboarding, you get to skate in front of
people that don't see it or haven't seen it.
before. They get into it; otherwise the
people that normally see it, they don't get
into it very much. I like traveling a lot and
skating other places 'cause that's when
you don't think about other things. You're
just out there to have fun and that's the best
part about it.
Lance has been ripping Skate City so heavily these
days that they've named a coping block after him.
PHOTOS: Glen E. Friedman
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