nash
42 TM
VANS
ERIC
INTERVIEW BY
BRYCE KANIGHTS
Hailing from Arcadia, CA, aka
"The City of Action," Eric Nash began
skateboarding as a dexterous adolescent. Thirteen
years later, Eric proceeds to roll with the vigor of
sessions gone by and shows no intention of letting
up. Welcome to the world of Eric Nash, where life is
full of skate history. Read on.
How did you get involved with skateboarding?
My next-door neighbor was always hip on the right things to do and we saw "Go
for It." He was the only kid that had a skateboard, a plastic Grentec. When we
came back from the movie we were so stoked we all started taking turns on his
skateboard.
How old were you then?
I was about eight. I got my first skate shirt, a Dogtown Jim Muir, in the fourth
grade. My friend's dad bought him a brand new skateboard and he sold me his
Grentec. About two months later he got another board so I got his wood deck.
After that, my cousin who worked for Tunnel Products gave me a skateboarder
magazine for Christmas along with my Tunnel, another wood board..
Then you got a ramp in your driveway?
By that time all my friends around the neighborhood skated so we were a skating
gang. Luckily we found a transition ramp that one guy's dad made. He sold that to
us for fifteen dollars, really cheap. were clueless and didn't know about
transition yet, so we slapped a piece of four-by-eight plywood on top of the ramp.
and made it a bank.
How did you do in school? Were you a skater all the way through?
The main thing through school was that my parents told me I could never get a D
all my life. When I got sponsored I used to sit at school and draw lines up pools,
make up my own skateparks, I wasn't doing my schoolwork. My parents got
bummed by that, but I never got a D in high school. After high school, I could only
live at home if I went to college, so I went to community college. Right now I have
a 2.93 GPA. I just graduated, got my AA. I'm taking a semester or two off to skate
a little, then eventually I'll go back to San Diego State. I dig school a lot. It's
something to do and it's fun to always learn.
When you went to school were you on the sports teams or were you a rebel?
I was never on any teams except Little League, but I wasn't an outcast. At our
school, if you were a skater, people were stoked. You always have those people
who say, "If you're not a football player then get away from us," but most people
were cool. We weren't so anti. People just wanted to party and rage. When I had
my ramp here sometimes I'd have twenty-five people over checking out the skating
and just hanging around.
What about the Skate City days?
They were probably the raddest years of
my life. My first experience with
Skate City was when I
NASH