SLICES OF
LIFE
7 Interviews With
People Whose Lives
Involve Skateboarding
STEVE
KEENAN
Who is Steve Keenan? He's the man, Doc-
tor Pain, the brains, the one that gathered
the cash and kept his cool, the intimidator,
the soother, the if he wasn't here we'd all
be working at McDonalds guy, the one hun-
dred percenter, the do the crappy job guy,
the is he in a bad mood guy, the first real
punker since Duane, the invisible man and
the plan for the future guy. -Jason Jessee
What factor is essential to skateboard
companies in today's world?
I think honesty is one. I don't think you can
bullshit people anymore. Kids in every
decade are smarter than they were the
decade before. There's a lot of other mar-
kets where you can just get up a bunch of
hype and glam going, and everyone's going
to fall for it. But I don't think in the skate-
board market you can do that because hon-
esty is the key. You come out with sales gim-
micks, and they're going to be seen as they
really are. A lot skater-owned companies try
to come off with the gimmick of, "We're out
there for you. We're non-profit. We're here just
because we love you, and we're skaters like
you." Bullshit. You want to make money.
We've all got bills to pay.
Yeah, you've got to make money, but you can
do cool things along the way. And maybe you
don't have to have the future's mackingest
company, maybe you can just exist at a certain
level and have your little niche, and that's
what's cool, and that's what we're trying to do
at Consolidated. We're not trying to take over
the skateboard market with what we do with
lower prices. We're trying to assure that we're
going to be around. We see the writing on the
wall. We know skateboarding has eighty com
panies, and it just can't last for very long.
Someone's got to go down the tubes. There's
Coke and there's Pepsi and there's no one else.
58 THRASHER
Where's the individuality in skateboarding?
There's none. And I think it's caused by the
companies because they don't want to be
judged. We did cool things to help skaters out
such as lowering our price, doing the plan to
get a skatepark built, which kind of seems triv.
ial, but I spent a week writing it and figured
how to get it going, then I sent it out all over,
and a lot of skateparks got built from that, and
some of the companies that are cool were mak-
ing fun of it. Well, fuck you, it got skateparks.
Do you feel that videos are really important?
For the company, I think the two things that
are most important are your advertising and
videos which both encompass your pros. If you
don't have good riders, you don't have shit.
Videos, right now, are the determining factor in
how well your stuff's going to sell. It's been
proven over and over. You come out with a
gnarly video and you're going to dominate.
Steve Keenan and his cohorts plot
to take power from extremists.
What really matters in skateboarding?
Just what you feel inside. If you don't like
skateboarding, and it's not fun inside your
heart, you should quit now. And if it is fun, just
do it for that sole reason, and do what you
need to do to get yourself to be able to do it.
If your reason for skateboarding is to be cool,
then you're doing it for the wrong reason, and
you've got to look inside and wonder, "Hey, I
just got into skating maybe to get away from
those things, the peer pressure at school, the 'l
want to be cool, I've got to hang out with this
guy shit." Skateboard purely for yourself, and
if you want to buy a blank board, if you want to
buy a board with no graphics, if you want to
buy a plastic board, if you like riding a long
board, whatever the fuck you want to do, just
do it. But do it because you want to do it purely
for yourself because it's a very soulful thing.
skateboarding. It's something that you do for
yourself and for how you feel inside.
One big happy family.
Richard, Tina and Jesse.
THRASE
Racing
TINA PAEZ "I love the sport."
When Tina Paez bought skateboards for her
sons Jesse and Richard, she had no way of
knowing it would change their lives. After
many years, broken decks and countless trips
to the hospital, a skate mom looks back and
shares the experience of a lifetime.
-Bryce Kanights
How did your sons start skateboarding?
I bought them skateboards and they just
took it from there.
Richard, age
8, and
Jesse,
Did you drive them around a lot?
Sometimes. It's kind of hard. I have three
other children and I'm a single parent.
Have you ever had to deal with the cops
because of your sons skating?
Oh, all the time. They always call me to
come get their boards, which is ridiculous.
Another boy that skates here in Visalia got a
petition going, trying to get a skateboard park,
and we've always been stopped due to the
liability insurance. And even Jesse's grand-
mother offered to donate a thousand dollars
just to get it going. I've been trying to get
something done about it. We had a big ol'
article in the paper. In about three weeks,
they're going to start giving out a hundred
dollar fine if they see them skating anywhere
where it's posted No Trespassing, which is
practically all over Visalia. My boys don't even
want to skate in Visalia anymore.
It's not fair, they have no where else to go.
Right, and then the city won't
even help you build a facility
where they can skate.
What are your feelings towards
skate harassment?
I think it's terrible. I think it's
very unfair. They're getting treated
just as if they're gang members,
like the tagging, writing on the
walls, they say they're doing the
same thing with their skateboards,
they fight with deadly weapons.
It's ridiculous. The police, I'm so
fed up with them.
What are your feelings towards
your sons' successes?
I'm proud. I'm just waiting for
the day that Richard becomes pro
too, which I think he will.
Did you think that they'd ever
get this far?
Jesse yeah, Jesse's very deter
mined. He was very, very deter-
mined to become a professional
skateboarder. He put a hundred
percent effort into it, which I
think is great. And Jesse's got a
two-year-old brother, and ever
since he was nine months old,
he's been on skateboards, and
that's all he says is, "Skateboards!
Skateboards!" We even had to
buy him one of his own.
Richard hits the
vertical plane
on a pane of
smoked glass.
How has skateboarding affected your life?
I love the sport. I'm a mother with two boys
that love skating, I'm determined to do some-
thing about it, and eventually it'll be done.
Any words of advice to other parents?
Stick behind them a hundred percent.
They're all good kids.
Jesse, up on
familiar turf.
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