SCOTT SMILEY
INTERVIEW AND PHOTOS BY WEZ LUNDRY
Growing up in Seattle, Washington, makes it hard to be
a pro skateboarder. But for Scott Smiley, that is just the
way it is. By avoiding the hype and the trends, he has
become one hell of a skater. Aside from riding a board,
he also plays drums in a band called Nobody. The fol-
lowing interview contains the answer to the prover-
bial question in the sky, "Who is this guy?"
Tell me a bit about Scott Smiley
growing up and skating.
My brother Jay got me into it
when I was about six. I had this
little wood board with clay wheels.
I was always trying just to keep up
with him, and I remember my first
slam. We'd just stolen a bunch of
crates from Tradewell to build a lit-
tle slant ramp, and the guy comes
out and starts yelling at us. Then
he's chasing us, and my brother
and his friends take off with these
crates. They've all got urethane,
and I'm stuck on these clay wheels
trying to keep up, and I go off at
curb and slam, and I'm left there
crying. The guy catches up and we
get busted. After that I got some
urethane wheels.
Was that the Maharajah board?
they got me all stoked to start
skating again, then I went down
and got the Losi board, just street
skating and bombing hills and shit.
What about that time that Monk
knocked over an old lady and
you got blamed for it?
No, that was me. I was coming
home from school in like the fifth
grade, I had the headphones on,
listening to Fear, and this old lady
comes out, and I hit her. I didn't.
mean to, she just came out in front
of me and I knocked her down and
broke her hip. So she's laying on
the ground, and this guy's yelling
at me and shit, "Oh, you're in big
trouble!" And all this. And he says,
"Go in the bank and call someone.
Get the ambulance here." I did
that, and then when the ambu-
lance came, in all the confusion, I
just ended up walking away, real
stealth-like, got around the corner,
put the board down, and I just
started bookin'. I pushed play, and
then it was, "I don't care about
you/Fuck you!" I felt pretty bad
about it, and then I remember
coming home from school early
the next Wednesday, because
that's when the local paper came
out. I remember running to get
Hessian from Hell (top) givin' up a big ol' rebel yell. Yeacceachooohhhgh! All you
Spandex-sportin' rollerbladers get the fuck out of the way or we'll run your bow-
legged asses over. Scott (sequence) is as cool as this shove it Indy to fakie looks.
Yeah. My brother kicked me
down one of his Maharajahs. That
got stolen out of my car in front of
Minnick's house. After that I got
an Alan Losi board and just cruised
around. Actually, no, my brother
kicked me down an Alva board,
and I skated that for years, and
then I didn't really have anybody.
to ride with, so I started BMXing.
Then a couple of my friends in
grade school started skating, so
At the West Side Ramphouse, Smiley (right) grabbed a stinky ass snow slob as if
he was strapped in. Come to think of it, maybe he was. It's a bag.
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home before my mom to get the paper 'cause I
knew it would be in the crime section, and sure
enough it was: "The little blonde-haired boy
managed to escape from the scene of the crime
in the confusion."
Was the swooper the first trick you learned?
A frontside swooper. Then I was skating the
garage in the UD, and I saw Nels Grevstad and
Ron Soderstrom for the first time, and they said,
"Come and skate our ramp anytime you want."
They pulled up in the truck and had the little fly
ramp and shit. I was all stoked, so I went out
there to Granny's ramp. The first drop-in, I made
it. Then I went for the roll-in and slammed on my
face. I blacked-out, and the next thing I knew, I
woke up in Ron's bathroom, and he
had a towel in my mouth, all bloody
and shit. I went back out and there
was a big blood stain on the ramp,
and everyone was laughing at me.
So who were the guys back then?
Pretty much Quirke and Gallardo,
Soderstrom and Nels stood out.
I remember back in the day you
had an elbow pad that said
"Doze the Mar."
Yeah, I was bummed, because I
never got to skate the place. It was
going down, they were going to
'doze it, and I was a little fucking
smart ass. I was just like, "I'm never
going to skate it." They were geek-
ing it, they were going to doze it,
so I was like, fuck it, 'doze the Mar.
What were the smallest wheels you rode?
Geez, man, I guess I sort of fell for it. Like 48s
were probably the smallest I went. I tried to set
up a street board but I don't like doing that. I
like just having one set-up. Now I'm riding 56s.
That's pretty much standard. It's good at the
bowl, it's good on the ramp. I like going fast,
so it works on the street.
What's up with the bowl right now?
This guy came in and bought the land without
even knowing what was up there. He buys a lot
of houses in the area, and when he saw it, he
was like, "Holy smokes, this is your guys' deal
and I don't want to fuck it up." So he gave us
some time to get it together to buy it back.
Hubbard put together the "Save the Bowl" cam-
paign, Thrasher helped us out with a free ad and
stuff, trying to sell T-shirts to raise money for a
down payment on the house. That was working,
we were slowly getting money in from selling
shirts, but then this guy Nate came in, he's been
working a lot, so he's got a bunch of money, and
he just decided to buy it. We got to start skating
again in October. It's been kind of bogus, we
haven't been able to skate it, but it's ours again.
Now that it's our land, we'll just go off and build
mass shit. Everybody can come check it out.
Describe the bowl in nine words.
Nine words? Why nine? One hundred percent
no half-assed riding, big and gnarly.
Do you have any crazy pool mis-
sion stories with Hubbard?
They're all crazy. One time wer
went to this one, and we staked it
out, it was six in the morning. We
got in and bailed it, then kicked it
for an hour or so in there, waiting
for the right time when no one was
around. We started skating and shit,
and I had the camera. We rode it for
like thirty-forty minutes, then all of a
sudden this big fat dude comes run-
ning out in a camouflage jacket, big
hairy belly, looking pretty drunk, he
came running at us, and as he was
trying to climb his flabby ass up over
the wall, we just grabbed our shit
and hopped like three fences, we
had all this shit, this guy was yelling.
out for blood. Just stuff like that,
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