ROOKIES
T
"A Skateboarding Wonderworld at My Doorstep."
Roundtable discussion with Matt Willigan and Ezra Brown
Photos by Sean Cronan
Clockwise from left: Subterranean kickflip to fakie at the T station. Any good interview should have some certified
weirdness, Charlie Wilkins seizes the moment with some wallie wheelie wizardry. Just passin' through.
23, 1975.
DONT
WALK
hen and where were you born?
Growing up in the stick-burbs with mini-
mal street terrain, how did you manage
to escape the drudgery most kids usually
complain about?
I had a curb to skate and a deadend street,
but I was into building my own obstacles. I
built a box and skated that, then I thought it
was a good opportunity to build a ramp in
my backyard. My mom was really supportive
of what I was doing. She was stoked on the
fact that I could use some carpentry skills to
have a good time and get some skills that
way besides the skateboarding skills, so she
let me build a 5' halfpipe.
a
Did you make a lot of new friends?
Yeah. I built the
e ramp
visible to the road,
and I didn't know anybody up there, I had just
moved an hour away from my last house, and
bunch of kids started driving up and asking,
"Can we skate your ramp?" I've met the most
skateboarder friends I ever have that way.
What were the dimensions of the ramp?
5' tall x 16, 8'
, 8' transitions and 16' of flat.
16
And, from there, over the next three years, I
tore that one down and built a 5'
spine
ramp. Then we got sick of that, and I tore
that down and built a 7' ramp, 22' wide. It
took over my whole backyard, so I've got
to give much respect to my mom for letting
me build all sorts of crazy stuff there and
take up lawn space.
summer
So, you were the host of many backyard
mer sessions. Tell us about one of
these jams.
I was having a birthday party, and my mom
was out getting something, and we had
some hors d'oeuvres and watermelons and
4525
VIENNA KITCHEN
Charlie Wilkins