wanderers. We only spent
money on hotel rooms because
we were trying to save to get a
place. We tried to get a place in
San Francisco but failed, so we
drove to some town called
Santa Cruz. I'd barely heard of
it. We thought it was a joke, but
once we got here, we were
amazed. People were skating
everywhere, so I met a lot of
people and was like, "Fuck it,
let's just get a place here for
now." That was like four years
ago. I'm really gonna miss this
place, but now I feel I need to
move on again.
The phone rings ... it's Catfish
The phone rings it's Catfish
going on with the interview and
ask him to ask me any question
he wants.
C: So Brian, what has been the
significance of LSD in your life?
B: Oh shit. How many nights.
did we stay up meditating,
breathing, listening to the Bob
Marley interview or those
Hendrix CDs? LSD has been an
essential element in my life. It's a
cleansing. You know, like strip-
ping off the layers of ideological
control society places on me. It's
like finding my essence. I think
everyone should take LSD at least
once a year, especially all politi-
cians and suits. It's like taking a
bath in holy water. You come
face to face with yourself,
exposed completely. You're liv-
ing purely in that moment, the
situation. That's why I love skate-
boarding so much; because
when I do it I'm existing in the
moment. People can get there
Sequence:
Supreme snap helps
Brian find a line over a
very tall concrete slab.
Frontside 5-0 180°
out along the waterfront
ribbon in SF.
differently, through art,
jazz, poetry, revolution, whatever
-but for me I get there through
skateboarding. I ride my skate-
board with no time limits, not
being judged on my perform-
ance, but by just flowing like chi,
like water. My body is a micro-
cosm to the universe itself. My
body is its own universe and my
breath is the wind. It's soft like
water, but given time can break
down even the hardest stone. It
just keeps flowing; it's pure ener
gy. We have to be like water.
The phone rings again. It's my friend Dave from
Jacksonville.
D: Brian, you've got to incorporate some Jacksonville sto-
ries in there. Tell me that story when you and Mike went
to Orlando.
B: OK, this is the condensed version. One day after I'd just
turned 16, Mike takes me to this house where the guy's got
plants growing in his back yard. We park down the street and
seriously crawl through this guy's back yard; I remember
crawling beneath windows, people eating dinner the
whole nine. We grab the plants and run to my car and drive
to Orlando, which is like three hours away. We got all the
weed off the plants and we're trying to dry it up on my dash-
board and all over the back seat. We have no idea what we're
doing. We go to Fashion Square Mall remember the mall
with the perfect transition walls on the outside? That place is
skateboarding paradise. Well, they're doing construction and
have this one area sectioned off with plywood. I go up and
peel back one of the sheets just enough to fit in. I try to con-
vince Mike to come in too but he's like, "fuck that." I go in
for like five minutes but I got nervous and came back out. So
we're still skating and we look up, and seriously a line of lit-
erally twenty cop cars is coming down the road. We run and
hide in between all these semis in the loading docks for like
an hour. We got cops walking right by us with flashlights,
talking all this shit about motion detectors inside the mall
going off. After a long time I can't stand it anymore and we
"I'M DRINKING
MILKSHAKES,
LYING TO COPS"
try to skate off. I remember I got like ten yards on my board
when I had six cop cars almost killing me and cops all over
me. I tell them a completely fake name, age, everything,
because I've got pounds of weed in the car. It's a school night
and we're supposed to be at each other's house in
Jacksonville. The cops want to take us to some kids jail. We're
on our way and I tell the cop I was lying the whole time. I tell
him my real name and I tell him I have to go get my ID. He's
like, "I'll come with you." So I seriously run to my car, open
the door, start throwing weed under the seats and clothes on
top in the ten seconds I have to spare. The fat-ass pig cop
starts huffing and puffing up to the car, and I'm like, "I'm just
really scared." I give him my ID and a phone number I know
my parents won't answer, and eventually he lets us leave. We
leave and just start busting up laughing. We go to a 7-11, dry
up some herb and buy papers, then go to a hotel and sleep
in the car in the parking lot. When we wake up we've got a
flat tire, so we swindle a tire for ten dollars, go to the
skatepark, and make it back to Jacksonville in time for dinner.
My parents are like, "How was school?" I swear it was magic.
That story is insane. What about IHOP?
Oh shit, I forgot about that. Me and Mike again are out
street skating. We're like 14 or something. It's like eleven
o'clock; we go to IHOP for some food. We sit at this booth
right next to the register, and we're just laughing, looking at
menus, fucking around. And then we hear all this commo-
tion. The waitress runs up and she's like, "We just got robbed,
oh my God, blah blah blah..." So the manager comes up and
he's like, "Boys, did you see anything? Don't be afraid." I look
at Mike and I'm like, "Yes, I saw the whole thing." The place
got robbed at gunpoint like five feet from our table and somehow
neither one of us saw a goddamn thing. Seriously nothing. The
cops come and we tell them we'll fill out police reports for free
meals. They agree, and we're filling out these reports, laughing
and making up the funniest shit like, "They were driving a Pinto."
And "Oh yeah, pea green with flames." So we get the menu and
order the most expensive thing on there. I had like three milk-
shakes. I'm drinking milkshakes, lying to cops. It was the best shit
ever. Then we skated home.
It's amazing some of the shit you got into back then.
Yeah, I can't even believe it. I'm sure they're just typical stories
of rebellious American youth. I've been throwing rupture into this
shitstem my whole life. I remember I got kicked out of preschool
for being too bad, I swear.
o, it's time to conclude this conversa-
tion. All things must come to an end.
Before leave, I'd like to extend my
greatest thanks and praise to Thrasher
for giving me this interview, Santa Cruz
skateboards for their support, thanks Jeff
for your patience, Jaime, Alex, and
everyone at Ezekiel clothing. Thanks to
Brian Uyeda and Lance Dalgart for
shooting photos. I know I'm forgetting
someone I'm sorry, it's late. All my
friends, Laurie, my family I love you.
Everyone who's reading this thank you,
Mother Nature and the sun, keep spin-
ning. And skateboarding, the greatest
thing on the earth for giving me so
much. Stay elevated, easy. Remember,
silence is complicitous.
Above:
If this were a curb and it
were a slappy it would be
I called a transfer. With the
ollie and the bar it still is.
60 THRASHER