"I'M REALLY SCARED
OF BACKSIDE LIPSLIDES.'
35
96 THRASHER
Compared to the
two-hundred-and-
fifty dollar tickets at
UC Irvine, the hun-
dred-dollar tickets
at UCSD are a steal.
Bargain priced back-
side lipslide to fakie
on a green kinker.
go with that. I'm sure I
could have done both but
I just didn't want to.
Did you like school?
Before I skated I defi-
nitely did. But I wanted to
skate more. Jamie and
Erik and everyone on
Zero would be going
skating, going on trips
and everything and I
couldn't go because I was
in high school. It got kind
of bad so I started taking
home school.
Like your mom teach-
ing you?
No, I'd just go to this
place once a week and
they'd give you a packet of
work you'd have to do and
return. I didn't like the
high school scene but I
know it's pretty important.
They teach you a lot of
stuff that's pretty stupid,
but the important stuff
outweighs it.
Were your parents
stoked on skating?
Not until about six
months ago when I started
to make some money and
they saw I might have a lit-
tle bit of a future with it.
Before they saw it as just
some hobby that was tak-
ing away my attention for
other things. They thought
I didn't understand that
skateboarding isn't going
to last forever.
Were your parents
pretty strict?
They definitely had
expectations of me as far
as school and all that, but
they were also pretty
understanding about a lot
of things.
Do you ever skate in
Temecula?
No, never. I drive an hour
every time I want to go
skate. If I don't skate, I just
stay in the house.
And you've never skat-
ed the skatepark there?
I skated there once or
twice. You have to wear
pads and then if you go
skate in the morning you
get busted all the time. I'm just not
into that whole deal. When I want to
skate I drive to Poway and Encinitas;
lately I've been skating in Huntington
Beach a lot.
Do you still skate with anyone
from the original crew?
Yeah, sometimes I do. A lot of them
aren't skating anymore. They're at
college or doing other things. But the
few that do, still skate with from
time to time.
How'd you get your pro career
in motion?
With me, I never really expected
any of this sponsorship or pro shit
to happen.
That's what they all say.
No, no, I swear. All I did was just
film with this kid for the hell of it. I'm
sure if we knew about it we would
have tried, but we didn't even really
understand that you got like ten
boards a month or whatever. We did-
n't know about that. So one day I was
skating with my friends and I guess
June Cate was checking me out. My
friends were all, "Yeah, June Cate's
stoked on you." So he hooked me up
If Elmer Fudd were watching Adrian skate
this hydrant, he would probably say, "Nice
Cabawewial offa fwatgwound."
on Entity skateboards. I was super
psyched. It's hard for me to appreci-
ate what a big deal getting sponsored
is for some people. It's not like I had
some plan to get sponsored. Every
little kid at every demo I go to wants
to know how to get sponsored. It
seems weird how obsessed kids are
with it.
How was Entity?
It went all right for the first three
months and then I started to realize
that there might be better opportuni-
ties out there. I guess things happened
too quickly.
How long had you been skating
before you got sponsored?
Two years.
Then what happened?
I met Jamie Thomas and we were
skating at this one spot. June was
filming a line of me, and Jamie asked
if he could film it because he really
likes filming. We talked later and he
said that Toy Machine was looking for
ams, and that I could maybe get on,
but at the time I had just been on Entity for like two
weeks so I told him I didn't even want to think about
switching teams yet. So that was that, for a while, but
about two or three months later I called Jamie and
told him I had realized that Entity wasn't really going
all that well and that I was interested in Toy Machine.
He said that Donny Barley had just gotten on and
those spots were filled but that he would look into
some other things. I think he had Zero in mind at the
time but it hadn't really been started yet. So I just
kept on sending him sponsorship videos and writing
him from time to time to let him know how I was
doing, and then when Zero started, he got in touch
with me.
So you've been filming as long as you've
been skating?
Yeah, totally. I mean, before it was mostly for fun,
just to see yourself on TV, but now it's a big part
of my job.
Is video the best way to prove yourself
these days?
Yeah, I think so. Unless you're some amazing per-
son who can go to any spot and bust out, then film-
ing is the best way to show your skating to someone
and get everybody's attention.
Did any of your friends get bummed when you
got sponsored?
No, not even. I got a call from every single friend I
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