Above: Lofty backside 180°
flip off a modest Tijuana
driveway bump.
Opposite: A groundbreaking
12-stair switch lipslide
above pavement rough
enough to break you.
Did you have to skate by yourself?
A lot of times I would.
Especially after the second year of
high school, when I had home
school, I'd just skate all day. I'd do
a little bit of school at night or
something. There was no one to
skate with except my friend Matt,
who had graduated already. But
I'd go skate before school too,
when I still went to school. I'd get
up at 5, right before the sun was
up, because you knew that you
were going to get out of school
and then there'd be only an hour
of light left. In the middle of win-
ter we'd go down to the ledge by
Dominic's, this shopping center,
and we'd go out there with shovels
and shovel a path up to the ledge.
We'd
I bring t towels and dry off the
ledge-this i
is at 5 in the morning,
in winter-it was so freezing. We
were all Eskimoed out. No one
and
else would really want to do it, but
I'd
get like one person to go with
me each time. No one else really
I wanted to skate that much.
What made you want to skate so
much that you'd shovel snow at 5
in the morning?
Well, it took like an hour and a half
to get to any good skateparks.
Where did you grow up?
Chicagoland area. Lake Zurich.
Did you have a typical skateboard
childhood growing up in Chicago?
Pretty much. All the other suburbs
around us had one or two skate-
boarders in their school, but in my
high school there were like thirty.
We had the whole population in our
little town.
Have you been skating skateparks
since the beginning?
As much as I could. I haven't in the
last three years, since I've moved out
to California.
There was a pretty crazy
skatepark scene in that area in
the early '90s.
Yeah. The best scene was
Rotation Station.
Who came up out of that place?
All the Madison guys, like Olson,
Mayhew, Pete Lehman, and Snyder.
Then Johnny Fonseca.
It was an indoor roller rink?
Originally it was a roller rink I guess,
and then they built a couple of ramps
they hauled in for a skate day or what-
ever. Then they slowly built it up, and
it was the best park ever. A couple of
years before I moved out here the
snow got too heavy on the roof and it
caved in. They moved all the ramps
and it's called The Pit now. It's a little
smaller but it's still pretty cool.
Did you take weekend trips?
I'd try to get my dad to drive every
other weekend. It was pretty harsh
because he didn't want to drive and
then wait around for us to skate a
couple sessions, but we didn't want to
go all that way and just skate one ses-
sion. So my dad would drive an hour
and a half there, drop us off, and drive
an hour and a half home. We'd skate
all three sessions, like a twelve-hour
skate day, and then my dad would
drive back and pick us up. It was like
six hours of driving for my parents for
us to skate one day.
When you were starting to learn,
did you feel like you were a natu-
ral, or did you feel like you had to
be out there training?
I'm the farthest thing from a natural.
I just put more effort into it. There are
so many things that aren't that hard. If
you try it long enough it's all easy, you
know? But I can't do Smolik shit.
Did you guys have a crew?
Chicago had some, like Team Sap, or
something, which was some other sub-
urb. But we had our own little posse.
No official name, though?
No, but everybody's moving out here
now and we're starting up the posse
again. There are like eight of us here.
All in San Diego?
Yep. Everybody's coming up hard.
So you barely had to go to school,
and then you switched to home
school so you could skate more?
Yeah. I feel like I still learned as
much as I would've in high school. I
wasn't learning anything there.
Did you like high school?
No. I hated it. It was such a
waste of time.
It was just kids hav-
ing a a big popularity contest, trying
to be cool, whatever. Nothing got
done. Actually, when I was doing
home school, when I was 16, I
started going to college too. Just
community college, which I've
been doing now for five years. I'm
just about a junior. But that stuff
wasn't even hard.
Did you say you moved out to
San Diego by yourself when you
were 17?
I moved with my girlfriend
originally. My ex-girlfriend. And
then after eight months she
moved back.
Her parents let her move to
California with a dude at age 17?
Yeah. What are they gonna do?
She was 18 right after that.
What was it like when you first
got out here?
It was harsh. I knew some people,
but no one I was really good friends
with. I kinda knew Mayhew and
those guys, and my friend Jerret
moved out here from Chicago, and
this guy Falco. But I didn't know
anyone really well. It was weird.
Since
I was
12 I was like, "Oh,
California! I'm moving out there."
Then when I finally did it, my par-
ents drove me out with all my stuff
and then they turned around and
drove home. It suddenly hit me like
a ton of bricks. I was stressing the
first couple of months.
Were you sponsored before you
came out?
Kind of. I got flow for some shit,
but that was about it.
When you were at home in
Chicago, did you make sponsor-
me videos and send them out to
companies?
Yeah, so they're probably still
sitting around in a bunch of
places. I always got good respons-
es but I never got hooked up. The
Midwest curse.
The Midwest curse? Is it harder
for people from the Midwest?
Yeah, it is. Now it's better for
everybody. A few years back, you
couldn't do shit unless you lived
somewhere else, but now... I
mean, I'm sure it's still easier if
I live where all the companies
you
are, but it seems like it's at least
possible to get hooked up if
you're somewhere else.
Did you have any especially bad
experiences when you first
lucky. It's weird-I always get
away with everything. I've
never gotten a skateboard tick-
et that I had to pay my whole
life. I have the magic luck or
something.
Speaking of good luck, you
were arrested recently.
What was it for? Grand
theft? Murder?
Putting a sticker on a lightpost.
That was my one piece of bad
luck, but I'm actually coming out
ahead in the end on that one.
Where were you?
as
The Long Beach trade show.
It was the first day I got there
and I was all excited, and as
soon as I got there I put a
sticker on a post. So the cop
car pulls up all fast, and they
manhandled me and slammed
me down and shit, twisting my
arm behind my back.
What were you thinking?
I'm like, "Whoa!" and I'm
trying
to talk to the guy. I
said, "Do you think this is
necessary? I'll take it off."
They
were just like, "This is
serious business. This is Long
Beach." So they took me
down to the station, and I was
in jail for a whole day, like
twenty-something hours.
Did you have to do the
strip search?
Yeah. I got strip searched. No
cavity though. I was sitting
there with my fingers across, wait-
ing for the guy with the glove. But
it didn't happen. I didn't eat the
whole time I was there. I hadn't
eaten breakfast either so I was I
went a day and a half without eat-
ing. They, were trying to feed me
this slop with undeterminable
"Once you've had
What was the restroom situa-
tion like in jail?
That was another bad one. There
was one metal toilet in the middle of
the room with like thirty dudes. No
toilet seat at all. There was just urine
and feces all over the top of it, and
there was no toilet paper. There was
a little roll of toilet paper, but these
burly dudes were
using it for a pil-
low in the cor-
picture in a
Magazine you're cooler than everyone else.
Everybody knows that."
came out to
California?
Not too bad. I had a pretty good
situation. I lived in a good place
because my girlfriend's dad was pay-
ing most of the rent because he did-
n't want us to live anywhere that did-
n't have security and
and stuff like that.
My friends had some bad ones,
though; they got robbed twice the
first few months they were here.
People barged into their apartment
in the middle of the night and put
them on the floor with guns to their
heads and stuff.
Where were they living?
The College area. It was harsh. I've
heard a lot of bad ones. I've gotten
meats in it and stuff, but it wasn't
happening. And I didn't sleep
because when I was trying to
sleep these gangster dudes were
trying to gaffle my shoes. I got
warned by the other inmates. They
were like, "Damn, man, you got
some pretty nice shoes. I'd watch
it." So when I was lying down with
my feet by the bars there were like
three different times they tried to
grab my shoes. I tried to lay down
the other way, but then I was too
afraid they were going to come
grab my head. I just curled in a
ball all night.
ner. There was no way
in hell I was going to
ask them for it.
How did it end up?
My friend Tom helped bail me
out. I got out of the whole thing
and talked to a lawyer, who told
me I could actually go to trial
court and get compensated for
being wrongfully arrested. They
did a couple of things they can't
do when they arrested me. They
charged me twice for the same
crime, which is pretty bad. And it
was an infraction, it turns out, not
a misdemeanor, which means it
wasn't an arrestable offense. So if
I want, I can go to court. I haven't
decided if it's worth it. I did drive
back the next day to go to the
trade show, and I put stickers on
like five police cars. That was a
sick night. It was the Osiris party,
and it was fun, and I went to seek
my revenge.
Was it easy or hard for you to
get hooked up with some spon-
sors once you got out here?
It was slow. I've seen some peo-
ple come out here and;
get hooked
up right away. I didn't really know
the right people to talk to, I guess.
It's all about connections, and it
slowly builds. I got hooked up
with some photos, and once you
get one picture in a magazine,
then everybody's willing to give
you more pictures.
Then it's all right to shoot
with you?
Yeah. Then you're cool. Once
you've had a picture you're
cool. Then you can call a pho-
tographer. Then pretty soon
someone wants to do an ad
with you, and once you've had
an ad, you're cooler.
But you're still the same person.
Oh, no. You're cool now. Once
you've had a picture in a magazine
you're cooler than everyone else.
Everybody knows that.
What was the first trick you
learned that made you say,
"Damn, this could really work
out"? Was there a point when
94 THRASHER