BEING STEVIE WILLIAMS EXTENDED CUT | World of X Games

[Music] i mean i always thought big before skateboarding i see things and the things that i see sometimes people don't believe me when i first started skating people laughed at me and think i was going to make it when i started my first company people had said it's not going to work i didn't heard that so many times but i'm still here he's a black professional skateboarder he's the black entrepreneur stevie built his legacy from nothing steve represented the underdog veronica philly all of this conditioning of my neighborhood which was you know don't trust the white man the blacks was against him from hanging with the white people down in love park do they really want to talk about that love park stevie and kayla's own that place they put philly back into the spotlight he just got better at his craft better at being a pro you got your face on the street box it was crazy he said he wanted to start a company and i was like what are you going to call it he said dgk are you sure you want to call it that that name represents something one of the most authentic brands there was rappers that were wearing it dgk and stevie have crossed so many boundaries he's the goat [Music] growing up in north philly like i just remembered nobody was rich it just was tough growing up and you had to share and you had to just do things and grow up fast in 1987 1988 it was a huge crack error it was normal for me to see things a lot of raids a lot of crack raids i remember seeing that you know i mean and people fighting you just got to watch your back and just make sure you got some heart that's that's philly my mom she raised me the best that she could he's my only child yes indeed i turned 21 when i had him i was raising him as single mother it was hard for him my dad he was in and out of the picture in my life him and my mom got divorced and after that divorce he got remarried so he had another family and you know as a young boy the last thing you want to see is somebody hurt your mom and at that point i figured like you know what i'm gonna have to pick up the pieces he saved me you know what i'm saying he really did it was me and him against the world the neighborhood i'm from back then the only thing you could do is sell crack you want to become you know one of the dudes on the corner to sell crack so you become cool it's the norm people want to really talk about what college they're going to they talking about what car they want to drive or what kind of clothes they're going to have i looked up to that i wanted that too you know that's just the culture of growing up in philly and growing up in the street i came home from school one time i was around 10 my mom was like look it's time to go we was in my sister's spot it was it was dangerous very dangerous anybody in their right mind wouldn't want to live in that type of atmosphere and i wanted to take stevie away so i moved them to west philly coming from north philly to west philly i felt like i had something to prove got into a lot of fights and then just wandering around the neighborhood i would see this black dude riding a skateboard that was roger brown and i was like damn that's cool i had a skateboard because my cousin kev bought me one and i had the bruce lee cheesy one that was you know the wheels stopped and i went up to him and i was like yo i'm trying to you know i'm trying to learn how to jump in the air and he was just like dawg you can't do that with that skateboard i was like damn what kind of he showed me a real pro looking skateboard that i've never seen before i never heard you can have a pro skateboard and that's when everything started i would just be around and i seen rasul and my man terence riding the skateboard too so i used to ask them let me ride your skateboard [Music] first time i saw stevie was on powerton avenue roger brown lived on powerton avenue too as well in the home of my home well actually it was john pucker i met terence he's a sharp looking guy this other kid named sharif we just see him with my cousin rachelle he was with my man shot he's big up to shahid because they used to go to the same school they two lived on powerton avenue too i think my grandmom and his grandmom knew each other you know what i'm saying [Music] [Laughter] i would always try to get people into skateboarding so i could have somebody to learn with because before then i didn't know anything about new love parking no nothing i'm skating in the projects you know by myself we always looked at steve back then like he was like i'm a little troublemaker we see who you hanging out with i see what you've done you're telling me stories yo what you been doing got into a fight with this guy you know what i mean steve came along and he you know we taught him out of ollie yeah he learned pretty fast he learned in one day how to ollie i was always looking at a skateboard but i never really looked at it how i looked at it after i did the ollie [Music] and everybody that does their first little ollie that's one of the best feelings in the world stevie did the trick and it must have tricked something in his head because from that point on he was flying almost where i could control him rasul and terence start coming over to my house when i seen a skateboard tape i was just derailed by that back then skateboarding tapes was playing a bunch of punk rock music so we had to turn it down and play art music because my mom and them and the other room would think we in there listening to some devil worshiping stuff the door opened up so fast like i seen other black kids i seen asian kids i seen crazy looking white kids and it was everywhere rasool would tell me that they in different cities it was just like yo what's going on like you could ride a skateboard in california and it was just so many questions on like well how do you do that and say oh you got to get sponsored and then it's like you get sponsored because you get good and then people they'll give you money and you can travel around the world and i was like what you could travel around the world by riding a skateboard and they give you money he was like yeah if you get sponsored that was it i want to be a pro skater what i got to do to do that terrance and rasul they was already going to love park i thought it was called left part so i ain't know where the hell it was but see my man sean he sold drugs and he was like yo i'll take you downtown got looked over like what you doing here he's like he pointed i looked over and it's sean i'm like oh man oh man it's about to go down [Applause] [Music] love park was this granite plaza pretty much a city block big it had different levels and it had different size granite ledges i mean it was like street skateboarder's dream spot you know some people recognize it as just a place to skate i don't want to spend too much time there because it all ends up looking the same but some people looked at it as your home away from home you build a life there [Music] terrance and rasool they was already going to love park i thought it was called left park so i ain't know where the hell it was but they didn't really want me to come down to love park yet you know he's a wild kid he's rolling with us and we get into a little scuffle steve's gonna go all the way out of his way to protect his friend so we never really wanted to bring him around certain things that he didn't understand yet back then like i was all into like you know revolutionary stuff like like my family you know i mean don't trust the white man fight the power like all of this type of conditioning of my neighborhood which was you know it was normal raw so who was like yo nah yo you can't do that yo if you're gonna be a skater you gotta be open you're gonna meet white people you're gonna meet all types of people and i wouldn't really tripping on what he was talking about really and maybe that is one of the reasons why he didn't bring me down there but see my man sean was from the hood he sold drugs he was like yo i'll take you downtown you got this crazy beat up car took me down there 11 years old downtown when i seen the love sign once i seen that it was a wrap i looked over like what you doing here steve like you pointed i looked over and it's sean i'm like oh man oh man he's about to go down yo they were pretty rough man big sean was rough because big sean was the main dude who robbed dudes for boards back in the day if you were skating love park and you had a brand new setup and nobody knew who you were you might get knocked up beside your head and your board taken i don't know man it was like the wild wild west i'm glad i was friends with them because i never got robbed sean is laughing he got three boards that day he got like two for himself and one for steve i'm shaking my head but i'm like now you can skate love used to be crowded used to be like 50 skaters there it was basically legal to skate there anywhere in the city that you skated if you were getting kicked out they would tell you to go to love that day when i first went down there you know it was black it was white it was asian puerto rican all together just chilling hanging out drinking from the same huawei ice tea cup it's just all for this little cult thing that we into at that time just breaking barriers as a young kid of you thinking certain things need to be a certain way it drew me in that much more to say damn like i'm proud to be a part of this because it was positive you know and then where we going back home to the hood not saying it's negative it's just that the circumstances is different when i went down there to love for finally i'm like okay let me go see what this boy doing everybody was you know cool everybody was looking out for each other it was a community it was like a family and i was so proud of that he had joined something like that but the neighborhood didn't agree with who he was and what he was doing he got a beat down in school it was so bad they would fight him every day in school you know for hanging with the white people down in love park they like yo why are you changing on this look what you got on or you want to act just like them you know that ain't for us so got into a lot of fights and the way skateboarders dress back then of course you would get laughed at every day every day i just prayed that they wasn't going to kill him i was a skater and proud of it no matter what nobody said because it was special and i wasn't given that special feeling up for nobody it was i'm a part of this thing that nobody's a part of and i'm really good at it we progressed real fast it was pretty amazing to watch it seemed like a lot of tricks came to him easy stevie was like a natural stevie was just fun to be around you know i mean he was a few years younger than me but we both had kind of a similar mentality on what we liked doing terence and rasool and there was a nice little squad that rolled around with stevie that's kind of who i gravitated towards you know [Music] philadelphia at the time was like broken up in different like little skate crews you know and it's like a mini society people try to create rules and you know there would be beefs so we were just trying to fit into the culture of skateboarding man skateboarders i don't think they're too territorial they're just clicky there was like the dgk click and like you know the daggers these guys had a lot of wall-e's and wall rides and stevie just skated completely different he was way more technical and i don't think people like understood or appreciated his style of skateboarding as much as they probably should have when people started recognizing that these young kids were like the dope ones the older crew they didn't want to give up that control the perception that they were like the illest in philly and so it seemed like there was some blocking going on the very first time a media company came to philadelphia to do an article they were shooting pictures of stevie and his guys and the other side straight up told transworld don't shoot those kids they're just dirty ghetto kids and that's where the name was born they insisted that we had to be in that because we was the kids the only kids skating down there from philly you go back and look at that pictures a bunch of guys from new jersey all these other guys who claim and they from philly i've never seen these dudes when i was growing up we would have met we would have ran into them there was really no chance of any of me and my homies getting sponsored until jeff pang came to love park jeff peng skated for underwear element and i was on them i was like yo i want to get sponsored how i get sponsored i'm good enough to get sponsored do you got a camera you got a camera oh let's film and he wound up filming me because there was nobody there at that time to tell him oh you don't want to take photos of them i don't film them they're just dirty ghetto kids they're not doing anything but it took somebody like jeff to be like y'all feel me yeah i mean he told me how to get sponsored he put a good word in and next thing you know i was sponsored by element at 12 years old i think they got a lot of people mad too stevie the little dude from west philly is not supposed to be getting sponsored by the damn underworld element skateboards and who the hell let that happen that's when i realized like it's about talent traveling it's about networking you just got to go out there and do it that's why i left the city of philly and i ran away to california at 14. i'm looking all over for him no stevie we just hopped on the road we made it to so many different states steve went to california oh my god [Applause] the way that other crews treated stevie and their crew was like they were just bullies almost in my opinion it was pretty disrespectful i was sponsored by element at 12 years old i wasn't letting none of those dudes tell me that i couldn't be who i wanted to be i wanted to turn pro and that's why i left the city of philly those are more kind of like town heroes and they were professionals but nobody was coming to look at the professionals in philly they was coming to check out love park that's when i realized like it's about talent traveling it's about networking you just got to go out there and do it if you're going to be a professional so i left at 14 i had a plan though my homie pat washington said yo if you ever come to san francisco you can stay at my house so i said i'm gonna take you up i'm on my way out there we had 20 some clothes and food i took the bus from philly to dc while locked in with my homie jimmy pelletier we had this master plan that we was going hitchhike to san francisco i get out there i could stay at pad house i can skate i can turn pro i can know all of these other pros much as we wanted a little piece of the industry to be out here on the east coast at the end of the day all the brands all the companies they're in california these hood dreams like and i don't know any other skater from the hood that dream like this and actually go do it we found some random skater dude mvc he had a brand new 1995 ford espire and sold him this crazy skate dream driving to california we all gonna get sponsored and i was just you know just running it you know and the funny thing his name was john wayne and i was like well his name john wayne oh we definitely out you know i mean john wayne take it across the country on the horse yeah i mean he was like yeah dude i'll do it and we just hopped on the road if we got pulled over and i was a runaway those dudes would have got charged with kidnapping john wayne just kidding out the little black kid from the hood and trying to take him to california we made it to so many different states stopped and skated dallas louisiana arizona i seen like my first cactus it was dope never been anywhere really outside of philly we get all the way to san francisco and then we found pat washington and he was like what are you doing here and i was like yo you said i can crash he was like yo i was just playing like i'm homeless oh my god he's like well i could show you where to put your clothes and then you just got to kind of take it from there at this time i'm on christmas break i'm totally in school i'm looking all over for him no stevie so then i'm panicking so his boy rasul finally comes and says steve went to california oh my god no i didn't call my mom at all i had to plan to not talk to her until i got to san francisco i was just gonna pop up and say i'm here you don't know nothing i didn't teach you nothing how is he surviving how is he living this is a dangerous world i said i'm coming to get you i was going to get the ticket on amtrak but i only had my job and i was paying electric gas fire doing the whole nine yards so i didn't have no money so i had to support him with faith 14 frisco on my own homeless a lot of nights sleeping on the streets a lot of nights sleeping in abandoned cars learning how to finesse hotel lobbies trade barter just thinking to myself like damn steve like what are you what are you doing dawg just go home and if for some reason i just couldn't i couldn't do it i needed to complete something in my life and i just kept going he took me to my homie shelby house that lived in the tenderloin and every skater that i seen in all the videos they was all there spencer fujimoto lee smith carl watson ben sanchez mike york like everybody was there and it was like oh wait you little stevie i'm like yeah they like oh well we heard about you like they all just embraced me like i was one of theirs it was cool and we all went skating and i've made everything from that [Music] i left philadelphia i would see stevie in san francisco all the time so we got to continue and build our relationship i got to see him just messing around with the board and doing stuff and that's one of my favorite things [Music] san francisco's such a small place that when someone shows up from out of town whether it's philly or new york or wherever you're like oh what's up with this guy as soon as i saw him at the pier i was like kid's dope style is very important in skateboarding and that just came through in photos and in footage [Music] how he dressed i carried himself i rolled away from things all that it was all so sick i got kicked off element because they already heard i wanted to escape with henry sanchez's new company and at that time i didn't know anything about business so element was up here henry sanchez's new company was down here but everything that came with henry sanchez's new company was something that made me who i am today while i was a runaway the things that i leaned on was more friendship and value and loyalty and trust the people that i learned how to survive with is the people that i wanted to be with [Music] then profile went out of business that hurt it's so easy as a black dude to give up on skating because the industry don't play out in our favor it's colorless because it's a universal sport anybody can do but then the industry is ran by all suburban adults that don't understand what it's like to grow up in the inner city they may have been scared to come into the inner city and it boils down to like people look at skateboarding like it's a suburban sport but skateboarding is just as urban as it is suburban but nobody gives the urban a chance because urban doesn't get a chance so nothing popped for me sf i didn't really see no future for me in the skateboard industry because there was no me getting on no major companies anymore the friends that i have won't be the sponsor type it was damn near a rap you just skated since she was a 10 years old to try to impress all of these people to get sponsored and then they don't want to sponsor you at that age he was like you know what i'd rather just go home and kick with my homies in philly none of my homies they all stopped skating we all started drinking around that time stealing from the store trying to figure out what we gonna do and where we gonna sleep at i was like this dude possibly on his way out you know this one this one was at like the height of josh and stevie i love you know this one's super important to me steve that was dgk right there you know it just speaks everything to me about what we've done [Music] in philly none of my homies they all stopped skating they started rapping graffiti getting in more trouble we all started drinking around that time stealing from the store trying to figure out what we going to do and where we going to sleep at there was no me getting on no companies anymore it was damn near a rap i decided to move back to philly because it had been a couple years and i wanted to see what was going on so i went back and when i got to philly man i was just like i miss this place love was like empty and the guys that dissed stevie us they weren't there anymore i was like this place is wide open right now it was like me and stevie we could do this we could finish what we were starting i was on market street and i walked past the bus stop and stevie and i think booze was his name we're in there just faded and i was like yo and he's like yo what's up looking all over for you where you at i'm like i'm just chilling right here he's like chilling doing what i'm always just drinking i was like this dude possibly on his way out from the skate game i mean he was young it just didn't seem like he was in the spot that he could be in you know he was like yo i got a crib that's what's up he's like i want you to start skating again if you escape you can stay at the house i got a room for you and i'm like oh you serious though he was josh he's my god son i love him to death if it wasn't for josh putting them in that apartment i don't know how much time would it turned out john said i seen talent in you and you shouldn't waste it i love josh she gave me the good luck remember he's a good human being for seeing something in myself that i didn't see i don't think i felt like it was like saving stevie none of us felt like that really with our own friends you know i was in a position to offer an opportunity but it was up to him you know if he wanted to take it or not [Music] he skated with me every single day until i got back josh was very established that was josh kaelis dc drawers alien workshop east coast west coast cover trans world he was the truth and when i was able to really get my legs back he was like you should go to cali he actually gave me a stamp so when i went back out to california skateboarding just opened up for me i went out and filmed a crazy sponsoring tape and i was shopping it to nothing but the best if i'm gonna go back i want to give it my best shot and that's what i did and that shot got me on chocolate to shoot for that type of company is like shooting for the stars if you landed on that you're good i took that money and went back to philadelphia i mean my mom got a house off of my uncle nate in west philly and that's when i started my second wind of my career stevie got on chocolate and ec which was huge for us because you know myself stevie and love park as a unit it was unstoppable it was ours it wasn't nobody in a way no town heroes trying to tell us what we can and can't do [Music] all of the old dudes they can't even come in the park anymore it's a change of guard we controlled that whole thing it took a couple years but dude it blew up you all the homies are still there and now the new kids is coming people were coming in and moving into philadelphia from all over the place ryan winning populardo tim o'connor we had mike blayback coming out shooting us we got filmers we got photographers josh and i think he had it all planned out in his mind like i'm gonna go back to philly get with steve and we're gonna blow love parker doing that really brought stevie to the world stevie and kayla's put philly sort of back into the spotlight to me that ever stevie and josh ever is the real error for skateboarding at love park [Applause] down the west coast is coming to philly and all you had to do is just come in the mix and skate and respect the people if you could do that you could scale apart the guys that diss stevie us you guys showed everybody what you think it should look like but now you're not here and we're gonna show you what we think love should look like everybody in love park is on the same agenda of getting philly on the map that's what it's about putting your spot on the map and having people drool over skating the spot that we made famous still to this day love park is epic because of what we all put in not just [Music] i first started going out to love park working for dc shoes ken block was like you're going to be spending a lot of time in philly i just was there to document as much as i possibly could we wanted stevie to really represent the style of skateboarding and the style of shoes that we were making like at the highest level at the in the coolest way i was kind of growing into my own as a photographer so i'd always experiment and you know i'd always hey can we shoot portraits can we do this can we do that see we've always like yeah yeah let's do it we knew that stevie was having a shoot coming out on dc what was his ad going to be like what tricks are going to film i remember throwing that print onto ken's desk i remember ken looking at it just laughing he was like that's a sad i was like yeah put that put that everywhere they put a photo of me and my face on my box they put it everywhere around the whole city san francisco doing x games it made people look at me everybody else had a trick but what's your trick for your shoe ad they just used my face and i sold millions of dollar worth of shoes that's when things really changed as far as like lifestyle josh and stevie were on top top selling boards and shoes everyone around the globe knew who those guys were stevie and josh went from like the honda civic to like bmws kayla was coming through with the bmw he had the nice cribs it made me get my own stuff and brought a range rover off of kayla and that's when i knew like oh this is popping because people around my way was like how the hell he got a range rover hip-hop and urban culture was a little bit different back then if you got that success you just wanted to like double middle finger all the haters and it was like y'all had doubts but look at me now you know and stevie just like he has that anyway so you add the success onto it and it's just that much doper you know i was asking sorry i was homeless and broke and the next thing you know i'm holding bottles of champagne pushing range rovers buying 400 000 houses with no manager damn near no dad or somebody to say no this is how you handle money you know i didn't even have a grip on my life i learned everything on the fly i got my mom to take care of and at that time i had a daughter it was another decision for me to say okay well i could keep wilding out and celebrating or i could be a dad and changed my life after getting all of these things and then having friends like colin mckay rob deredick and seeing how much of the entrepreneur these dudes were it was like oh that's my next step i want to be entrepreneur too we had a blank board one day and i was like what are you doing leaving chocolate is like leaving the lakers when we had the meeting to do the deal my partner asked me what i wanted to call my company are you sure you want to call it that [Applause] the philly scene blew up huge people were coming in and moving into philadelphia a lot of people started their careers at love park and throughout all that it was hella illegal it wasn't like 93 where you were getting kicked out of other spots and getting sent to love park it was the opposite cops coming in undercover's coming in people were getting robbed by the cops guns pulled out on by the cops beat up by the cops love park was super illegal to skate once i paid that 300 fight i'm like i'm never getting caught up here again it gets to the point where if somebody moves real fast next to you like yeah you're thinking about dipping [Music] we still like we still put it down 2001 i started traveling the world with chocolate in dc [Music] being on the road allowed me to meet and see all types of kids from around the world that really rocked like me [Applause] [Music] and a lot of them i met let me know that i gave them inspiration to be there so [Music] [Applause] [Music] i was so on fire selling so much product i think stevie's life really started to change because people were recognizing how dopey was the way he carried himself the way he talked the way he skated people they like that stevie moves the needle he's gonna create sales and so in return they're going to want to keep boosting him and he's going to want to keep doing it too because it's life-changing stevie was on top top selling boards and shoes everyone around the globe knew stevie because of who he was and how talented he was and how he looked in photos and how he looked in footage just that's why he blew up so i had that grenade chain on [Music] i'm making millions of dollars and it just made me question like cells it was like oh that's my next step i want to be entrepreneur i moved back to the west coast to los angeles and that's when one of my good friends eli he was like yo i think you should do your own company i got a hookup if you want to do it we wound up meeting my partner to this day troy morgan and we sat down with him and he explained to me all the possibilities that i could have if i owned my own skateboard company and that meeting that we had i left thinking i could do this show i remember he had a blank board one day i was like what are you doing he's like awesome this new thing i'm doing and i was like what like and i remember tripping on the fact that he was contemplating leaving a brand like chocolate leaving chocolate is like leaving the lakers you know what i mean so it's like how can you do that it was like whoa chocolate was like one of the top dogs you know and to start his own thing is extremely risky when we had the meeting to do the deal my partner asked me what i wanted to call my company i said dgk and he said yeah we're gonna call it that he's like are you sure you want to call it that he's like no yeah we're gonna call it that and i was like all right even though the name could be a little inappropriate we talked for like two days i remember us telling him that we're not dirty ghetto kids but at the end of the day i had to come around to the fact that that's a reality that name represents something that name represents the struggle they think dirty ghetto kids are nothing but we are something i'm sure there was doubters and there always is though you know when he created dgk as a boar company yeah i knew it would work out for him it is the most authentic brand in all of skateboard there's a real story to it egk was born from love park from somebody hating on stevie and his crew they didn't label themselves dirty ghetto kids somebody else did i just had a little small vision i'm like i could put my homies on my best friend marcus mcbride henry sanchez a crew of other dudes that compliment us that i know that i could rock with that that may not be as big as me but it's on the same level of talent as me and we can show that we are squad [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] there was no disrespect to chocolate i just thought it was a part of my destiny to skate with my homies and go on the road with my homies we can do and say whatever we want to say and feel as comfortable as we need to feel because when you get on here you better be you i feel like when that company came out like everyone was pretty surprised it was something completely different than anything else at the time dgk hit from the jump it was like this is the team it's the idea behind the brand it was super relatable especially for that time period with a lot of urban skateboarders a lot of things happened so fast i signed a seven-figure deal with reebok we had the dgk skate park in atlanta georgia lil wayne learned how to skate there justin bieber skated there was khalifa gucci man ludacris shot videos in there it was always me and dgk trying to push the culture at inner city through skateboarding through fashion and pop culture ddk was absolutely everywhere seeing stevie and tony hawk games dgk and stevie have crossed so many boundaries it's still here and it's still cracking [Music] you know people did not believe in dgk not one bit at all where they at now that's how i look at it 2009 i was on my way out from the company i was skating for because the company i was riding for had lost its way i was actually asking stevie for advice on what direction he think i should take and i think in that conversation it was just like wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute why am i not riding for never thought about dgk and then it just started rolling out the josh and stevie story why don't we just complete the whole thing and stevie was like yeah let's do it going to dgk felt awesome it was like this is where i should have been since the beginning kayla's original dirty ghetto kid from philly he was always on our side and that's where it all goes back full circle to when i stopped skating he gave me a room at his apartment and the deal was i could stay there for free if i skated he skated with me every single day if i didn't get that chance i'll be still right with my homies trying to figure out what we gonna do and where we gonna sleep at i love josh he's a good human being for seeing something in myself that i didn't see [Music] we did a dgk movie in 2012. the first movie that dgk done we did it our way and then next thing you know dgk getting the best team there isn't any other team like bgk in the whole skateboard industry there's no other african-american skateboard company like myself that has a dominant skateboard team [Music] i like to pride myself on that we come from the hood and i can tell anybody in the hood i want a skateboard company and it's top [Applause] five at a time where i'm supposed to be this stevie williams dude i was questioning myself what the hell am i doing he started to realize he didn't have the support that he really needed these things were hitting me heavy [Applause] ddk represents people who came from nothing represents inner city street kids from all walks of life doesn't matter if you're african-american caucasian asian latino it's talking about kids who have nothing just like me and stevie that kid came from nothing comes from an environment that set up to destroy you but made it out i think stevie had a different idea for what he wanted to do with dgk i created a brand called asphalt yacht club which was something different from dgk because fashion and skateboarding was coming together so when ayc came along he had the opportunity to try to make like a luxury brand for the streets when you start another business and you're trying to push in a whole nother industry you got to kind of you know you got to start mingling in a different kind of world i was just really trying to just be successful trying to push the culture inner city that was his whole mission taking it to another platform to be able to sit next to somebody like jay-z and say this is what we do skateboarders we move the streets just as much as you do but when you get around a bunch of people who are not skateboarders and don't understand the culture of skateboarding then that's where it gets a little rough around the edges man i think he got caught up in between that i went back to philadelphia on tour one time me and my homie wound up walking into love park i didn't even know where i was walking and when we stopped at the fountain i just started like bawling crying [Music] man i probably cried like a good 20 minutes and i couldn't really shake it i didn't know where it was coming from it was heavy love park is gone my whole childhood was gone i was questioning myself what the hell am i doing asphalt yacht club is doing bad stevie williams is getting old love park is gone these things were hitting me heavy at a time where i'm supposed to be this stevie williams dude and i just couldn't he started to realize he didn't have the support that he really needed you can't be around a bunch of people that just want to be around you just because you're stevie williams or a celebrity those things left me depressed those things left me questioning myself i couldn't even get a ollie off the ground with so much weight i felt like i lost myself in success money didn't make my personality it just got me into places that i've never been before but i've been there and my homies ain't there so i decided to let everything go i stopped chasing bread i stopped chasing deals i stopped chasing everything and i got back with my family and my friends and what i want to do right now is be a dad grow and learn how to be a better human being i did a lot and it made a lot of money but back in the day 1995 96 it wasn't about no money it was just doing it for the love how much fun i had and what i was doing and how creative i was [Music] that's my motivation [Music] that's where i'm at seeing my son skate i love seeing him like really progress skating at jaquan with the homies it's a whole new generation of kids out there that i would love to skate with [Music] when i get on that board and i do my thing no matter if i got all the money in the world or not i'm happy with it [Applause] the universe is going to give back what you put in started saved by skateboarding which is a non-profit we give them complete skateboards to the inner city kids whether it's the fabelas in brazil the projects at nicholson garden out here in la we actually come to your neighborhood i grew up in south central l.a i feel if i would have had like somebody even just give me an opportunity to show me something different that it could have made a difference in my life that's why i'm so passionate about what i do like whatever you're going through you can always channel that energy into skateboarding it's your place away from everything you can make it out the hood but you got to go back to go back to north philly where our family is it was beautiful they deserve a chance too we from the dirtiest blocks in philadelphia and we had to skate through these blocks and get laughed at and now we're good you know stevie built his legacy from nothing he takes that for those that come from nothing like real serious you know steve williams trail blazed for so many people that didn't have a voice minority skaters african-american skaters they represent the underdog represent the guide as in the last of the line in my eyes his legacy is already here you know he really made an impact and paved the way especially for other black skaters out there stevie's legacy in skateboarding is massive and i think it's only going to grow myself then bgk is always there as a foundation for skaters like me that come from inner city dgk going on 20 years i want to do it for another 20 years [Music] you

Channel: X Games

Views: 172,247

Rating: 4.9546523 out of 5

Keywords: yt:quality=high, X Games, XGames, X-Games, action sports, being stevie williams, stevie williams, stevie williams dgk, stevie williams x games, x games stevie williams, espn2 stevie williams, stevie williams skateboarding, stevie williams skate, stevie williams video part, stevie williams bio, stevie williams skate video, stevie williams skate 2021, stevie williams 2020, stevie williams dgk part, josh kalis dc video, stevie williams dc, josh kalis dc, trending, x games mode

Id: xQITf8eMIv0

Length: 46min 37sec (2797 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Stoned_calzone]

I never see dexxers who also skate... represent!!

[u/reddit_mods_r_fagots]

nice