Jamie Thomas | The Nine Club With Chris Roberts - Episode 68

well we are back we're back at the nightclub huh listen everybody I'm being serious and everybody laughs I don't understand I like watching you do the intro it's fun but we got a special guest here today Jamie Thomas the chief the chief is here what's going on how are you doing I'm doing good yeah I can't complain life's good well first of all thank you for coming it's my pleasure now that drive we're to come from Encinitas insidious okay so let me let me just start off with asking you right how what the chief hat would say where does that nickname come what's the story you know well I used to be the guy who always coordinated the missions and got everybody motivated whether they wanted to be motivated or not it would be the one of the guys yeah motivated yeah and it started off in the early zero days and me going to pick up Ellington Alyssa and Jim Greco Ellington Alyssa all lived at this house in San Diego called albatross okay and anyway I just drove up one day to pick them up and they're like Chiefs here Chiefs here yeah I didn't I think maybe they had a conversation in the night and they're just talking about that that's what I did yeah I don't know they just started calling me the Chiefs and so it stuck did you like the nickname I mean you can't really argue with nickname right no yeah it is he argues with his nickname all the time yeah bag come on our back our bags yeah no but what yeah you can't argue but I mean it's kind of an endearing it's a name and right you know and I don't know how like ellington know it's a gym and right I don't know I thought it was cool I guess I mean I I mean it was better than like drill sergeant or something I really knew that that's what they kind of meant but they came up a little nicer they came up with a better version that maybe that I would like but hey listen Matt you wanted to get things done right you wanted to get the session going get out there right that was always my mo is yeah yeah I don't get things somebody always has to be that guy you know I'm not that guy I'm not I need I need the chief tell me let's go baby let's go there's only a few people in skateboarding to have like a name right you know right there's the boss the boss there's the chief chief who's there's some other ones the krob the correct yeah yeah lizard lizard well truth must be sexual name right right right well the musca ones the story and I thought they're gonna go into Anna's eppley later oh the musca right do you know the yeah yeah the first tour he went on with Toy Machine okay he was probably 16 or so okay he was drinking a lot whatever on the tour he loved to party and we like went to some pizza place after the demo and he was drinking and it was like obviously severely underage being like 16 and everything but team manager helps Mao helped him get beer and good team manager yeah of course he was good he was drinking and he told that the team manager at the time was Mike Ballard yeah okay yeah and he he was I guess kind of acting like he was in an argument but he wasn't really an argument he just kind of be an antagonist and he told Ballard to slap him and Howard's like I don't want to slap you Chad and now it's big guy yeah a big hand and I remember standing there and you I will slap me Ballard slap me and he was kind of like saying I think his the the motive was is that he was tough enough to take a slap from Ballard okay right and so he was telling Ballard to slap him and Bauer's like no no no and then you know eventually like Chad kept going on and Ballard just slapped him okay and Chad got super bent out of shape and like really upset and like basically wanted to fight ballard in the pizza place guys begging him to slap it out of shape well he was i mean i think he probably don't know drank like big mug five four or five big mug here it's sixteen years old something so anyway we gotten it was kind of like parties over everybody's packing up like we got to get out of here you know Chad's pissed anyway we all got in the van we all got in the van and Chad was still mumbling about the incident and and the quote the quote he said was you can't feed the musca you can't feed the muskie and he was like he was saying like he said this was the line I'll break a bottle over here ahead I'll rip your ear off I don't give a [ __ ] you can't fade the musca and then he said that like over and over that night and anyway we were all just so psyched on it we just started calling the Moscow I mean everybody was like because it was such a I don't know such a like overly bold and outlandish statement I'll break a bottle over my head I'll rip your ear off it was just sounded I don't know he was talking about himself first yeah yeah and it was I don't know we just all knew we were in a moment and then the next day everyone just called him the musca and then from there it kind of stuck and then he embraced it and it became his name the Moscow I could imagine why he didn't want to talk about that in his epic was super he's super okay with anything I mean the way he speaks about himself and the way he speaks about everything so endearing that it's like yeah it's cool you know you can't you can't help but love him and no matter what he says right right he's the musca yeah he's the Mazda Moscow so Jamie Thomas the Alabama what's don't worry about it am i know born and raised Alabama actually born in Florida but more in Florida but grew up in Alabama when did you move to Alabama cold six weeks yeah yeah it's a it's a technicality I claim Alabama and someone else from oh you right right did they drive cross-country ordinary I mean it's only next state but yeah they drew to me that's cross-country you've never left West LA I see yeah well you know what's funny though is like when you go on tours you know you and you're in the van and you go from state to state to state you're in you're in a new state every day and you don't even know where the hell you are sometimes right you just jump out of the van and yeah there's noobs with guns in Walmart you're like what the [ __ ] yeah that's never happened to me but I know what you mean what do you keep a map and where you going or no I just traveled a lot I know where you are yeah I've traveled a young skater you turned out of the van and well I was usually driving the van no really why he's the chief dude I know but still I don't know managers drive the vans know for a long while I was the team manager for like ten years well I'm talking about a young skater the skater know what you're talking to me I can't pretend I'm a young skater it never really was a young skater so raised in Alabama yes right what did you do as a young lad were you uh when I was really young I lived like in the woods like Alabama like pigs chickens Wiley yeah big big not a lot of acreage just shot [ __ ] in the woods and you hunted yeah you were just a gatherer yeah or I just shot like bottles or my mom's pants or whatever you know yes I got a BB gun for Christmas at like probably five and start shooting [ __ ] yeah exploring the woods and I had a couple buddies one dude had a motorcycle and ride him what we de ride his motorcycle oh you guys were just having a blast yeah yeah yeah it was great as a kid it was awesome I had like a Creek by her house I mean it's kind of like what you'd imagine it to be in Alabama like catch like salamanders and Oh snakes and critters and [ __ ] yeah oh good I think it's like every kid's like dream like just to have a backyard full of yeah yeah right we had that until so in third grade my father was - excuse me my father was a nuclear engineer whoa so he worked at Alabama power and then in third fourth grade he got a job in Georgia I moved my family moved to Atlanta for a year and then when we moved I found a skateboard like a 70s banana board from the from the Attic in the move and that was the first skateboard at Everest in the new house you found it yes Oh when we moved I wasn't really a part of the move but for some reason when we were moving and when we got to a land okay I remembered finding a like a banana board from the 70s and it was probably it was 1984 okay so was the board was like you know my sister's I think and it was like twelve or fourteen years old or okay so it wasn't just randomly there no no no it was in the family yeah yeah but I you know we lived on a gravel road and surrounded by woods so the board would have been in the board would have been in a box in our attic the whole way you know our whole childhood so she would have maybe had it in Florida in the 70s I was born in 74 okay you know they lived in Florida until 74 so probably where I would have been from there you go right right so hey you dope down and figured this so anyway I found fiberglass like banana board okay it looks like a penny board but ya know upturned tail okay it was like didn't even know what to call it no didn't even have a name my sister you know in the time at the time lived in her house she was about seven or eight years old than me I'm the youngest of four youngest of four yeah right yeah yeah yeah yeah so um she I have a sister that's between her and I as well so there were all about three and a half four years apart okay yeah right so um anyway she took you know told me was a skateboard and they started showing me how to like tic-tac and walk the dog and wish she had some moves anyway so she and that was all I knew but that's all I knew about skateboarding was what she showed me so I just practice I tried to remember what she showed me and I just practiced those things in the driveway yeah we I lived in Atlanta for a year we had a really like in Atlanta there's lots of hills so we had a really steep driveway and I rode down on my but you know kept doing that until I got stand up and then stood up on highway and right yeah I remembered I am ISOTONER gloves remember those probably I know there with the holes in them the you know I kind of tack like they were like ISOTONER commercials where they're like yeah yeah they're like tan like ivory and black and they're like they were like an 80s and 80s fashion yeah fashion yeah right anyway my mom had a pair of ISOTONER oh they're really nice and I was like oh if I like fall I wear ISOTONER gloves I'll save my hand right anyway the first of all I just shredded the ISOTONER gloves and it was a wish it was a real big yes oh she was it happened immediately and they were they were like I'm at the time there was like ISOTONER commercials they were like a thing to have I remember they're like thin super thin they were like basically like a yeah almost like a lycra glove right right right and then they have like little how I knew they'd like a little leather little leather yeah anyway shredded the ISOTONER gloves oh yeah and took took a spill and kind of got my first scabs and absent scabs right right anyway I really love skateboarding and then the next the next year we moved back to Alabama and then my father then accepted a job in Florida and sweet she moved back to Alabama just for a summer just for the summer or same same house yeah we rented it out that you're going okay got you moved back to the same house okay getting ready to go to school and then dad came home and said we're moving to Florida nother job another job all about the power industries and the nuclear power industry so we took a job in Palm Beach Gardens Florida okay so I'd already discovered skateboarding but didn't really know much except about the fiberglass board and that you know hail to the hill and yeah walking the dog and tic-tacs that's all I kind of knew and then family moved to Florida and then now this is probably 85 okay and skateboarding was like going off so I went down there visited my brother my brother lived in Melbourne Florida and I went to visit him at his job he worked at a boat marina Oh anyway long story short there was a guy at the boat marina this like 70s surfer dude on like that I saw like shrouding through the boat marina oh well on a board and it was the first time I'd ever seen another skateboarder and I just remembered seeing him he had like basically like a mini stacy peralta he's only like 5 foot tall but he had like long blonde hair and he was just like cruising cutting it up and I was just like blown away like he was sidewalk surfers yes did you guys autograph like no I just was like fascinated because I liked skateboarding but I never seen I've never seen it I've never seen it on television or anything yet so I didn't know what it looked like I knew even though maybe anybody else was doing oh I had no idea right idea I saw him like cutting back and it was kind of you know what it looked like it looked like those the z-boys account of Jay Adams ok go into the contest where everyone's doing freestyle and then Jay Adams goes out there and he's just like cutting it up and getting all crazy and anyway the guy looked like that ok and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever and then when he came to a stop he would like go to a stop and like didn't like do a couple 360s and then like pop his board I'll be like you almost like you had like a full routine yeah but it didn't look like it was a routine it really looked well yeah it looked like I felt like I was watching a movie and then like he popped his board up in his hand and I was like holy [ __ ] oh I want to do that yeah and I was that was kind of it and then I went over to him and I said hey I noticed that your board has like a tail on it and stuff like I have a skateboard but it doesn't have that can I can i buy yours or do you have an extra one that I can buy Wow and he's like yeah I'll sell you this one for 20 bucks and he just hands me the board his whole complete yeah and I was like 20 bucks like I looked over at my brother and my brother just pulled 20 bucks out his pocket and hand him 20 bucks and then I had to figure out a way to earn the 20 bucks to pay my brother to pay him back yeah but he just like this guy sell his only but maybe board that's what it came down to and it was like it was kind of rag doubt it was like what it was like water damage though right but I didn't care I just saw it and was yeah wow it's awesome you remember what kind of board that was remember it and I just and I just went on eBay like for like or not just but like a year or two ago I went on eBay and I bought each part from that board and then put it back together seriously I didn't know we were going to talk about this right I brought it oh you should have brought yeah I mean I didn't think about like no housing right my first board Oh way her so I bought the I bought the board in each part and then put it back together and then a friend of mine Jim at Watson rescreen the graphic exactly as it was I found the ground really I found the graphic the board I had like what happened to the board you had just old I in orbit I ended up like spray-painting it you know I went through after after I got into skating I kind of got into like a punk rock phase of skate okay you just kind of don't really care about anything and just destroy everything right and then I don't and it turned into a skim board I think at one point yeah okay any rate the board though like my brother and I went and took it all apart okay I sanded it down to like you know the bare like wood and then revarnished it and then I went and bought clear grip and the whole got new stickers for the top and just kisses after the the punk rock phase no no this is alright when I all right when you got it yeah right when I bought it I was like he refurbished it yeah yeah my brother my brother was a woodworker and a craftsman so like he was like oh we can fix that up no problem no and I was just so amped so I spent like probably a day taking the grip off the grip had probably like five years right well and this is 1908 Adar this is 1985 and then to come to realize this was like in 1979 or 1980 boy there you go so the net had probably been on there for five and at that time the it came with it pry came with grip right like it wasn't even made to be taken away yeah it did come with the grip and then so when you think about it 20 bucks like it's basically like I bought like this relic you know what I mean true you know like at this time the Bones Brigade boards were out and stuff they were ten inches wide this board was like eight inches wide so it was like you know it was not like like current right you know so when the guy was like saw me all stoked on it he probably gave me a deal too but he saw me all stoked that had been at trucks oj wheels okay oh JS before they rotate - oh and then it had basically it was just it was a sim super light where'd you say move to when US started actually skating Palm Beach Gardens Florida Palm Beach Gardens Florida yeah so Palm Beach Gardens Florida how old were you I was eleven eleven yeah okay skate park out there nor any game Arno driveway driveway neighborhood coldest act like skateboarding was going crazy in the ADA it was like blowing up bones brigade were coming onto the scene but I didn't I hadn't seen a video but I did see neighbors now skating and was like you know got introduced to the ollie and because I saw the surf guy and what his moves were and then I just practiced those for like the summer before we moved there you know I was just doing 360s and carving and kind of like learning mixing what my sister had shown me plus what he showed me and then I asked him about other tricks too and he showed me like whatever how to pop the board in your hand okay 360s and like carving and well I'm by my grandmother's house in Melbourne where I was from the summer I there was a tennis courts and I would just go there and like cruise around and like it was I remembered it being like the best feeling in the world right oh I had been shown how a skateboard was supposed to be ridden uh-huh and then I had this tennis court and I would just go there and ride it my board for hours learning to push and learning to carve and write well Joe first did you wanna push and push [ __ ] I am I didn't know that anybody did that right until like later when I got to Florida there was a couple of buddies of mine that push [ __ ] it was like you correct them we're like no I just was like I just you know I didn't really know so you didn't know that I had the right way to do it I just was [ __ ] like first like discovered almost you gonna be like well I I knew that my I had one homie that was like the best homey and he pushed like that and I just remember thinking that looks absurd so you know you're seeing all these people in your neighborhood you said doing Ollie's and stuff were you blown away we were just like whoa dude this is a whole nother level yeah that a [ __ ] oh I was I just learned 360s my my mind was blown there was so many I was learning the names of tricks it was like basically seeing Tony Hawk pro skater video game or something right right everybody there was a there was a name and I just remember getting so hyped on the names oh you do like like you know we had someone on my street had a quarter pipe in there like yeah you you gotta learn rock and roll's and I was like that is the coolest name ever cuz Van Halen Van Halen album came out for rock and roll was just being introduced to Romero cuz you know as a kid you're listening to like whatever's on the radio yeah like for sure it's like Michael Jackson Prince and yeah I don't know you know that was kind of what I remember okay Michael Jackson all right so what at what point did you realize this board now cuz this board ain't happening no more well like the refurbished I didn't write right away I was just like still so stoked on it oh but I did have a bore I went to school and had like a 70s board and everybody had like an 80s like 10 inch wide board but I didn't care I was so stoked on skating it probably lasted I don't know six months to a year of just skating that board and just being stoked on it okay I realize like wait you know I remembered wanting to write everybody else's boards because they were way cooler that's when you knew yeah so back to your answers yeah question probably six months six months okay do you remember that board was it a no I ended up getting like I ended up getting like a hand-me-down like spray painted Agent Orange board and the in like shapes were just starting to come into the picture okay so I had an agent orange which you know a pig is like basically the bomb looking board right there oh oh the Powell boards that's called a pig okay got anyway so this agent orange board was a pig it was just basically looks shaped like a bomb uh-huh but shapes were starting to come into the picture like Ross cops and like things started having cut so girls money bumps yeah so I remembered trying to cut a Rob Ross cop tail on to my like Asian orange board what do you mean you tried to cut like you actually find it oh yeah like put the Ross Cup on and you trace the trace the tail cut out [ __ ] it all up no I didn't I mean it was good but it was a pig front with just so the Ross Scott had some like contour and shape okay because I was like 11 or 12 I wasn't like thinking about it all I was just like I wanted that I wanted something to make it more current gotcha okay right right I mean I at an early age I started like you know kind of like doing stuff myself kind of making boards and sick I don't know customizing of my stuff and everybody was kind of doing that at the time it was like customize your grip right on paying it paint right right right and so we're people getting a sponsor and stuff like your body I know anything about that I know you know I didn't know I mean at the time I didn't even know that there were mean I knew about the Bones Brigade but that was kind of it okay no like right I hadn't been introduced to Street skating at all I didn't even know that I felt like me and the kids and I hadn't seen a video yet so I felt like I heard Tony Hawk's name I heard Mike McGill's name okay and I'd seen the skull and sword board I just remembered thinking the graphics were just next-level okay those were like the and I remembered hearing the boards were like 150 bucks or something and right and I just and I you know I knew that wasn't an option so I was just like I don't know and it's not like my parents were poor or anything but it just like it's a lot of money back there well it's an skating like I'd only been skating like a year to go to them and be like I want like the most expensive board out it just didn't seem like it okay I didn't seem like I had I don't know I don't know why I didn't ask for it but it just didn't seem like it was an option yeah interesting and I wasn't even sure that I loved that I was that into skating to where I wanted that yet Wow it sounded like it thought I was the name I was into it but I wasn't really like I gotta have this board I just wanted to like hang out with the dudes in the neighborhood I didn't do what they were doing right and it didn't matter if I rode their board for a minute or mine or I made some crappy rendition of a curve of a current board right like it was all just fun riding the board yeah wasn't like I was stuck in to whose names okay I got you you know and I hadn't even been to a skate shop yet so I didn't even know I didn't even know like that all those options this is out there Yeah right I just knew what everybody in my neighborhood had there was like four guys in my neighborhood skated I knew what they had and I knew what this you know janky thing some custom but when did you get introduced to like the real world that was shop that was like that was sixth grade elementary school and in seventh grade I you know got to junior high and everybody was skating like everybody had the bangs oh like totally like Tony makes clear that the haircut right and I had I grew my hair out and I just remembered at that point I started acknowledging like whoa there's lots of people that skate and there's like a culture that goes this it's not just not just like something you do in your neighborhood it's like a light culture yeah so then I started kind of getting a little bit more into it right is out like you know started getting into you know learning about skating a bit my parents told me we're moving back Alabama no yeah I was crushing the same house no no well well they were talking about the same house but somehow in there we had sold the home or something and they were gonna move closer into the city not be out in the country and so that was like the only like grain of hope that I had but I still knew that in Florida the skate scene was going off there was like there was like youth you know punk rock shows for like young kids and I started getting into like punk rock music and stuff and and then they were moving we were moving back to Alabama and I could only imagine that it was like a very close-minded place you were devastated I was devastated I remembered thinking like honestly about like suicide like I remembered thinking like I have friends I have you know like everything is here and it's amazing and I know Alabama's gonna suck I mean it's hard for young kids it because the parents they just pick up and move and the codes are there yeah so when I got to Alabama was every bit as bad as I thought Oh was it so bad yeah I was when the sticks though I wasn't but I was the only skateboarder in my school and I was like seriously teased to such a gnarly degree and I'm not saying I'm not like you get in any fights no because I was really intimidated it was like a lot of jocks and preps and there was a lot of them and only one of me okay where I was completely by myself it was like being in the prison yard and like you know what I mean in like yeah even if I really wanted to like go for it and fight somebody like am I gonna fight them all right you know back up no yeah and so I just kind of put my head down and I didn't talk that much and I was kind of like and it was against my personality too because I was you know for the most part outgoing you know an extrovert and I just felt like I was withering and dying and then in eighth grade I remembered getting really into skating and kind of starting to see I think I saw sick boys and I saw like handrail skating and Street skating and I remembered getting like really really stoked we had a three stair rail right my right by our school and I remember wanting like you know I went a boardslide the rail went to board side the rail yeah it had you know the rails that have the rail and the sidewalk like you know you have to like rock and roll out almost yes so it was one of those rails so it's not the ideal scenario easier for frontside boardslide Stone is back yes but so my first trick was a frontside boardslide on like a three stair rail oh really yeah because the backside boardslide it was harder to turn out we had to ollie up to right so you had all you mastered the Ollie's and stuff right you'd already yeah you know what you know what um I ended up going back and visiting some of my friends in Florida okay and they were really progressive in skating and they were doing like kick flips and stuff and I just remembered like I was I'm with I think for a spring break hmm I remembered going back and everyone was like ripping oh and I remembered like getting a crash course and you got to catch up Wow I remember learning kick flips like that week seriously basically like yeah like you got a everyone around you can do kick flips the only one that came hundreds of hours yeah whatever it takes yeah I'll be in when this is done and so I remember just getting dedicated to kick flips and then that same time period I remembered learning like how to ollie over a board and to vault and I remember just you know and then I went back went back to Alabama and it seemed like that kind of you know was a little bit of a boost in confidence sick anyway yeah I was hollien stuff and yeah Ollie in the three stair maybe five stair and then I wanted a board side this rail and you did it yeah and a frontside board a little dink er right you just let me do this probably enough to fit the whole board on okay just that amount right right right oh and that's where you got the the bug huh the race yeah eighth grade eighth grade skating I just remembered seeing sick boys and realize you know kind of like you know seeing Street skating and then I just craved anything I could get my hands on that Street skating in it was like you know Streets of Fire you know yeah or wheels of fire streets on fire those videos I just remembered and then came the Powell videos you know mm-hmm and I just remember getting sewing up on all of it annal chin and just seeing the videos then went in from there went into like band this and her propaganda like seeing Frankie Hill and it was like one of the dudes that just kind of like blew my mind like yeah you can jump off anything and we had these loading docks in my town we didn't I didn't really know much about gaps but we had loading docks and I just remembered and jump ramps right jump ramp Eric came right around the same time yeah I remember riding off these loading docks for hours like seeing how long or how high I could take drops you know like I was and I was really excited about and then jump ramps I loved as well like you know seeing how high you go right yeah so you know far you could go you can make a jump ramp with like a little mellow kick and go far I never I just remember getting so psyched on skating at that point I was like I didn't think about a career now but I just thought this is all I want to do this is that's it says all I want to do like baseball is done sports are done care about anything this is all I want to do did you finish high school so going into ninth grade yeah I started almost 15 and I started kind of driving to local towns around okay and skating with all the dudes from all the you know surrounding areas and getting more into it we started filming a little bit you know just kind of and then that time like h-street videos came out uh-huh and h-street videos were unique and there they were different from pow videos because pal videos were filmed on like 16 mil and 35 35 millimeter cameras and they were like these big productions right and then when the h3 videos came out and then even when like you know the first World Industries video came out rubbish-heap those videos were filmed like on a VHS camera and they were kind of ghetto and it was like just somebody filming right and that kind of like suggested to us like hey does anybody know anybody with a video camera okay let's just get a video camera and start making videos so sick so me and my buddies just started filming and making videos oh I didn't really have any vision for it I was just like hey turn it on and pointed at me and follow me around and I'll do it and I'll do the same right and I'll do the same for you but I remember being very interested in seeing myself on film because I felt like it helped me progress anyway and it also gave me a reason to try a little bit harder than I'd planned on trying that day yeah for sure because you were able to then like create a goal yeah and then try and accomplish it and then look back on it right you know without looking back on it you give yourself a goal and yeah it feels good but you can't replay it you for sure you can and you can't even replay the feeling no you can't try a couple of times and then it kind of wears away right and then you reminisce about it but you can't talk about it with people you're just a weirdo really like I just remembered finding a fascination and filming and how alright how cool it was to be able to watch your stuff back it's true though you could just see yourself anybody's looking at you but now you can look at yourself too in the youth also like why is my arm doing this like I don't like control my heart that is actually the first thing that I noticed what's it I had a lead hand okay like I skated like really yeah and it was like it was like this and I remembered thinking like what am I doing with my hand why am i doing that yeah and it took me like a year or two to like to control that to control it and so what I started doing was grabbing my pants when I pushed and you know when pants are really baggy at the time it really helped because there was a reason for you because you had to pull this to pull up this right big sheet of fabric with your legs so you could you'd move your leg right so pants started getting bad year and at this point I used it as like I'm gonna give my front arm something to do I was pulling my pants so my knee would work and then it took down this lead arm lead our boy so in my really really young footage it's like a hand navigating everywhere it's really jacked like when they do my epically later do you guys are gonna see it and you'll be like oh that's what he's talking about the lead and oh man so you guys are filming now and everything right are you not now turning that into a sponsor me not really I mean at this point we're just kind of gonna skate shop or something where you got in there there was a skate shop but it was like a hobby shop and they weren't really sponsoring Danakil I did end up applying for a job there and they gave me a job and no not my first job my first job was at Wendy's really yeah I got a pan burgers I got caught stealing and really and they gave me community service and community service there were no like jobs working at the old folks home or sometimes were all taken there was must been a bunch of their daily so they gave me a job at Wendy's and my salary went to the city for them to use on whatever you got oh I thought you got caught stealing at Wendy's candy bar or something no no like this is ninth grade I kind of got happy it's a grant that bad guy and it got that's not that far off [ __ ] I kind of got into like I was hanging out with the all these dudes that drank and you know like stuff and I was the youngest of the crew they were like 10th 11th grade right and I was like probably just 9th grade and anyway I started drinking and started kind of like wanting to be cool and party with them right and then we would get drunk and go like break into cars in like okay actually you know it wouldn't break in we would go to apartment complexes and just open doors that if they were right you know and it was kind of like this thing that we did when we were drunk and it was I mean I know it's terrible but if there was like stuff like laying there or whatever we would steal stuff mm-hmm and I don't even know if we had a plan to sell it or do anything with it it was just like kids kids in a small town board yeah and it's time skating you know I liked it but I was starting to get caught up a little bit in high school you know and I like I was kind of like drinking on the weekends and like I don't know just kind of trying to find my way but got you got a little distracted from from you know what I might have told this story backwards I think that I think that when I got to high school I got caught up in this before I started traveling to other towns okay got you so whatever broke into some cars yeah or you know when it is some like unlocked cars and at first we would just like take change and like right like a pocketknife or it's like random dumb stuff that is undetectable and then just like most things you get carried away and then the next weekend yeah we would take a little bit more or we'd be like man there's all these unlocked cars maybe we can take something and sell it and buy things we want right poor party or what okay so I started we stole car stereos oh and so we were in theory selling like CB radios and car stereo stuff with the cops that they can oh so I don't know I think we sold a CB radio to a guy okay and that dude for whatever reason got in trouble with the law and then they they like ran the ran the like my serial number something on his on his CB radio and a CB radio came up as stolen and then they were going to you know like whatever prosecute him so he told him that he got it from us and then that was enough for them to get a search warrant and then they searched me in my homies house Wow and then and this is in ninth grade so in ninth grade ninth grade degree the cops came to school and took me out of took me out of biology or like science class and then took me out of school and handcuffs really yeah it was gnarly Wow and my parents were devastated yeah I had good parents like they taught me right from the whole way through I mean you have cops at their house urge in your home yeah they had to call my parents or in order to get into it and then they got into my room and there's just car stereos everywhere no way did your parents see these things in your room no kind of like you know I we I was youngest of four my parents were a little bit like left me to my own devices right and I was kind of just running amuck okay yeah right right but that taught you a lesson though right you did you sleep with juvie I went to proper three days in juvie it was like waiting for sentencing and then I had to go in front of the judge and it was like and then they let me out after two days of two days okay and then then I had to walk during I know I had to wait for my court case and since it was my first offense doing anything that they you know said hey we'll give you community service and probation okay so I got six months community service and in for whatever reason the old folks home was taken actually you know what I raked leaves for a little bit oh I think it was 15 at the time and I had to get like a work permit in order to serve community service how windy what were you doing at Wendy's flipping burgers or what do you know they put you on the register register are you serious yeah who's stealing cars here they all just you know this is the first time it's dawned on me that I got caught stealing and got put on the rash yeah she basically interviewed me and was like yeah you'll do great on the registry oh my god but you didn't you learned quite at that point I remember it's actually I remember sitting in the like metal the room with the metal toilet and they're like oh yeah yeah going like I have to have crushed my parents I just has to be the worst right and then I remember when my parents picked me up from juvie and it was like the first like half an hour of the car ride was like completely silent oh yeah and then it was like we are so disappointed in you right and they didn't even need to say anything to me you knew how disappointed they were in me and I knew that I basically had to spend the next phase of my life like making it up to them and not being such a derelict yeah right so shortly after that though I still hung with the same crew okay so I didn't completely snap out of that but I just knew I wasn't stealing anymore but I remember around summertime ninth grade nice summer ninth grade yeah one of my friend's parents were out of town we partied at their house it was like 2:00 in the morning and it was like crazy night like everybody you know like got wasted and was acting a fool like my girlfriend at the time got drunk I was throwing up and I just remembered it kind of sobering up like late and I went outside to smoke a cigarette and remember like just kind of sitting there and then like I remember watching the cigarette burn as I smoked it yeah and I imagined that the cigarette was like my life oh and I had this epiphany that if I didn't do something with my life it was just gonna burn out and be over burn your fingers yeah burn my fingers right anyway I just remembered like that as soon as I had that thought it was my last drag of a cigarette I threw his cigarette down I stepped on it and I was like I'm done smoking I'm done drinking I'm done with this life really and I'm gonna do something with myself I knew that to make something of my life I was gonna have to apply myself and give it all I had right or I I was gonna be in the same garage or a different garage when you're 35 years old yeah I knew it nothing was gonna change right and for some reason that became crystal clear I remembered stepping on the cigarette and then I went I went in to go down and go to sleep and I remember laying there in bed going like getting super motivated that I'm gonna do something with my life I want to be a pro skateboarder and I just remembered thinking to myself very clearly I'm I'm gonna focus on that and so all my friends woke up the next morning and everybody's like oh they're all telling stories about like what happened the night before and I remember like I waited till my turn and I was like hey guys like I know this might sound weird but I'm done and they were like what do you mean I was like I'm done drinking I'm quitting and they're like oh if I have a dollar for every time I quit I'd be a millionaire tomorrow yeah and I was like not I I really am done Wow they were like they were like oh right yeah yeah you'll be back whatever you know it's just like there's no use in trying to convince these guys that I'm making this change for sure so I had there was one other buddy at my high school that skated that was like into it and I remembered the next month like when you know the start of the year or something or even maybe even before the summer was over reaching out to him and trying to go skating with him and then he was you know kind of a loner and he didn't really his name was Adam he didn't really have somebody that he skated with the icy skater with his cousin maybe but he didn't have somebody that was like his good skate homey and so it was like I called him up and I was like hey let's go skating and we just heard skating together oh and he didn't drink and he didn't like he was you know super focused on skating so it was like I didn't and I was done and so did you pretty much switch your friends then did you hang out with those people again or no I mean they called me for the next few weekends and then they just stopped calling cuz I you know and then as soon as I like befriended my buddy Adam yeah and we started skating all the time together it was just our whole world was about that and like we played some video games like at a time skater died the video game came out in like Zelda came out all the Mario's were out yeah so we would play video games we don't play video games watch videos I was like my round rubbish-heap time that came out remembered we would just watch those videos over and over and over and over and and we got really into skating together and then we started I started traveling around to the local okay areas like 25 miles this way 30 miles that way right that same year I got a motorcycle oh I got a motorcycle so I could drive I could get around okay right and so I Drive my buddy Adam what about you you would go nuts to butts or what no no I didn't ditch him so I I think I've always been a little bit of a hustler so we okay I don't know if he told his mom or I told his mom that I was 16 and so she let us drive his mom his car okay she let us drive her car she thought I had my license I think he was like Jamie's got his license he's 16 right and I didn't have my license oh and I was just like I was just like yeah I got this I got this and I'd driven a car before yeah and I driven my motorcycle before so I was like yeah and I think she'd see me driving a motorcycle so she was like ah he's got this right right I think I was still only 15 and I think we told her this for like a whole year till you walked in you're like I got my license no no we never told her and there was a few sketchy instances one time we were driving to so we lived I lived in Dothan Alabama which is South Alabama just above like Panama City Beach anyway Columbus Georgia was like almost two hours away and there was a skate park they're called warehouse skates anyway we were driving to warehouse skates and it was raining we went down like we're on this back road and we were down this big-ass hill and I caught in her car it was like a Mazda Protege it started hydroplaning and I didn't know what to do in a hydroplane stereo and we hydroplane all the way down this hill and I remembered the hill went to a bridge a narrow bridge on either side and I either side was like a 60-foot ravine and I remember thinking like this is it we're gonna die right here because I don't know what to do so I didn't really do anything and it turns out that that's the right thing yeah I left my foot off the gas and we hide your plane for a while and then like it just kind of came and we were kind of sideways and then it just came out of it and we were just driving and then we didn't talk for like 30 minutes and I remember thinking that you know I'm 15 I don't have a license this is crazy obviously if I had totaled the car killed my buddy or whatever be like I'd be in jail for life right I don't know I don't know what happened to me but so you guys were going to parks and going to stay yeah there was no real parks in our area so you had to drive about two hours you're meeting people we've got your moon why where Pete it was awesome right oh that's totally awesome and then sometimes I would ride my motorcycle to those towns if like he couldn't go or his monitor car whatever but it was just another option for us to general my buddy Billy lived in the next town uh you know he had a car and then he was like a year two older than me and he would drive us to South Florida and like we would go like six eight hours oh no stepping it up yeah ever go to Kona we did go to Kona and we was in that in me ye know old estate market Florida okay go ahead we went to Daytona Beach and I wanted to go and like compete in this contest in Daytona oh and that was 1991 it was the NSA qualifiers and I remembered going to that contest thinking like oh I'm gonna enter you know like I remember just feeling all confident about it like you were gonna win not gonna win I didn't think I was I wasn't that delusional you know I mean even though I was doing well in my like local area and I was like as progressive as anybody else in the area okay I knew that there was better dudes in it out there than me okay we met John man Tessie that trip o-jama Tessie was like blowing up you know he wrote for New Deal at the time and it was like he was a big deal and it was super cool to us it was rad and then I went remembered going to the skate park it's a stone edge wasn't named of this remember going to the skate park is that the one with the bull with a spine like had like yellow edge and being yeah I have yellow edging and I don't know if it had a spine but it has a center section that you could launch and it was like about a three or four foot section it was kind of like a horseshoe almost yeah but they had a street section there and the you know the qualifiers were on the street section right and Andrew Reynolds was there he was really little like I was four I was 15 the boss Andy he was and he was probably yeah he was probably only 11 or 12 at the time but he was super good right and then Dave Duran was there King Gale was there a star-studded I mean all the best all the best guys in Florida were there there yeah they were there okay and I remember going there and like I mean whatever hocus pocus and you know the a treat videos had been out for a year so but I remember going there and seeing King Gale do a 540 ollie on the quarter pipe Oh hoping wow you know I was like you know I had all this like I had all this macho that I'm done I'm gonna inner I want a place and I want to go to like I want to go to like the you know the next qualifier and I want to go to the finals light am finals right and I remembered seeing Dave Turin and King Gayle and Andrew and a couple other you know Clyde singleton was there all these guys and I just remembered thinking like I got no business out there and I just like I entered okay I entered and then I went and kind of like did some practice and like saw everybody and I was like I got no business here you didn't even go then you didn't even do your run and I went and like uninjured yeah I was like I'm gonna see you guys next year Wow I'm not I'm not ready for this I got no business here so what did you do you then in came Gail I mean I remember Ken Gail and Dave Duran were the dudes I think Dave during won the contest okay Dave durin they had a vert wall basically on the street course and I remembered he did an ollie to fakie above the ver wall and it was like an eight-foot wall and it was like probably four feet of vert or something but I just remembered being blown away and I remember to Andrew Reynolds like maybe Front's 180 and backs 180 the pyramid and at the time like I had never even skated up here never know I'd seen a pyramid but I mean I'd skated one a little bit of hip okay but I hadn't skated a pyramid like that and I was just like there was too much for me to take in you had a small rail there and okay I just I don't know you know what it really was I was just intimidated these guys were like they were skating like vets they were good right yeah and some of them we were the same age like me and King Gail and Dave Darren are probably almost all at same age but because I was from Alabama they were on a different riot totally they've been skating around each other and maybe even a contest sir here a while and I was like you know did you come back next year I did you act the night did you and did you the next year enter yeah the next year was in Orlando okay I came back and I think I got third place third place yeah so in that year in that year I basically was like okay I'm gonna come back next year but I'm gonna be ready so then over the next twelve months I've skated contests and okay travelled around the southeast you know were you picking up any sponsors or anything yeah so I got a job at the local hobby shop skate shop right bike shop okay and we were filming each other more and more this time and I made a couple VHS you know sponsor me video right and I and you know we I worked at the shut up I worked at the shop and I was the buyer like I had to buy the cool stuff so they like let me you know pick and at the time it was like real was just getting started you know I bought some blind stuff like oh the original skull and banana and all those boards right came out the not escape oom bored anyway all that stuff around that time period all the basically the biggest board graphics that collectors are sought after in the early 90s right I bought those for the shop okay and I'd either ridden them or you know kind of sold them to my buddies sure but you know I think I was riding I was starting to like ride the board's from the shop and then and then like not always telling the boss but I think I was like put herself on the team I think I like put myself does the only guy in the shop I'll be shop but anyway at this point I sent a video to deluxe oh yeah okay and Tommy's brother Tony was the sales guy for deluxe and Tony was a very generous guy and he was like you know he was like oh you're you know very outgoing and like we love to get real board's real was just kind of starting and growing and he's like we'd love to get real boards in the shop Oh and so like overnight I went from buying like a couple of real boards to as soon as they put me on like a flow program right I was buying like 50 to 60 percent real boards I closed all the boards it was basically like a real outlet right yeah it was like we were a real skate shop was oh it was like it was like half it was like half blind and you know the world stuff and then the other half was real so anyway I was buying you know real stuff and they sent me they started sending packages but they would send them to my house which felt very special yeah and they'd only be like one or two but still totally so the first package I ever got was the hanging Klansmen board oh wow empty bondage in Thibault oh there's his name again being brought up on the show gets brought up a lot he's the best guy I know yeah I know so anyway they they were flown me boards here and there and then that year you know I was going to the to the Hamm qualifiers in Orlando and I reached out to Tony and I was like hey could you guys like you know help me with entry fee stuff and he's like well how about you enter this contest if you can if you can take care of this one if you make it to the next cuz how the old am finals used to work were you had to qualify in the southeast okay and then you had to go to the East Coast qualifiers oh and then after that it sent you to the finals is saying to the finals so it was Orlando winston-salem North Carolina at Eastern vert and then Texas okay Park skatepark at Houston yeah oh well so that was the circuit and it was like I think you could see it in Thrasher Magazine he like told you where to go oh right and so you know I went to Orlando first and Clyde singleton and all the guys that were there the year before were there again but it was kind of like that seventh grade thing where I wasn't like ready the first year and came back and now I had confidence oh I think I learned to Benihana and I was bringing the Benihana to the to the contest yeah at any rate I did okay I did okay I did okay and I I qualified third riding a real board okay and so I called Tony you know I was like hey I qualified third I'm making at winston-salem and he's like okay I'll talk to Jeff Clint or I'll let you talk to Jeff Clinton at the time you know Jeff's one of the original founders of the deluxe and real okay I talked to Jeff and Jeff's like yeah we're stoked on you so you know you're buying boards for the shop you're the buyer and you know you're riding the boards and you did you did good ripping right and at the time like it was kind of like a contest was like almost like kind of something for your resume ya mean meanwhile I was sending them a video every single month are you sure yeah every month every month and it would be like like I remember one video and this was like VHS like like master you were just filming yourself filming we were filming there's a couple stories stories here one story was at my high school the only guy we knew with a video camera he had to babysit his little brother after school so we were like screw it I'm coming over to your house I'm gonna film I'm gonna film in your driveway Oh his name was Jay Bush anyway we was me and my buddy Adam mm-hmm my straightedge buddy Adam yeah we went to Jay Bush's house because he had the only video camera yeah the only video camera that I knew of and we went to his house and we drugged out his garbage can I jumped between his driveway in his neighbor's driveway I did lines up and down his driveway I filmed pretty much a whole video that one day in his driveway and you sent it to real yes so but but then one other day he came out of the house and went to a local mini ramp with us okay so one of my videos was and in the background his brothers I mean his yeah his younger brother was like maybe nine or something mm-hmm and I remembered he came out of the house and he had on the pajamas with with the TV yeah and I was like I was like dude you're real big to have those pajamas I just remembered being stoked that we could as a pair I remembered being stoked on the fact that my buddy Jay would film us in the gym yeah and then my other buddy was like my I Adam was like my height man the footage would be like yeah Jamie yeah do you have any of the spiders do you have to I mean some of this stuff that'd be amazing I mean it right I talked to Patrick you know they helped them with the musky episode with Reynolds episode he talked about doing that play later next season Oh sick so maybe some of that stuff got show up yeah yeah but and maybe at least the lead hand to lead hit right yeah right anyway so early on so that sponsor me video is composed of his driveway and then my buddy's mini ramp a my buddy didn't know how to make a mini ramp so the mini ramp has transitions at the bottom but then it's just like a ditch oh Jesus and you could in there was and so you can't really grind the coping very much so it pretty much was me learning melons to fakie and like like bone out Ollie's to fakie and all right right so I think I do like 15 alleys to fakie in this video and they're all in it's like VCR to VCR slow-motion I think the video was at 18 minutes did they say to you yo Jamie bite it they no they didn't say anything I think probably Tony was the only guy watching it because he was just like I write and show anybody this right and that was one of them and then the next one I would send him another one in a month later oh wow yeah I think I was naked in one of them was going all out you want to get on the team oh you know what would you say just happened to be on the tape now that you asked that Kelly I don't know it yeah alright here's another one for you hmm one of those videos maybe even that one the naked one was the one in Baker 2 in the end when it says skateboarding has gotten so serious we're gonna leave this section black okay oh yeah yeah and gosh it's so bad so I remember one of my party tricks was getting naked I was a sober kid but still had no problem getting naked it was like I always like bill the sober bill weeks wild on the streets and so I remember skating in Atlanta before I moved same summer as the like NSA NSA contest series okay I remember we were skating a school yard and for some reason it made sense to me there was like a bump to a fence and for some reason it made sense to me that I was gonna ollie the bump to fence naked right of course I don't know and I still don't even know why that makes any sense were you were you were you shoeless or do we know shoes on I had shoes on and I had a hat on backwards but I had no shirt on and a belt anyway yeah so it was like you know I didn't wear underwear at the time so my pants and at the time pants were sagging you know like you're like blind cutoff shorts or something yeah and in Atlanta was so hot like in that south it was so hot in the summer that you really wear underwear it was like so I was like only one layer away from being naked anyway might as well as well just take it a drop the trip anyway so I filmed and it's like a long extended line so yeah it's even better the guys just building you know I I know it was the thing starts off okay with me the fence was kind of like bent down and it was like a bump to the fence it was a really good spot yeah I think it started with me Eiling over the fence into the bank and then I remembered like maybe doing a shove it on flat or a couple shove it's okay and there's this one part there's this one part where I'm kind of like not really sure what to do and I start like scratching my leg why am i scratching my leg I think I was just like uncomfortable obviously I'm gonna take it yeah yeah I'm at a school yard truck which I you know I'm naked get arrested yeah I was 16 those I don't know what that means but at any rate I screws around and then I'm pushing to the bump to fence and I've been e Hana the pump to fail and and then for some reason I carve around and then I'm like flapping my Weiner all over the place and all of this is in the video seriously oh that's in the sponsor me video you just said [ __ ] it yeah I had a whole sponsor me video it was like everything we filmed in everything I filmed in the summer right and then this was like the funny [ __ ] at the end okay I know it doesn't even really make sense it seems insane how many of you got line no I think I just did it that try no and I think I was so naive that I thought they'll think of it as funny just like me and my buddies do right you know and I never really heard anything negative about it I think Tony told me like what the [ __ ] dude you're naked or something but he didn't even trip on it that hard and so and you know and I don't even know if anybody was even seeing my tapes at deluxe I think I felt like I was just sending them into thin air we didn't have any you know what and you know I think I knew that so that's why I sent one every month I was like I was like if I up my odds right by sending a video every month to the same place eventually Thibault or somebody buddy right mommy somebody's gonna be like what the hell and especially if you say if you send this line and when you're naked maybe you'll get you know you know what maybe that's what it was maybe I just had a reaction right I just wanted like right I don't know what I was thinking but anyway I think that and I don't know for certain that they were gonna put the naked footage in to Baker too but I remember catching wind so they found the tape so make you so here's the story I was told I wasn't close with Mickey at the time didn't really know I knew of him and I knew him and I'd met him before okay but apparently the Baker guys were visiting the lux and they came across the video gotcha and got the video and they're like oh we should check this out or we should you know we should watch this or whatever right you know and those guys are all about causing hijinks or whatever so they got the video and the video was just put in what was it the whole sponsor me video we're just the naked gloves the whole sponsor do the whole sponsor me video yeah because in the video if you still go back and watch it it said after black yeah this is after the videos yeah it's like the credits right I just remember thinking like I know these guys I filmed some Andrews tricks in this video right and I filmed other tricks in the video why would they yeah why would they put me on blast right and I have nothing to do with this company right okay at the time I'd had an attorney friend that helped me with my audio contract oh I think yeah I was I just gotta know it was like you know out of America and into audio it was the first time I'd ever had an attorney do anything for me yeah anyway I call this guy and I'm like hey I got a question for you yeah this is footage of me apparently in a in a skateboard video and it's like from like it's like from like five years ago or something seven years ago and I have nothing to do with this company right what are my rights yeah and he's like oh yeah they can't use that oh and I was like really I was like so what do you do he's like you send him a letter right now and they and in they have to recall production if they use it and if they haven't if they haven't done it yet if they haven't put it out yet they have to take it out and I was like oh that makes me feel like they're using your likeness so no I called pear will endure and said hey sorry to call this sorry to do this buddy but I just you know caught wind that my sponsoring videos in the Baker video right and then I just called you know my attorney friend that and got some legal advice and you know he made me aware that you know you can't use this without my permission and I absolutely do not give you permission to use this oh and I'd like you to take it out right and he was like you know he's like it's about to go out for duplicating like that day or the next day and he's like and this is like the third thing we've had to deal with it's been like music and like us using something of Chad Fernandez and I've been in a legal fight with him and like it just kind of went on and on and it was basically Jay was just mix you know he was just like you know causing high jinks in but you didn't call Andrew or anybody like to try to be like yo well like Andrews role in the company at that point like he was like star rider yeah but he wasn't like the guy calling the shots yet okay gotcha you know and I didn't and also like Andrew and I were buddies and I didn't want not like we're buddies but we were like you know friends and I didn't want it to be like me calling him out you know and I felt like the best way to get it taken out was to call the business guy got you okay know the guy who was really gonna care if my attorney called him or not okay you know what I mean so I just thought it through and sat there and was like what should I do yeah yeah yeah yeah and then I thought don't call Jay Strickland then my phone conversations gonna be in the next video okay so I was like that does not gonna do me any good he's just gonna love me calling him right right right so I don't want to give him the satisfaction of it yeah so I just called the guy who ran the distribution that was eventually going to be dealing with the legal legality of it right and it you know it worked yeah he got the thing taken out they took it out and then they put two minutes of black and it says skateboarding has gotten so serious that this section has to be black and that was referring to that was him trying to like yeah make fun of jab at me okay for not wanting my sponsor in there now people knew that this was a jab at you or its people on the inside some people knew and then the story got out I heard boards like her and people talked about it but yeah I didn't care I mean I rather that be black then some yeah footage of me that you know was insane in the first place right right just imagine that if no you got a recent release the whole part yeah the naked part for sure yeah yeah well look at Josh now he just it's all adult or naked I know naked too in thing if you if you saw this footage you'd have to blur a lot out right I'm very I'm very liberal with showing the Wang in this video it's like I'm hopping it around and oh my we thought it was the funniest thing ever you know we didn't right I don't know I feel like it went through this time where being naked was funny right you know maybe it's you know it is funny though we hug it is fun it is kind of fun fun and I remembered you know like meeting new people and their crews didn't think it was funny and it was like I just asked why like why are you doing that well I think I think it was like what Chris said maybe it's to be noticed or me know I mean I mean you know you're an extrovert when you're like getting doing it right and over time I realized that that just made me look like a weirdo not really necessarily like it didn't you know it doesn't necessarily help right but someone would notice it did you ever say to Andrew and afterwards did you ever say yo man like what was up with that no never talked about it maybe yeah maybe interesting I don't know but you know what I think he just said oh that was Jay you know what it was it was Jay Jay that was Jays mo you know he just wanted to stir it stir it up right yeah you know and without the permission of yeah of course stirs it up even more yeah for sure but he didn't really care about legality of yes you know I mean it that was on pair he was like there to just have a good time right right you know cause [ __ ] so Wow whatever had I mean I love that so anyway yes since sponsoring videos to deluxe yeah a lot right in they paid for my entry fee in North Carolina at the winston-salem contest which Andrew was out again and Jim gagney and like all the guys on the East Coast then were there Oh how'd you do with that contest I got second second yes I went third to second so it was there's only one place left to go Johnson from winston-salem and Virginia but but winston-salem oh yeah when she said but I think he was a few years younger and I don't think he was in that he wasn't in that contest because you had to do this whole qualifying thing you know if he would have been 13 or so he wouldn't have been going down to Orlando actually he just started skating probably that year oh maybe so the next stop my next stop was Texas so I went home and saved up money I was only 17 at that 17 at the time gotcha and I quit school I kind of got in a little more trouble at school okay oh and I ended up quitting school and oh man when I quit school I didn't be saying this but it was the best because I used to have to go to school every day all I thought about was skating all I thought about was skating and going to California yeah but I had a couple of friends that lived in other areas that either didn't go to school or they were graduate they were at us yeah you got the way for your friend to get out of school go skate and I would do that too and I would like or if someone like skip school that day I would be like no me and you were still saving up money to go to text no and it isn't no this point I wasn't I wasn't yet so I actually I hadn't even gone to the qualifiers yet this was the focus of before all that okay got you we're jumping around hey it's all good anyway anyway anyway I am my dad knew that my mom had signed me out oh and he had said to live in my house you have to go to school or you have to get a job and I looked at him and I said is it either/or and he said yes it's either/or and at this time we were skating everyday and I went to this one Burger King and I was like I ate double cheeseburgers every day my buddies went there and I was like I know everybody at Burger King I'm getting a job at Burger King and I'm like plus last year I worked at Wendy's you know and I did I didn't say this earlier but I did good at Wendy's and I did a good job yeah I had pride what I was doing there so after my community service they just kept me on and I stayed another three to six months after my committee service was up I didn't make manager but the manager I feel like maybe had a crush on me you know I was she was like 30 and I wished she seemed really old at the time okay well I got the job at the skate shop so I worked at the skate shop so I went from Wendy's to the skate shop and the skate shop ended up saying hey weren't the skateboard things not really working for us we're not making any money okay I didn't because I was riding too many of the board right we're losing money yeah I don't know why losing money those blind Jason Lee boards seemed real popular but for some reason where the books aren't proven we're always out of them I don't understand yeah at any rate so then there was like that you know six month window and then we're her King and then my dad said you got to work at this so I got the person signing me up at Burger King but Wendy's I was running the register that was a lot easier at Burger King I was I was like Don whopper I was on the sandwich sandwich detail would you steal like would you eat sometimes that would nibble this is before all the the contest right there's no I was kind of doing the local contest but it was before the summer where I went to the NSA right okay so this is leading up to the summer okay right and so what I needed was I needed a car and so once I had to get a job or my dad said I couldn't live there right I was like okay I'll get a job at Burger King and I'll save up for a car and my dad was always legit and saying that if you pay for half of anything I'll meet you halfway oh that's yeah so he was like if you save up half the money for the car I'll pay the other half and so my aunt uncle had like an Isuzu I mark and it was like maybe $1700 or two grand Wow and I remember thinking like oh I only need a grand and so I worked at Burger King enough to save up a loaner dad take well I kind of was still working part-time because I was skating right and then once I realized that it was just going so slow I was like a couple of months had gone by and I stole some car risk there you know no skilling days [ __ ] maybe a chicken nugget here or there but I wasn't I wasn't in the stealing hi I'm just kidding that's all right yeah I deserve it so at any rate I am i started working double a split shift so I would go and help make biscuits in the morning and do breakfast and then I would skate skate home for a few hours like take a nap or I don't watch television or something and watch wheel of fortune and then go back to back to work and then work like the evening oh and so I started getting money quickly and then I also started getting money to travel to the other areas around me okay you know skating and I was able to buy boards and oh your was amazing great yeah then I saved a gran and my dad met me halfway and I bought my aunt and uncle's car Oh and then I was and that's how I got to the contest okay you know right so we drove to those car did you drive to the Houston one - yeah theory at this point was I was dreaming about California every all day and night all day and night yeah so at this point it was like I Oh like what do I got it you're halfway there in Houston so all right into my the the mindset was qualify in Orlando okay winston-salem qualifying winston-salem for Houston if I make it to Houston I'm halfway there and I'm going out right in my Isuzu zy mark this is like a Ford Fiesta oh it's like really small and crappy okay gotcha but it was a car nonetheless a B right absolutely day so I had some buddies that I'd met in Atlanta mm-hmm and this is how I quit Burger King to Soho I put in I put in notice no I put in like a week noticed and take one day off from work the band for one one Mario Rubik Abba the drummer of the band Danny Mahoney was like a hardcore band okay he was like a straightedge guy but anyway I was really into the band for one one okay there were Kelly was into 401 - I was really into the band for one one and I wanted to go see them they're playing in Atlanta okay I had a couple of buddies that I'd met in Atlanta from like a trip there it's you know met them somewhat met them at a spring break or something okay in Florida anyway I was gonna go to Atlanta and hang out with my friends that I'd met there skate dudes and and I was gonna go to the four in one concert okay it's like on a Friday night right and I put in with my boss so I was like hey I really want to go I think it might even have been a two weeks and she's like oh well we'll see you know Friday's our busiest night we'll see how busy we are that night and then I'll let you know oh and I'm like well I just want to let you know this is really important to me I really want to go and I had planned a weekend in Atlanta and it was gonna be awesome and right I was gonna get to see this band yeah noon came around and I knew that I had to leave Atlanta was about three three and a half hour drive basically you were going there regardless okay and so lunch time came around all right went to her right before lunch and I was like hey I just want to remind you this is the day that I have you know I have something going on in Atlanta I need to take off Wow which one let you know I had to take off by like 11 or something in anyway so 11 comes around I'm like hey I need to take off and she's like we're slammed wait till we're done and then lunch time came around and then lunch time it was like you can't leave in the middle of a lunch rush it's like from 11:00 to 1:00 I was like there's like suckering me into sitting here all day you could see it about my late yeah I just went to and I was like look I gotta go and she's like you can't leave I'm sorry you can't have the time off you can't leave today and I remember going back to my the Whopper station and I remember I remember having this moment where I was just like you know now or never I was just like [ __ ] it ya know and I just stood there for a second thinking about like how fun it was gonna be to hang out my buddies and see fall in one and all the what all the orders from the drive-thru were coming in and like the monitor was just out know and I just remember watching it stack up and not saying anything then people started yelling they're like what we need this we need this is like out of a movie it is a movie I just stood there for an extended period of time it was probably only like three or four minutes but three or four minutes in a rush seriously you have pressure yeah the line is stacking up I remember just like taking my shirt off like all slow and casual and just like setting it down and then it's like walking out and she's like where are you going I'm like I told you weeks ago yeah and I was just like I'm done I quit Wow anyway I left and then you don't know what happened who you don't know who man the whopper station and the whopper station nobody act it was stacked up it kind of felt good that it was stacking up I felt like it was you know it felt like often spacers yeah yeah I love that anyway so I quit Burger King yeah went to Atlanta met some buddies in Atlanta and I'm like I'm moving to Atlanta oh yeah so I went back and I already had the car got the car yeah I had the car I was like summer it was almost summertime Atlanta was like these dudes were it was gonna be summer in Atlanta oh gosh stoked and so after the Florida Florida font is Florida symp they're qualifiers or whatever there was one in winston-salem right and went to Atlanta for a month or so waiting for that winston-salem one and it was like half not halfway but like on the way the way way to winston-salem hung out there my friend Devin my friend Devin let me stay at his house for the summer time and it was epic it was so fun like every moment there were so many dudes that skated there and it was a big city no job no school no I mean I got a car and you got a car yeah cruising right I didn't have much money so I quickly started running out of money and then I was like hey what should we do and then we all got a job telemarketing we won't even tell them the marketing we weren't even telemarketing we were doing it on like we were doing cold calls surveys oh god yeah it was rough you got hung up on a lot probably or got called on you get hung up on nine out of ten that's crazy but then it becomes this like gnarly challenge too like yeah how can you get somebody on the phone it's like you're fishing it's like a job yeah yeah right and you're like out there and you're like I got a bite right and then I started working on my charm as well I started working on my own voice yeah yeah not even a voice it's more like technique it was like me and my buddy Sean Sean young he wrote for antihero unrealistic but anyway he did it and we would sit next to each other and we would like challenge each other to who was gonna do what and I would be like we're gonna I'm gonna get this many calls and you had to oh the only thing you had to do was make X amount of calls a night oh that's it you had a certain number yet a quota that's yeah and so it was kind of like you didn't care if you got hung up on but it always felt better I mean rather than just because they give you a list of phone numbers to call or is it like a little list you don't know their name you just have a list of numbers and then you're again give me give us a pitch do you remember the whole thing if you called me right now I would be like mana I would be like let me do it hello hi can I please speak to the man of the house this is speaking oh hi how are you tonight I'm all right who's this well no generally generally from there you'd be like and sometimes I would say like I actually don't really have that good of a job but I would start with I would just say that I get hung up on a let's just say I get hung up on a lot on this job but my goal is to is to is to ask you a few questions about your laundry habits or whatever and the funny thing is is there was three of us that did it in the beginning it was me Sean and my buddy Hurley okay we were the three that moved to California together oh and Hurley lasted one day one day yeah he was like this is terrible too much rejection and he went to the bathroom and never came back get a pack of smokes and he basically and I think he maybe asked me for my keys to get something out of my car and he just went to go to sleep in my car and just level he slept for like we worked an eight-hour day he worked he went and slept like six hours in the car now was and then you guys were at the time like saying like we're gonna go to Cal we're gonna go to college all three of you were in percent we were currently on maybe not so much Oh Hurley was this other job Hurley was from New Hampshire yeah I was just gonna ask you like wasn't Sean in Hurley so Sean was from Alabama and his dad moved to New Hampshire for like a year his family moved to New Hampshire for a year he met Hurley in New Hampshire and then Sean when they moved back they moved to Atlanta Oh and so Hurley and Sean stayed in touch and when they graduated high school Hurley was like oh I'm gonna come down and stay the summer with you in Atlanta and so Hurley came down and stayed the summer and then I was there and I knew Sean from Alabama and then you know we skated together in this crew and Sean was just like the funniest dude to be around and the funnest guy who's so carefree and easygoing it was just always a blast and then he heard about our garage plan of moving to California he's like I'm in oh there you go yeah so right before we left timing belt blue on this Suzu I mark so broke 500 bucks - no I thought that and it was 1200 or 1700 dollars total that's probably like all both good amount of money and so we all thought to ourselves like okay does do I just pay this with all the money I have and I borrow 200 bucks from you guys and I'm dead broke and then we stay here another three months for me to get the money they were like they were like oh that's not gonna work because you got the am finals in Texas we got to be there by this date so we were like what should we do and everyone's like ah let's just all pitch in and then we'll survive on less oh so we divided 1700 bucks three ways and then right then I pretty much gave my car to the three of us yes like our car right right and then it was only like a week or two later we left for Texas oh wow so you got no time to raise more money we were just like and we were just committed to going right so there was this one big gap I wanted to try before I left it was like you know I might not I don't know what else think I might not ever come back anyway I just was like I gotta try before we leave and I remember talking about it you know remembered you know the guys smoking cigarettes in the garage and us like talking about this trip to California but I was like I gotta try the bucket gap right I gotta try before we leave anyway I went to the Buckhead gap and I didn't go fast enough oh no and it was it was a gap over like some bushes and a sidewalk and then the sidewalk was about a two foot drop to the street Oh which is kind of weird for the yeah yeah definitely not up to code right anyway so I remember not going fast enough and kicking out and one foot landed on the sidewalk on but the other foot landed in the street and that meant the foot landing in the street took most of the impact and so I blew my heel out and it was like the worst heel bruise and I at that point I really hadn't had a hue bruise where it was black and blue and my leg was you know shaking and I was like hey so I blew my heel out I thought it broke my foot he was that bad and we were leaving for Texas and like within less than a week they're like [ __ ] it let's just go straight to hell no no I was like I just gotta go but I'm probably not gonna be able to skate my heel bruised so bad so it was kind of not a good idea but you know I thought I would do it or whatever no when you're 17 course you know danceable yeah anyway so I we left for Texas yep and I was supposed to hook up with the real guys when we got there and according to Jeff Clinton one of the owners at the time he was like yeah they'll hook you up with place stay you know you can stay in their hotel whatever dudes coming yeah naked dudes coming anyway and they'd probably already gotten the like lowdown on who I was somebody probably seen my sponsoring video and gone like oh this guy I can't believe we're giving him anyway so I went to the Texas contest we got there a day or two early we didn't have any we didn't have real much money I somehow we left with a microwave we left we I don't know who had the microwave in Southtown like what is a weirdest thing no we brought a microwave can here is our theory hot dogs are the cheapest thing on the planet and all we need to cook hot dogs everywhere we go is a microwave you don't even need to technically cook them they're already cooked yeah they just seem real gross yeah so we thought if we have a microwave and one of my buddies had a small microwave and I remembered we took that and we put it in the trunk of my car you're in your little Suzu you got your microwave in the back you you're buying hot dogs so we we got to Texas a couple days early okay yeah but yeah and then the real you're supposed to hook up with the real dudes so let's look over the real dude that was the hope the hope did that hope come true or did you guys end up being in this in the zoo and we slept in the bowl at the skate park oh you did yeah so we got there a couple down Sonora Parker indoor / outdoor park so they have an outdoor these were they had an outdoor and an indoor but the mini ramp contest was at their indoor park it was a skate park at Houston there was two parks okay one was an outdoor that had a bowl an outdoor mini ramp and a street course and the old Texas vert ramp Oh Craig Johnson all those guys okay so that was the park the street contest was that they had a little mini Street course at the mini ramp indoor park okay but and Jeff Taylor I met him then Oh sick anyway we got there a couple days early mm-hmm and we just camped out in the bowl the dudes run the park really we're like hey we don't got a place to stay I'm entering the contest oh you know whatever we're gonna link up with you know the real guys and hopefully you know hope please stay right so we slept in the bowl for a night or two okay live by mosquitos oh it was August in Houston oh yeah it was rough Wow that was the biggest problem I mean because sleeping outside you know yeah yeah I mean I don't know why we slept on concrete though because we didn't have sleeping mats I didn't have a sleeping bag out of blanket Oh got a blanket and slip on concrete all right any rate though I didn't care I was like we're here we're doing it my heel was really still bruised - okay I had it like wrapped up and I was icing it and nursing it and right and I really couldn't skate that much yeah and the contest is like a day or two away so I wasn't very hopeful on how it's gonna skate I knew it was gonna be bad kind of crummy okay but whatever I'm still going to California yeah anyway so everyone starts coming into town we start seeing everybody and I start seeing like you know like whatever King Gale Dave durin all the guys that I'd seen at the year before and the guys some of them that I'd befriended okay and and then all the guys from California were coming out and the real team came and at the time it was Moses Tony Ferguson Wow Kelly Byrd Joey bast oh my god and a couple other guys and I they were all really good you know but was it weird for you to go up to them deck hey guys I'm much for sure but was it really and it was it wasn't really that way or stay with you guys is this it wasn't really that weird in the beginning but once I tried to talk to them yeah they made it very clear they didn't want to really have anything to do with me they were like they were cordial but they weren't asking me questions you know when you have a conversation with somebody like oh so where are you from they're like be like hi I'm Jamie I you know I get real boards hey I live in Alabama and they'd be like cool cool no anything more you know and then I think the way I carried myself like you know it was probably only a month a month before this that I filmed the naked sponsor me video okay so I think that I was like trying to like you know like whatever like trying too hard I think I think that that's a basic okay if if you had to put a title on the first few years of my career probably my trying hard that's a turn-off it could be trying too hard and connotations could have been like everywhere I went that's like a sign above my head trying too hard here comes trying too hard with these new guys or these other guys like Joey passing them have you heard of them before or wasn't no it was the first time I'd ever seen him you mean Tony Ferguson like you know yeah there hadn't been you know a girl or a real video that you know girl don't start til 93 yeah so this is 92 summer in 92 so he still rides for real oh yeah plan B so yeah he quit he quit that to go to plan yeah yeah and then girl would have he would have been like 94 593 so he would have gone from real to plan B to girl like anyway whatever I didn't know who they were but I went I watching him skate I remembered Tony only tried like really hard technical stuff like where the other guys like wanted to make stuff you know Tony would try like switch flip switch nose main right a man who had only I'd be like I mean he might be good but I haven't seen him make that yet yeah yeah yeah but I just remembered thinking when he doesn't make it an employee mind I know I just remember thinking like who would ever try that that would take forever I just stayed off and do like a 180 over the hip right anyway my skating was extremely basic okay I did you know I did three flips over the hip and your back foot flips and other than that I did some maybe grabs even though they're probably honest I did a couple Benihana's my pants were probably sagging I had no one to wear on a myzel been naked right again yeah yeah I mean there are some takeaways in the takeaways are I saw people for years and they were like I remember you you lose sagging and your ass was hanging out or you Benny haunted the pyramid right right I thought you were cool and I was just like so you skated in the contest with your heel in there well I didn't the first day I didn't skate in the practice they had like open practice okay and skate because I tried to skate and it was a little sensitive and sore and then I absence all ties icing epson salt ice and then eventually I was like there's no way I'm not gonna skate and so I wrapped it up wrapped it up and just skated oh and then that day you know I kind of was like I it's got to happen I just got to do it I'm gonna deal with I through it yeah if I throw it so I did and I ended up making the semi-final and then making it to the finals oh so I made it to the finals of the contest okay and miracle Mangum was there oh he was like one of the first students that I met that was like really cool okay going and right um he was doing like massive frontside all he's a disaster I remember and it was awesome but and he had his ass hanging out too so I was like at least there's somebody else here but anyway the finals I did okay ended up getting seventh Matt Beach one Oh Andrew Reynolds got second okay and I can't really remember from there but I'm sure like Kane was in there somewhere Kane Gail and I ran olds I think he already rode for birdhouse at the time I think mat beach road for birdhouse as well okay yeah they both yeah oh so it was like one and two and then I can't remember who else you know placed in there I need Ben livers edge was in their group no yeah so you got seven I got seventh so it wasn't terrible no but you're nonetheless I did meet the real real guys okay time the the team manager was Dave Medi mm-hmm and they'd had some like car trouble or something on the way out and or maybe they had brought more guys than they originally anticipated Kelly Kelly bird had spent some time in Houston's maybe he's even from there mm-hmm I think he was from there yeah and so he came went back back he came to you know the contest with them okay and it originally was a couple people weren't supposed to so Dave just said hey man I you know Jeff told me that I'm you know to hook up with you but unfortunately we don't have any room for you to stay with us and we can't really help you out I'm sorry okay and so and also it wasn't like I was it was a really thought out plan on my part because I have two other buddies when I leave them in the bowl I go stay with the real team there you go and I can't go hey real team can all three of us stay in the hotel so we didn't really have that thought out of a plan anyway okay we were pretty much destined to sleep in the bowl the whole time in my wife right so we did we slept in the bowl a day or two before the contest started and then we slept there every night and I remembered people would come and see us sleeping and then that like tripping out like dude aren't you skating in the contest today and I'd be like yeah they're like why you sleeping in the bowl I'm like I don't know I remember this - there was an old pad company called dr. bone savers okay I forget her name but the chick from dr. bone savers was there uh-huh and somehow I like was like oh can I ride for you I don't even wear pads I don't know what I was I don't know what I was thinking but I guess maybe I just wanted a sponsors okay and she was like yeah sure and she's like you know where you from whenever we were talking and then she's like where you guys staying I'm like oh we're just staying here in the bowl oh and there's another one too like remember that remember that pool that Alfonso Rawls tries to ollie across the pool from one side of the pool to the other his board goes in the pool in HD video anyway that pool is in Houston and that's where everyone stayed but that pool was green and the water was like a lake he was like had been neglected oh yeah well gosh there's another embarrassing story for some reason I'm like gravitating right he's embarrassing yeah so on this trip I brought a speedo in my fear and my theory was that if I go swimming or if I like take a shower and a pool or not take a shower but I wash off in a pool I won't have to deal with wet shorts after all I'll have is the speedo that you can like wring out and all it is is like underwear okay okay I don't know that seems insane but I was like practice that was probably just another reason to get semi as naked as possible but anyway we went to that hotel I know I know I know party boy I know so we went to the hotel and it was like a closed hotel to the skate park okay and we didn't know everybody was staying there right I went to go jump into the pool when I was at Gaia the pools green and I was like well I haven't showered in two or three days it's got to be cleaner than I am Wow even if it was a lake okay I'd be swimming a lake so I had a bar of soap I went in the shallow end to put on my speedos I went I went in the shallow end and I'm washing myself and in the end in the green pool at night or during the note during the day oh my god during the day Wow and then I started to just go to a hotel yeah who are completely nuts back then yeah I think I just didn't give a [ __ ] right anyway I started seeing people come from the contest like cruising around and I was like whoa what up dude like showering up in the pool got out had speedos on like no big deal or about me I changed into my best I'm sure to do from the bowl and then change to change back into my skate clothes so if anyone would have happened to have seen me in the bowl and then happen to see me been a hot Benihana the pyramid with my pants saggin a new underwear and then happened to seeing me in the speedo at the pool right it would have been like one plus one plus crazy this don't touch this guy don't sponsor him no matter what nowadays you'd get all the sponsors yeah that's it I met I met all these guys I met a bunch of cool people I met Jeff Taylor okay Mirko met you know some of these people would be friends I'd be friends with forever yeah you know so Mirko gave me his phone number was like hey if you come through San Diego call me like I'll you know I can help you guys out with a place to stay and we'll go skating it'll be sick and I was like it was the only person that kind of said I actually know it I take that back the guy that the team manager of vans at the time I think he I think he might have been hooking up with dr. Bowen save Oh at any rate since I got on good with the doctor bone savers chick oh she gave us she put us up for the last night of the contest after the finals she put us up in the doubletree hotel whoa so me Shaun and Hurley me Shaun and Hurley had a $300 suite and they kept like they kept like encouraging me like dude you got a hookup with the doctor boom chick but she was like 32 no 32 she was like 30 is 130 okay and it like I would I mean I would have been down but like it was not really an option it was a long shot it was a long shot and she might have even seen me in the speedo and been like yeah you're not really right you're a boy still so at any rate she put us up in the Doubletree though and we lived like kings room one night we got a good shower was amazing that was before our drive to California ala fornia okay so we drove to California first stop San Diego mirko Mangum drove into El Cajon Oh called Mirko from a payphone he's like oh me get my buddy ties house he met his buddies name was Ty Gilbert he was escape sponsor dude the road for you know companies back then okay he was mere Coast buddy we ended up staying at Ty's house it was it was awesome it was sick anyway that was my that was my trip to California yeah yeah our journey there Wow so bed your first stopping so sorry okay I the guy who was hooking up with the doctor his neighbor's chick he was a team manager at vans and I ended up getting on vans at the at the am final oh really yeah so that was like a break that was a good right yeah like I've started really heart of something I probably are properly he was like yeah I would love for you to ride four vans oh and I was like awesome yeah and I don't know or any just riding well he didn't tell me what my what was gonna happen but it wasn't what he didn't say he saves yeah he didn't say you're gonna be co-sponsored or you don't say you're gonna float you just said yeah we want you to ride four vans oh okay and I said oh we're coming to California and he's like oh we'll stop by the factory I'll get you get you a package you know it'll be it'll be awesome okay my are here here's my thinking it was as simple as this I love you I met miracle I met him I met Mirko so San Diego is now on our list gotcha I met the guy the team manager from Vans tiny was his knee okay I met tiny so and he told me that vans was in like orange or orange oh okay so it goes San Diego Orange right and I knew that Embarcadero was in San Francisco okay and you know the plan B video yep come out one two three you're going up up north yeah I was that was the goal the goal was to go to San Diego because I met miracle gonna hang out there for a little bit yeah I see how it treats us yeah and then after that we're gonna go to go visit vans and then after that we're gonna go sleep in Embarcadero wow that was the plan right at this point we ended up leaving we ended up leaving Atlanta probably with like maybe six hundred dollars each which is like $1,800 and at the time when you had it pulled it all up and we were like one for all all for one yeah it was like a decent amount of money by the time you get to California so we didn't really do the math no we knew that we knew it was gonna be tight but we weren't not going because it was gonna be tight right so we went to coffee went there we stayed it we stayed at MiraCosta so all we'd spent money on was food Taco Bell hot dogs and gas yeah to San Diego San Diego went to vans and here's an interesting story the day we got to Vans was the day they they had their first batch of half cabs off the off the assembly line Oh before I got there the only person had gotten home with Steve Caballero whoa hey and I just showed up and he's like hey it's it's like noon and we just got our first batch of half cabs off the assembly line would you like some half cabs Wow you know we'd always cut them we'd all been cutting our full cabs down and putting stickers around them you know it's been like a year to that been happening okay so he handed me a pair of half cabs and I was just like and they were all black and I was just like oh my god why gave me two pairs okay and I felt so rich anyway I got super amped on the new half cabs we went skating we went out skating that night I tried to always some Street gap that was way too big for me and I ended up putting my foot off the front of my board and rolling my ankle really bad bruised yes input oh it was my front ankle and I remember being really bad so we hung out an orange for a day I knew a guy that I'd like you know befriended pen pal or cousin yeah in orange he lettuce gave us a place to stay for a night and then we went up to San Francisco Wow so we drove always a San Francisco amazing Drive whatever awesome went straight to Embarcadero parked at the first parking spot in front of bar code arrow and just got out and we were just so stoked that we just arrived and you slept it in bark Adaro well I mean we looked at our situation and we knew we weren't gonna be able to get an apartment by this time we had three to four hundred bucks each okay right and we knew that wasn't enough money to get a place so we took that money and we went and got a bank account let me put all the money in the bank oh we were there to stay stay we knew if we had the money we were gonna spend it okay so we put the money in the bank yeah probably the second or third day we were there Wow and then we were like we're just gonna Panhandle we're gonna Panhandle we're gonna sell stuff we're gonna hustle and do whatever we got to do oh we made this pact me Sean and Hurley made this pact that we're not gonna go to the bank and get any money out unless we have haven't all three of us haven't eaten in 24 hours oh so that was like the pact like we'll find a way to get food I'm so like at this point it was like if someone's eating it there's a pizza there was like a I forget the name that place it was a pizza pizza joint right at Embarcadero like right where everyone hung out okay so I mean this is real I would look at the tables and if someone left like a half a piece of pizza and they left their plate there because they didn't clean up just bus I always I would bus tables but eat all the leftover pizza Wow and yet seems like I mean you know like if you're whatever you got plenty of money for food that seems kind of gross like what are you doing like eating after them but then I thought of it as what could they possibly have I had a disease am I gonna get from the pizza none yeah yeah and I'm not grossed out because I'm trying to survive yeah like I haven't eaten in eight hours I want to eat this pizza well at some points I remember I remember um we met I met Rick Jones and around this time I met a lot of like kind of locals and Drake was nice to me and Brian Young was there I remember one time one time and I'm not selling I'm not telling these stories for sympathy points or anything I don't sure I don't really this is where this point I really care what anyone yes about right but in any rate there was a pigeon that had a big crust pizza the pizza crust and I remember took the [ __ ] pizza crust from a pigeon yeah what how did you catch this pigeon oh I did oh I charged him on charged a dime couldn't carry it he dropped the pizza crust cuz I was like hanging out and I was hungry I looked over the tables for like an hour or so and there was no date so and Palin sucks man hey spare change spare change in right look I look like it's I had like blind jeans on you know yeah like some punk that just in in really like right next to Embarcadero there was a thoroughfare from right at the end of Market Street everyone went to like the pier to take the buses okay and so it was like like that's where although that's where all the real like pan handlers hung out there was one dude that we called the drummer because he panhandled me acted like he was like drums yeah dreads okay he pant handled like this and we had nicknames for all of the brass around right how much would you make panhandling like in a day Tommy sir yeah I mean usually a couple of bucks most people just would walk right by you know it sucks to acknowledge you would hear people's change you're like I can hear three dollars of change jingling in their racket and I would be so stoked on a quarter and I won't give it to me because they think what I'm gonna buy drugs with a quarter Yeah right right I don't know what the exact change a bus no it was too much changed at any rate I remember just you know and sometimes people and sometimes like either be like an old lady that would be like you know what I'm not gonna give you money but would you like some food and I'd be like yes I hadn't drank in years yeah hadn't done any drugs and you know I write straight and focused on scape learning never never touched anything since the night of the city no probably a year no so they she'd be like yeah can I you know yeah I'll buy you I'll buy you some food and one remember one morning she offered to buy food and I was it was my shift panhandling okay and I was asking for money and she took me and I couldn't be like oh yeah I got two buddies oh yeah yeah right so I like went you know and she bought me like a breakfast platter it like you know you know at ad embarcadero there was a Carl's jr. around the corner okay so she took me to Carl's jr. pizza place wasn't open yells probably eight in the morning okay she took me and got me a big breakfast platter like eggs sausage pancakes oh and then I'd I'd noticed that the breakfast platter was the same plate as the salad bar so then that was the first time and I was like I ate like a pancake or a sausage and then I went and got Sean they were probably sleeping I'm waiting gosh those guys and then I gave chaired my food with okay and then I was like held up the styrofoam plate and I was like hey this is the same plate as a salad tray or the same plate as a salad plate right why don't we go back at lunchtime when it's busy and we can just eat well then kill the salad bar mmm so that was the new hustle and okay you know and I got the idea from all the at embarcadero they would get a cup they'd find a cup in the trash or find it come somewhere wash it out and it would take the cup back with them and you'd skate all day and you'd take your cup and free refills yeah and they they had like a janitor at Carlos jr. that would like I ball you to see if he walked in with your coat your cup and okay he was like the soft drink police oh he was this like you know he looked like he looked at groundskeeper Willie he was a black dude be like groundskeeper Willie like it was all wiry right and he would like kind of grunt at you and like and kind of like kind of yell at you and get in arguments with you and stuff right so you had to watch out for him and yeah right navigate it and you'd like kind of hang out outside and wait till he wasn't there and then you'd go and get your drinks yeah and then sell at this point yeah now we did sell more since they did with the cups I was like oh why can't you do those salad or sure so we would keep that little styrofoam thing it would be like right yeah keep it for like oh we keep it for a week and then later on we could go there breakfast and get another one and leave someone left their food on the table and I did that we you know I would I would bus tables too leaving yeah no eating leftover food the people left like oh you guys are really like [ __ ] like strug like well we didn't a struggle was real we had like you know so-so Hurley stayed about just like at the telemarketing job early state of early Hurley stayed about three weeks and then was like you know me and Sean didn't want to go back to Alabama or to the south okay but where Hurley lived in New Hampshire there was a scene there was a punk rock scene there was stuff going on he had friends he was ready to well he didn't have he wasn't there wasn't so much to lose for him going home you know so California was cool and all but screw sleeping outside and Passover it was - Kate - we were all skating but you know it was kind of like we were you know we were all a little confused on how we fit into skating because it was real clear that no one wanted to be her friend you know and probably because I was kids I was chasing it all away we were almost kids but there was a lot of homeless kids that came through oh there were yeah and there was a couple of homeless kids you know there was Ohio players and those guys were like a lot smoother people but I was gonna ask you like how did they embarcadero crew like treat because that was okay so sort of the first day had a sprained ankle came to Embarcadero yeah and James Kelch came up to me and he was looking at my shoes and he's like what shoes of those blood and I was like they're half cabs and he was like where'd you get those and he wrote four vans okay and I was like well I ride four vans and we just went through vans last week and they just you know we're like just made Wow and he's like what size you wear mmm and I was like I told him he's I got size I wear wow you're gonna have to come out those shoes and I was like I was like yeah sorry man I'm not gonna give you my shoes he goes no you're gonna give me your shoes Wow and I was like nah sorry man ain't gonna happen and he just like looked at me and he I think he said something like you can make this the easy you're gonna go the easy way or the hard way right now sorry I guess the hard way you know I'm just kidding Wow I think he was hoping that I just coughed him up yeah yeah and then he realized like well I'm not gonna really Punk this kid off his feet at this time he rode for real oh yeah yeah he was pro what I mean is though is like he was a made dude and he had like you know maybe yeah his board was already out he was Pro crazy yeah anyway and I think that if I just said for real all right man you can have him the heat a minute he'll yeah right right right but he was like no I'm just kidding with you man yeah cool he's like what's your name and I was like I told my name mm-hmm he's like all right cool cool man was good to me whatever he was always nice to me too always cool okay cool yeah so that was like my introductory and I was like oh this thing gonna be that bad right he was like the older dude and he didn't he didn't really have a chip on his shoulder but all the younger kids you know at the time was like Mike York Lee Smith rhotic Carl Watson all those dudes were like never a few years younger than me they all were like the antagonist you know yeah and so they were a tougher went name it's tougher to win them over okay cuz I mean I've already admitted how wack I was I think the top all this off I had a perm oh yeah Wow I don't really know why at some point we permed my hair across this mission I don't really know why that's amazing but we perm my hair at somewhere it was like a dare or something I don't know so I had a perm right and it was like it was like right it was maybe bleached as well so I'd like a bleached perm yeah and those kids were ruthless yeah it was bad right bad how long did you step in San Francisco about a year and a half year and a half so I eventually you probably got a place and yeah so we slept on the streets for three months three months yeah Hurley left after about two weeks he Greyhound it back yeah he took a greyhound and his mom bought him a greyhound and he came to us and said I want to see you guys make it you guys can have my money so he gave us he gave me and Sean like three or four hundred bucks oh so we had about a thousand the twelve hundred bucks in the bank mm-hmm and it turned into now we had 500 or 600 each instead of 300 each right or 400 each yeah anyway so Sean took I mean I Hurley took off he didn't tell us either he just called his mom as like give me a bus ticket and then he called and he came over it was like hey I'm going home oh wow we were like why he's like man he's like Nashua is not that bad I'm not I'm not trying to like you know I'm not trying to move on the streets with you guys yeah I got a good scene I got a bunch of buddies back right I'm good I'm going home right my you know my mom's helping me and there you go anyway so now it's just me and Sean's me and Sean knew we didn't want to go back to the south we knew we want to stay in California so we stayed out we slept outside for a few more months and we met a lot of people you know in some you know Thibault would let us because at this time I was still on flow for deluxe okay and I was hopeful that something would work out Jeff Clint would give me boards Tony would give me boy phoebo would give me boards Thibault didn't really at this point tell me yet that nothing's gonna work out with real oh I was still hopeful right but I felt in Texas that I was like the odd man out okay and then out Embarcadero it didn't take long to feel like I was the odd man uh-oh okay so after a couple of months he wrote for real what's up yeah but kelts didn't really he didn't seem like he was passing any judgment on me at the okay right right it was like we were sleeping there every night and overtime I had kind of a run-in at one point or another with all the locals okay and since I didn't really know the etiquette of embarcadero it was like it was the gnarliest high school scene ever you know I was trying to come into like you know that that they had a thing going for sure and it wasn't like you were just gonna waltz into it and be a part of it right even though that's what I thought in my head you know being a kidnap a Moses like oh you just go to market right you just go to Embarcadero and when you get there they're gonna be like oh you skate too sick mmm he's game with us but that wasn't the way that wasn't the way it was and so you know you know yeah I admit I was jacked I didn't understand the etiquette I didn't know how to communicate I didn't know how to I don't know I didn't how did like integrate yeah were you filming stuff at that time too yeah so we yeah so we filmed our whole trip to California but then in front of in front of when we went to San Diego MiraCosta we left my car with the windows down in front of his buddies Ty's house and our camera gosto so we ended up losing the tape with all of our footage on our trip to California and all the stuff in Texas so that was a bummer the camera was gone and like my mom helped me buy that camera that's how I was filming and making videos and that's how many my sponsored videos after after Jay Bush's driveway at it okay right anyway so I started at you know I had made videos with that camera yeah so and then we when we got up north my girl for my high school girlfriend her name is Brandi and we were like you know like really tight in high school and stuff and it was really cool yeah she wanted to help me out so she convinced her dad to buy a video camera and she sent me a video camera Wow cornea Wow yeah it was amazing where did she send it to him by Embarcadero and it's a deluxe oh so she sent it she sent it to deluxe and as I got my my mom sent me care packages okay I got there I got there and late I got there in late August and it quickly got cold so for my birthday I got a sleeping bag and then I got and your parents knew you were out on the streets or did you not tell them the fence my mom I told my mom I kind of pitched it as we were camping in it and that somebody's would let us stay at their houses from time okay which was kind of kind of true but I didn't want her to worry though you know her so right anyway so yeah yeah and Thibault would let us you know sometimes he would let us stay at his house so it's ramen and we would get showered up there you go in sometimes we'd meet somebody that was staying in you know coming through town and they'd have a hotel and we'd hang out with them they're nice it was basically people just helping us out yeah so I had a sleeping bag into the winner of you know of 1992 and there was like all locals there one there was always just one dude that skated super late at night every night it was like 2:00 in the morning oh and he wore this Black Label shirt every time and we in his name was John John Baker okay and we met him and I thought he looked like Lou Ferrigno I thought he looked like Lou Ferrigno the guy who played the incredible yeah yeah yeah and for some reason I thought the guy's the actor - played The Incredible Hulk his name was oof oregano ooh and I don't know why anybody would ever call anybody ooh but I said what I started calling this guy who because I thought he looked like Lou Ferrigno and so his nickname became ooh hoo right little did I know that he wore the Black Label shirts so much that all the locals had already seen him in the black shirt black label shirt had faded and they all called him brown label because I sure was I didn't know that I called him ooh who is what we call them every night who would come and skate embarcadero at like midnight to 2:00 in the morning whoa and the cops did a pass at like midnight every night so you'd get there after midnight to go to sleep we'd hang out it hate or you know go to a Civic Center go skating or do whatever and we just get get back to Embarcadero okay past midnight yeah cops already did their rounds they kicked all the homeless people out anyway we'd see we would see ooh all the time skating and and we'd befriended him just because you know he was like you guys are always here what do you up to and we're like oh you know we grew up in the south and we just rather sleep here then well live in the south and he's like go crazy and we're like what do you do he's like I go to school and this is I study and I do all my homework and stuff and this is kind of like my time my first class is until like 10:00 in the morning so I just come and skate from like 12 to 2 and plus nobody's here I get to skate and pee whatever and I'm like oh that's it cool whatever well so we ended up befriending him and then after a couple visits he's like hey you guys know that my parents pay for my place I live in the Tenderloin is a ghetto neighborhood but my parents play for a studio apartment if you guys want you can you know you can come and sleep on my floor and pay me like 50 bucks a month or something Wow and we were like yes no absolutely right so I think Shawn paid 50 and then he gave me his closet which was like the size of a single mattress Oh and so I like I almost had my own room or whatever but we lived in the studio apartment in the TL and Jones and O'Farrell okay so when we got off the streets because you can't it's really hard to get a job living on the streets I applied for some jobs I apply to like Burger King and like all fast food and stuff but you don't have an address I was gonna say and you can't and you can't really clean up enough for a job interview too I mean even if you do clean up without an address it's really hard hard yeah and I tried to let go with the like deluxe address but then you also it's hard to clean up every day and I didn't have a place to park my car so my cars get those parking tickets Wow and it was kind of hard to get to and from a job yeah I could imagine you know and you've seen that that movie with Will Smith what's it called yeah right so it's hard to maintain a job while you're homeless yeah people think like oh why doesn't that homeless guy just go get a job like that easy yeah it's not that easy without someone giving you a without someone without someone throwing you a line it's really hard to guys right right and then brown label you comes along you guys got a place place stay now we're showering every day Wow you know and then I got I got a job at a department store selling shoes oh and yeah there you go I you know I worked saved up money yeah I moved out of it we lived in the Tenderloin for about six months okay saved up enough money move to the Haight district yeah and got a place with Drake Jones and Brian Young Oh sick and at this time to you well you said that we were metal mean nothing was gonna happen with real right so so at this by around this point Thibault sat me down and was like I remembered he like how to rock and he was like playing with the rock and he was like I I saw him like processing that was difficult to tell me this was shattering my dreams but was like look I'm really sorry but there's there's not really anything we can do here for you okay the guys you have to be able to get along with the team and that kind of stuff you know and that that really hasn't happened so we don't really have anything to offer but I personally will give you boards to help you out mm-hmm and I'll give you even a couple extra to sell here and there you know he could he told me this when you know we were living you know before I'd gotten a job yeah but I did it just nothing's really gonna work out we can keep you know keep you on thunder and spitfire that's not really much of a team decision but things aren't gonna work out with real well and it's time he was like you know if there's a brand you like out there you know and you want me to talk to somebody for you and I was like I really like Black Label JOHN CARTER yells Mike my favorite skater ho sik I really like Black Label he's like oh I know I know John lacera well so yeah just film a video and let me know and I'll send it to Jon for you okay so I was you know like filming a video and I think I skipped a step here one day I was all the footage a video no Brian Young actually got got hired to film for the Spitfire video and since you know we were roommates and hung out a lot he just we filmed whatever mm-hmm so anyway I was filming for that video and before I even filmed a sponsor me video or anything this guy approached me at Embarcadero and was like hey I heard you know you're from Alabama you got 7th in the damn finals yeah you know whatever and he offered me like to help him build his new company and it was a called experience oh yeah okay right and yeah anyway that was my variance Roger Roger Davis ROG yeah another ROG huh yeah no wait so it's how long was how long did you do that experience thing for it seemed like a long time but I think it was only like a year only a year maybe even less probably when he was time I build it for him was like just escape for him and try him but he told me the name at the name at the time the name was chapped Chad and I was like yeah it doesn't sound good oh and he's like it's not like chapped I was like chapped lips chapped ass yeah yeah and he was like he was like no it's like chapped like you're bummed like ch apt and I was like it's not a real word like so he changed it to experience and I was like yeah I'm not really interested in he goes well we can change the name and I was well what can we change it to anyway he goes well you can help me pick the name and I was like okay now we're name now we're naming a baby right I'm in I'm in okay yeah and he's like yeah and you can help me you know pick some team riders or something you know and know at the time Drake Jones was on think mm-hmm and Sean Young didn't really have a sponsor so I was like yeah here we go me Drake and Sean Oh and then this guy Matt Robeson was already on chapped and he's like yeah he'll just stay on and so it would be you got you for oh um this guy Adam Schneider was getting boards as well so he would be and thrown in the mix anyway there was four or five of us that we're gonna be on right and I was a big Jimi Hendrix fan and so I wanted to name an experience so he was like yeah sounds good I like the name oh let's do it so I called it experience and and he's just like yeah I want to turn you Pro know I was like well I haven't really done much to turn pro he's like what no way man you did great that you know am qualifier yeah that was like seven things it seemed really great right and I was like Matt Beach and and and intervals aren't Pro yet but they were they were younger and okay I was just like he's like well I'll pay it I'll pay you six hundred bucks a month and I was like alright I'm okay and I'd had a job though I was working and then I kind of waited until some checks started coming and I I also had a job and I bought like a stereo I bought some furniture I bought a bed you know I bought the basic necessities and then once I bought all that stuff I was like probably making about 1,200 bucks there a thousand bucks a month working a full-time job working this job yeah and then he was offering me 600 and now that I'd bought all this stuff all I had to do is pay rent and food and I could do that on 600 bucks I think my rent yeah I rent and food was like 500 or 600 bill right and I was like alright yeah so I quit the job and started skating full toe okay why only a year that what happened and what happened in that year that you want to be a profiling cream he was kind of shady yeah that was after all he was kind of shady and he didn't really you know not that I had any business experience but he didn't really have like a business plan worked out it was just by board cell board's okay and then try and use some of the money off what I sell to put back into product what he sold to put back into product and give me some gotcha but he pretty much had to reinvest the money into the product non-stop right in order to keep it going which is obvious but he didn't have enough of a buffer in order to pay me Drake so he stopped kind of paying you probably consistent consistently right and then he started paying us in boards and I was like man you know I already had this hustle of you know I used to sell boards and one of our hustles whenever on the streets and homeless was people would come down and they'd bring boards mhm and they would it was like consignment they would give you a board and be like hey I want 10 bucks for this I want 20 bucks and you go sell it and I would go sell from you wouldn't ask questions it could be cracked it could be broken it could be glued back together to whatever and you would just go sell it right as soon as they gave it to you'd look at it and just be like what kind is it graphic and you would just go find it was out of town kids that came in every weekend like hundred kids per week orna kids I would just like be a middleman for this sales transaction yeah and sometimes it would go fine sometimes they'd put it together in five minutes later that break it and come back to me no look it wasn't my board right I sold it for a homing they're like where did who did you sell it for and you know I just like I don't know he's gone it's gone right that was kind of lame yeah so you stopped writing for you quit experience well yeah so I knew the experience wasn't going good no and so I was like okay I'm gonna get back I talked to Thibault and I was like hey I need I need to get away from experience he saying you know I get it I was like if I film a sponsored video we still give it till the cero cuz I don't know this arrow like yeah I will Oh sick so I this time was gonna focus on filming a sponsoring video I pretty much had the video done and the video was at a friend's house and laban Pheidias went to that or was that I think was at danger hobos house oh the video was the danger hobos house and laban fattiest was at Daniel's house saw the video watched it and they were just now start there was just starting a division of blockhead called invisible oh right and so I didn't even get the get get a chance to send the video to Lucero they had already seen it had seen it and then he'd called me up and said hey I'm starting a new company would you like to be a part of this new company I'm starting called invisible Oh and he told me John you know John Reeves gonna ride for it and then we have like some other up and comers but he'll be pro and you'll get 500 bucks a month and I was like oh well I'm supposed to get six now but I haven't been paid that in like two to three months he's like you'll get you're a consistent check every single month Wow guaranteed and he's like I've been riding for you know blockhead for whatever time and I you know I get paid consistently yeah I was like all right I'm in let's do it right and so that was in San Diego so I finished out the lease I was in and then I moved to San Diego San Diego yeah okay with your buddy still so Shawn Shawn Shawn Shawn young stayed in the TL he never even moved to hate Oh eventually he moved out there and we skated a little bit but and then Brian Young and Drake and I that apartment we lived in they all went their separate ways in different time invisible now you're getting five hundred bucks a month you moved down it was good it was a really positive scenario so living in San Diego yeah except we live down the middle of nowhere well yeah so we got I got rice to get rides and I would get a ride to transworld and get a ride to the invisible blockhead tracker you know hqx climax I would take the ramps all day and I would go and hang out at Transworld and I had befriended all of the photographers at Transworld I basically just camped out at the couch at Transworld okay they went skating and then I would just jump in the talk okay yeah and then I would just try I would try my best without offending anybody or putting anybody off because I started to learn the etiquette by this time and add Embarcadero I realized that no matter how hard I tried I was gonna be accepted and eventually I stopped trying stop talking to locals okay I kind of just like kept my distance right just didn't go to Embarcadero when anybody else was there started filming on the outskirts in that video I made four four label that ended up you know laban ended up seeing mm-hmm I wasn't around any of those guys and I was just kind of doing my own thing doing your own thing and I kind of realized that I was trying way too hard and that I really needed to just focus on skating yeah and I remember having some like really some big epiphanies about how the way the way I came across uh uh during that time period interest I mean I was like you know getting and screaming matches with like the Embarcadero kids and going like wait I'm like eighteen these guys are like thirteen right you know like a bar no levar was always nice it was mainly likely Mike York even in even Karl even Karl like Carlson nice guys nice guy in the but he was like still in kid so yeah they were like 13 Reilly like right teen or fourteen yeah and I remember that like I remember getting in a crazy screaming match with Lee Smith one time and then I went to Embarcadero the next day and when I skated up everybody started barking you know like if you're a tea dog every dog right okay and I was like I was trying to figure it out and I was like looking around like who they barking at yeah and I realized they were other barking at me and it was because I'd gotten into a confrontation with with Lee Smith right and I'd like you know threatened to get physical with him even though I was like 18 and he was like yeah 13 or 14 right and they were clowning me so they didn't have to fight me Oh kind of his whoa like okay and I accepted it and was like yeah you know I get it and I just kind of skate it off and that was the last time I ever tried yeah yeah I was just like I'm gonna go on my own my own thing right right I need to like disappear from trying to be accepted by these guys it's never gonna happen and the funny thing is is that then Mike and even leave a little bit they'd be like hey I heard you did like you know so-and-so you know the spot or what else it and then I I was like yeah how'd you hear and they're like oh so and so you know said something about it so it was like they were hearing what I was doing but I didn't have to tell him anymore and I didn't try and like prove myself to them right right once I started doing that it it kind of started work it's cool yeah yeah right anyway move to San Diego yeah move to San Diego was a fresh start I had the perspective of the roughest crowd there yeah the hardest people to like you know be accepted by right and when I moved to San Diego was like I was cheating it was so easy because if people were nicer foul also you're in the mixer now you're at Transworld you're you're eligible and all that you're in it yeah you know the company I mean Larry Bhama in the group that owned Transworld also owned invisible oh they're so it kind of gave me like this chance of like hey maybe put this guy in the car he like rides for one of our companies right you could yeah I wasn't really like put him in the pages it was just give him a shake him a shot yeah and then when I went out I tried my hardest and tried to apply myself right and I usually got photos and then I started getting photos running the mag now at this point in time - are you doing like are you are you into the big rails and stuff no no I'll just jump jumping down god I just like jumping stuff everywhere I go I haven't really tapped into rails I skated rails a little bit mm-hm you know like as a kid and but I still what made you want to I mean I know the evolution that I mean like what made you yeah it was a path - you know when I saw that Pat Duffy part I like thought half of it wasn't real right I remember thinking like that that double kink ride is not real there's no way right yeah who can balance on a round bar round bar for any length of time much less that far yeah I remember thinking that that's totally was that inspiring for you to know it's all been motocross okay I was like I don't even know what he's doing or how he's doing that well I'm sure we'll get there we'll get there but uh so indivisible live hours no way we're rounding the corner baby we're almost there we're invisible I got some pages in Transworld I'm interested in stories I got to I got to I started dreaming up tricks that I wanted to do yes spots that I saw and then now these photographers that I'd befriended Grant Britain Dave Swift skinned Phillips yeah those three guys they had given me a chance to go out and it was always positive they're very encouraging and we'd gotten photos every time we'd gone out amazing so we would you know Dave would take me around the spots that he knew about and then I would just be looking for things where I would see things wherever we went that I wanted to do big gaps yeah and there was a roof gap there was a roof gap that I thought was awesome it was like one roof was slanted one way one roof was slanted the other way I was like dude I want to jump across that roof he could probably do tricks across it oh and dave was like I don't know you know whatever and I was like you line it up Dave line it up so he got grant Britain uh uh grant Britain you know to this roof gap and I was like I'm gonna ollie it and I want to admit least try and pop shuvit and we'll see where that goes okay so I Ollie did I pop shoved it right and then I was like I think I can kick flip it okay anyway so I kick flip the roof gap and it all happened relatively quickly the kickflip was really rocketed and you know but that at the time I was probably ninety maybe ninety four maybe didn't matter as much it wasn't as critical yeah it wasn't good but it was good that I was jumping roof to roof may I guess made it yeah anyway like I came in to Transworld a month or two later just her normal like hey what's up guys what are you up to right and they just handed me the magazine and I was on the cover that's why it was like it was like whoa this is like changing the kickflip okay rock it okay right and the pop show of sequence was inside the Oh sick so it was like and then that was like the Stoke that I needed I was like these guys believe in me enough to give me a cover yeah and then I just like seriously yeah really righto from that at that point I start jumping everything in my path I was like you're Melanie yeah it was that man no I was like these guys believed in me enough to put me on the cover of Transworld right growing up trans war was everything yeah and they just put me on the cover I was like before that I'd had a few pages and then Bryce K nights you know when I was in San Francisco he'd taken a few photos of me that were in Thrasher okay it had happened but it wasn't like a cover no cover cover was yeah it was huge huge huge and so you're still invisible at the time I mean invisible yeah and then I went on tour with invisible that summer and things kind of fell apart oh are you trying to no I wasn't trying to I was starting to become season than not right such you know right I don't know not be such the trying too hard guy anyway John Reeves and I got got into a conflict and it just wasn't it wasn't working out and it was he was the man John is amazed I got nicknames earlier I got I got all the love in the world for job time at the time we were oil in the water okay basically it was too competitive we were like gunning for the same spot and I was like the new young kid gunning for it and things were working out for me and he'd been around for a long time and it and I wasn't sensitive to the way he felt about things and we just kind of had words back in 40 heads yeah and I didn't really understand where he was coming from I just felt like you know he was like picking a fight with me and so eventually got to a friction point where I was over it and I just got out of the van in like Wisconsin and got on a greyhound oh yeah no I didn't go back we were in the middle of the country and I had a friend Greg where and in Massachusetts and I called him and was like hey can I come to your house I want to come skate the east coast and he's like yeah sure so Dave from yeah invisible bought me a bus ticket a one-way bus ticket from Fond du Lac Wisconsin to Boston Massachusetts and picked me up at the bus station and I went to drink it and hung out and drink at mass with Wayne my buddy so it was at the end of invisible or did you that was the end I mean I quit right then for a while no but I mean for Jamie yeah like that was I quit but he was like no just think about it and I was like Dave this is this isn't working man okay and then you're not gonna let him go which you shouldn't and it's just weren't you're quitting this company that that is supporting you I mean like wow it was actually differentially receiving rent and all the supporting me but the friction was so much so that it wasn't like that it wasn't worth it didn't see I didn't and Dave was a really nice guy but he wasn't a problem-solver he wasn't going to he wasn't going to figure out a way to solve it it was just like come on guys get along right that was his way of solving it wasn't really solving it so I was just like this isn't gonna work I had a strong personality and I knew how I worked in John you know at the time had a strong personality right it wasn't gonna work and we were in a small van crossing the country and we were halfway across the country did you think maybe you could stay on the team and does not deal with anybody a small the company was too small and everybody was on deck and okay no when those guys like Laban got bummed you got you felt like I left him hanging oh because at this time I'd started to create a name for myself and all these kids were expecting me to be at the demos and I didn't even think about yeah right yeah I didn't think I could get out of here yeah I didn't think that I had a name and they wanted to see me you know I just knew that that van was toxic was toxic and I had to get out got it so much so I just got out of gas station in the gas station also had a Greyhound bus station at the same gas yeah right I was like I was just like all right I'll see you guys later I had a bag and a board so now you should know you're shredding East Coast I went to and went to Massachusetts yeah ROG right when I got there I called Jim at deluxe and I said look I quit invisible is there any way you could help me out with some boards okay so he sent a box of boards to Massachusetts sick and I was writing real boards mm-hmm so I was writing real boards I went and I stayed with Greg for like a week and then I took a bus down to Philly I'd met some some some people in Philly and I ended up staying with somebody there and filming a little bit and I was filming my fall in one profile oh and four and one issue number seven Kelly confirms I'm very foggy in the first Rene Mathis covered Rene matheson on the cover doing a heel flip across a channel gasps OH talking at love park yeah I got a sparkler and it's like it's embarrassed basically any time anybody ever yeah was fourth of July yeah yeah but I 182 love gap and film some line okay and at the time I don't think it had been 180 but I was filming dan wolf was there Dan will filming we and he and I like became friends oh and then I took a greyhound from there or actually maybe we drove down to DC and then I took a greyhound from DC and I was just like selling boards or doing whatever I could to get the next bus tonight and then I took a greyhound from there to Alabama and then ended up like seeing all my homies I grew up with and then I remember selling every single thing I had including my shoes and getting a plane ticket home 0:07 I think I think even my friends and my high school girlfriend chipped in a plane ticket back to San Diego so went back to San Diego okay summer of 1994 and that summer Edie Templeton called me and asked me to write for Toy Machine Wow cold call you out of the bullet called me out of the blue Wow you never knew him either I didn't know I yeah I didn't know that you were down that no I was talking to Markovic a new market [ __ ] and I knew all the guys on prime and I wanted a ride for prime okay but market [ __ ] I think saw that he and I were on the same company might not be a good fit he's very similar yeah yeah thanks the same things might happen that happened with John Reeves my stay with me and March so he was like hey you should get on blind or 101 oh and I was like you know those companies are cool but they're not what they used to be like blind is you know mark and those guys are gone I don't I don't really associate with who's on blind guy right and 101 school but I don't know not us and I don't know even where to start with that mm-hmm so I was kind of like you know maybe world industries isn't the best camp for me I wanted to write for Plan B right and this was the Jeremy Rea era of Plan B oh and I talked to Jeremy before I took the plane ticket home but just socks on okay I'd have to take my shoes off in security anyway we got the plane yeah no shoes no shoes I sold my phasing yeah so but I saw Jeremy they were doing a plan B tour that summer yeah and I saw Jeremy in Tallahassee Florida okay and I remember talking to him he's like hey I can talk to him but I was still kind of rough around the UH okay no and I in my head I was thinking like Alien Workshop prime plan B right that's what I want to do right xx Sheen not even on the radar it wasn't on my radar right just B is so obscure yeah and was like Jamal and yeah so that summer they had a blow-out tour and everybody quit yeah everybody quit except for Panama death so there was yeah panama dan and a couple of flow guys and so Edie called me and said that my whole team just quit do you want to write for towing machine Wow and I was like you know I I didn't know him I was like well deve and you know we I didn't really know you but he's like I just know you're motivated I like your skating and you know I want to sponsor you Wow and so I was like you know in that the same within a week but week before that I got a call from flip and flip was like we're moving to America we used to be death box we've got a brand called flip we're moving to America we want you to be our first u.s. rail Wow yeah and I was like I don't know anything about and they told me like we got Tom penny Jeff Rowley all names you never heard of yeah runa glyph Berg and Andy Scott and I was like that sounds great but I don't know any of those guys I've never heard I've never heard meth and Jamie Thomas on Flint I was I've never heard one of those names yeah and it was Jeremy Fox that called oh wow and I was like I'm sorry I don't know who any of those guys are man I don't think I can do that and he's like well think about it you know like we're gonna we're really gonna make an impact he's like these guys that I'm bringing over or better than everybody I remember thinking okay that's very off-putting but they were yeah he definitely made way it was right right after they showed up as when he three flip to 13 and Oceanside high and he kick flipped over the 10 stare at the police station yeah that was probably only a month or two later so he basically gave me a warning that these guys are gonna come they're coming to annihilate and then Andy Scott like was one of the monks the first guys to do the kickflip McTwist oh and they were coming for the all that they worried yeah they were coming in hot so I remember thinking that that's just too much of a stretch I'm flattered that anybody called me right so the only calls I got were two I got two calls flip and flip and Toy Machine Wow and Ed Templeton called me and said my whole team just quit and I know you're motivated and I'm if you down if you're down to help me rebuild the team I'd love to have you on board no and I was like alright what what is or do you know any of the details and he's like well go meet was Todd Swank I'm in Europe so I went and met with Todd Swank and you know Swank was like yeah you know we'd love to have you involved well and he asked me how much I wanted to get paid oh here's the number yeah yeah and invisible one month I had this one board called the High Plains Drifter it was like this it was like this like horse scene and a sunset okay and they and the sunsets were like a rainbow gradient and everyone was different it was like this blue scene I had a graphic I had a an ad - doing a frontside blunt on a five stair or four or five stair rail oh and I think it was the first from blown on a rail but I also had a photo in that ad I was on a horse run horse horse yeah I was dream so there was a photo of me doing a front blunt that's a sliver okay and then there's a photo of me on a horse and grant Britten shot both photos oh and I said hi Jamie Thomas High Plains Drifter and it was to promote the board okay I don't know why I was on a horse but I thought Clint Eastwood was awesome and his movies were awesome yeah so I was trying to like I don't know what I was doing right anyway my best month ever you know visible pay me 500 bucks a month okay my best month ever when that board was killing it I think I had a slick bottom version and that version though at the same time and I made $1,200 1,200 bucks and 1,200 bucks in one month for skating great was so good and I was like I remembered living off of that one month for like I remember living in luxury for like three or four months to follow and so I was like if I could get twelve you had that number in your head or so and Todd when Swank asked me he's like yes so you know I was like how much you know are you gonna pay me he's like well what are you looking for and I just went 1,200 bucks and he's like yeah which shouldn't be a problem I was like do you got more problems like could I have said more now right that's all that's an age-old question yeah well at any rate I was like oh my gosh Edie Templeton called me right to date a day ago right offered me to ride for his company and now they're about this pay me twelve hundred bucks a month and he wants me to help rebuild the team yeah and at that point they just put out that video I've okay and I was like yeah and I saw your last video it's it's kind of a [ __ ] show man he's like I die no man I'm making videos is not my thing like you want to make a video like make a video and I'm like really I can make a video he's like yeah just help me rebuild the team and we'll make a video Wow and so I was like let's do it let's do it right now and so I had met Donny barley uh-huh earlier and I'd met you know some belly young in San Fran's San Francisco oh yeah I'd met these different guys and then Kahless I actually met at love park 93 and you know I got him on invisible and then he went on that whole invisible tour oh I talked to him and was like hey you should come to Toy Machine with me and so I kind of put together this you got him on any building you left I know he was bummed too he was like you got me on invisible and you know these guys are cool too it's it was sick it was the best time I like Wow I was like sorry man but would you ride for towing machine and he was like I don't know and I'm like in Dallas right now and he was like kind of getting into gang banging and stuff and I was like I was like look I'll send you a box at this time Edie had me like sending out teen boxes because I didn't go down there very much okay man I'll send you a box and I'll help pay for a ticket out here so I sent I sent Kahless like a box like 15 boards oh it's like just sell them all and get a ticket out here and he was like [ __ ] I can't I mean like all right yeah I was like and I'll figure out a way to pay you something a month Wow so you can survive and he's like all right so I went to Ed and was like head there's this kid and he's the best yeah so good right and he's worth it I'm gonna send him a box of 15 boards so he can sell to get here yeah we need to pay him a couple hundred bucks a month he's gonna film apart for the next 20 machine video it's coming amazing Oh anyway so Kayla showed up on my doorstep Kayla showed up on my doorstep with not only Kayla's but with his girlfriend oh and not only with his girlfriend but she also brought a friend and none of them have any money now my next three to four months of $1200 a month we're gonna pay for Kayla's his girl in his girls Wow eventually his girlfriend's friend went back and eventually his girlfriend went back right and then it was more manageable Wow anyway it was it was awesome chaos and I agree yeah I'm filming video Thicke recruited satva Donnie didn't get on right away though you know he waited and we didn't he didn't get on it look after right - welcome to hell but well anyway made that video in six months heavy metal and then that was the first video that I kind of somewhat filmed most of and though edited it right and then started finding music and putting music to songs and learning about editing you know before that it was just like put all the footage you down you have down and then put a song behind it yeah you know right is the first one where I started imagining why should this trick off front of a CD right yeah Ryan what trick should be last and yeah all that kind of stuff so Wow ed stood by his word and you know basically gave me the keys to help videos and then I fell in it I filmed ed and before that Deanna was Ed's filmer she filmed him on roller skates and I was like Edie why is the footage like kind of high like almost like she's some rollers in and I was like who's filming it and he's like Deana Danis film this you don't that on rollerskates that's how I was likable and he was like lip sliding ten stair rails and at the time there wasn't that many people deciding ten stair rails so he did a feeble a lip slide and a front board down a ten and I was like yeah and I was like Edie we got to go back and film those rules so we went back to UCI and he was like no problem he didn't get it right yeah and I remember just being shocked like wow this guy's so good at Rails yeah and at that time I started skating rails a little bit okay but I was just kind of barely grinding the same rails that he was doing but that next year or two after that video I kind of like got the taste of like oh this is what it's like to make a video now I know how the process works right and I felt like I didn't put enough into that video you know I really realized it in the editing phase okay so the next video I was like alright I'm gonna work really hard so when I get to edit it's gonna be like the bet it's gonna be great right you know because until you edit a video you don't really know you don't really know how to go about it for sure for sure so now that I'd edited a video that's like really stoked and I was like Edie we got to make another one and it's got to be good right and then I was like hey I'm gonna work on the team a little bit more I have a few guys that I think we could add okay Donny barley Mike Maldonado Chad Muska crazy so those were the additives to it and then Elissa steamer as well right and then welcome to hell Brian Anderson came after Donny barley came right yeah so then you built the hell I know seriously yeah I was the only got to know what they would they were really yet it I felt like in my eyes I was like oh yeah I mean that was that was kind of the the mo wasn't like I don't really want to go take ride around their times you know and and there's like all these dudes people that out there that are you know in Elissa yeah we're so good and Elissa we were on a time machine tour and we went to Tampa and you know she was ripping right the demo we did a demo at skatepark in Tampa and she was killing it and yeah muskan hurt us hit it off and so wanted her on Toy Machine you know I remember originally I was like God you know she's awesome and we can admire the hell rad she is but do we need to put her on the team you know oh I wasn't like I didn't know what to think you know and then he was just so hell-bent on it and then I was like alright well let me go out in filmer and I during that video I went out to stay with her for a week and she was awesome right the best week filming and you're like you're on I think she might even have been on I think Moscow was so like right heavy-handed with his vote yeah I think he I think he put her on the day of the Dimmick demo oh wow like you're on I'll deal with these guys later right he did the same he did the same thing with Brian Anderson - oh did he yeah Moscow is very impulsive Wow I think he put Brian Harrison on the first day we met up that's incredible cuz barley like knew how good Brian Harrison yes they grew up together yeah in Brian Harrison lived in like Santa Rose I think he was washing dishes mhm and barley we went to San Francisco to film and skate and he's like you got to come down and skate with us right and then the whole way barley was like you gotta meet my friend you got my friend he's like he's so special yeah I got to meet him and then everything that barley said was true Tom at SF State the first time and I was just like he was just going around doing all this stuff like he was wall riding over the rail and down the stairs board sliding the big rail and we were just like I remember being just blown away like wow this guy is like wow insane yeah so much crazy stuff he was super you know like respectful and nice nice and he was washing dishes and it was a cook and I was just like this guy's like the best guy mm-hmm and they wanted to put him on the same we skated with him all day like right hooked up with him in like 11:00 in the morning and then hung out until like 10:00 at night and went to dinner and stuff and they were like trying to have a team meeting in the van after dinner to put him on dude why do we gotta rush this what are you guys doing yeah yeah in Moscow was like no we got to put him on we got to put him on and Bobby was like you know obviously barley was down down everybody was down and out and Elissa was there I was just like I wasn't Brian talking about this yeah I just didn't feel the need to put him on in one day I was like right it's not like somebody else is here to recruit him tomorrow right you know what I mean like let's just like get to know him but they everyone I was like out vote I vote right all I was trying to do is just like be patient no thinking about the big picture yeah I was just like what's the rush and they are so very fast yeah they all were just like we gotta put him on and I was like yeah all right well you know like I'm not gonna be the guy who says no he's an amazing skateboarder and it seems like the nicest human being on the planet right right right I have no objection to the guy yeah it's just then I'll see where we gotta put him on one night right right and they were like we got a pretty much Alyssa got on in a day that's amazing just Musca it's calling the shot of it dude you got to respect that no I know he works on intuition yeah and he was just spot-on though right yeah I mean I admit like yeah hey I actually went through the tape recently oh yeah first day skating with Brian Harrison I went through the tape right to get some footage of Moscow for a zeppole later okay I just watch the tape and I was just like an off like I remember what I felt watching ShamWow and just how insane it was oh how did you feel when they gave you the tape of me to put in welcome to hell the line thing were you just like wow this kid is just uh he'll flipper huh yeah I like the most like the lowest thing in the whole menu I know like inhalation hey listen man I'm just friends with Tony barley do you work um you work you know him and I basically reached out to all the guys and was like hey if you got any friends you want a friends section right make sure to get me their footage and he did say and you were in I was in but I saw he skated together we notable time right when I was filming Donny because I had to do the same thing I had to basically camp out at the guys houses right and I remember just staying in you know what's the name of the neighborhood he lived in oh you see LA maybe I UCLA yeah maybe what Brentwood Brentwood yeah yeah so I remember going up and staying in his apartment in Brentwood I'm Katie yep and then you know we would skate the courthouse yeah yeah skate you know wherever yeah I was kidding I was get heavy with Donny yeah yeah he was rad it was like the whole hotrod crew Yeah right yeah for sure yeah dude how did you end up skating and filming for that video in like actually filming the skaters and editing the video I just like how did I end up doing it well I mean dude you had the last pair in a lot of hats I know yeah you were a lot of stuff well I mean I was so back to like the first cover at Transworld when they handed me that it was like that was like my diploma they like gave me the like stamp of kind of stamp of approval like you and you can go be whatever you want to be and you know what I thanked grant and Dave countless times for that yeah I've like sometimes I'll just text them driving down the road and they like thank you guys so much for giving me a chance embrace connives - okay I probably think Bryce can I gave Morford grant Britton you know Dave Swift and skin like I don't know five times each some of them more grant I just send them a soppy message once a sappy message sorry anyway um but I think that when I each each building block led to the next so like I filmed a part for the Spitfire video in the invisible video in both those like an at least Spitfire was short because those guys were editing it down they had a million guys to put in the video that part was short my invisible part had every trick I had on film and it was two songs and it was just a bunch of bunch of stuff mm-hmm and it wasn't really like thought out there was no behind it at all good a vanishing point no that was the second one this first one was memoirs I'm an invisible man vanishing point was was when they did the like Crocodile Dundee skit with Mumford and Mumford skated Eric Clapton cocaine which was a good part but I was often visible during that time that was the footage from the tour that I left okay and then when we did heavy metal it kind of gave me the keys you know he was kind of like here's your thing and we only we wanted to do something quick and we didn't have a budget so we filmed it all in San Diego pretty much yeah and I remember it was my first project that I took on start to finish and that was the building block to show me how to make a video right you know it was the first time I'd used and it wasn't computer editing system equipment yet it was beta tape to tape and you put one tape in you know when he had control board yeah and you put one trick on at a time and you build the part one trick at a time raise you record one trick at a time and you have a song all like yeah so we laid the track you lay the music and then you lay a trick and then if that trick doesn't look good to the music the only thing you do is go over and relay a new trick on top like yeah and so you had and you had to constantly recording over the same thing yeah and yes for what video heavy metal okay so that's 1995 so you put it in all you have to all you know is your intro and your first few tricks and then after that I wrote each trick down on a index card because you can't and then I just imagined what they would look like after one another and then you have your ending index card and your beginning index card and that's how we did the first video part tape to tape terrible nightmare but I remember doing it and I remembered thinking like oh this is gonna be like the ending section and I only had like three things in the ending section and it made me feel like man I wish I really focused more on this ending section I need more than three things to like close this part and I just didn't have anything in the video we'd already committed to a time frame so I was like all right that's gonna be it so that process got me into okay the next video I want to have them I want to have an intro all Enders the whole thing no no I want to have an intro and then I want to have a buildup and then I want to have a Plateau and then I want to go out with a finale oh yeah and so because I'd made a part with index you are the perfect song for that yeah yeah I'd made a part with index cards I was like I know the foundation of how a video parts laid and now when I film it I can envision where this trick goes in the park oh there you go so it was like the what heavy metal was the building block for welcome to hell and that it was kind of like I'd figured out the formula of how it works and I made a mediocre part it was okay I skated a Gloria Gaynor I Will Survive and that was kind of all about like me kind of finding my way and I don't know it's kind of weird but a disco song I know people many people skated to a disco song maybe anyway so I wanted to find a song and I wanted to do that song justice early on in that part a buddy of mine that rode 4-0 early on I met him on a tour Wade Burke it he had an Iron Maiden tape and I didn't grow up listening to Iron Maiden much I knew about number of the beasts and some of those songs like their hits yeah but he had a tape and it had hallowed be thy name on it that song and I remember hearing it and just thinking like whoa this is like an editing like this is like an editing like masteries yeah the dream editing part and I was just like I remembered hearing it as weird as this is I'm naked again I remembered hearing it in the show I remembered hearing it in the shower I had a little boombox on this trip and I was in the shower and I was listening to it and I was like this is it this is the best video part song there ever will blow I'm gonna skate to this and I'm gonna do it justice and that was early on it was like the first few months of us filming right after heavy metal came out and I was like I have time there's no like deadline set for this video and I was super motivated and we'd kind of rounded out the team we kind of had put everybody on and basically I had no job right job was to film the guys and skate with them and it was kind of like I'll film them do what they want to do and then I'll either set up the camera or I'll tell them how to film me or maybe I'll get a filmer and so the things that I really wanted to do that we're I think we're good I asked somebody to come with me okay it started off with like being lead upon oh yeah lead upon twas like I lived in Encinitas he lived in Encinitas and I would ask him like hey Lee do you mind filming me today there was this thing I really want to do yeah and he was a great film er and I'd be like you know do you mind helping me with this and I didn't even really have to he was great because most of the time I had to come up with how's it gonna be filmed and then try and like convince somebody to hopefully try and film it for me that way I get it right and get it right and sometimes you'd end up doing things multiple times yeah but with Lee he had his own vision and his vision was better than mine so he would film great and I would just watch the footage back and be like yeah that's awesome yeah and then also dance dirt I started hanging out with him in this town and he started filming some tricks of me as well like if I had something really big I wanted to do that the file would called in and be like Dan would somehow I felt like died yeah somehow I felt like it would be safe if Dan was there because he had like you know paramedic stuff in his bag and like he was ready to like stitch you were right put you back together and he just had this way about him that everything was gonna be okay okay and so the really gnarly scary stuff I'd call him okay Wow so it was kind of like Lee and him and then anybody I could get to hold the camera Wow so but I was dreaming stuff up and I you know some of my tricks I would write down and I wouldn't even want to tell anybody about because I knew that they would think that they if they couldn't do it that they wouldn't think that I'd be able to do it and I didn't want to tell anybody because I didn't want to doubt myself yeah you don't want to put that in your head yeah so I kinda would just go there and they'd be like I just want to go look at this thing how much fun I go look at this thing and then I wouldn't tell anybody until I got the leap of faith I would yeah I wouldn't tell anybody until I got there and then I was ready to go and then I they'd be like what are we here doing and I'm like I wanna do this and then they'd have whatever reaction they had but I was already committed at that point and I was only like a few minutes away from trying it right and so there wasn't gonna be much room for them to like you know get in my head we go out yeah yeah I'd already looked at it for every day that week and you know knew that I wanted to do it anyway so that's kind of where welcome to hell I knew how to make a video apart from making that heavy metal and then I went into it and then I dreamed and then there's that intro in the beginning and I was like okay I went to the Brooklyn banks and I was like if you did a line from rail to rail it'd be the ultimate intro uh-huh and no one had skated the big yeah no one had skated the big rail yet and there was some leeway that would like with that like with that like pushing across the bridge I could have started the line anywhere inside that pushing across the bridge right and you wouldn't have been able to notice it just had to end at a certain point and then the difference in heavy metal and welcome to hell was is that Tommy Otto got computer editing equipment and so now I could put the tricks wherever I want and you can like mess with them in different places you can get your music you know how you edit now right I understood the concept of editing and I admired mike ternasky videos I'd admired like all the great skate videos and I'd like gone back now and watched all those and smiled down what made them all awesome right right right saw what I thought were the flaws like in the Powell videos how they're cut in the middle of the trick not even show the first land and then cut in the middle of the second trick mmm and I was like oh you could use that to your advantage if you got a guy at least riding away even if he doesn't make it if he's like landing on it then you can cut to another angle as long as the angle cuts quick right so I started kind of incorporating that into the videos taking Howell and Plan B and those things you know cuz Plan B's first video was in 92 now we're in you know what 96 96 1700 you're too much welcome to hell so anyway that that was it and I'd really didn't know how to film that good still yet but I was getting the hang of it and that was like my I don't know my like whatever yes prod yeah I think you killed it welcome to hell yeah you know iconic skate video right there I mean the name and a lot of guys were that held together I I'm the glue that held it together yeah I was trying to vote against it but I wanted to start with you choose the whole like music soundtrack oh yeah I was suggestive anywhere where someone didn't know what they wanted to use I would suggest stuff to kind of but a lot of people knew like Mike Maldonado knew he wanted a skated in London done I knew he wanted to skate the London dungeon and Elissa steamer wanted to skate to the Sundays and that seems insane to go from Oh No fits London dungeon - the Sundays I like soft with song that I forget what it was called but it was some like jazzy type thing yeah that was Sava Szabo's into music on his own I think I might have picked the the police every little thing she does is magic yeah the first part but this one he wanted he picked and it came it worked out girl I mean speaking of songs you've had like some of the most epic songs you know well I mean I really always felt that yeah if you picked a really good song it encouraged you to live up to the song you know so you would pick the song a lot of time or a lot of times you would even start building usually I would get like five to ten tricks on film and then I would find a song and then the rest of the time I was just trying to like do this live up to the song yeah I was trying to do the song justice interesting yeah and that was the next three videos so yeah Chambers Brothers mmm time has come today with thrill of it all that was another rush project that was that was zero zeros version of walk of heavy metal okay here we have six months let's put out a video to put our name on the Mac well because it I mean let's move back so you left Toy Machine to zero you know it's tough wheels so you had started zero as like a clothing thing right yes originally originally zero was just supposed to be a clothing company right anyway so we made some t-shirts and we made the American zero logo was first right and actually know what the first thing was first was the army zip up that was the first thing we made we made it we made it in December 1995 oh wow so the army zip up on a on a US tour the end of a US tour right before we left for Europe summer 95 a van was below panama dance house and it got broken into I was here that day yeah it got broken into and Edie Edie came downstairs to a guy in our van Wow and the guy took a screwdriver and pointed it at Ed's face and I was like and it didn't know what to do yeah and so ed just like kind of froze and the guy grabbed my bag and took off running in the objects Wow and so in my bag was all my clothes my passport all my stuff Jesus so I had nothing right and you know time machine or tomahto was like paying for me to be on tour and paying for me to go to Europe but we supposed to leave for Europe in like four days or something right actually no one was a week we had to go to we had to go to a new passport we had to go from from Boston to Rhode Island because the first x-games was happening in Rhode Island oh and so I think I had the clothes I had on and then we went to an to a army surplus store in Providence Rhode Island okay and I got the green parrot cargoes that I wore in the opening line and welcome to hell okay and all throughout welcome to hell right and then I got the army shirt that I wore with I won the X Games oh wow so I only had two t-shirts whatever I was with nothing and then the army shirt alone that's what I went to Europe with Wow in any rate I wore that shirt all summer and then so when we had the zero talk I was like oh would be so sick to make a zero shirt just like the army shirt mm-hmm so I wanted to emulate that shirt I'd worn all summer yeah and worn so you know when I got into the zero thing I just wanted to make that and then we called that the army logo oh and so it was called the army logo and I you know remembered tracing the are off of the army you know trying to get the font as close as I could so it resonated that that was what it was from yeah interested because I you know at that time to copy and stuff was kind of cool or ever you know know what let me ask you a question real quick no he's good you do huh go ahead Jamie no you you start this company zero with him that with them right I mean you start rhyming they're helping you do t-shirts right now are you getting the name like trademarked and stuff are you having it under your name or how does all this work like there's no I didn't know how any of it works that's a really good question yeah Todd registered the trademark oh and so essentially he would own 0 yeah by the time I didn't care the fact that he was gonna make the stuff I wanted to make was good enough okay right you know and I didn't care at all and so really and I didn't get paid a lot for making welcome to hell okay I got like I don't know a couple grand or like I think I got 1,200 bucks or if it's 1,800 bucks I got from making welcome okay as a filmer an editor and everything well and I remember thinking that wasn't enough hmm but really what it was was it was like my it was my Jesus or whatever you know it was like my it was like my resume to do more for sure Todd back to company because I had made welcome to hell why I built a team I'd filmed the guys ID edit it and it was a success in time machine I'd prove myself and time machine was working you know obviously a large part of why I was working is because IDI made rad graphics he had cool ads but there was a portion that I was doing too and todd todd noticed and recognized that and he saw how determined and motivated I was but he wanted to like encourage it so he used the resources he had to help create opportunities okay and so we were making t-shirts started making logo boards yeah and he registered the name I didn't even think about that stuff I didn't know any of that worked right I was just like I want to make stuff yeah and the name there was it was at the time the name was a little bit clouded so it started off as American zero yeah yeah any rate we made logo boards and then the guys that were riding for zero in the beginning they all had other board sponsors right and at one time or another some of them their board sponsors it wasn't working out or they needed boards to ride I ended up giving them boards and it kind of got into this gray area of is it a board company or a t-shirt company right and then I started getting closer it was basically Adrian Lopez Wade Berkut Scottie Kopelman Erik Ellington those that was the crew I remembered you know going to ed and being like hey I really want to do this brand as a board brand but I'm gonna stay on Toy Machine for now you know as it grows I'll see if it makes sense for me to change over it later on right and so anyway he you know Ed's like alright cool whatever you know he thinks that that's plenty of time right so Todd asked me to write a business plan I didn't know anything about a business plan I just wrote down on notebook paper why I wanted to do it why I was gonna be different and what was gonna be a no-nonsense skateboard brand that was all based on these underdogs mm-hmm that was like the goal right and so Todd liked it and I was really nervous cuz I was like I don't have to quit telling machine if he doesn't like it I can't do this brand here I might have to go find somebody else to do it and that stress for like a week anyway so he's like yeah let's do it so we started making boards we started doing it and then um just after I went and you know talk to Matt Mumford Mumford was talking about leaving invisible oh yeah and anyway started coming together right and then it looked like it I should be a part of it so I went to ad remember I was at a trade show I went to ed and was like hey Edie I know I've only been running for 20 machine for a couple of years but I think I really want to do my own thing right I think I really want to do my own thing yeah you know I it's already starting and I I I can't stop I really want to ride for zero and he was like well let's just film one more video mm-hmm and I was like yeah I don't I don't have it in me my heart isn't in it anymore I got to move on I need to make a zero video as soon as possible and get this thing off the ground right so we started filming for thrill of it all thrill of it all I mean great video yeah great and welcome to hell was only a year which yeah which is crazy what but thrill of it all is six months heavy metal was six months and then misled youth was almost two years a few years yeah yeah okay so then I throw it always kind of like this burst of me coming off welcome to hell not really knowing what to do and not want to do the same thing over again and then and then when we started filming I knew that again we put it out and we felt like it was rushed and we really wanted to make something great yeah and we start focusing on walk on misled youth and when we started on misled youth it was kind of obvious that you know we were we had something again and right team that was hungry for it and everybody was getting it so Oh feel like those videos were like or zero specifically in my eyes you guys just like had a certain style and a certain look and you skated certain things that were just like I it was no one was doing that I don't even know that we were trying to do anything on purpose filming for misled youth I just remembered you know when the fisheye came out when the Marquand came out it was the game-changer yeah you know I always wanted to get close and I you know when all the old like videos were the guy when the fish I was really close to the guy it was my favorite footage yeah the dance dirt footage in the life video brian lotti you know Dan stock footage of brian lotti and now and later like all that stuff was like the greatest but the fisheye I had was like some janky fisheye and it was so lame and then when the mark one came out it was like the game changer it was like that was like I was going to jam that thing yeah yeah like you know I could yeah I couldn't get it close enough to the action I love that too in your face yes gave me morning I love that it's a bit obnoxious at times but my goal was to go back and forth from long lens to fisheye long lines to fish right and to really showcase the fisheye and then to give you a break with long lens there you go and so that was my method back then yeah it's like and then also just when their musics fast you play it you just put all the fisheye clips and when the music's slow you put the long it also you did the the quick shotgun editing though though yeah I got real carried away with that yeah some of those parts are hard for me to watch now cuz they're all really cut like really like if the stuff didn't roll away if the stuff did it I was like I don't care if they think I roll away or not I knew I rolled away I'll just jam it in there right or some tricks where I'm like there's no roll away right and there's not a second angle that's showing you that you did it yeah you just gotta take it take our word for it but ha ha ha ha but it was it was kind of like the style though too was like this this that oh yeah I know I could have this thing you know yeah yeah yeah that was that was the goal is to like it takes someone's attention hostage right and just like hammer over ya know and yes I don't know we were into it and then we dry balls and the fact that we had like some songs that were pretty fast yeah like Eric skated a Slayer and Jim skated Black Flag and then even the who you know song and the funny thing is is I always edited two beats differently than everybody else and I knew that everybody edited you land on the beat I added I've seen changes on the beat Oh because I felt like I remember asking you like well why don't you add it to the beat when you showed this video at a shows welcome to hell I don't yes in Boston and I said I did any like yeah I did it like really yeah and and people always would ask me that and I was just like that's not I feel like the beat is more I feel like a scene change is more dramatic in someone landing right someone landing I don't feel like is is the most dramatic thing have I feel like the scene change especially when you got quick cuts right and so I felt like that the beats demanded the scene change and I saw some people be like that's a cheap way of editing and I'm like you can call it cheap you can call whatever you want but I feel that I feel the the different like I feel the dramatic part is when the scene changes yeah and so but then over time I started to find that certain times it's like you land on the beat in certain time the scene changes on the beat depending on how to find the beat you were really trying to make the scene change on the beat yeah I was yeah in the scene or I would make the scene change on a on a loud lyric I would always hear that from people that you would give people money you'd have a trick list for them and you'd give them money if you got that true that's not a lie you know what the money the money that I offered was basically I was just trying to get it into someone's head that I believed in them enough yeah to give them a carrot no I mean it was and it was in you and you know just to be clear to Kelly I only offered that carrot if it was something they already wanted to do right wasn't like I was like oh yeah yeah it wasn't like it wasn't like I think you could keep flip noseslide staples so I'm putting it on the list yeah you know it was like for sure it was I would be sometimes I would ask them do you think you could kickflip noseslide staples right and they were like yeah I think I could write and I'd be like all right some list but at the same time they usually got like motivated by the process yeah the fact that there was this these tricks that they had want to do but they weren't willing to commit to had been floating or dinging around in their head now they're on paper and there's times there's a reward attached all yeah I mean oh not very not very often there was a bunch of money I mean those are just a few exceptional option I mean a few exceptions that there were tricks like right when Forrest Edwards was trying to get on the team there was like a few tricks that he'd claimed he wanted to do and if I ever heard someone claims something big I was like I'll give you a thousand bucks like Dane won Dane said he wanted a hardflip belt or I was like there's a thousand there's $1,000 on a hardflip down el toro dane for the rest of your life Wow whenever whenever you do it there's a thousand bucks and Forest said he wanted a three flip grind Hollywood 16 back then yeah for his part and I was like there's a thousand bucks I'll give you a thousand bucks and then he also wanted to switch flip switch back lifts at 12 and he almost did that oh he got into it and Dane tried a hard flip to he's tried the hardflip yeah I would I think he tried it you know there's a thousand bucks on the line when he tried it you know and I I mean there's certain things like that's worth a thousand dollars yeah for ya for your video to have a hard flip down El Toro in it just someone say yeah Dane Hart flips El Toro in the new zero video that's like an advertised yeah I did a Burton that everyone is gonna toss true it wasn't like it wasn't like Dane did a hard flip down to 12 and I'm like hey if you do el Toro I'll give you a grand Rhino it was like hey you know I wanted to do it I got a grand on it when you do it yeah it's kind of more like that but you know I've gotten a bad rap for doing this or that or you know everybody says whatever but usually it's like I try and do what I can do to motivate dudes to be what they want to be well we got let's move it on we got a I want to I want to like the fall in circa audio I mean America it's like another 20 years of his life I know start with America Jesus Christ I got a pro shoe at America yeah very similar to how I got into Transworld I lived with that Templeton for a summer didn't have a house when I got back from Europe okay name is after summer so for a couple of months I lived there and I would go to America each day hang out with Don Brown and just hang out mm-hmm and then I was like give me a blank shoe piece of paper like a blank drawing of a shoe all right draw shoes and I would just draw shoes in America all day and I would hang out with Don and I would talk to whoever came in and I was just like I just kind of hung out there okay he'll and then my career like welcome to hat we were filming for welcome to hell and things started picking up and Moscow was blowing up mmm so it was kind of like Moscow was about to get a shoe because of the hype that around them right and I think that I think that I kind of rode his coattails on that hype in the sense that there probably wasn't plans for me to get issue yeah but because I was hanging out at him at Seoul tech drawing shoes getting to know everybody getting to know the designers and I'd had a few sketches like lying around okay they took one of my sketches and basically and no one asked me hey here draw some shoes I just yeah I was like yeah give me some blank shoes I want to draw on some shoes on board right I like coloring and I don't know if I I'm probably hoped that maybe they cared about what I was drawing but at the same time if they didn't whatever I was doing my thing yeah yeah for sure I was wearing sales at the time okay for most of welcome to hell right it was the most functional shoe and you know they made an all black like black outsole yeah black upper and that was my deal alright anyway I feel like Mosca's hype you know was starting to like warrant him a shoe yeah and then since I was like his counterpart and welcome to hell and I was making the video and I was hanging out at Sol Tech they like threw me a bone oh and kind of like gave me a shoe but it wasn't like even officially a shoe yet they just sampled one of my drawings they took one of my drawings made it more into a design XI right and then sampled it okay and they gave me a sample and the sample was like a size 9 or 10 and it actually didn't even fit me like it fit ellington okay Ellington has a trick in the video in the first pair of sample oh yeah welcome to hell yeah he grinds that guardrail all he's over the bolts to grind the guard really oh and he gives me five after oh that was the day I got the samples and he's wearing them but they didn't fit me okay anyway so then it said Janek on the shoe it didn't have my name they expelled it wrong and I said Jay and I see okay anyway we called it the Janek in the beginning but I feel like yeah like kind of right place right time yeah Musca was getting a shoe and von Braun just kind of threw me a bone and I was getting a shoe and then maybe it helped me a little bit that Moscow you know maybe it didn't I think my she was already in the works yeah it was it was in the works okay and then the first few samples were sore the first few shoes or suede and then I around that time film and welcome to hell I became vegan and I wanted to have canvas shoes oh and that's when we came up with the concept of grinding the real barefoot yeah for the canvas shoe ad okay so the first batch of my shoes were suede second batch were synthetic and canvas got chip oh really good do that Ghidorah yes yeah it was like thick yeah and I don't even know if there was a third batch another I might have quit or there was even a third batch why did you quit who did circa was it sir no it was audio audio yeah okay I mean I haven't really talked about ever the reason why I quit but it was kind of like I felt like Musca and the guys at s Muska and Sal those guys were really close to Pier the owner of Sol Tech okay and I felt like my connection was through Don Brown and I felt like it was real shaky mm-hmm I never really felt like pier cared that it was on or whatever so I hope he's a nice guy and he's always been great to me but I just felt like he gave those guys a lot of attention and focus and he gave them a lot more time right and at the time pier was the only guy who signed checks okay so if Pierre went to Europe for a couple of months you just didn't get a chance oh and I remember just thinking how insane that was they said how can you run a company where if you're in Europe and you can't sign a cheque like I'm just not supposed to eat that month what are we talking about okay yeah and so I asked Donna's like he done can you find Pierre when he comes back into town and can't go into his office and ask him to sign 12 checks and put them in your desk drawer yeah and then send me one every month right and um he's like no I can't do that you know and then I was just kind of always felt like I was like the like stepchild okay and I didn't really feel like I felt like I finally like I barely got a shoe yeah and then I'd asked to like have a few meetings of Pierre and I never really could get a meeting and Don was a great dude and but I felt like Pierre was a guy who owned the company right he was a guy that I needed to have a relationship with and I didn't feel like I could get to him I felt like there was always like a buffer between okay yeah right right so I was just kind of like yeah this is cool and my shoes supposedly was doing well and stuff but I don't like the fact that I can't talk to the dude by who my destiny is in his hands oh and I am I tried a couple times and it wasn't working and Chris Miller came to me and was like hey we want to launch a new shoe company I want it to be huge Jeremy Ray and Steve Berra oh and you know we want to give you creative control and we want to like make you one of the dudes okay and it was kind of like it was kind of like he you know believed in me right was giving me more of an opportunity to be involved okay and really that's what I wanted I wanted to be involved gotcha and at Sol Tech I felt like I couldn't even get a meeting right much less be involved right your hands on dude yeah you want to I'm learning to be not always to be hands on but yeah but it's good to be hands on I mean I think at some level there's you know times in the past where I've had battles yeah and mine I picked all the battles yeah I picked all the rise for a good two decades okay nowadays I pick and choose my battles okay but it took me till like 40 right to resign to resign to the notion that not every battle needs to be won right right took me a long long time mm-hm and and I think that that's somewhat polarizing I think that it's had some people think like I don't want to deal with that guy you know I don't blame them because I've had guys that pick every battle it's paying the ass mm-hmm yeah and I don't really realize how I am until I'm on the other side of it there you go right so audio comes around and do ya and it was like you're gonna be one of the main guys bright but they were a new shoe company they had some hiccups in the beginning it was owned by k2 mm-hmm that was a little strange for me I'd always ridden for companies that were owned by people that I knew right so even though I had sacrificed you know leaving America where my shoe was good uh-huh but the fact that I didn't have a personal relationship with the person that was you know in controlling like my future right that that didn't give me any reassurance and even though we had gone to somewhere where k2 owned audio okay Chris Miller was the guy and I I trusted Chris and I had worked on a truck program within a project with him and yeah and it had gone well and I always liked Chris and you know he was you know very complimentary and supportive of the things that I wanted to do and right and he asked who I'd you know kind of wanted on the team and you know like Adrian Lopez like it was kind of like these are the guys I want and you know and it it worked yeah so anyway it was cool yeah but then I went on a couple of tours and there were like k2 tours and there was like rollerblade people taking us around to was like a skiing and rollerblade company and that I ended up not being so rad and I was not really into it and he kind of had these moments of corporate corporate nests and then I also got this crazy offer to ride for circa oh and offered a ride for circa was like it was like a life-changing scenario right I mean right it's like it was good pay it was a percentage of ownership oh guys to be a parallel with us you still have a percentage I I technically still own 7% of sir oh there you go okay I don't know what that's worth these days right right whatever right I should have cashed out a long time ago oh yeah Musca and I you know we got an equity stake in circa and then paid me really well and they also were willing to get behind us in a way that audio because of K twos you know kind of like ownership and you know k2 overseeing it they weren't really able to do those things so they were like hey you can have multiple shoes we can even we'll start a shoe line with you we can do your own brand it was like sky's the limit right and so I mean I didn't want to be cheap and I tried to stay as loyal as I could but when my contract was up with audio kind of the overshadowing you know corporate scenario I just felt like it working I felt like it wasn't working right and this opportunity was circa was yeah it looked too good to pass up and B to be with Chad at that moment in time was like it was a very special thing cool so yeah yeah I left audio to go to circa okay and then that was magical for two to three years they had some financial issues they had a snow sneezin that they gave everybody in the industry terms but then the snow season tanked and then everybody in the industry owed them money and they used that they used those terms you know basically they couldn't finance all the footwear for the neck production because they had you know the footwear company also owned us no brand an outerwear brand and so it put it put them in a financial strain and then I you know we weren't getting paid for like months and months and crazy right like six months yeah and then what for him for him yeah and then they wanted us to just loan them the money and then not get any not getting any interest on it's weird when they paid us back right at the time we were making good money so six months of salary was like a lot of money for sure right so it was just weird you know and they had at that point my my shoes had were selling like around forty to fifty percent of what was selling for the brand and they told me whenever it got to that point we were gonna start a new brand so we had we designed out a new brand already and then they basically were like not only can we not pay you right now but we're gonna have to can the new brand project because things are so tight that we have to focus everything on circa and so I was like alright that's you know the a lot of those things were the things that got me here you know and you're gonna take care of me that was gonna give me the opportunity to take care of my family right invest money and anyway to my distribution and now you're not paying me and the brand is gone and I don't know if you're gonna pull it off and even come back right so I was like you know so I went and had a meeting with ken Block and Damon way you know and talked about doing a new new Footwear brand with DC mm-hmm and those guys were like you know the timing was right yeah and they were like let's do it oh and they were like you know they asked me how many shoes I was selling at the time right I had my royalty reports from circa I gave them a royalty reports and they're like this is plenty okay we have plenty of sales if we can even get half these sales in the you know first year we're off at the races okay so Wow they're like what is your ideas for design and I was like oh I want to go above my current shoe I'm up and below my current shoe step below it and step above it and then we called the shoe the rival because it was gonna rival my old circle show right and then we called this other shoe at the Heritage because I had a rubber toe cap and it was going to be from my heritage all the way back to me Wow so the no cat was in America at audio mm-hmm and then there was one at circa as well so was gonna be the heritage and the rival those at the first two shoes yeah and so and it worked the first season went off and the good news was is that I went and negotiated with circa I said negotiated a six-month time period for them to sell off my inventory okay and that gave me six months to go and design the fall in line and then DC invested blind into the first seasons of inventory Oh so the first day we were gonna tell everybody that I was off circa and on a new brand and announcing a new brand we also had shoes the shoes about it Wow first time that's ever been done Wow so that's what we did in that first holiday season was gnarly damn you guys were killing it I was just like um and I hedged my bets I'm gonna work on falling and then I'll still own a piece of that yeah if one of them's got a right work you know right right right eventually seems like you know one of them really what how long which fault was fallen going for until so 2003 to 2016 I mean that's a long run yeah it was a good read it's a good run it was what happened well the footwear landscape drastically changed is true and then we had every possible problem along the way really we had a factory burned down we missed the whole season factory burnt down yeah fire yeah do the grower down we couldn't couldn't get the shoes replaced in the time frame that we needed to she's another time we got one whole season moldy moldy like mold in the shield on the shoes on the outside of shoes you can't really clean that would not New Balance - it's it's happened with a couple of people yeah yeah it happened with fallen crazy and then because they come over on boats and if they're not as the conditions I you know aren't up to snuff Wow it can and then we had we changed like when when around 2008 you know you had the you know global economic crisis prices of oil and prices of shoes you know they went up dramatically right and so the factories would have to you know our agents would have to find new factories that can meet the prices that we wanted and then when you go to those new factories those new factories would cut corners in order to meet your prices then your shoe quality would go down oh so you have quality going down and then you have nike adidas vans converse pouring in marketing dollars right getting the most amazing teams ever you know quality going down you have delays in you know production shipping all these things because you're working with new factories right so you're not delivering the best product and then you have to increase your prices to survive because even the cheaper shoes that they're making are still costing you more yeah and from China yeah so it just it was like just repeated issues over and over and then those issues went on too long with us being independent and I saw the writing on the wall and started having to make some really we had to make some really radical changes okay our distribution right had to start like you know laying people off in waves yeah and start making cutbacks yeah and then eventually I just saw that without someone helping stabilize that situation everything was gonna be gone uh-huh right and so you know cuz fallin grew like crazy yeah and it was shrinking like crazy Wow you know and then without a stable manufacturing partner throughout that whole process yeah and the landscape was changing so much it was all going towards sporting its brands being more accepted because they'd gone through a few cycles of skate generations right you know and they made amazing products and there's no doubt about it yeah it was kind of like they were doing everything right and because things were so hard for us we were doing everything wrong Wow you know so it was a struggle and then we got basically our last chance by going to dwindle okay dwindle and globe yeah their partners and globe has the footwear game dialed mhm and so it was the best chance we could have and it was too little too late we redesigned the whole line and the last few seasons were the best lines we'd ever done okay you know globe got behind me and gave you know they designated a sales manager specifically have fallen to designers for 12 months Wow and we redesigned the whole line and they gave it full attention the quality you know increased it like amazingly yeah the designs were better than ever okay but it was too it was too late it was too late and people would see it and they'd be like I really want to buy it and you know I was putting I was asking favors from all my friends at own shops right you know and then they'd bring it in and it wouldn't check programs - yeah and we did like you know we did like this thing called minority division where we do Co labs with like the coolest shops that were like all my friends and it would gave them an exclusivity reason to book it but even those shoes wouldn't do well and the design was good the collab was their materials were good the riot quality was good there was just no place for it in the market no and the sales wouldn't the the sales season after season would diminish to the point where we couldn't meet the factory minimums right and then you kind of just got a look at it and be like we tried don't did the best we could you know and it for me was really hard you know I had to over that time period I had to lay a lot of friends off or I had to shut down our distribution and then at the very end I had to lay all my you know all these dudes I written for the team for ten years yeah it's a long - you know and it it was hard and that you know and it was the biggest failure that I've kind of faced right you know right my life probably yeah you know to have something that was that big at one point and you know to be honest I just kept doubling down like when things would get tough yeah I would i reinvent it in the company you know I kept reinvesting kept reinvesting and I'd had some money put away and I had some savings and you know I'd bought a house and but that's not like I'm set for life money right I mean everything I had was invested a big portion of what I had was invested in the go and so I would end up losing a lot of you know what I had built right with that you know but I I never got into skating to get rich and you never I never expected anything out of it so I'm still thankful for all the experience and I knew that you know even if you take the company away I still have all that experience of business design marketing all those things and I knew I would be okay and I'd be able to take care of my family yeah and it was just what path that I want to go right after making those hard decisions you know yeah and I've tried to stay as true as I could to the path that I was on right you know so I wouldn't you know be taking a crazy left turn yeah everybody be wondering like what happened to that dude right right right right so you know we kept doing zero it swindle after falling down uh-huh and and then over time a little bit I put some energy and focus into it and realized that you know it wasn't necessarily working for them because they didn't own the brand and it was kind of expensive or than the license it okay and then for me I wasn't communicating with shops as much as I used to and they were the middleman on and and then there's also some confines in the way they do things that really didn't work for how raw zero was okay I wanted to make products like on impulse and I wanted to do guys quick and I want it you know and they had a very methodical way of doing things in a system they had a system yeah I couldn't just be as erratic as I wanted to there you're ahead yeah yeah I couldn't be as erratic as I wanted to be right and I think that these times call for like more spontaneous movement so you know we both kind of agreed that it would make the most sense from you know me to okay to take zero out of dwindle I take it back onto its own okay or take it some other to some other distribution right and I thought about it and I was like you know I feel like I'm kind of bouncing around yeah I'm gonna do it I'd rather do it small and meaningful I like that yeah so we took it at a dwindle and I had a few buddies that were helping with the brand already at a small level and then we just kind of increased their their input yeah you know they're they're job titles and right right and we've been doing it on our own for about 10 months Wow yeah how does it feel to be on your own I mean it feels good yeah I feel like sometimes I feel like it's almost a rebuilding process was totally yeah I mean I feel like I feel like a big part of the purpose was to kind of get it back to its roots and get it back to the point where it was alive at the source and it was run by a small tight group of guys that just ultimately cared a lot about it right and loved it yeah and like wanted to live it yeah and so you know the team that stuck with it throughout that time period those are the bright guys because I you know they they love it yes I care about it and they've been there you know for a long time you know Brockman's been there for what 13 13 years a long time yeah yeah and tell me as well so sick and then Danes been there over 10 so a lot of the guys have been there for ages Tony's been there for yeah same 1300 a lot of the guys were all introduced in new blood Wow so things are looking up though everything is good yes yes sir good good we're finally to a point now where you know we've we did a big summer tour this year yeah and we're working on a new video sick and and we're kind of getting our groove and product it's basically like a certain percentage of it is our traditional like things that you've seen from zero forever mm-hmm and then so like 33 percent of its that 33 percent of it is like revamped versions of a lot of our nostalgic type stuff but like either new backgrounds new colors you know experimentation with that stuff and then 30 percent I just want to experiment completely with new artists and new direction you know yeah and kind of just because I don't feel like we can just totally keep doing the same thing we've been doing and expected to be relevant right yeah you know so 30 percent of it I just want to like experiment with you know or 33 33 33 I want to experiment with one office yeah yeah one option just get weird yeah you know like we did that Gary Coleman bored with a beard on it yeah we're just trying to like have fun and it's kind of like if you if we come up with a good idea like just make it yeah you know just have fun totally yeah and then runs of boards are so small now that you can you could you can pull some sketchy stuff off - yeah it's not that big of a deal right right right so we've been having a lot of fun with it and then we're working on a new video it's called damn it all damn it all yeah okay kind of a throwback like such an epic song from you okay epic part epic song right no matter the cost I was somewhat filming apart for our last little web series called no cash value okay I was filming a part for that and then I started working on this this life on video for the barracks and then that ended up not happening with some of the changes that they were doing okay they're going through at the barracks and so I I have a decent start I probably have twenty to twenty five tricks for the video perfect I think that's a really good that's enough right yeah so my formula for video part is fifty tricks I think you know it's a pretty good day a minimum Wow I've never had a video part I think fifty trees yeah I think fifty tricks plus like three to five lines is like the full full part and then yes is that for a certain type of skateboarder or Zephyr every skateboarder you I think that's an average of like if you want to have a full part where the person ends up watching it going that was a full part right fifty trees you know and if you have thirty tricks they're gonna be like I wanted more he he did good but I wanted more yeah you know and fifty tricks if it's done right it's like that was solid but I still want more but you know Andrew and like stay gold or whatever what he said in his epic Larian something he had like 80 tricks I mean even like my favorite part is Bryan wedding and it's maybe a minute half long or something it's it's probably like 25 to 30 Clips I mean Greg go ahead like probably want more still though no but I still fit right yeah no I I get it I just think that to have a full full part and even if you go to 50 tricks I'm gonna use every single trick so you're really gonna get down to like 38 probably or I used right I want to ask you real quick about a stray so yeah we shut fallen down and then I was kind of floating I wore falling for like three to six months afterwards and I was like I'm just gonna wear falling until someone calls me yeah and then I was like what if nobody ever calls her phone ever right now I was like I'm just gonna wear fallen forever night right I kind of felt like I was hanging on to something in the past and then I was like you know what I want to start I want to start feeling like new emotions when I skate and I just feel sad wearing fallens yeah and so I was like you know yeah get some fans yeah fans are you know like running great shoes and I got a buddy that works there Matt Bennett wrote for fallin for almost ten years and I was like Matt can I have some shoes I was like hey I just need one pair I'm going on a trip and he sent me ten pairs say yeah and then I was like wow this is I could get used to this right all the pros - they were all great mm-hmm I was just like this is awesome so yeah I called them for a little bit to try and see if something would work out okay and I think I'd been like the xxx guy on the team or something right and I probably would have been on you know they already got like every aspect of skateboarding covered right and they already got rally and yeah and a slot that you know would be comparable to something that I would bring right and I was like you know what I'd probably let me know what I bring to them you know and then I called commerce and it was kind of similar they had some initiatives where they're trying to put two or three guys on okay they're like so it's coming you're a fourth in line you know right on who knows when that will happen yeah you know and then I caught wind of you know this new Footwear project angel Chabad is doing he's the founder of crew and Supra oh yeah mm-hmm and he wanted to do a price point brand largely direct-to-consumer mm-hmm and and then when I heard price point he was like yeah I want to have it be as good as anything but I want the shoes to be like forty and fifty bucks right and then I was like whoa that that's amazing yeah you know it's like yeah and I was like if you can pull that off in the shoes are good like then you have legs to compete with as big as anybody wants no no no right right right and then also I feel like a lot of my fans were like you know come from struggling situations and like I was an underdog and I feel like I've ever attracted underdog fans mm-hmm and I feel like that fallen you know some of our shoes were more affordable and cheaper and that kind of made sense right and so now if the whole brand is gonna be mm-hmm excuse me the whole brand is gonna be less than 60 bucks right that it would be amazing love it they're gonna sell skate classics for less than 60 bucks Wow it kind of just like all fell together so musk and I came together around the same time and we're talking about you know how excited we would be to work on something again and yeah and it's you Musca Antoine and Brady and 20 break so a great team yeah angels angels really been really close with all those dudes except me okay I've liked the outsiders yeah you know he's right he's um you know spent a lot of time with the other guys but you know I've gotten to you know know everybody and be a part of it and uh huh and I don't know from for me too it's great because those guys they know what they want to do they have a clear vision and the shoes worked for me and the insoles are great shoes are good dude I feel like we could sit here and talk forever man we needed you apart - I feel like I know it's crazy dude the amount of stories in the places you've been the people you've managed it's nuts you know yeah I mean I turned pro in 1993 1993 I started skating in 91 so 24 years 91 do I start yeah something like that late bloomer started skating at 15 that is a late bloom you wanted let's talk about me right now yeah you want to know about my story yeah I was born in Inglewood now but eight listen man dude like I said we could talk forever dude but thank you so much for hey my pleasure we deem it to talk about leap of faith dude what the hell you think I'm not thinking I'm answering the questions you're asking me before what were you thinking trying that I went to Point Loma high school for the first time okay I was just you know when you get to a school you look around the spot you're looking checking everything out yeah right I remember looking over that rail and going whoa that's a big drop and then I was thinking like man I wonder if somebody could Holly that anyway I was like I you know I was looking at it with a couple people like what are you thinking man they like laughs it's like four stories tall yeah two story oh but they left me there they left me there just to look at it and I was like tripping out on it and I was like aw I'm just gonna push up to it at the speed that you would push up to okay right and I'm gonna like imagine what it would be like trying it okay I pushed up to it at the speed and I kicked my board into the rail grab the rail and like looked over it and kind of like got a look lamps it like what it looked like yeah and then I like looked under my hands and it said Jamie M Thomas gap oh it was already written there under my hands yeah Wow it's already written okay someone that went to the school had like called it like Jamie Thomas gay and I was like oh it gave me like the chills I got like really weirded out yeah and then I like left and went and caught up with the crew and and ramose Dave Swift Vinny Ponte Danny super Wow okay anyway so I went caught up with it I was like hey - the craziest thing that's happened to me and I like I like drugged somebody back there to look at it okay and they were like whoa that's crazy and they're like but what are you thinking where's the gap right but it sounds like no over this rail and they're like what Wow no anyway so I always thought about it and I was like one day I want to come back here okay no and it had probably been like a year oh and I started like jumping off vert ramps and not like training or preparing but I'll kind of figure out how hyah stuff could you jump off right right anyway I don't even know if I even got close to that height but I just felt like I could at least land on the board that's all I knew okay and so I I basically lined up a photographer went there Adrian Lopez lead upon Elissa steamer Chris Lambert and a few in this whoever whatever kids were there that you tell people that you were gonna go out and do this I or was it one of those things I think that Adrian knew I think Lee knew right I think their crew knew I was gonna try somebody I knew I was gonna try right I don't even think that maybe add all of them hadn't even seen it yet so we went there we set up a camera on a tripod Lee was gonna film on the other one uh-huh and I Grant was gonna shoot the photo shoot photos it was gonna be a cover if I made it for Transworld right and like I pushed up to another half an hour and it was like one of those things we're like I just don't know if I have I have it in me to pull the trigger on wow yeah I'm getting anxiety just yeah and then oh I was like all right Adrian right here shake my hand shake my hand we did the commitment handshake he came up shook my hand and it and then he turned around was like he's going next try I went back she was untied went down to tie my shoe right next to my shoe is a dead bird oh and I was like is this an omen like she's gonna die right now right but I was like as I guy ready shook his hand [ __ ] I'm going okay and so I turned around and tied my shoe and just went and then I lit over the rail I remember grabbed my board remember thinking like wow this is way higher than I anticipated yeah dropping for ages and then I wasn't going nearly fast enough though so my board drop off the feet my board drops off my feet and it hits the ground first my body keeps going forward puts my ankle on the nose and my other foot in the middle of the board that's what focused that's what right okay so board breaks I go onto my hip like full impact cuz I'm not rolling anywhere right board broke immediately you know and hip and ankle my friend ankle landing on the nose in a weird position jarred my ankle you know jumping off of something like 18 feet high right on your nose weird so my ankle and my hip are done I get up and I'm like yeah I'm not trying that again there's no way I'm putting another board together and going up like right so then I like took a break from that and then you know some time goes by and then I got into some other you know got into film and misled youth and I wanted to come back you know at some point never ended up coming back and I ended up trying to double set it sat at San Dieguito instead okay and then I ended up blowing my knee out trying a big double set in San Francisco and then that kind of took me out of trying the leap of faith for like a long while okay right after misled youth right I still stayed usually when a videos done I stay in filming mode because you're so in the mode right you want to take advantage of going and you also want to go do the stuff that you weren't able to do in the deadline that you had and you just kind of keep keep it going keep the ball rolling right so right I ended up blowing my knee out a few months after misled youth came out geez and it was gnarly it was like fractured my femur PCL MCL torn meniscus it was a really gnarly what we doing when trying to jump a big double set in SF that one that that's that Ryan disenzo kick flipped Wow so that was 99 Andrew and I tried it like back-to-back days and I ended up kicking my board and landing in sprained ankle position and my knee didn't bend forward because my ankle was rolled whoo and then my knee buckled it's it was it's a horrible god anyway blew my knee out right in that knee injury led to like multiple knee injuries every other year for the next like five years Wow okay so anyway I never got back to the leap of faith never got back to it now and it's just I don't know I wanted to do it I always wanted to do it and then I got to a point where I was like I don't know five any business doing that do you think you could have done it do you think it is possible I absolutely think it's possible I think jaws can do it sure speed is the factor that is the factor you go the the the less the impact yeah and so like jaw jaws has his his meth in his like way of doing it worked out right he's got it down to a science he knows how fast you have to go for how tall the drop is yeah and a lot of it is like the mechanics of how your body works ya know like and you don't know if you're good at doing what taking drops like I didn't know that I was like good at taking drops and I'm not necessarily sure that I was I just knew that I was willing to try it more often than everybody else oh how did it become the leap of faith what was the who named that who coined that term Adrian Lopez oh really yeah the thing we were making an ad so what happened was it didn't get the cover no I didn't make it no and then zero was all about being an underdog and we thought it was great that a slam would be my first ad right and so it was the first ad in Transworld oka and I felt like it needed a title and the leap of faith was two in one of his leaving Toy Machine which was super successful right was leaving Toy Machine to ride for zero okay and I was jumping this gap and at the time it was more like 60% leaving Toy Machine to ride for zero that's like not even really a company at the time that was more of the leap of faith then the actual gap right because the gap would stand the test of time yeah and people would eventually get used to me writing for Xero the gap is what ended up taking over the name the faith it's so crazy because like that ad it was kind of like that it was almost a sequence it was thinking was like a Auto sideways with a sequencer it's okay right right right right this is amazing the chief the chief the chief Wow hey you know what dude continued success with the zero and the new video would damn it all thank you I just want to keep skating as long as I can and then you know the fact that we're running zero now on her own and love it strays taken off it's been received well hopefully that will enable me to continue to skate you have a life in skateboarding this has been a dream and I'm very thankful to be here Wow hey Jamie Thomas let me wipe my hands to get a good handshake from you no I'm saying thanks for having me [Music]

Channel: The Nine Club

Views: 707,899

Keywords: chris roberts, roger bagley, kelly hart, crob, the nine club, nine club, the 9 club, 9 club, skateboarding, skateboards, skate, skating, skater, podcast, talk, show, history, lesson, interview, news, tutorial, motivation, entertainment, best style, legend, how to skate, schrock, funny, haha, hilarious, comedy, braille, thrasher, berrics, transworld, tricks, sk8ing, nike sb, sk8board, street skating, switch tre flip, boardslide, crail couch, jamie thomas, zero, straye, toy machine

Id: hc5AlRTTNx0

Length: 213min 44sec (12824 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 16 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/stro_budden]

all Nine Club interviews are worth the watch, but this one especially is. Jamie gives a ton of detail and barely even scratches the surface.

[u/TallGary]

This could have been 6 hours and still would have been too short.

[u/banging73]

Excellent. Well worth the watch. Had no idea Jamie had to go through so much shit. He earned everything he has.

[u/mmm_vernors]

I can barely watch a half hour of TV without getting bored, but I sat through this whole thing and wish there was more

[u/[deleted]]

they say every skater has a nickname and also should have been workhorse as he's someone you want to watch get it done cause he's awesome at getting burly....... his sister lives in Wellington, Floridugh fyi

[u/jakedesnake]

Three hours and thirtythree minutes? Jeez