Interview by: Ray Maté
TR: My name’s Tino. I’m from Dominican Republic. I moved to New York when I was like, five. Been living Upstate the majority of time and I’m a skateboarder, I skate in New York, I love skating.
RM: How old are you now?
TR: I’m 26 now, I just turned 26 this year.
RM: Thank you for looking out all the time. I will go Upstate at the weirdest hour and skate the park. Fucking 12:45, 1:00am, you know.
TR: Yeah, yeah.
RM: It’s probably the only time I have to fucking roll on a skateboard.
TR: Yeah, that’s why I’m always like, I can’t deny you because, I’m like, dude I can’t… when I’m your age, I’m gonna be like, damn.
RM: Yeah.
TR: I really need to skate at one point.
RM: Yeah, because you got that itch and you’re like, what do I do and you can’t like, not do it so you gotta figure it out. You know, fortunately, I’m lucky enough to be able to go to Peekskill at a late hour and skate by myself because I’m old and washed.
TR: I might have to be hitting you up now, because I live down here.
RM: Yeah well, you’re here now so you let me know. So dude, you’re… I don’t know… there’s so many things that you’ve been saying that you wanted to do. I’m gonna come out here and come skate and do this and that and, literally, that’s been a span of like, I’m just gonna say two months. I’m gonna come down here and whatever, move to Brooklyn and whatever, just try to meet people, go skate. I saw your latest Quarter Snacks and is it Mike Sass that filmed it?
TR: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
RM: Who was in it? It was Andrew Singh.
TR: Andrew, this kid, Marcus Eagle, Brandon Geronda.
RM: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TR: Mike Bart and Roland Schultz.
RM: Is it all Second Nature Crew?
TR: We all just kinda gravitate towards being a Second Nature Crew. Second Nature’s a weird thing where it’s all friends that are part of the shot but eventually it’s the dudes that still stick around, even when it’s like…
RM: Yeah, and I love that place. I can bring my son up there to go skate. He’s been watching Instagram and he’s been looking at my friend’s son’s Instagram.
TR: Yeah, yeah.
RM: I think my friends son is six and I think he’s been doing some really wild shit on a skateboard for a six year old. I think he like, ollied 10 stairs in one of his clips.
TR: Ah, that’s…
RM: He like…
TR: Ah that’s beast.
RM: Dude.
TR: Yeah, that’s beast.
RM: Imagine that, six years old trying to do that shit.
TR: I feel like I would just explode. 10 stairs, right now… I’ll Ollie is but…
RM: If you’re gonna explode I’d shatter that to pieces
TR: At six years old, I don’t know, where you have, the… to survive.
RM: I mean, I guess when you’re just like, motivated and into shit, you know how it is when you first love skating, you’re like, obsessed.
TR: Yeah.
RM: It’s like everything else, you know, you just jump in it, you wanna learn everything about it, you wanna be a part of it, you wanna dress it… dress like it.
TR: Oh, that’s the best part though, the dressing like a skater.
RM: You know how it is. Now, people dress like skaters don’t skate but, that’s just the time that we live in now, everything is about looks.
TR: Yeah.
RM: You and I know we’re just so heavily influenced from skateboarding, that we become our own little critics. We see things a certain way. That whole speil… people don’t understand skaters are probably one of the biggest critics ever, to talk about anything from music to skate parks, fits etc etc
TR: Oh my god, yeah, yeah.
RM: The way people talk, the way people walk. The clothing. How people carry themselves.
TR: Yes. It’s funny, we just criticize way too much. We take time to be like, “That guy’s style’s bad, so he’s bad.”
RM: Yeah, yeah, he’s bad, he whack.
TR: He’s whack.
RM: Does that make us better people? Yeah.
TR: He’s like, “I don’t like how he wears those jeans.”
RM: Yeah, that’s just how it is.
TR: Were just haters.
RM: So, who are you skating for now?
TR: Honestly, only Nike right now.
RM: Nike?
TR: Yeah. I’m only skating for Nike… just skating around.
RM: Yeah, Nike’s been… I don’t know, they’ve been like, top of the media for the past four or five days.
TR: Yeah.
RM: And the Kaepernick movement, the Just Do It tag line is… I think is stronger than ever. With, man, that one commercial that popped up early in the summer.
TR: Yeah.
RM: Someone texted me and I almost cried watching that.
TR: Yeah, you just showed me.
RM: Yeah, it’s on some, I don’t know.
TR: Yeah, I love Nike. Honestly, before I started skating… I tried it when I was younger like, I guess, like in middle school. You see somebody doing it you’re like, “Oh let’s try to skate.” And, I was like… my dad and my mom definitely don’t like skating because, there’s just… you just don’t understand, what’s the purpose of it? But, for me, it’s like, everybody’s gotta have something to do, you gotta have like a hobby or something.
RM: Put your energy into something.
TR: Yeah because if you don’t, after we both skate… if you’re don’t have a hobby, to me, I don’t understand how you even go through your day.
RM: Yeah.
TR: You don’t have something that allows you to release. There’s no point in it, but you’re still gonna do it. There’s no real point in skating. We just go around like, destroying trees. Then we built all this, we break it, but at the end of the day it just allows you to just not go crazy.
RM: Yeah, it’s something to do. It’s not a team sport, but…
TR: Can’t do team sports either. I hate team sports. I can’t do it. I can’t imagine… because, all the blame can fall on one guy. I’m like, alright. Like, I played baseball. If the guy on first base isn’t catching that ball…
RM: No, I know. I played softball and I played baseball in a police athletic league for years.
TR: Yeah.
RM: It could be one guy just fuck everything up.
TR: And then younger… watching parents. Watching parents get mad at their kids. Bill’s yelling at his son to catch the ball or run the base faster. It’s like, “Bill, who are you?”
RM: Yeah, soccer moms freaking out. Taking over their kid’s lives.
TR: Yeah like, who are you?
RM: Yeah.
TR: He’s probably gonna be something better than you will ever be. Who are you to like… Those are just crazy. So, I did sports the majority of high school.
RM: Just baseball?
TR: Oh no, I did baseball when I was younger. Stopped that. Then I did track, I tried lacrosse, that was whack. I just don’t think it’s… because it’s something where everybody has to be good at it. For you to become like, genuinely… if there’s… I played against one school. The kids just recently started playing Lacrosse, and all it was was just this kid with a really long stick just whacking at you like a baseball bat. I’m just like oh, yeah, that’s kind of-
RM: Illegal.
TR: Yeah, but it just hurt and I’m like, “This is why.” Then I did track all of high school. I loved running. I still like running.
RM: That makes sense. You fucking jump up everything and jump over everything.
TR: I did all that jumping stuff. I never wore Nike stuff until I found a pair of Nike shoes underneath a Nike truck. Nike running cleats and they were size nine, my size. I kid you not. I went underneath, I saw them on the other side. I just crawled underneath and I stole them. I just dipped out. We were in some faraway meet and I was like-
RM: Opportunity.
TR: Yeah. I was like, “These are good. I’m going to keep wearing these things.”
RM: Opportunity.
TR: Yeah, that’s it.
RM: Trying to think of what else… how do you like living in Bed-Stuy?
TR: Right now it’s pretty much everything I’ve wanted.
RM: That’s awesome.
TR: Right now. Some people are like, “It’s too much, I don’t like that. I want to live in the LES.” I’d like to live in the lower east side, like really be right
there, but at the same time, I’m like, “Dude, it’s only three to five minutes away. I’m cool with that.”
RM: But I mean you’re… you live in a part of New York that’s still kind of New York though. Me, I appreciate that. Just growing up here, born here. I actually was born a few blocks away in Lutheran Medical Center in Sunset Park. But you know how it is, we’ve been here. We don’t really need to be in the scene. We just want to be in our area where we love and-
TR: Do our things.
RM: Yeah. Exactly.
TR: It’s cool. There’s spots everywhere. That’s the thing now. I’m here. I look around left and right and I’m like, “Oh, I could skate that. I could skate this.”
RM: Must be nice.
TR: Photos… I take photos of everything… everywhere I go. Take a photo and I have the GPS… thank god for iPhone.
RM: Yeah, thank god for that.
TR: Technology’s crazy, but for me, for skating I’m like, “I’ll just take a photo and I’ll go back to it.”
RM: I’m not going to lie, going back to iPhone… I was using Samsung for quite a long time because I was getting phones… I was sponsored. Now getting back on Apple, I swear, I don’t even know why I left.
TR: It’s crazy. I was on that Samsung stuff for a minute. I was in high school. iPhone was like next gen.
RM: Thank god for… when Samsung phones started blowing up, that’s when I got cut off the program. I just can’t imagine my kid playing with that phone and that thing blowing up in his hand. I would have fucking killed somebody.
TR: That’s crazy that that happened. How does it just blow up? That’s the craziest part. It blew up in some dude’s ear in a plane or something like that.
RM: Yeah, some really awful… that’s some lawsuit shit.
TR: Yeah, it sucks for that.
RM: I’m trying to think of what else. You still hang out with the Second Nature guys? You see them a lot?
TR: Not as much… just getting used to being down here. Trying to get a job. I’m about to start working up here.
RM: You see Brian at all?
TR: I’ve seen Brian a couple times. I seen him and he was going to skate and I’m just like, “Yes, dude.”
RM: Brian Brown is fucking one of the illest dudes to watch skate ever.
TR: His advice was why I skate how I skate. He told me, “When you’re skating, skate and try and feel as cool as you can while doing any tricks and just keep doing that. Whatever makes you feel super cool when you’re doing a trick, keep doing that. You want to get that feeling. You want to feel…”
RM: That’s actually really good advice.
TR: Yeah. He was just like, “If you feel really cool doing that, keep doing that. Go gravitate toward that.”
RM: It’s so funny that you mention that, because I remember growing up over the years… this video came out, next video came out… oh, you’ve got to do big spins, oh, you’ve got to do pressure flips. You’ve got to do this shit. You’re not skating to doing what you want. You’re trying to skate to keep up with the trends and you don’t realize you should skate and learn what you like doing and develop it and do it faster and better and higher instead of just following everything.
TR: That’s kind of why I skate how I skate. I just like…
RM: That’s great advice.
TR: I do a lot of K-flips. I’m like, “Yeah, because they make me feel good.”
RM: I hear you.
TR: I want to keep doing that. I like popping the board really high.
RM: I’ve seen it.
TR: Yeah, it just feels cool when it’s higher. You watch Austin Gillette skate…
RM: Yeah, dude, Austin’s amazing.
TR: Yeah. I watched him skate the other day and I’m just like, “Yeah, I kind of want to make sure my board goes that high.”
RM: Last time I saw Austin was at this thing at China Chalet… I think it was a few years ago. This is before I quit smoking and I was going through this weird party phase and my pops died. I just remember out of nowhere I was like, “Fuck this place. I’m going to smoke a cigarette.” I just lit up a cigarette and he looked at me. He’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m smoking a fucking cigarette.” He just took a cigarette and started smoking too and all of a sudden the whole damn room started smoking. It was pretty epic. I don’t know if he remembers that, but I remember that day and that was pretty funny. I think the night before we ate horse ribs, but that’s a whole other story. Yeah, sorry. This guy Matty Matheson, this cook dude… he hosted a dinner for whatever you want to call these guys, cool guy influencer people. Somehow I ate horse ribs. I felt really bad after. We should talk about something else, I feel uncomfortable now. You’re always out doing something.
TR: A wild, maybe. Other than that… I’m doing this little house skateboarding kind of thing. It’s called Love House.
RM: Love House?
TR: Yeah. It just came spontaneous and we were just like, “Dude, let’s just do this.”
RM: Is it boards or…
TR: I just want to make it clothing. It’s not to sell it, it’s just to get clothing on my homies’ backs. We’ll literally be going thrifting all the time, he’s trying to get a t-shirt. It’s just like, dude.
RM: That’s dope. Love House… that’s a good name.
TR: It’s cool. Honestly, we just… at the end of the day, don’t want any negative energy. Only positivity. Obviously there’s stuff that’s like, “Oh, that’s kind of…” But at the end of the day it’s like, “Keep it up.” It takes more energy to be negative.
RM: Of course, it’s a waste of time. I don’t know if you know this, I kind of know stuff about clothes, so if you need help, I can help you with that. I’ve done a few things in my life.
TR: I know who you are. I told them all, I was like, “I have a friend, his name is Ray. I swear to god guys, he knows what he’s doing.” They’re just like-
RM: I know some things. “Then hit him up.” I’m like, “All right. Let me get that money before we start hitting people up.”
TR: We’re kind of doing that and you know Kevin? Kevin White? Blanco?
RM: Of course I know Kevin. He’s fucking hilarious.
TR: That’s kind of how it came about because we were hanging out for a month when he was here. We would just always go out. We’d go to this thing called 113 Mambo and in the basement they would play house music and all that stuff.
RM: Really? I can’t picture him being a house guy.
TR: He loves house. Kevin loves house music.
RM: Kevin White loves house?
TR: He’s sent me videos that he’s edited to house music.
RM: I can’t… wow.
TR: He loves it.
RM: I know him pretty well. I did not know he was into house.
TR: His music… his likes and tastes in music is vast.
RM: Oh no doubt.
TR: But he loves house music and it’s just like… it was so weird when I told him that he’s like, “You like house music too?” I’m like, “Yeah.” It just seems to always go really well with skating. Somehow I always come across… I have a camera, VX21, and I also have this old VHS camera, old one. It only takes VHS. I’m like, “I’m probably not going to use it, but it’s just cool.”
RM: I’m not going to lie, when I think of house, I think of shopping at Canal Jeans and I think about going to the Palladium and chasing girls, because that’s where all the dope girls were at. Not for nothing, House has had a good run. I’ve seen it come back.
TR: Yeah, such… it started in Chicago in 1977. It was primarily just black culture, that was house. It was so… everybody goes and it just looks like everybody has a good time. Just love the scene. Outfits were always sick.
RM: Platforms and shit?
TR: Yeah. 1977 and then going through that…you can imagine how many stops… literally that’s when all these styles just boom, boom, boom, boom. Year after year there’s a new one. Those shoes, those pants, baggy, slim, tight, colorful.
RM: Yeah, it’s weird because I don’t think some people understand how house influenced the way people dress now. I don’t know. Everything’s all one thing now.
TR: Yeah, you can just see it in old videos where you’re just… all right, that right there, I see it all the time. The big, puffy shoes are coming back.
RM: Oh man.
TR: What is it? Under Armor DC3… was it DC3?
RM: Oh my god, the looking joints.
TR: They literally are.
RM: They’re D3s.
TR: Just slimmed down D3s. I don’t know if they’ll skate really good. I see this one kid that just skates D3s… the original ones.
RM: That’s crazy. Those things are like bricks.
TR: But you know how we were talking about clothing and fashion? He wears skinny clothing and really loose chucks and it just looks so bad because he’s not balanced.
RM: That sounds awful.
TR: I look at him and I’m like, “I will literally buy you baggy jeans.” Because the skinny clothing makes those DCs… those Osiris things look twice as big as they are. I’m just like… dude.
RM: I’m glad you talked about that though, because how crazy that skateboarding influences everything from fashions, the trends… since day one it’s always been…
TR: You know why that is? I always think about this stuff about skateboarding, because I just always think about… I think the reason it influences fashion and everything is not because it’s such a great idea that we have or it’s all the clothing stuff… It’s like, “Oh, that’s a unique look.” Realistically it’s because… you know how everybody gets like, “Oh, I’m going to do basements now because that guy does basements.” All skaters watch a skate video and see one dude wearing it and since skateboarding… everybody watches videos nonstop, “Damn, that guy is so beast. He wears those clothes so well,” everybody follows him on Instagram or everybody watched the video. They start wearing those clothes. But since we’re such a collective group… that we all start wearing it and you can’t deny it when 1,000 kids start wearing one style.
RM: That’s true.
TR: Dickies have always been in skateboarding Tight blue jeans, cuffed. They usually have different colored socks on there or something like that and it’s just that one look. All the kids take that and you instantly know what they gravitate toward in music. The way we influence fashion is that everybody starts copying it and you can’t deny it when 1,000 people are wearing it and then more than that. We always roll together, so every single dude has cutoff jeans.
RM: That’s true.
TR: Dickies have always been in skateboarding Tight blue jeans, cuffed. They usually have different colored socks on there or something like that and it’s just that one look. All the kids take that and you instantly know what they gravitate toward in music. The way we influence fashion is that everybody starts copying it and you can’t deny it when 1,000 people are wearing it and then more than that. We always roll together, so every single dude has cutoff jeans.
RM: Cutoff jeans. They have a pack across their chest or something…
TR: Everybody has ripped jeans or something like that. They’re like, “Oh, that’s fashionable.”
RM: Or like blind jeans or some weird freaking fashion.
TR: Everybody’s been wearing worker clothes. That’s kind of where it’s gone to.
RM: Yeah, work wear to the fullest.
TR: I’ve been seeing a lot of people wearing Wranglers and stuff like that. It’s the jeans… the jean look. You remember. Everybody was rocking chinos for a minute, because chinos was a look. Still wearing chinos, but now blue jeans is… every park there’s got to be at least 12 kids. You remember the… here’s the quickest one, the most recent one to happen. The colored camo pants one.
RM: Oh, the crazy… every time I think of that kid on Instagram… I can’t remember his name, but I think of that kid… Steven Lawyer or something like that.
TR: Yeah.
RM: He’s dope though, whatever, that’s his thing. But then you see other kids dressed like that.
TR: Right and it’s… it just took off because everybody’s like, “Damn, he’s so good.” Then they’re just like, “Yo, let’s all wear that.”
RM: It’s always a dude that’s ill. I remember back in the day I would see this kid skating in overalls and it was this kid, Ducky, from Brooklyn and he would no comply wear a big old with overalls. I’m like, “I want to dress like that dude.” Then fast forward and you see a video… there’s Mike Vallely wearing cargo pants and Converse and a flannel. Mike Vallely or Matt Hensley… just gravitate towards people that are-
TR: Track joggers.
RM: That’s another one, too.
TR: You just watch all the dudes skating… it’s comfortable. They look cool.
RM: I’m not going to lie, I never liked it. But as of recently, I kind of dig it. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m washed and old. I’m just embracing it now. I know better than to hate on it.
TR: It’s all just how you want to look at it. You watch some guy like Clark skating, he always gets along with joggers.
RM: Yeah, but he’s dope.
TR: Yeah, but that’s what makes it sick. You’re just like, “Damn.”
RM: For him, when he looks good on a skateboard, the way he does his tricks… he could wear whatever. But then there’s a handful of people that could wear anything and they look good. Lucas Puig, there’s Jack Curtain.
TR: He looks good in everything, Jack does.
RM: You know what it is. They just look good because the way they skate looks good. They dance good.
TR: Yeah, they dance good.
RM: We’re talking about skateboarding is like dancing.
TR: It kind of it. Literally, when you think about motions and stuff like that… when you’re doing lines, the best ones are the ones that just look fluid and you’re just like, “Damn, this guy is just dancing pretty much.” Austin Gillette literally looks like… he literally looks like a dancer. I watched him at the park. He did one trick. He goes into a no slide and
RM: That’s another one, too.
TR: You just watch all the dudes skating…it’s comfortable. They look cool.
RM: I’m not going to lie, I never liked it. But as of recently, I kind of dig it. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m washed and old. I’m just embracing it now. I know better than to hate on it.
TR: It’s all just how you want to look at it. You watch some guy like Clark skating, he always gets along with joggers.
RM: Yeah, but he’s dope.
TR: Yeah, but that’s what makes it sick. You’re just like, “Damn.”
RM: For him, when he looks good on a skateboard, the way he does his tricks… he could wear whatever. But then there’s a handful of people that could wear anything and they look good. Lucas Puig, there’s Jack Curtain.
TR: He looks good in everything, Jack does.
RM: You know what it is. They just look good because the way they skate looks good. They dance good.
TR: Yeah, they dance good.
RM: We’re talking about skateboarding is like dancing.
TR: It kind of it. Literally, when you think about motions and stuff like that… when you’re doing lines, the best ones are the ones that just look fluid and you’re just like, “Damn, this guy is just dancing pretty much.” Austin Gillette literally looks like… he literally looks like a dancer. I watched him at the park. He did one trick. He goes into a no slide and then pops out 270, but he does the full rotation so he lands. He does it and he just lands going the same direction and you’re just like…
RM: He flows good.
TR: He flows perfect.
RM: No tick tack?
TR: Nothing, just perfect… here’s a trick that literally just looks like they’re dancing. When people do the 180s back to regular… so let’s do 185, back to that. The motion that your body does is literally like a move.
RM: It’s a dance move.
TR: Because you can’t do it slowly. You literally have to put your feet in one spot and quickly turn it right back and you’re just like… Yeah and most people that can do that trick… there’s certain tricks that you can almost not make look really bad, because most people that do those tricks completely respect the fact that it’s ike, all right, you’ve gotta do it this way or else you just look like a dummy. You can’t just tap and land all sketchy.
RM: Yeah, that’s one thing. You don’t want to look like a motherfucking dummy.
TR: Then some people just know how to go about it. Connor knows how to go about it.
RM: Connor Champion is one of my favorites. He’s just-
TR: Beast.
RM: He’s mad cool. I haven’t really hung out with him in awhile. We spent a lot of time together because of Mighty
TR: Coolest dude.
RM: Coolest dude.
TR: Best to get advice from. For me, Connor has come from… he came from Carolina and he moved here and now he’s living here and it’s just… I look at him and I’m just like, all right.
RM: He’s one of my favorites to watch skate. I remember in SF he came and met up with a bunch of us and I think we went to go skate this curved bench. I’ve never seen anybody do a back smith around a curb bench like he did.
TR: The red one?
RM: Yeah, it was a red one.
TR: I remember.
RM: I think literally he came from the airport, Uber-ed to where we were at and I think he did that in less than an hour. I might be wrong.
TR: That’s Connor.
RM: It was pretty sick.
TR: Yeah, he’s cool to watch. His style is his style and it’s just always been his style.
RM: But with his style, his skill level, he can skate-
TR: That’s what I’m saying.
RM: He can skate a ledge, he’ll skate a quarter pipe, he’ll skate a bank. But the way he does it…
TR: It’s cool when you see somebody’s… that’s their style and everything looks like his style. He can skate tranny, still look like himself. He can skate
a rail, still looks like himself. The way he approaches all that. He’s a beast.
RM: Some people just look good on a skateboard. That’s actually one of the hardest things to do that people probably don’t even realize. To look good on a skateboard is one of the most difficult tasks to do. It’s pure talent.
TR: That’s kind of why I’m… quality, quantity and then skill level, you know how it goes. It’s like, “Is that trick really… it’s not that hard.” I’m like, “You… it looked pretty good.” One kid that everybody bashes on is Sean Pablo or something like that.
RM: He’s dope.
TR: I think he’s dope. Some people are just like… they bag on the thing. Sean Pablo’s this or whatever. I just always see him as a thing because I remember… I remember people not liking him and I’ve always thought… I was like eh. When I look at him, he’s just developing into what he’s going to be, just like every other skater.
RM: His impossibles are ill. 360’s are ill. Just the way he looks on a board.
TR: Yeah, but people always pick on certain things. I’m always like, “He still skates great, dude.” He has a solid pop. I don’t care if he’s not consistent. At the end of the day, his footage is still going to look… maybe a lot better than most people’s. I’m not dependent on what style you’re into in the skating world.
RM: I agree with you 100%. He looks good on the board regardless, but obviously, too, it’s captured a certain way, but all in all it’s a joint effort. It’s the filmer and the skater putting it together. He’s just one of those dudes that looks good on a skateboard.
TR: You know.
RM: It’s pretty natural for people to dislike someone like that because for them it looks like it easy. My nephew looks like him but without the fancy boots.
TR: Yeah, and there’s some people that are like, “Why does he look like that?”Because that’s how he skates, dude.
RM: God’s gift to him was to look good on a skateboard.
TR: Something like that, yeah. Why does Gino skate like that? I don’t know, he was skating like that.
RM: Gino skates like that because god gave him that gift to look good on a skateboard. He can be off the board for like three months, and look good again just like that. People are naturals and sometimes people…
TR: That’s how it goes. You skate like that, you skate like that. If you want, keep skating that way.
RM: Yeah, you can’t practice that.
TR: Whatever feels good and that’s why Brian’s advice always comes to my head. I’m like, “Dude, does it feel good? Do you feel safe doing it? All right, keep doing it.”
RM: Brian got some good advice. It was good right? Brian never said shit like that to me.
TR: Yeah.
RM: Fucking Brian.
TR: Brian hit me with that… I looked at him. That’s after knowing him for a little bit. I looked at him and I was like…
RM: That’s actually good advice. Is my phone over there? I’ve got it, nevermind. Brian…
TR: Brian Brown, cool advice man.
RM: What’d you think?
Speaker 3: It was good.
RM: I think we covered a lot of cool stuff.
TR: Yeah. Hopefully I can keep dropping this footage. Dude, that’s kind of how it goes. It’s sick.
If you keep dropping footage, you can keep editing it to different music. That’s the only reason… literally, I’ll tell you right now. The only reason I like skating street is that you can edit it to certain music. That’s literally it. I don’t care about doing tricks that are like… someone’s done it. I just want to put music behind it and see how well it flows. A lot of video parts do. I watch a lot of video parts just for the music incorporated with that. That’s literally it. I understand the skating is great, but it’s a whole piece.
RM: For sure. Did Brian Brown skate to “Under My Thumb”? Is that it?
TR: Yep.
RM: I’ve seen Brian… Brian’s skating is just… yeah. But that’s when you know skateboarding is good. You can remember the song and the skateboarding at the same time.
TR: Yeah, Brian’s style with it… the best thing when somebody has a different style and then they do a trick outside of what you think they do. It always looks different and when they do it… there’s certain tricks you’re just like, “Oh, I wouldn’t expect that guy to do that trick, but it looked great with his style.” Brian doing… I’ve seen Brian do it. But I saw him do one that’s… I think he did that on a bump or whatever and it just looked so crazy because you’ve never seen him skate something like that. I’m just like, “That looks beast.”
RM: He looks like he could do anything though.
TR: Yeah, when he wants to.
RM: Even simple things. He’ll go over that little hump at the park-
TR: He’s smooth.
RM: 180 power slide over it and then come back down fakie… do some Brian Brown shit.
TR: He’s a smooth ride. He’s beast though.
RM: He is. He’s amazing.
TR: I don’t know where he’s at right now, but I saw him the other day skating so that’s good enough.
RM: We talked about a lot of good stuff, right? Music, clothes, Brooklyn. So you’re only skating for Nike now?
TR: Yeah.
RM: Nike, no boards anywhere?
TR: No boards. I haven’t gotten boards from anybody for a bit. I’m trying to get skate for whatever… I don’t want it to be a random thing. I always try and skate for people I want to know.
RM: Of course, that’s the way to do it.
TR: At the end of the day, it’s like… skateboarding nowadays almost feels like… it is a sport but at the same time it feels like it’s gravitating towards more sporty, sporty. Here’s the team, let’s get that guy.
RM: It’s almost like the new football.
TR: Yeah, it’s like, “Let’s get that guy, because he’s beast.” Some skate teams you look at and you’re like, “I don’t think any of these guys hang out with each other at all, unless they have to go to a demo together.” I don’t think they’re actually friends outside.
RM: Yeah, just crew or squad.
TR: Yeah. I’m not against accepting anybody into whatever crew you might have. I’m like, “Yeah, dude. You want to be friends, come on in.”
RM: But naturally it should always be…kind of like friends and family.
TR: Yeah. I can see us hanging out outside of this activity.
RM: It’s you and Kevin might do something, right? The clothing brand? I like the name Love House. It’s a good name.
TR: It’s cool. All of it, when I’m thinking about it I’m just like, “Yeah dude, make it something…”
RM: I swear, that sounds like something you could sell to Opening Ceremony. I’m not making fun of… that’s a good thing. I just picture that shit.
TR: Yeah. We have some other friends that like it. I’m just like literally trying to have as many people as I can. I don’t want to stop it as, “Oh, there’s 10 people… just have as many.” I want a list that’s just forever.
RM: You can go back to how Nick Tershay did his shit. I remember one of his ads it was all the dope skateboarders you could think of from Alex Olson to.. Steve Caballero. Maybe not Steve Caballero, but he had a list of all the dudes.
TR: Yeah, it’s just friends and… if you like it, if you want it, you can have it. I always wanted to do… there’s a price for everything, obviously.
RM: Of course.
TR: I always, in my dreams, I’ll get a price for everybody else, but the skater pass… you get a different price if you’re a skater because I get it. I’m like, “Send some footage in. I’m not saying I’m putting you on, I’m just saying we’ll see what you’re working with.” I’m like, “Okay, this guy’s really putting it to work.” Everybody that skates… we all know. Skateboarding consumes the majority of your money.
RM: It does.
TR: It really does. After being sponsored… my homies giving me stuff. You’re just like wow. You can save a lot of money. You can really save a lot of money when you don’t have to spend money on that.
RM: I remember seeing something in my Instagram feed today. It said something like, “Skate dah, dah, dah.” I’m like Jesus Christ, everybody wants that pass. Then you see people doing all this shit and all these podcasts and you’re like… oh, fucking Christ already.
TR: It seems like anything that comes out is trying to have a skate team, skateboarding thing. I’m like, “No dude. You’re not. You look dumb, the people you get are dumb. No. Stay out… All right, come in. See how much you’re hated.” That’s the first thing. We’re hating on you. Your design on shirts… do you understand how dumb anybody who skates looks in one of your shirts?
RM: That’s very powerful and very true.
TR: We’re just like, “Dude, get the hell out of here.”