When did you start skating?
I was 11 when I first started skateboarding in Ottawa, Canada in 1987 with kids in my neighborhood--Eric and this other guy Josh. I moved to Vancouver in 1995-96.
What kind of stuff were you guys riding?
Right when I started, we just skated the neighborhood. There'd be, like, driveways with little slants on them that we would roll around on and parking blocks that we'd railslide. Then we found this big, eight-foot quarterpipe by our school.
Did you go through a launch ramp phase?
Yeah, I had a launch ramp. They were building some school by my house and had this fiberglass stuff there. We stole a sheet of it and used it to surface our jump ramp. It was awesome, so smooth.
Did you start flicking ollies off of it?
Yeah, I used to be pretty good at that. I used to go pretty high.
Did you ever do wall rides?
No, I never really learned wall rides until recently--like really doing them. I couldn't figure it out.
Do you remember your early sponsors?
Yeah, the first guy that ever gave me stuff was this guy Claud. We used to skate this Boys & Girls Club, who had a ramp in the basement. He came in there and kind of helped make it better and built more ramps. They were horrible ramps. He was like this older slalom guy. Then he ended up opening some kind of store in the basement there and he used to give me boards. I kind of worked for him. The store was called SK8 City. I didn't get sponsored for years and years. I used to always ride the worst set-ups: the nose would come to just about where the bolts are--always worn out.
Did you have any unusual spots to skate back there?
We used to skate empty pools, but where I lived, they were square pools--little shallow ones. You could ollie the stairs, and there were little rails that went down into them.
Did they go up to vert or were they just banked?
They weren't even banked, they were just vertical drops. Then we'd skate just anything, we'd cruise around downtown from my house--it's like a half-hour skate.
Did you ever go to Toronto much?
No, I used to go to Montreal. I never went to Toronto until I went to Vancouver.
There's some kind of dam in Toronto with a long concrete quarterpipe.
No, I skated the Big-O in Montreal, that concrete fullpipe with the halfpipe at the end of it. It's pretty sick. It's like a really low and tight halfpipe and then it turns into a fullpipe with flat bottom.
Can you ride inside of it?
Yeah, it's awesome. It used to have this rubber track field stuff in it--you know how some running tracks have rubber grounds? Through the years, skaters picked away at it and now it's smooth concrete in there.
What did you think of the huge clothes / tiny wheels era of the early 1990s?
I was kind of stoked, because I grew up totally poor on welfare and people used to always dog me for that. Back then, you could get the big clothes for nothing at cheap stores. I was like, "Wow, I can kind of fit in now!" I kind of ran the poor look.
Did you get that stuff at skate shops or thrift stores?
I never bought anything at skate shops. The shop I rode for would give me a couple of things, but I never bought clothes from them. I liked the vintage stores and the work clothes stores, cuz they would have deals.
What about the tiny wheels?
I wasn't really into them, because they were slow. I've always ridden bigger wheels than kids usually ride, but I always had small wheels anyway, because they were worn out.
Do you enjoy contests these days?
I like going there, skating the parks and seeing my friends. If I do a good run, I'm stoked--but it's usually really stressful. It takes a lot out of you, that whole weekend of skating really hard. It's a workout! I usually take a little break, cuz I don't want to fly somewhere, get there and stress out.
Is the stress caused by everyone focusing on you during your run?
I don't get nervous at all in my runs, it's just in practice. If I'm not skating good or if I'm sore or something's wrong, that usually causes the stress.
How could they improve contests?
I think they should eliminate all the qualifiers and semi-finals and make them way shorter, like the X Games. "This is your three runs, go." It's so much easier. If you threw-out the other heats, you could get better runs.
Is a pro proven more in real street sessions or a contest?
The contest doesn't prove you as a pro at all. Look at Anthony van Engelen--he's pro for Alien Workshop and has never entered a pro contest and that's fine. He was going to enter the Australian one, but it was all X Games-style, so he didn't. Contests don't mean anything. All they mean to us pros is a nice little bonus, you know? If we get money--that's all it means to us is more money.
What's good about being pro these days?
There's a lot more money in it, so it makes it easier. You don't have to sell your gear when you get it from your sponsors. You get more respect now from the general public--that's pretty cool, you know, thanks to Tony Hawk.
What's bad about it?
The bad part about it would be the popularity, as well. Having to deal with more crap. Like, IMAX is doing this Extreme Games thing--it's just annoying to deal with them. People that don't know anything about skateboarding that try to tell you what to do and people jumping into it that have no history and trying to make all this money--that's all over the place now.
Do you think magazines and videos show too much of staircases and ledges?
I think that it's pretty well-balanced right now. For a while, it was all huge rails and big gaps and stuff, but now the tech stuff is coming back again and I think it's really well-balanced. There's park stuff in there, too.
I just noticed that Thrasher is the only one that consistently shows more pools, pipes and a bigger variety of terrain.
Yeah, vert is pretty much non-existent.
What do you think of that?
I don't want it to be non-existent. I wish more people skated vert. Where I live, there are no ramps and I don't think there's going to be any for a long time. It takes a long time to learn vert. I love it. I think it's one of the funnest parts of skateboarding.
Do you ever skate vert ramps?
When there's one there, I'll skate it, for sure. I can do airs, flip-tricks, lip tricks. I can't do inverts right now (laughs). I haven't got those down.
Do you ever skate small stuff while street skating?
Yeah. Lately, that's all I've been doing. I'm just trying not to stress out and turn it into a job anymore. It's like, "Schedule it. I'll meet you at the rail, we'll do this and we're done. We got the trick." Now I've just been cruising--it's been really good. I've just been feeling a lot better skateboarding now. You actually learn more that way, because you're not just set on one thing, like, "I gotta get the nose blunt slide." Now I'm just going to go out, "Hey, maybe I'll try this trick."
Do you ever go to any backyard pools?
Yeah, but not here in Vancouver, because there aren't any.
What about the old parks like North Van?
Oh, the bowls, and stuff? Yeah, those are there, but there are better ones now. The Hastings park is pretty much like a pool--it's deep. When they built it, there was still concrete on the coping and it was rad.
Have you ridden many public skateparks in other areas?
California ones are usually horrible. They're just not great and you have to wear pads and all that crap. The Oregon ones are really good, but you also have to wear pads there. The new parks that those guys are building are really huge, which I think is awesome. Arizona parks are awesome and the ones up here are just sweet (laughs). There's been, like, three new ones built in the past couple of months. Two new ones in North Van and one in Port Moody.
How could they improve skateparks?
Skateparks could be improved by, I don't know, a lot of them are just built wrong. More ledges would be cool, like street spot stuff. Just make sure it flows. Don't make it all one thing, like big quarterpipes--include everything.
Should skateparks copy real street spots?
I think they should copy them, but make them better. How you would like it to be? Of course, Love Park is amazing, but some of the ledges are pretty low, so you could make them a little bit higher.
How did you get on éS?
I was riding for Sheep, then Don Brown called and told me that they were canceling Sheep. He said that I could ride for etnies, and I was like, "Okay." I really wanted to stay with Sole Technology, but I wanted to ride for éS. That's when I was riding for Plan B. Danny Way was like, "You can't ride for etnies, you gotta ride for éS." I said, "I want to, but I don't think I can." Then he called Don and they just worked it out so that I could get on éS. It worked out great. Danny just told them their plans for Plan B and me, so Danny Way is the reason I'm on éS.
How did your Anti-Social skate-shop come about?
I was always like, "I'm never going to open a skateboard store." Especially in Vancouver--there are so many stores here. My roommate Michelle always wanted to have her own store. Her and my friend Laura were going to do it. There was this old shop called The Boarding House that Michelle was helping to keep open. Eventually, they had to shut it down, so she was like, "I want to open my own store. Maybe I'll take over The Boarding House." She changed her mind because they had big debts. So, I was always hanging out with them, they were having meetings and I was like, "I'd be down to go into this with you as a silent partner--me, you and Laura." Then they were like, "Okay, we want you in on it," and I was like, "Okay, cool." Then Laura said she didn't want to do it anymore--she didn't want to put money down and handle all of that responsibility. So, it was just me and Michelle. We started collaborating on ideas and it turned out into Anti-Social.
So, you're half-owners?
Yeah, we're 50/50. There's an art-gallery, as well. We wanted to do something different. We wanted to have a skateboard store in Vancouver because there are none--they're all snowboard stores that sell skateboards. We wanted it to be more for the core skaters. RDS is a skate shop that sells snowboards, but they're dumping snowboards next season. So, they're going to be a skate shop, but they're in North Van, which is a different city. There's another one in White Rock called The Board Kennel. They're a skate shop, but they're really, really far away. In Vancouver, Anti-Social is the only real skateboard store.
Don’t you have an art gallery at Anti-Social?
The gallery is kind of like a separate thing in the same building. It's in the back, where's there's a whole other space. We have skate-related artists and shows. We also do limited-edition boards with the artists for their shows, as well as clothes, and other stuff.
Who do you skate with these days?
I've been skating with a lot of the new kids coming out of Vancouver--just the local kids, you know? There's a new indoor park and we've been going there. They're cool, they just skate for fun.
Who are some of your favorite skaters ever?
There's Gonz. You know what's funny? Through the years that I've been skating, I've never really looked at magazines or videos or anything too much, so I never really knew anybody. Now, when I'm looking back, I'm learning more. I never even heard about The Gonz for so long. But, people like Gonz, Eric Koston and Mike Carroll.
You said you didn't look at magazines for a long time.
Yeah, years and years…not until I got sponsored by that shop. I couldn't afford it, and I never went to stores. I just skated.
It's almost better.
Yeah, it was. I didn't even know the names of tricks.
That's kind of a more pure form of skateboarding.
Yeah, my friend Eric would get videos and sometimes I'd watch them. He got Speed Wheels Risk It: Gambling With Gravity.
I was in that.
Oh, you were? See, I'm figuring it out (laughs)! I thought that video was awesome.
Do you have any future goals?
To pursue happiness (laughs), try to be stable, make sure my daughter's happy.
Any goals in skating?
Try to keep up on the game.