 |
| all photos by jody morris |
Introduction by Joey Suriel
Few photographers took the time to truly enter our world and document the culture of 1990s Los Angeles skateboarding. Jody Morris was one of them. He sensed a major movement was emerging long before others did, ultimately capturing an essential time capsule of the LA scene.
Some of the most memorable moments in my career were caught through Jody’s lens. From the iconic introduction ads of Menace to the legendary 1994 group photo in Amsterdam, he always had a knack for seeing each moment and preserving it on film.
Thank you, Jody Morris, for capturing these moments that forever changed my life. I look back and appreciate them now more than ever. —Joey Suriel
=O =O =O
CBI: I figure we’ll get this out of the way now for any hazier topics that might come up ahead: You suffered a head injury in the late 90s that has affected your memory? What happened?
MORRIS: I was skating this bowl at an old park in Vancouver called Burnaby with Rick McCrank, and the layout was kinda weird. There’s the deep end, obviously, but there was also this kinda “bath tub” section that was only a foot or two deep. How it worked is that you would push across the park to get speed and roll into this bath tub, but I forgot about the little waterfall slightly afterwards that takes you into the deep end. I got wheelbite on the waterfall and ended up getting chucked into the wall headfirst. Completely knocked out.
Next thing I know, I’m looking up at Rick and he’s asking me if I’m okay. He’d found me unconscious in the bottom of the bowl. I don’t know how long I was out for.
You just woke up and it’s Rick McCrank?
Yeah, I just remember him standing over top of me, like, “Hey, are you alright?”
I honestly had no idea what was going on. And being the intelligent person I was back then, I did not go to the hospital. I ended up spending the next two weeks on the couch with lockjaw down one side of my body. I probably did some serious damage there… and I definitely should’ve gone to the hospital after that, but I never did. Just young and dumb.
 |
| rick mccrank |
Holy shit, man!
You know how it is. When you’re young, you just think you can power through it. Plus, I had no health insurance at the time, which was a factor as well.
Do you now have photos that you have no memory of taking?
Absolutely, which is strange because I rely on these photos for memories. It’s usually a photo that jogs my memory about something and takes me back to that time. And that’s still what usually happens, but there are a few photos that I just can’t place at all. Or I’ll see someone post a photo on Instagram, crediting Jody Morris, and I’ll think to myself… maybe?
I remember Kareem was wanting to make some t-shirts a while ago. He’d sent me over this photo, asking I had the hi-res, and I had to ask if he was sure I even shot it. He ended up sending me back a photo of the signed print I had given him!
“Okay. Well, that’s definitely mine then.” (laughs)
What was the photo?
It was a photo of Kareem, Billy Valdes, Keenan, Gino and Gabriel Rodriguez all playing dice outside of the XLarge store in LA.
Woah! That’s a good one.
Since then, it has jogged my memory and I can vaguely remember shooting it, but when he originally sent it over, I honestly didn’t think it was me. I actually told him to hit up Kosick about it. (laughs)
(laughs) So what made you want to start shooting skate photos? I imagine you were skating first, right? What led you behind the lens?
Yeah, I started skating in high school. This was in Ottawa, back in the late 80s, when there were maybe three other people in your school that skated and you were looked upon as a pariah.
After graduating high school, I moved away for college. I started attending film school, learning how to direct movies. Part of the curriculum was taking a course in black-and-white photography, just to learn composition and how film works, and that’s really what sparked my interest. And when you’re getting assigned projects for school, you go with what you know. For me, that meant going out skating with my friends. So, I started shooting skate photos, not necessarily because I wanted to but because I needed to shoot photos for my class. Skating just happened to be the subject matter I knew best.
So that’s really what started it. Then, as my friends got better at skating and ended up getting sponsored, they started needing photos for ads. There were no local photographers at the time, and it’s not like you could just call up somebody to come by. We’re in Canada. There was really nobody shooting back then. But I had a camera, so I ended up shooting the photos. One ended up as a Check-Out in Transworld and another got used for an ad in Thrasher. And shortly after that, a check came in the mail. I just remember thinking to myself, “Excuse me? I can go skate with my friends and money arrives in the mail? This is interesting!”
 |
| fun fact: one of those three skaters in jody's high school was tom green |
Is that when you started taking it more seriously?
It definitely sparked my interest. I started to wonder if there was possibly something there for me. Is this something I can do, even though I was living in Eastern Canada at the time?
This was in Toronto?
Yeah, that’s where I had moved for school.
The Toronto scene was actually pretty strong back then. Was it shooting Jason Corbitt that landed you in the magazines?
Yeah, it was Jason’s Check Out and New School ad. He had just got on New School, shortly after he’d gotten the cover of Transworld with Spike.
But yeah, Toronto had a lot of great skaters at the time. Jason, Justin Bokma, Bill Weiss, Tom Boyle, and Thomas Morgan were all living there back then. And being in such close proximity to the east coast, the Alien guys would come up to hang out with Thomas all the time, too. Dyrdek, Bo Turner, and the Conklins. Kelly Bird wound up in town for a while, too. We had a bit of a scene going there for a minute.
One of my early favorite photos of yours has to be Bokma’s backside 180 5-0 on that ledge…
Yeah, that’s still one of my favorite photos, too.
Was Justin even sponsored at that point?
Probably not. That was pretty early on, but Justin always looked so damn good on a skateboard. He was one of those guys that whatever he did, it looked incredible. He had this amazing combination of power and smoothness. He had everything, especially at that time when style in street skating didn’t seem as important; it was more about getting the trick. Street skating was still in its tiny little wheel phase, and here was this guy who was just as smooth as could be, before people really were. That photo is just another example. He was always so much fun to shoot with.
 |
| justin bokma (r.i.p.) |
How many naked Bill Weiss 540s have you shot in your life?
(laughs) Here’s where the memory gets hazy, because I feel like I would always put the camera away when that started happening. Just for my own mental health, as I knew that would only leave with scars on my psyche for years to come… or maybe I did shoot it and have just blocked all of those memories out my mind? Bill might tell me otherwise, but I don’t think so. Imagine digging through old prints and finding a random naked photo of Bill Weiss? Nobody wants that.
(laughs) So when did you move to Vancouver?
Well, I was only in Toronto for about two years. And, like I said, I had started shooting photos and was able to sneak a couple into the mags. For some reason after that, I got the idea in my head that I should start sending my photos into Thrasher, which I really had no business doing at that point. I’m sure all of my photos were terrible back then.
This was for Photograffiti?
Not even that. I was just randomly sending them photos in the mail as a submission. I figured since there were now some pretty good skaters in Toronto, they’re obviously going to want my photos. I thought that shooting those guys could be my “in” somehow, which is clearly not how it works.
I have to thank Bryce Kanights here, because he actually did get back to me after my having randomly sent him all these photos. They couldn’t use any of my photos in the magazine, but I do remember him telling me that there was some promise there. And if I wanted to explore it more, he offered to help me.
 |
| keith chan |
Rad.
So, Bryce basically taught me how to shoot photos through the mail, because there was no email yet. As a student on a budget in Toronto, I didn’t have enough money to buy film and develop it, so Bryce would send me rolls of film to shoot photos with. Once I was out of film, I would mail those rolls back to Bryce and he would develop them all, then he would call to tell me what I was doing wrong.
That’s amazing.
But it’s just such a different experience now, you know? You take a photo in 2026 and you just look at the screen to see how it looks. You can instantly see that maybe I should move my flash two feet to the left, or maybe I’m shooting something a little too hot. Whatever you might need to correct. But at this time, Bryce was calling to tell me what I was doing wrong with photos that I had never actually seen before. Like, “Do you remember this photo of Thomas Morgan at night skating a three stair? You put the flash too close to him.”
He basically taught me how to light blindly, just by relating everything to me over the phone.
 |
| thomas morgan |
But it’s incredible that he was willing to do all that.
Oh, I’m forever grateful to Bryce. He really paved the way for me. And at some point, my quality improved enough to where he did start running my photos in the magazine, which was awesome. But even then, he told me point blank that there was only so much they could do with me in Toronto. The talent pool was only so big there, but if I was in Vancouver, they could use me a lot more. Because not only are there so many good skaters living there already, there were also people coming in and out to shoot with.
That was all I needed to hear. I packed up and moved to Vancouver in the summer of ’92.
So, right at the end of the Richmond Skate Ranch, but before the New Spot?
Exactly. The Skate Ranch was still going on when I rolled into Vancouver, but I didn’t know any of those dudes. Honestly, I didn’t know anybody in Vancouver at all, but once again, Bryce made it happen. He gave me Rob “Sluggo” Boyce’s phone number before I left and says, “Call this guy.”
I ended up calling Rob on my very first day in town. I remember we met downtown and the entire crew was there. I met Colin, Moses, Sam Devlin… basically the entire Red Dragons crew on my very first day. We’ve been friends ever since.
But it’s wild how much geography played into this back then, because all of those Toronto skaters you mentioned earlier would turn pro.
It’s just that Toronto seemed so far away. The whole of skateboarding was on the other side of the world. And on top of that, we only had about five months to skate outside there. Yeah, we could hit a parking garage or something when it got bad out, but nobody wants to look at that in a magazine. It was very limiting, both in how many skaters would come through and how much time you could actually shoot photos in the first place.
 |
| rds |
What’s the wildest Red Dragons experience you remember?
(laughs) It was always young-and-dumb stuff, like not taking any shit from security guards. That was probably the big one. Because in our minds, security guards weren’t really police. There’s nothing those guys could actually do, so we would just ignore them entirely. There was a lot of that.
That changed a bit when the New Spot became a thing, because it wasn’t so much security guards anymore. It became a lot of running from the actual police. That basically became an everyday thing for a while, but no, it never really got any crazier than that.
It did seem like Moses, in particular, was always getting into shit back then… or was that just how it was presented?
(laughs) He did have a knack for getting himself into little situations back then. Moses just didn’t like taking shit from anybody, especially if they were an authority figure. That’s probably why there was a bit more footage of him doing that kind of stuff in videos. Most of the other guys would just go along with it whenever they got kicked out by a security guard, but not Moses. He would always kinda perk up, like, “Oh really?”
Yeah, he liked to push it with those guys as much as he could, but it was more for entertainment purposes than anything else. I think he got a kick out of pushing people’s buttons like that.
How do you look back on all this? Was this “kids being kids” or possibly “kids being bratty 16-year-old professional skateboarders”?
No, because this was before skateboarding got so big, you know? This was the 90s, man. There was no money in skateboarding back then. It was like “Oh, you’re pro? Good for you.” (laughs)
It was more just derelicts having fun… And we were still so young. We were just running around in the streets, doing whatever we pleased. This is what we want to do and we’re going to do it, just don’t tell us not to.
 |
| moses |
Well, one thing I’ve always appreciated is how well-rounded Vancouver skaters were back then. It seems like all those guys could skate everything.
That’s just something those guys grew up with. They never put themselves into boxes, like, “Oh, I’m a street skater” or “Oh, I’m a vert skater.” They were always just skateboarders. What are we skating today? Like Colin grew up down the street from Griffin Bowl, so that’s where he started. They all grew up in the Ranch, but then they’d head downtown to street skate. It was all just skateboarding. There was no pigeonholing for those guys. Moses was an incredible street skater, but he could also do 540s on vert. Colin could switch flip stairs long before it was common for people to really do that. It was just how Vancouver skaters skated, because why not?
They also had access… which I gotta wonder, could some of those mid-90s World dudes even skate transition at all?
Honestly, some of them could not. It’s not because they didn’t want to, they just might’ve grown up in an area that didn’t have any transition to skate. They couldn’t have learned how to drop in on a vert ramp, even if they wanted to, because there wasn’t a place to do that. If you grew up in LA back in the 90s, where are you going to skate any kind of tranny? You’re not, because it wasn’t available. There weren’t any parks… and again, there really wasn’t any money in skateboarding, so a lot of these guys didn’t even have cars, either. It’s not like they had the option to drive somewhere else for a ramp. You’re a product of your environment, and if your environment is flat, that’s what you learn to skate.
 |
| tony ferguson |
Did you have a preference between shooting vert or street?
Well, shooting vert in the 90s was a lot like shooting street skating, because it was mostly people trying to do things that had never done before. It wasn’t a lot of big airs anymore, like in the 80s. Vert skating was heading in the same technical direction that street skating had been going in. This is where the potential was, as it was still wide open in that capacity. That’s where vert was at in the 90s. Even if the ramp looked like shit, tucked inside some gummy warehouse somewhere, people were still going to be doing things that nobody had even seen before. That was the real attraction, but visually speaking, shooting outdoors in Vancouver at dusk was always going to look better than a dusty warehouse. That’s what was more important to me, so I guess I’d have to say street.
It seemed like lot of 90s vert skating was dropping in and trying the same trick over and over again, as opposed to taking actual runs.
That’s also because it was tied so closely to filming. The entire reason we would be out there sometimes was to learn some trick that had never been done before. That’s what you have to do sometimes. Sure, there would be a quick warm-up beforehand, but once they got down to business, it became all about learning that one singular trick, but it’s not like that’s all vert skating was back then. And street skaters did the same thing.
There was just such a heavy focus on progression. Someone like Colin or Danny wasn’t going to take their foot off the gas until they rolled away from something new, which is how a lot of that stuff in the Plan B videos went down. They were taking pure street stuff to vert for the first time. And lot of that was at the Skate Ranch, right before it closed. It was honestly inspiring to watch.
 |
| colin |
Just a fun one, I always loved the photos of Colin with the baseball bat. What’s the story there?
(laughs) Oh, that was a few years later at the Plan B Ramp. Colin, Danny and I were just taking funny photos with all the random stuff lying around the warehouse. We shot a bunch of photos that day… like blasting big airs while chugging beers. Skating with backpacks on and doing funny poses mid-air. Swinging baseball bats around. We were laughing our asses off.
I love that he has the bat resting on his shoulder. Classic baseball card pose.
Colin could just do stuff like that. It looks like a Louisville Slugger ad.
If I remember correctly, he’s skating a really funny board in that one. It was a blank board and he had written the names of the most obscure towns in British Columbia all over it. I don’t know if anybody picked up on that, but if you zoom in there, it’s all of these really small towns with maybe 12 people living in them. I loved that.
So good. But what about his fake nollie nose manual on the picnic table? In the grass? Because I’ll admit, I sorta thought that was real at the time.
(laughs) What’s hilarious is that we swore up and down to Transworld that it was real. We told them that because it was Canada in the winter, the ground was frozen solid, so you could actually pop on it!
What really played into our favor is that if you look in the background, there’s an old man walking by. He wasn’t in on it, he just happened to be super old and needed to take baby steps in order to get around. So, by the time we were able to assemble the “sequence”, it looks like he’s casually walking by in the background. It just took him that long to walk down the street.
…But yeah, that whole thing was 100% real. (laughs)
Honestly, how we did that was Colin doing a nose stall on the table first, where he tail dropped in switch off the side. Then, he put his board back on the table, basically into a rock on the edge, and lifted up. From there, he actually did the nose manual across it and nollied off. But the get was the nollie up, which was that switch drop in. I just shot it in the middle of him coming down.
That’s the part that got me.
For sure… That’s the frozen tundra for you, man. Canada.
(laughs) What about that Droors ad of him on the lamp post?
Yeah, I shot a couple photos with Colin like that. This was before Droors really started going in that direction with their ads, we just thought it was cool. I think that kinda gave Ken the idea for that series, because they kinda ran with it after that. Niko shot most of them, like Dyrdek with the blue paint and all that. I shot one of Colin laying in a big net, too. But yeah, the other one was just him hanging off a lamppost.
How did he get up there?
He just climbed up there! Treehugger style, scaling up the pole.
Colin was always fun to shoot with. He’s a creative dude and it’s always cool to go back and forth with him on ideas. Because we just happened to shoot that one day. It wasn’t like we were trying to shoot a Droors ad or anything. It wasn’t until however long afterwards, when Ken said that he needed something for an ad, that we sent those photos over. I remember telling him, “Well, it’s not a skate photo, but what do you think of this?”
I loved those ads.
And that was Ken’s forte, too. Being able to recognize that running something like that was better than an actual skate photo… because it stood out.
 |
| "Fred was a pure skate rat back then, before all the crazy stories." |
What about Rick Howard at this time?
I think Rick had already moved to California by the time I got to Van. We would always cross paths whenever he’d visit, but we weren’t really in the mix together.
But didn’t you shoot the afro basketball stuff for his Thrasher interview?
Yeah, but that was after I’d moved to LA. Fletch was a big thing at the time. The Chevy Chase movie? That was Rick doing his best Fletch impersonation… which, over time, people have interpreted differently. The movie isn’t as remembered now, so whenever people see that photo, they maybe take that the wrong way. But at the time, everybody knew it was Fletch.
 |
| "Six-five... with the afro, six-nine." |
What made you move down to LA?
It was kind of the same reason I moved to Van. I was doing more stuff in Vancouver compared to Toronto, but again, Bryce was like, “You’re limited by the weather up there. Come winter, it’s all indoors and we can only run so many indoor photos. If you want to come down to California, there’s not too many people shooting down here.”
It’s funny to think about now, but skateboarding was still so small. At the time, there were really only a handful of people shooting photos anywhere, especially in Los Angeles. Plus, Stereo has just started and all those dudes were basically in LA, too. Stereo was under Deluxe back then, which has always been closely aligned with Thrasher… but there really wasn’t anybody around to shoot them.
So, I ended up coming down here to shoot something with John Deago, who was on Stereo back then. He and Mike Daher had a place together out in the Valley. I was only supposed to crash at their house for a few days, but I ended up staying there for six months. In hindsight, long outstaying my welcome, for sure, but through that, I started shooting all of the LA scene. Jason Lee would come by and pick us up almost every day to skate. I started shooting with Chris Pastras a bit, and through him, I met Kareem Campbell. And honestly, Kareem was the second person to really give me a boost. Bryce basically opened that first door for me, and Kareem opened the one after that.
This was around the time when all of the Girl dudes quit World. And with that happening, Spike Jonze had also left World. Next thing I know, Kareem is saying that Rocco and Rodney want to talk to me about becoming their new staff photographer. So, he brings me in and they hire me on to shoot for all the World brands. I was shooting a lot of stuff for Blind, Plan B, World, some 101, and most of original Menace stuff.
We’ll get to World in a minute, but how was Stereo-era J. Lee? Was he acting yet?
No, I don’t think he was acting yet. He might’ve been dabbling a little bit, but I don’t think it was anything serious. At this point, he was more focused on getting Stereo up and running. This was right at the beginning of Stereo and he was fully on board.
 |
| j. lee |
I know he was a little self conscious about his skating at the time, with the overly technical onslaught that was trending back then.
I will say he was very particular with how things came out. I was still learning back then, too, and I think I published a couple photos that he wasn’t totally psyched on. Maybe his foot wasn’t quite in the right place or something? He was really particular about that sort of thing. He was one of those guys who had a very high standard with his stuff. And when you look back on everything now, you know that he was on the right track. He wanted to make sure that everything looked as good as it could be.
I remember us skating these hidden away little Beverly Hills spots. Like the Beverly Center used to have these really cool manual pads, but across from there was another parking garage with a really cool bump. He knew all of these… they weren’t even really spots. I don’t know what you would call them, because there was absolutely no chance you would ever run into anybody else at these places. You know what I mean?
This is back when spots were a little more unique, and he always had his back pocket full with stuff like that.
What about that shot of him on rollerskates with the wig on?
That was all stuff that he had in the trunk of his car!
We had been skating in this little parking lot. Again, another little bump, going over a garbage can. The session was pretty much over, but we were still all hanging out. I feel like he was putting his board in the car when I saw that stuff lying there.“Hey, what’s up with all that?”
He ended up trying it on for me, just to be funny, and I took a photo. Just dorking around. He’s always had a great sense of humor like that.
Gotta ask about your Koston cover at the Greyhound Bumps. Was that your first cover? How’d that one come together? It didn’t seem like you were shooting much in San Diego back then.
That was my first Thrasher cover… actually no, I think that might’ve been my first cover, period.
And you’re right, that was one of my first times shooting in San Diego. I had gone down there with Kareem for a tradeshow. I was just tagging along within and whoever he was out skating with. The Greyhound Bumps were only a few blocks away and were kind of a hot spot at the time… even though it was more of a video spot. It was in a ton of videos but you rarely saw photos there because there really wasn’t much to it, visually. It was basically just a couple of curb cuts, some flatground, and empty space.
And this was at night!
Yeah, and I was still learning how to shoot at the time. It’s not a spectacular photo but I liked it because it’s Koston. And it ended up working out. Like I said, it became my first cover. I was hyped.
So Kareem gets you the job at World…
Yeah, Kareem led me to World, but more than that, he opened up LA for me. Because even though I was at World, I could still shoot the Girl dudes and everyone else, too. Basically shooting whoever was in the area. Because even though the Girl guys weren’t at World anymore, they still all hung out together. Kareem’s the one who unlocked that for me.
 |
| koston |
And Rocco was okay with you shooting Girl riders?
I don’t think he cared, just as long as what he needed got done. He kept whatever animosity he had on the business side to himself.
How was he as a boss?
It was like working for a giant kid, which is about as fun as it gets.
For example, we used to get these letters at World all the time from kids who broke their boards. And it was always the same thing: “I only had this board for a week. All I did was ollie a two stair and the tail broke. You owe me a new board.”
Classic shit.
Yeah, and I don’t think a single one of those letters ever worked.
Well, at one point, Steve bought a Land Rover. And there just happened to be this empty lot down the street from World. It was essentially two lots: An upper section and a lower section with a little hill connecting the two. I know there’s footage of this… I think its in the beginning of Barbarians at the Gate, where he goes racing across and launches his Land Rover off that hill? Flying. And, of course, he lands and snaps the front axle.
So what does he do? He ends up writing one those little kid letters himself and sends it to Land Rover! Like, “I’ve only had this Land Rover for one week and all I did was launch it off a six-foot incline and the axle broke! You guys are crap and you owe me a new truck!” (laughs)
And he sent it to them, just to be funny! It’s not like he ever thought they’d give him a new truck, he just thought it would be funny to write them the same letter he gets every day!
It was like working for a kid with a lot of money and no responsibilities. What’s something fun you want to do? Let’s do that! That’s what he did every day. So we got things like a giant trampoline, a putting course, archery… even a full kitchen with a chef for a while.
 |
| menace crew |
Amazing. Talk to me about those early Menace ads. Was it always the plan to focus on lifestyle photography versus tricks in the beginning?
I can’t remember if that was Kareem’s idea going into it or if it just developed as we shot the photos. I think we shot the first ads before he actually had boards, only t-shirts. I remember shooting that photo of them standing by the phone behind this little restaurant Joey and Fabian knew. That was their first group photo as a team… and that was the first ad.
I think it worked because every other skate ad back then was a skate photo. There really weren’t any ads with dudes just hanging out. You didn’t see that kinda stuff. Like, those Droors ads we talked about earlier hadn’t come out yet.
I don’t know if Kareem had asked me to shoot stuff like that, or if he just thought it looked cool whenever the photos came back. I can’t remember, but Kareem was always good about knowing what would work at the right time. He always had his finger on the pulse.
It really stuck out at the time.
Exactly. It was something different to look at. It wasn’t just another kickflip.
It was quite a while until Kareem started putting skate tricks in Menace ads, and even then, he still kept those chilling photos in the mix. Eventually, it became something in the center with a skate sequence surrounding it. Those were good, too, but I always loved the hip-hop vibe of those first few ads. They looked more like album covers than skate ads.
Total hip-hop style.
Yeah, but that’s how those guys lived. That’s what they listened to and that’s who they were. There was nothing fake about it.
But how did you shoot these ads? Did you have concepts in mind beforehand or was it looser than that?
It was pretty loose. Like the ad with Joey in the Polo shirt doing the hands? I think that was up on the roof of Billy’s apartment building. And the phone one I mentioned earlier, that was in an Italian restaurant we used to eat at all the time. It was just a little hole in the wall, but it was Joey who remembered them having that cool patio in the back.
I think those were shot on the same day, because Joey’s wearing the same 1992 Polo shirt in both ads.
Maybe? It’s hard to tell. Those guys wore a lot of Polo back then. (laughs)
(laughs) Good point. What about the one of them standing over top of that dog? Like a cocker spaniel?
The one in the archway? I think that might’ve been Billy’s dog… or maybe his girlfriend’s at the time. We were just having fun there. That was Billy’s idea, actually. He actually brought it up to me one day, like, “Hey, I found this really cool looking spot. I think it would look good for an ad.”
Those guys always had a good eye.
Where they nervous at all with these ads being so different?
Not really. I think after that first ad came out and people were psyched, it just became our thing. We’d shoot some photos and then head over to the lab to drop everything off. Some of the guys would even come back with me to pick everything up when it was ready. They seemed really into the creative part of it. Looking at the photos and telling me which ones they liked or didn’t like. They really seemed to enjoy the process, for sure.
Yeah, it was different, but I also think that was part of the fun. Because it really was making an impact. Whether you liked it or not, you definitely took notice. And the fact that it seemed to be working made everything more fun and exciting. After a while, they started coming with ideas, too.
Like what?
Probably my favorite example was Fabian’s ad with both his dad and his son. Fabian set that all up. Like, “Hey, my Dad just got home and my son was just born. They’re meeting for the first time today. I think it would be really cool to have a shot of that and I’d love to use it for an ad.”
It was totally Fabian driving all that.
 |
| fabian |
I’ve always wondered how seriously these guys took the whole “pro skater” stuff thing? And not just the Menace dudes, but Guy and the Chocolate dudes, too. Were they skating a lot or did they even care? Because to your point earlier, there wasn’t much money in it back then.
They all kinda treated it differently. Like Guy at this point, he had kinda slowed down with filming. It did seem like he was just hanging out a lot, but I think that had more to do with him trying to come up with things he really wanted to do, needing a challenge for himself. Because, all of a sudden, I would get a call from him, like, “Hey, I thought of something.”
It would always come out of the blue. Because there were times when we hadn’t shot a photo in weeks and he didn’t really seem to care, but now he’s all eager, like, “Let’s go!”
And being a fan of his skating, you just knew that if he was calling up to shoot something, he must’ve thought of something pretty damn cool. Because he wouldn’t be sweating it otherwise. He must be fired up.
But would he be skating in the meantime?
Oh, Guy was always skating, he just wasn’t charging. He would be out there, but you could tell that he was kinda waiting on something to really go after. I think he needed to really challenge himself, that seems like when he was most inspired. Like, he never wanted to go out and shoot a basic kickflip or something, which I understand. That’s why whenever he would come up with something he wanted to do, it was guaranteed to be something you’d never seen before.
But there were also days when everyone would just be out skating and having a blast. It wasn’t always about getting something crazy. Like that Sheffey Girl ad at UCLA where he’s doing a 5-0 down the rail? That was just everyone rolling around in a big mob, having a great time. It’s not like we were out on a mission to get something specific, we were just having fun. Let’s go to UCLA for the day and see what happens.
I think Guy got an ad that same day, too. A front tail.
Oh, that’s right!
That was just a random day?
Yeah, if you look in the background, there’s like 15 people back there, like the Menace dudes and Girl guys. That’s just how it went. That was the crew, just rolling around because everybody felt like skating that day.
 |
| billy on tour |
How about the Menace dudes? How seriously did they take skateboarding as a career?
Oh, I remember the Menace crew skating all the time. They really were. Sure, you only saw photos of them hanging out in those initial ads, but those was all shot after they’d been skating all day.
Okay, because I could never really tell.
Totally, because that was the image being put out there. So many of those hangout photos were taken after they’d been skating at Lockwood for eight hours.
How real was the prospect of a Menace video back then?
There was a serious plan to make one, for sure. In those days, you had what was called a “transfer tape”, where everyone would dump their footage on it, and there was definitely a Menace transfer tape getting filled up. Soc was logging stuff for a full-length, too.
 |
| fabian, soc & gabriel (r.i.p.) at los feliz |
So, how was shooting at Lockwood as a white guy from Canada with thousands of dollars in camera gear?
(laughs) Fabian hooked me up early on. Because I had gone there in my Thrasher days and met Fabian and Joey when they were still on ATM Click… and I had full blinders on. I didn’t really know where I was. I was just like, “Oh, cool! A schoolyard!”
Luckily, nothing happened that day. But when I moved to LA later on, I was spending quite a bit of time at Lockwood. On one of those early visits as I was shooting a trick on the back to bench, a dude came creeping up behind me, gun in hand. I actually had my back to him, shooting a photo. Completely oblivious. Luckily, Fabian ran up and told the guy it was cool. “This is how we make our money. Don’t mess with this guy.”
After that, everything was cool, but things were never cool, you know? For a long time, you really had to watch your back there. I remember one day, Guy and I had gone to Fabian’s house to pick him up. We were driving back towards Lockwood when a cop car flew past us on the wrong side of the road. Sirens blaring with a cop hanging out the passenger window, holding a shotgun. Guy jokingly says, “Oh, somebody probably just got shot at Lockwood.”
As we pull up to Lockwood, they’re loading Chuck Wampler into an ambulance. It was all very real. You had to know the guys that grew up in that neighborhood. If you were with them, you were fine. But if you didn’t know them or went there without them, you were not fine.
Every weekend, there were kids who had seen Lockwood in the videos and decided to drive up from wherever. They’d hop out of the car, jump the fence, and get robbed for everything they had. Like, I remember people getting their video cameras stolen there regularly… because they didn’t understand the geography. They just wanted to skate the spot, not fully realizing where they were.
Wasn’t Fabian’s uncle an OG in that neighborhood?
Fabian’s whole family was in pretty deep over there. They all had respect in the neighborhood. The kids who messed with people at Lockwood all knew Fabian’s family, so if Fabian said to leave you alone, they would leave you alone. But if you were there and he wasn’t, you were fair game.
How would you compare the Red Dragons' shenanigans with the very real Menace experience in LA? (laughs)
(laughs) There’s no comparison. You have to remember that I moved to LA not too long after the riots, and it was… weird. And that’s beyond the typical culture shock one would experience after moving there from a place so different. Like, I remember driving to Gabriel’s house for the first time and there were very specific instructions you had to follow. Don’t go down this street. Make the left here. The light is turning red so stop 500 feet back from the intersection and when it turns green, go. You had to know the ways of getting around some of those neighborhoods. Because in 90s LA, there were areas you couldn’t just drive a straight line to where you were headed.
Way worse than Moses getting picked on by a Rent-A-Cop.
I mean, what’s the worst thing that’s gonna happen in Canada? First off, nobody has guns. Somebody might punch you in the face, but eating shit on the concrete hurts worse than that, so whatever. Vancouver is so much smaller than LA, too. It’s just a completely different animal. They were both really fun at the time, just different worlds.
Did you shoot that one Menace ad with the bullet hole in the wall and the shadow?
Yeah, I think that was at Los Feliz, up on the roof above those tables. Everybody was standing there and I remember thinking to myself how cool all the shadows looked on that wall. The one I ended up using was Billy with his arms outstretched, but I also shot ones with Joey and Gabriel Rodriguez.
How was shooting with Gabriel? We didn’t get to see much of him back then, unfortunately. Was he just really particular, too?
Oh, I loved shooting with Gabriel. Another guy who just looked so smooth on a board. Power and style, all rolled into one, which meant his photos always looked great. He definitely didn’t get as much coverage as he deserved, but I feel like like it had more to do with the time, because there just weren’t many people shooting photos back then. In all of LA, you basically had me, Ortiz and Kosick. And that was for the entire city, so a lot of people fell through the cracks. There just weren’t that many opportunities for a lot of these guys to shoot.
I do love the TWS cover we shot together. Ollieing over that rail and the gap? Just a clean 180 but I love the way the lines look. And he looks super stylish, as always. But more than that, it just felt cool to get a cover with Gabriel. Because this was well after his Powell and 101 days, when he should’ve easily had a cover or two. Something like that was long overdue for him.
 |
| gabriel |
What about that alleyway ollie photo with Billy? Always loved that one.
That was down near the Beverly Center. What’s funny is Billy had found that spot and that photo probably directly caused the spot to get ruined. I don’t think anybody had ever really skated it before. I went there with both him and Guy and they both ended up getting something on it. But as soon as those photos came out, everybody wanted to know where that spot was, and within a few weeks, whatever business that was had to put up a rail to keep people from skating there. Just like that, it was done, because literally everyone was going there. That business was over it, like “Screw this.”
It’s just funny to be able to pinpoint the exact moment and reason that caused a place to get skatestopped. We basically caused an avalanche. (laughs)
 |
| billy |
How was it working so closely with Kareem? Because I know he had his hands in a lot of different things at this time.
Kareem was just the mastermind, man. He was always playing 3D chess. He got me the job at World because he wanted to hook me up, but also because he knew that having me there would be good for him, too. It was good for the things he wanted to do. He could always see three steps ahead like that. He was also really good at connecting people and putting people into different places. Like, I remember showing him photos of Sluggo one time and his response was, “I think World should have a vert skater.”
So, he started getting in Rodney’s ear about it, like “Jody showed me some stuff.” Next thing I know, Sluggo was on World. I remember people wondering where that whole thing came from, because it was a little unusual at the time. That was Kareem seeing around the corner.
 |
| fabian & reemo |
What about that photo of Reemo smoking in the car? That one seems very well lit to be spontaneous.
That just came from always trying to shoot different types of photos, beyond skate photos. I didn’t have anything set up for that shot, I just happened to be taking my flashes back to the car after shooting something else and those guys were hanging out in the car like that. It wasn’t some big production, like, “Hey, sit here and smoke this!”
(laughs)
That’s how those guys were. They were just chilling after skating, waiting for me to break my gear down. I went to put my stuff in Kareem’s car and noticed the scene. Alright, “Hold on. We’re not done here.” I already had my flashes on tripods anyway, so I was able to capture a real moment.
That’s how most of that stuff went. Just them hanging out, usually after a session. You didn’t have to pose them or anything. They were just naturally interesting.
Like that shot of Shiloh with the cigars? So good.
Same thing. That was at our friend Paul’s apartment, who was manager of XLarge at the time. We were just over there, hanging out. We’d just come from skating, so I had my gear. Everybody was sitting on this couch and it looked cool. “Let me get a shot of that.”
How were those dudes on tour? There’s gotta be some great stories…
Well, I remember one summer where a few distributors convinced all of these different companies to go on tour together in Europe to keep costs down, which ended up being this huge thing. It was all the World companies, Workshop, and a few others. So, I think we had, like, three vans full of people… probably 25-30 people. And for many of us, it was our first time being out of the country. Honestly, I would say that a lot of these guys had never even left their hometowns before, and now we’re in Europe where everything is different. It was crazy, but it was also one of the best trips ever because everything was so new for everybody.
Just the simplest things, like asking for a water after the demo. Never even thinking that it would have carbonation. That definitely freaked some people out, like “What is this!?! You drink this? Carbonated water? What are you guys doing?”
(laughs) Who was that?
Everybody! (laughs)
At the very first demo, we’re all hot and sweaty from skating. Basically boiling under the sun. We go to guzzle down some water, as we’re used to taking down about half a gallon… we didn’t know. Five seconds later, it felt like our stomachs were about to explode!
“This is awful! You people are crazy!” (laughs)
And then the town went on siesta and all the shops closed for two hours, so we still couldn’t get regular water. “What do you mean everything’s closed? I want something to drink!”
It was such an adventure navigating how strange we thought everything was at that age.
(laughs) But that shot of Lavar at the Eiffel Tower is incredible.
Lavar was a real character. He had all of this energy and was a bit of a ham. He would really play things up, which made him really fun to shoot. Even beyond his incredible skating, he was always down to do whatever. You could ask him to do whatever and he’d always end up taking it even further. I shot so many great photos of him hamming his way around Europe.
Lavar was just the total package at that time. An amazing skater but still young enough to where he didn’t take it all so seriously. Even though he was on the same level as all these other dudes who were much older than him… and maybe more serious, Lavar could still have fun. Because you’d ask some of these guys to do something for a photo and they might be too cool to do it.
 |
| keenan (r.i.p.) |
Were you able to shoot much in the World Park?
The World Park actually closed after my first couple of months at World, but I was able to go a few times. I shot some stuff with Keenan and Kareem there, and a bunch of stuff with Ronnie Creager while he was still on Foundation.
I was going to ask about Ronnie’s frontside heel over the sawhorse.
Yeah, that was before he actually got on Blind. I just feel like he was having so much fun hanging out in Worldland that he wanted to come over officially. But he was so good back then… he still is, actually. That frontside heelflip felt like he was just dorking around. He seemed way more interested in this hyper-tech thing he was going to try for a sequence that day. Frontside heelflipping over that sawhorse was like a warmup for him.
 |
| creager |
We talked about Guy earlier, how was it working with him for his TWS Pro Spotlight?
Guy is probably my favorite person to shoot of all time. At that point, like I said, he wasn’t interested in going out to shoot anything “basic”, which made him really fun to be around. Because if he called you up to get something, you just knew some shit was about to go down. Even if he didn’t land it, he was still going to get really damn close to something no one had even thought of. Plus, he just looked so damn fluid on a skateboard. Whatever he did, he always looked cool. He’s a photographer’s dream.
But for the rest of us, even seeing him at all was a treat. He was super underground.
It may have felt like that, but I basically saw him almost every day for a few years. He was always in the mix, he just wasn’t skating every day.
You could see him sitting in the background a lot, working on graffiti letters.
Yeah, he was always down to come along. Like if the Menace dudes were going somewhere to film, he’d be in the mix because that was who he always hung out with. He was there because that’s what the crew was doing.
With him trying these ridiculously hard tricks, did you ever see him lose his temper and focus his board? He doesn’t seem like the type.
I don’t think so, but I’ll say yes just because everyone does at some point. We all have those days, but there’s no specific instance I can recall of Guy doing that. Because I would see him trying the absolute hardest shit, and just keep going. He was a machine. If he decided that he could do something, and it was physically possible, he was going to do it.
He was a battler?
Kind of, but it’s not like he needed hours in order to do something. He just knew he could get there and he would. He’d already done the math in his head and knew how to do it. Like, yeah, I can get my shoulder around to revert out of this switch nosegrind. I think he could already see it in his brain, so he knew it could happen.
 |
| guy at hp rail |
What’s the best thing you ever saw him do that wasn’t captured?
Oh, there was a ton of stuff that never got photographed or filmed. Just hanging out a spot, he’d start trying something, but by the time you pulled out your camera, he’d already done it and was over it.
“Come on, man. Just do one more and let’s shoot it!”
“Nah, I’m good.”
…it was either that, or “Nah, it’s not good enough.”
Meanwhile, everyone else is freaking out. Like, are you kidding me?!? That was incredible! He just didn’t think it was up to his level… That was probably his most common reason for not wanting to shoot something, which could really hurt at times. Could’ve filled a mag with all the stuff he didn’t let me shoot. Like, come on, man! But it only adds to the mystery of Guy in that era.
Give me an example.
I remember a couple things he tried but never got, and I would bring them up to him later, like, “Can we please go back and try that again?” But he would always be over it, for one reason or another.
There was a rail in LA called “King Rail”. Kareem had a frontside bluntslide down it, and it was in a few of the Powell videos.
 |
| kareem at king rail |
J. Lee lipslides it in Video Days with the Mickey Mouse shirt.
That’s it. Guy was trying nollie 180 switch crooks and going backside 180 out of it. This was way before anyone was doing anything like that. Years before. And he actually landed one but his foot dragged slightly. He was immediately like, “Don’t use that.”
I even tried to talk him into it, like, “Dude, nobody has ever seen anything like this!”
He wouldn’t budge. And hats off for holding yourself to that high of a level, that you wouldn’t want something like that to come out because it wasn’t absolutely perfect.
That would’ve been for his Pro Spotlight?
Yeah, it was in that era.
What about his switch blacktail in Vancouver?
I know the one, but it’s funny because I have absolutely no memory of shooting that photo. None whatsoever.
Wow… Really!?!
Yes. To the point where I don’t even know if that’s really my photo. It very well could be my photo. I’ve shot a thousand other things on that rail, but I just don’t know for sure. That’s one on Instagram where people always write “Photo: Jody Morris” and I always wonder…. “Is it?”
I know I’m credited for it in the magazine, but whenever I go into my files, I don’t have the photo… but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, either. I don’t have a lot of those photos from back then.
Well, I noticed that you not only shot his frontside heel over the table at Los Feliz, but you filmed it, too. Were you shooting a lot of video back then?
Yeah, I was actually filming a good bit back then. I filmed some stuff in 411 and a few things in 20 Shot Sequence. I filmed a bunch of stuff with Colin for Plan B, too. Because there weren’t a lot of filmers back then, either. I would shoot photos until they wanted to focus more on making a video, and then I would film, too. That didn’t last for very long, though.
But you originally went to school for film, you just didn’t care for it?
Right? I just didn’t enjoy filming as much. I liked the process of still photography so much more. I always found it to be so much more rewarding in the end.
It’s kinda funny, because when I first started shooting, there was no filmer for most of these tricks. Looking back on so many of these things front the early 90s, there’s absolutely no footage of this stuff. We didn’t even think about it. But then video quickly became such a thing, the idea of a filmer ending up in your photo was almost unavoidable.
Honestly, it’s kinda crazy how I even got that video camera, because I had gone into Transworld to pick up some more film and Dave Swift just handed it to me.
“What’s this?”
“Budgets, man. This is how you’re going to shoot sequences now. We’re wasting too much money on film.”
Because to that point, people were trying super-technical things for the first time ever and photographers would be burning through film, trying to get the sequence. Roll after roll. And living in LA, shooting with different people almost every day, I was going through massive amounts of film… as was everybody else.
That’s how videograb sequences became a thing. There were both good and bad points to it, because you did get to see how the trick was actually done, but the visuals were just so ugly.
What trick did you waste the most film on?
Probably whenever Colin or Danny would try some ridiculous street trick on vert for the first time ever. Nowadays, you know a trick can be done because you’ve already seen something similar go down before, but back then, you really didn’t know if it was possible to do a 360 kickflip on vert without grabbing. There are so many variables. But hey, he got really close on the fifth try, so I better shoot every try from now on because I don’t want to miss it!
I can’t imagine how much money Transworld was spending on film back then.
 |
| dill in the middle of nowhere |
Talk to me about that Dill satellite photo in New Mexico with the Wrays and AVE.
Oh yeah, that was back in the Transmission days with Ty Evans. Chris Lambert, too. That photo was something we had to scrape together because all of our other plans had fallen apart. At that point, we were just trying to get whatever we could out there.
I originally got the idea from watching that Jodi Foster movie Contact, which was filmed at the VLA Satellite Array. Obviously, it looks incredible, so I started to wonder if it was possible to go out there and shoot a skate photo. I don’t know if I went out there to suss is out first, but we all came up with a plan to go out there and see what we could get. Because there was really nothing out there to skate, we knew that we were gonna have to bring our own stuff to shoot with. So, we loaded up the van with plywood and 2x4s and spent an entire day out there building ramps. All day in the hot sun, literally in the middle of nowhere. We had driven for miles down this old dirt road, nobody in sight anywhere, and basically built a little street course out there.
Like I said, we were out there building stuff all day. Once the sun went down, we just figured that we could leave it there over night. We’ll come back in the morning and load this stuff up before heading over toward the facility.
Well, we came back in the morning and it was gone. All of the ramps had vanished without a trace. And we were nowhere, man. It made no sense. Our best guess was maybe some farmer was watching us from a hilltop with binoculars and they came down to take all the wood after we left? We still don’t know, but regardless, it was gone. Luckily, we had a little bit of wood leftover in the van so we made a little wedge ramp and that was it. That was all we had. Everything else went out the window. So we set up that wedge ramp by some train tracks with a satellite in the background. It’s not much from a skate perspective, it’s really just a skatepark fly out, but it works for a photo.
We were just making due. Because we couldn’t just leave empty-handed, without getting something. It took us 24 hours to drive out there, let alone building all the stuff… just for it all to get stolen. Sure, everyone was deflated, but we weren’t just going to leave, so we had to come up with things on the fly. Like, I remember us taking that wedge ramp and doing tricks over the razorwire around one of the satellite dishes. I think AVE had a few clips of that in Transmission.
There was no security around?
No, we didn’t see any security at all. I imagine they’d be all over the place now, but back then, there was nobody out there. I mean, it’s a huge area and those satellites are massive, but you’re still miles away from where the scientists are. They can’t see you. There might’ve been patrols, but if so, they were few and far between. It’s so far from anything that they’re not expecting anyone to be out there. Because at one point, we actually jumped the fences and started climbing all over those things. Nobody ever came.
 |
| jonas wray (r.i.p.) |
Was that the same trip as Jonas’s ollie at the Salt Flats?
No, that was a different trip. I actually used to live with Jonas for a bit and we’d take trips like that all the time. That was in the Mojave Desert, and again, we’d just taken a weird road. I remember it was the middle of the night and there was a full moon. We noticed the ground basically glowing on the horizon. We couldn’t really tell what was going on, so we pull over and end up walking out into this field. It turned out to be this dry salt lake.
How it works is that the salt fields soften up from rains but you also have these crazy winds blowing through there, which would kinda shape the salt slush into these little waves. Once the sun comes back out, it bakes everything and dries it out, so you end up with these perfect little jump ramps everywhere. It basically becomes a skatepark, but made completely out of salt… so if you fall, you’re literally putting salt in your wound instantly. It was terrible, but it looked really cool. I always thought it looked like Mars.
We ended up coming back the next day and shooting it in the daylight.
 |
| jeremy wray over hensley |
I love that shot of Jeremy Wray blasting over Hensley in the chair.
Yeah, that was in Carlsbad. We’d gone over to skate the bump and that chair just happened to be there. We pulled it out and it was literally as simple as saying, “Hey Matt, sit in the chair.”
Jeremy had already ollied over it a few times. It was clearly not going to be a problem for him. But yeah, it was literally garbage that happened to be sitting next to the bump. It was an opportunity that happened to arise at that moment.
Talk to me about that Rick McCrank Vancouver crooked grind that ended on the cover of Transworld?
Oh, man… you want to use that one in this? (laughs)
I don’t like that photo.
Really? Why not? I love that photo!
I just think it looks terrible. I mean, the trick is gnarly. Nothing on Rick at all. He’s ripping. I just don’t like that photo at all. The way it’s lit, I always thought it looked kinda flat and dull.
I will say that the Plan B sticker at the end of the ledge is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I always thought that was such an interesting touch and am surprised more people don’t do that.
I can’t remember whose idea it was to put that sticker up there. I do know that he had tried shooting it previously with somebody else and it didn’t turn out, for whatever reason. Transworld has asked us to go back there and shoot it again, which is always kinda weird. I feel like we knew it was going to be a cover, so there was a little more concern with making sure it worked. That, and I can’t imagine Rick wanted to come back and do it a third time. Because I remember us shooting it a few different ways to see what looked best. Does it look better about halfway through the ledge or all the way at the end? Just trying different things.
 |
| crankers |
Another cover, what about Sluggo doing that backflip? Kind of a wild one…
I’m pretty sure he’d done them snowboarding before.
Something people don’t really know about Sluggo: He was a gymnast as a kid and could still do almost all of that stuff. Like, he could do standing still backflips and all that. So, with him having already done one snowboarding, I feel like that was the next logical thing for him to do. He just got it in his head that he could do it. And when he told me that he was going to try a backflip that day, there really was no question in my mind that he could do it. Of course, it’s possible. He does backflips all day.
Yeah, it was kind of a circus trick, but at the same time, it was pretty impressive. As a fly out, I thought it was pretty cool, but when he did it on a vert ramp? Holy shit. That was next level.
 |
| sluggo |
How long did all that take?
The fly out one wasn’t so bad. Once he had the motion, it just came down to him hanging onto his board.
Did he grab early or ollie into it?
He ollied into it. You can see it in the sequence. He’s like a foot or two off the ground before he even grabbed it.
It was one of those things where kicked his board away a few times, just to make sure he could get his body around. But the minute he knew that he would land on his feet, it was a piece of cake. After a few times, he had it wired. He could do it on command.
Doing it on vert was a whole different animal, though, because he had to stop his rotation and land going the opposite direction. He couldn’t just carry his momentum forward, he now had to go backwards. That was amazing to see, even though it took much longer. I don’t remember how long it took, but he did end up doing that multiple times, too. It wasn’t just a one-off thing.
I’m pretty sure his first vert one ended up as a cover, too. For SBC, I think.
 |
| d way |
Last cover question, we gotta talk about that Danny Way 360 kickflip over the mega ramp gap. Because that really is insane.
Well, he’d already done it when I shot that. My apologies to Mike Blabac, as he’d already shot a sequence of it. I was working with Plan B at the time and I thought that it should be a Plan B ad. So, I asked Danny if we could shoot a still of it and he was down. It honestly didn’t take him too long to do it again, as he already knew the mechanics. It was just a matter of catching his board. But yeah, it was originally supposed to be a Plan B ad, but then we started to think that it really should be cover. We sent it over and Transworld ended up using it.
But how do you go about shooting something that big?
I wanted to make this look more like a street trick, which is why I shot it fisheye. I wanted it to look like a street trick on an epic scale, like he was three flipping the world’s biggest double set. Most mega ramp stuff had been shot long lens to give you that full, true perspective. I just didn’t think that shooting a three flip long lens would’ve looked as dramatic. It would’ve still given you that holy shit moment because of how big it all is, but I don’t think it would’ve worked the same for a still. As a sequence, it looks amazing, but shooting a still is different, because you just have the one frame.
 |
| moses |
So how often are you shooting skating nowadays?
Zero times a week.
Oh yeah? What happened? Have you just moved on from it?
I run two businesses these days and I just don’t have the time, unfortunately. Not to mention that the average skater is about 18 years old. They don’t want to be going out with some fifty year-old dude. It’s not fun for them and I get it. I’ve been there. There are hardly any magazines left to shoot for anyway, and the guys who are shooting now are way too good. I couldn’t compete.
But was there something that led you to stop going out?
More than anything, it was probably traffic.
 |
| "colin and i just happened upon this one day." |
(laughs)
I had moved down to Carlsbad, but was still shooting in LA all the time. Driving those two hours in traffic, only to get kicked out of some spot in Santa Monica, then sitting in traffic for another hour as we all headed over to Glendale for another spot, only to get kicked out again. Over and over again… and that’s not even counting the drive home. It just became a grind. I didn’t fall out of love with shooting skate photos, I fell out of love with the process it takes to get them. After a couple decades of that, I just couldn’t do it anymore.
Spending eight hours in traffic to get maybe 20 minutes at a spot before getting kicked out, usually with nothing to show for it? It could be soul crushing. More power to the those who are still doing it, but after having put in my 10,000 hours of sitting in traffic, I was done. It was time for me to move on.
So what are you doing now? You mentioned two businesses? I know you did Momentum Wheels for a while...
Yeah, my wife and I have had a restaurant going in Encinitas for 11 years now called Birdseye. We also have a guitar shop in Carlsbad called Coast Sonic that we started around the same time, too. Between the two, that takes up all my time, but it’s fun.
 |
| amsterdam, 1994 |
Congrats, man. I still need to get down there and check out Birdseye. But as we wrap this up, what would you say is your proudest moment in skateboarding and your biggest regret?
I don’t really have a proudest moment, but the thing I look back on most fondly was being able to travel the world for years. Honestly, you kinda take it for granted at the time, like “Oh, we’re going to Switzerland next week,” or “Yeah, we’re going on tour for the next month.” It doesn’t really sink in… which is also probably my biggest regret. That I didn’t quite realize what was happening at the time, and maybe didn’t enjoy it as much as I should’ve.
It takes the perspective gained in those decades since to realize how good we had it. Because skateboarding in the 90s was dead. Nobody cared. Nobody was paying attention, but we were still able to do all of this fun shit. I just don’t think we realized how good we had it. How good it really was.
No comments:
Post a Comment