Reese Forbes: “Just wanted to have something as random as it gets”

Reese Forbes is the king of apparent paradoxes, and has trodden some road with his fair share of unexpected people. It started early, way before some bizarre twist of life got him to jump the Brad Staba ship. Back on his native East Coast, Reese was once teammates with dudes like Matt Mofett, Peter Hewitt and Adam McNatt, on the probably aptly named Goodtimes board company. Eclectic assemblage. Not the last to happen. After a hefty dose of Eastern Exposure via Dan Wolfe’s lens, Maryland’s über-popper joined Element, before getting together with artist Micheal Leon to start Rasa Libre. And then, the clean-cut, polite Reese joined one of the most acclaimed, most offensive board companies in the new millenium, Skate Mental. And it’s not over… Unsurprisingly, the boards he chose to talk about for his five favorite pro-models reflect exactly how he would later describe his first ever board on Element: “As random as it gets.” And awesome, too.

Element Pool (1995)
Art by Mike Baugh

When Element wanted to turn me pro, I wanted to be involved in my graphics, so I called my friend Mike Baugh. The idea behind it, well, I gotta get back into a 17-year-old mind for a second. I just wanted to have something as random as it gets. Mike worked for Discovery Channel, a couple big companies so he had some graphic skills.

I just jumped in that suit and he shot me with goggles and that swimming hat. I was supposed to be an action figure, that’s what it was. I’m not sure what I was supposed to be. The pool balls, it has no relevance whatsoever, it means nothing. It’s just random.

Element did not like it. I don’t think (Element owner) Johnny Schillereff saw that board as having that continuity with any of the other Element boards. But he just wanted me to have what I wanted, which was great. That was probably one of the last times I had what I wanted, basically.

Rasa Libre Zebra Stripes (2003)
Art by Michael Leon

After I lost Element, I was skating a lot with Matt Field, we were talking about starting a company. We had a lot to bring to the table with his creativity. Matt Field and Mic-E Reyes came up with the Rasa Libre name, we were playing around with the word “Rasa” just because of the way it rolls off your tongue, the way it sounds. Plus we wanted that notion of being free, just how you feel when you skate.

When it came to my board, it was as usual: anything that Michael Leon shows me I never have anything to change, it’s always perfect, he’s that good. For this one, he just went for zebra print I guess but he added his own spin to it. This graphic is really sick, and the pattern is amazing. I would say that’s probably my favorite skateboard, ever. I loved Rasa Libre, great company. It was ahead of its time and the beauty of it is that it came and went, and never had time to get stale.

Rasa Libre Wine and Roses (2004)
Art by Michael Leon

The wine bottle is a graphic that Michael always wanted to give me, he thought I would like it because he knew I was into drinking wine. There was also this idea of wine and roses, it was a ’60s thing and a saying, from some Sinatra album I think. It was a song, definitely. It was just really cool.

There was another one he did that was on a guitar stain board, that was mimicking that Gibson Starburst guitar, so Michael did that graphic on a board that looks like that exact same stain. This one’s not actually it, there’s a better one that has that graphic on but anyway, that’s the only one I have.

Skate Mental leap of luxury (2009)
Art by Brad Staba

The jet, the gold watch, all the cool stuff, you know, that’s Brad Staba’s signature humor. It’s done through Brad’s perception of who I am. I mean, he thinks I like all the finer things in life (laughs).

Brad could probably not be any more different than who I am but it worked. We skated in SF when I lived there and we were buddies, then he had the opportunity to do something out of Girl and I just wanted to jump at that chance.

On Skate Mental, there were a lot of good-fun, offensive graphics he did. There was one that said “Fuck your Face,” and it was on a t-shirt too. And then there’s one he did at me with just teeth coming out of this businessman guy, which is probably my least favorite graphic in history. But you just gotta look at it with humor. Brad does a very good job at it.

Stacks beetles series (2010)
Art by Michael Leon

Right when Brad pulled Skate Mental from Girl, I made a decision that I was not gonna do that, so I started talking with Michael Leon, he was thinking about turning his Commonwealth Stacks project into Stacks, the skateboard company.

I always enjoyed working with Michael so it was a natural fit. For now, the team is just yours truly. It always felt like there was some unfinished business since we stopped collaborating on Rasa Libre.

That beetle board is really cool because it came as a 3-board series, Small, Medium and Large, and the way he did the beetles is really amazing, with the colors on their backs, it just looks really cool on a board.

Inspiration information: Frankie Hill and the bulldog

” Me and Todd Hastings went to Amsterdam, and this wasn’t a tour, we just took a break and we went to the Bulldog Coffee Shop in Amsterdam, and I looked up and saw their logo and I was, like, ‘What do you think about that for the graphic, Todd?’
He thought it was a pretty good idea, so when we came back, I told Powell to do a bulldog. It’s a pretty close rendition of the one in Amsterdam! It was the best coffee shop around, man. They really don’t sell coffe there. At all.” -Frankie Hill

This is just the mandatory graphic nerd question from that totally  impromptu interview I did with Frankie Hill in Santa Barbara a few weeks ago, masterfully hooked up by the awesome Andrew Mercado from Gullwing. The rest is over here.

 

Duane Peters: “I thought black and green was more German”

Besides sharing the same sense of rejection, why reggae and punk rock got along so well in late ’70s London was very simple : early punk-rockers respected how crazy and unconventional people like, say, Big Youth or Lee Perry dressed and behaved -unapologetically. An attitude that accompanied nicely a bunch of red-gold-green diamond encrusted teeth in Big Youth’s case…
Fast forward three decades and meet Duane Peters for the first time. You’ll understand why the dude is as at ease in the 21^st century as he would have been in 1977. Never mind the plad, never mind the past, Duane will display the most candy-colored headphones and rock shoes that’d make TK bland. The difference being that he doesn’t look out of place doing so, while you would. It’s called style. No wonder why when it came to digging five boards out of the little collection he managed to save from his darker years, The Master of Disaster didn’t disappoint… Short extracts below of the most entertaining two-hours monologue I’ve ever been served.

Excalibur Corn Dog (1975)
Art by Duane Peters

I lost my stuff so many times, some stayed with the mom of my kids, plus all the homeless shit. I got lucky when I got to save this one from my junk pile, it was in storage for 15 years at least.

When the Dogtown movie came out I was laughing cause everybody was coming out of the wood work, “Yeah I was there,” guys who haven’t stepped on a board in years. So it was funny to me, I was thinking it’d be funny if there was a character called Corn Dog. I imagined a scenario, saying he had been in prison for fifteen years. We were bored, I was living in LA and we had a video camera.

So we started going around Hollywood and Corn Dog thinks that Tony Alva and Jay Adams stole his trick, which is the “toe break”. He’s looking for Tony Alva to get his check, claiming that he got ripped off. So I took my teeth out and had straw hair, thirty years later he’s an old hippie guy, and I put the tongs on his hands cause back in the days guys walked around in tongs and they take their tongs off and use them as gloves. I just thought it was funny. It’s all on youtube.

Santa Cruz (1979)
Art by Jim Philips

This is the template for the green and black Santa Cruz board, which there were only 300 of. I quit Dogtown cause they were all going into rollerskates, and Fausto had me call Santa Cruz. So Madrid made the green and black board but at the time they had a bad batch of wood or something, I broke three boards in one day, I almost quit Santa Cruz for that. They even had people sending in their green and black boards to exchange them for the red and black board.

So. Olson already had the checker board and I was riding his while they were making mine and I wanted stripes. It was just punk rock. X-Ray Spex comes to mind, Blondie had that black-and-white striped album, but black and white was Olson’s already. Plus I thought black and green was more German, I’m half German, I used to be proud of it. It’s the beauty of being American, you come from twenty different backgrounds so you can choose, ‘Oh, I’m not Irish anymore,’ everybody and their mother is Irish since the Dropkick Murphys. We’re mutts.

This particular deck sat on the warehouse wall until maybe seven years ago. One of the guys called me up, ‘Hey, do you want this template?’ I remember seeing it when I walked up there drunk and saying, ‘They’ll never give up that board’. But they did eventually. From what I’ve heard, they also did a “King Olson” deck and a “Prince (George) Orton” deck. It looks like “drama queen” or “queer queen” but from what I understand they did these in the order that people came on on the team.

Skull Skates (2000)
Art by Tara Miller

Jak’s are the Hell’s Angels of skateboarding, biker gang style. They’ve been around since the late ’70s, early ’80s. Tom Scott’s the president, John Marsch started it but he’s deceased, he got hit by a truck. A lot of the guys are the San Francisco original street skaters. Gnarly.

They made me a honorary Jak’s in like 1982 or 1984 when I moved out there. You have your Jak’s vest and you wear your colors like in a bike gang. They’re all over the world now, you have to be petitioned to be on, you gotta go through a bunch of shit.

I just did a movie called Hostility Hotel with the second and third Jak’s from the first generation, too. Back in my day, man, it was kinda embarrassing to be a skateboarder and a punk-rocker, you didn’t wanna have a skateboard at the punk show. But Jak’s, they skate to the clubs and shows, to the High Beam or the Night Break, there’s always a Jak’s guy at the door that takes your board and keeps all the boards together.

Black Label Red Cross (2003)
Art by John Lucero

Lucero graphics. They didn’t sell real good but I can understand it, a lot of people think it’s because of the Jesus. I don’t know when religion and skateboarding cross-bred but to me, they’re completely separate. But to each their own, I don’t wanna shit on nobody’s Buddha.

To me it’s just very Sex Pistols and punk as shit, I love this graphic. The text behind it is from one of my songs from Never Mind The Open Minds. The cool thing with Lucero is that you talk about what you want and you give him a basic thing of what you want, and most of the times it’s already almost there. He’s got an insane sense of colors. Such a great artist.

Pocket Pistols cruiser (2008)
Art by Chicken

This one is kind of an offshoot of the second board I had on Santa Cruz, which I did and then Jim Philips fixed. He had these 80s stripes in mind, same kind of colors, just real simple, real old-shool looking, like the old days but we did our own thing still. Plus, Chicken does really good art too, he’s like Lucero, he’s got really good taste and he’s a lot into board quality.

I don’t have any idea if these boards sell nowadays, I don’t keep up. It’s like with record sales, man. I just learned to stop reading my own press and checking my board sales. It will affect your self esteem cause even if it’s really good, you’ll live off this good energy and as soon as it gets down, you’re gonna start going down.

“You may have understimated the negative selling power of my name”

So apparently I can add “shipping slave” to my LinkedIn profile now, heh? This silk-screen print non-business worked beyond all my expectations, so stoked that people care. I honestly thought it would take years for them to sell out -there’s ONE Cliver left, and maybe 8 Francises, crazy.
But you know what the best thing was? Getting to be in touch with all these cool people all over the world who ordered prints. It ranged from legendary ’90s Supernaut skaters to skate dudes in South Africa, from Australian documentary makers to designers, and that was the best. Some even sent shit in the mail!
Here’s a mini sum up of some of the stuff I got to get/discover. Not a bad day at work!

1. Julien Stranger letter

This was after I sent him a letter myself cause I realized only after the fact that the Todd Francis print bared Julien’s name in huge on it. Which can be, I don’t know, uncomfortable having your name out there without you knowing it beforehand? After I awkwardly apologized, this is what I got in the mail. Pure act of class! Thanks man. This. Is .Good.

2. Keenan Milton “Forever” sticker

Sent by the notorious Titletownjeff out of the non-less notorious Skull and Bones forum. It was accompanied by an amazing hallmark-type card, and actual cash inside the envelope. Now that’s old-school.

3. Corey Hague’s documentary about wrestling

It’s all here.

4. Aye Jay unreleased artwork

Didn’t order the print but got in touch following the whole frenzy around them, so I guess that counts. From the dude who brought us the Larry david/Mötörhead non-collab, mind you! This is his site.

5. Trent Bonham’s sick deck collection

I suppose no caption is needed? Check it entirely here.

6. Eric Lehman’s soft good version

I guess the print is an okay consolation, but when you own the OG shirt (“Bob Shirt” tag and all!) like Eric does… score!

Something’s cooking…

“With Antihero, the stuff we did wasn’t about controversy. It was more like making people laugh, but sort of a sick laugh. Sort of a thoughtful, bummer of a laugh, you know? Like the K9 dog biting off the cop’s face. The dog is sick of being told what to do by the cop, so he rebels. There’s a little story to it.
It wasn’t a firecracker up a cat’s butt. That’s just sick. It was confrontational but there was a smart story to it. I like to tell a deeper story. I like to think that the stuff we did with Antihero wasn’t easy. Maybe it was one step too far, but it’s never the easy step too far. It gotta push the envelope but in a way that’s intelligent, I guess?”
-Todd Francis

Why this quote, you may ask? And why is it illustrated by a studious Sean Cliver doing his homework, right above? The answer shall reveal sometime next week…  Any guesses, perhaps?

Choose your weapon

Oh, just stumbled upon the sickest, sorta skate graphics-related photo ever…

Danny Way: “I was attracted to the darkness, as you see it from the graphic”

Back in 1991 in Blagnac, France, the H Street team came and did a demo. We all got really perplexed when we saw that Danny Way didn’t bring a vert board. Instead what he carried was one of these straight-railed, round-tailed, mini-wheeled (and no riser pads ! The heresy…) setups that hadn’t really reached France yet. “He just switched to street skating,” we thought, right before D.Way dropped on the monstrous vert ramp and killed it like nobody before –two tricks from that day even ended up in Questionable.
With a 20-plus-year-long career , Danny still remembers that board. “I’ve been looking for it for ever,” he regrets, “It’s the one that has the Volkswagen-like “DW” logo on the nose. That shape right there revolutionized all street shapes. There were other people playing with the idea at the time, Tony Hawk had a twin tip board but it looked retarded, it was such a bad shape. But the DW one, I remember shortly after Salman Agah copied my shape, Jeremy Klein copied my shape…” Having said that, Danny still has quite a bunch to pick up from -either from an aunaccessible attic he has to struggle with, or from the various displays on his walls. Here are the five decks he had time to discuss between two exploits.

H-Street Giant Holding Giant (1989)

“I quit Powell cause I never felt they had that big of an agenda for me. I knew what my potential was, and I knew where I was. I was ready to go. I got my first pro-model on H Street six months after I got on, and it was this one. On some boards in these days, you had a say in your graphics.

A local friend from Vista drew this graphic, and there’s another one I drew, it was so bad, it was the stupidest graphic ever, it had a big H Street and a question mark. It took me five minutes to do it. Even though I wanted it to look elementary and that it looked almost like a kid did it.

Anyway, my friend drew this giant holding a giant holding a giant for my board. There was no particular meaning I think, besides maybe that everybody looked like a giant to me then. Or that I was a little kid but I had a giant ego, I saw myself as one of the bigger guys. But I wasn’t. “

Blind OC Bladerunners (1991)
Art by Marc McKee

“I rode for Blind for like a year and a half and this one was one of my two boards, the other one was the Nuke Baby one, the fake Nash board. H Street was going down the tubes, Mike Ternasky and Rocco were buddies and this was a strategic plan, this was just to buy time so we can get Plan B started basically. Eventually I got back on H Street for a few months until we started Plan B.

Anyway, this Bladerunners graphic was going on at the time when mini-trucks were popular, everybody seemed to own a lowered truck like that, and they wore the Oakley blades and that stuff. And in skateboarding we didn’t really think it was that cool so this is kind of a joke. I like this board because Mark Gonzales, Jason Jesse, Ron Chatman, Todd Congeliere and Jason Lee are on it too. It wasn’t just an OC thing, but all these guys are from the OC.”

Plan B 12-gauge (1993)
Art by Spike Jonze

“That’s Sheffey on the board there, that’s in Fallbrook by my old house. We used to go out in the middle of this hill and blow stuff up. Spike Jonze shot this, he had the mannequin head, that was his idea. It’s hard to remember exactly cause at this time period there was always some kind of obscure, crazy thing happening.

He probably just brought the head over and said, ‘we’re gonna shoot a sequence for a board graphic’, and that was it. This is back before naked chicks on boards got really crazy, so this at the time wasn’t really crazy but if you look at it now, you might be like, ‘wow, what is this about?’ with the kid and the shotgun blowing the mannequin’s head away.

I don’t really go out shoot guns that much anymore. I mean, I  like them, I think they’re cool. But I don’t really have the passion anymore, and I don’t have time.”

Plan B Silence Of The Lambs (1994)
Art by Sean Coons

“One of my favorite artists, Sean Coons, drew this water colors graphic at the time The Silence Of The Lambs came out, it was my favorite movie. This board was part of whole series but it was my favorite anyway.

What prompted me to have Hannibal Lecter was, I don’t know, back then I was just kind of in the dark states I think, I was attracted  to things like this, I don’t know why, I mean I ‘m not these days, but when I was a kid it was just personal  things that were going on in my life. I was attracted to the darkness, as you see it from the graphic. It’s not where the Slayer thing came from, I like Slayer and have always enjoyed their music when I skate.”

Alien Workshop Mega (2002)
Art by Mike Hill

“I skated this one for two weeks, everyday. I filmed the whole Mega section in the DC video on it, so I saved the board complete, I never switched the board out, every trick on that video part is on this board. Plus it’s the only mega board I had that looked almost like a regular street board, I was pretty psyched about that too. That board got a lot of action.

I never really changed shapes before or after that one. The Mega shape is something I came out with when I invented the Mega. Paul Schmitt makes my boards, so everybody rides Schmitt boards except Jake I think. Everybody rides my shape, they just go to Schmitt,  ‘I need Danny’s mega boards.’ Nobody is trying to reinvent the Mega board, I got it all figured out, and now everybody has that board.

It’s longer but only 8,8″ wide cause it gotta be relative, the width of a board doesn’t change its stability at all, it’s more about the wheelbase and the trucks’ width. It took a few shapes but I got it all figured out since.”

Ben Horton ($LAVE) : “Every graphic doesn’t need to be profound”

I had loosely suspected it before. It became really obvious when I started working on curating the board exhibit for that one show in Paris last summer: in 2011, there aren’t that many skateboard graphics that have something to say. I mean, by “newer” artists -which immediately sets asides the Templetons, Eli Gesners, Mike Hills, Todd Francises, Clivers, McKees and Aly Moores of Droorstalgic times past.

Not to tout the expired stale fart trumpet again, but my theme being called Agents Provocateurs -a journey through offensive/political board graphics- I sadly only had a couple names in mind when time came not to make this an all-90s board exhibit. 

Thanks lil Baby Jesus though, there’s still a handful of artists who still carry the maculate torch today. Among the Siebens, the Winston Tsengs (enjoi) and the Whoever-thinks-of-these-sick-Skatementals-concepts, Ben Horton has remained one of my personal faves since he launched $LAVE.  The brilliance of it all, the video, Ben Raybourn : the guy behind it had to be a Midas of sorts, I thought.  Well, he is. But he’ll never admit it. Enjoy his interview below…

********

How old are you and when did you start really drawing?
I’m old enough to have a hard time remembering when I started drawing. I think I really got into it when I was about 12 I guess.

How long have you been skating?
About 25 years. You would think I could figure out Back-smiths by now.

What was the first cool drawing of yours you remember liking?
I’m still working on that. So by default, I’ll say it was a volcano I drew when I was 5 years old.

Who were some early influences you had?
When I was young I liked saturday morning cartoons a lot. All the Warner Bros. stuff with Chuck Jones as the director was my favorite as a kid. After that, I started getting into all the usual famous painters from history as well as some modern artists. But as I got older, I began to only like certain aspects of a person’s artwork. I rarely like the piece as a whole.

What was your first “published” drawing/graphic?
Probably, some drawings I did for ads for the skateboard shop I worked at in 1992. Then I worked for Maple skateboards which became Imperial distribution. Later on, I worked for the original Scarecrow(before ABC), Foundation, Black Label, etc.

I occasionally skated with Jamie Thomas when he moved to San Diego. I guess he probably noticed the stuff I did for Foundation because he skated for Toy Machine which is at Tum Yeto. That was back before Zero, around ’94 I guess. I was working on and off in the skate industry. I worked at a screen print shop 2003 when he offered me a job.

How did you get do do $lave?
After working at Black Box for some time, Jamie was kind enough to offer me the opportunity to start a brand through Black Box.

Does it have to be spelt with a dollar sign and not an “S”, by the way?
I guess you can spell it however you want. The official/legal name is, “$LAVE” in all caps.

What’s the meaning behind the name?
It can really be whatever you want. The general idea is that most people are a “slave” to something. Whether it’s substance addiction, television, an occupation, society’s demands, etc. That’s why I used the dollar sign for the “S”. Because money is one of the most influential factors in a society that determines how much freedom a person has or doesn’t have. I realize that “Slavery” typically describes people keeping other people as legal property and forcing them to live a certain way and therefore making them into personal slaves.

But that is only one aspect of the word “slave”. For $LAVE Skateboards it’s about the other side of the word “slave” that refers to people being controlled by or dependent on something or society as a whole. And therefore reminding us to always pay attention to that and to continue to preserve whatever freedoms we have, while striving for more.

My point is, we need to keep an eye on what freedoms we are sacrificing.If we don’t, that line at the airport security area is only going to get longer. And your personal belongings in your bag and your home are going to become more and more public.

Haha, that was a small rant, good thing nobody is reading this!

The central question to me : being an old ’90s fart, there are to me very few graphic artists nowadays that I think are REALLY good. Do you think that’s true?
Well, I can partially agree with your opinion, and I definitely don’t include myself in those few artists. There is a lot of art out there. And personally I don’t like the majority of it. But who am I to say? What’s great is that art is completely subjective. It all comes down to what the individual viewer likes. There’s no right or wrong.

Who are some skate artists from nowadays that you dig?
They’re all good. Everyone’s great.

And non-skate ones ?
I would like to keep this list to myself.

Do you think it’s important for a drawing on skateboard to have a “message” of some sort?
Yes, but I don’t think it’s neccssary. Every graphic doesn’t need to be profound. Some ideas are just silly and meaningless, which is great. Skateboarding should always stay free. It’s an environment/Industry that has few restrictions on graphics and a great place to voice your opinion if you have one.

Who else carries that specificity today?
Chris Johanson, Todd Francis, Ed Templeton, Sean Cliver, etc. I could go on and on, but in general I feel like skateboarding has always been an outlet for artists to do whatever they want.

Does the market care?
You mean the people buying skateboards? Some do and some don’t I guess.

What are some of your own favorite graphics?
Probably the latest series of five boards for $lave called “Positive Series”.  I like the colors and illustration style of this series. They’re also the first Illustration series of graphics I’ve done now that I have 5 Pros on the team.  I also usually like my newer graphics more than my older ones, which is a good thing I guess. It would suck to always be trying to copy some drawing I did in the past.

Lastly… why is there that NRA sticker on your old BMW?
Jon Allie put it on there and I like it. I’m backing some policies of the NRA. That goes back to the freedom crap I was talking about earlier. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

Guy Mariano: “Who would do that nowadays? Have this idea, and then spend a whole day making it happen?”

Guy Mariano might have unveiled Steve Rocco’s ultimate secret. “We were all just kids, man,” he reminisces as he relives his journey through Powell, Blind and Girl, “and I feel that Steve himself was just a kid, too.” Only a kid who happens to have made a bit of pocket money.
So why bother with candy when you can actually buy the whole store, then set it on fire just for the laughs? Hence the guns, the death, the sex, all these unknown, therefore fascinating, things for anybody immature enough to get the joke. Dumbo Board aside, (too direct of a jab at his ears size), Guy loved it all. That’s why his graphics have a special place in the Droorstalgic hearts.
When you can actually find them, that is -The only board that Guy currently owns is a Jason Lee “Bowie” deck offered to him by Marc Johnson. But thanks to a cross-continental chain of help, the five images ended up being found.  And Guy could talk about them…

More Guy on The Chrome Ball and on Lodown (Of course it’s all part of a big concerted plan to have all these come out at the same time. You think we’re not professionals?)

Blind Claudia Schiffer (1991)
Art by Sean Cliver

“That one was my first board, so of course you’re gonna be super hyped on it. But the graphic itself was really good. Also, it was at a time when I started to recognize supermodels, from the ad campaigns, whether it’d be Kate Moss on Calvin Klein, or this one who was a Guess model. It was super-special that that board came out in that era.

Also, what added to it was that just me and Jason Lee had that graphic, with just our names that changed. I had been looking up to him for so long, so sharing anything with someone like that, it was super special. I think it did very well, a check might have been $ 5,000 at $2 a board, you know what I mean?”

Blind Accidental Gun Death (1992)
Art by Marc McKee

“Nowadays graphics are more or less a reflection of pros’ personalities, but back then it was more, ‘Our art guys will do stuff’. Still, that Accidental Gun Death board is special to me cause it was very graphic in a time where skateboard graphics had become really kid-friendly and all types of cartoons, they were doing a lot of Dr Seuss, or taking Burger King logos.

I think at that time on the news they might have been talking a lot on the news about kids’ accidental gun deaths or something and how dangerous guns are. It was a bit political. When I saw the board I thought it was pretty harsh but it was cool, man. I’d bring home my new boards and my mom would be like, “Oh that’s cute”, or “Oh that’s cool.”  And when she saw that one, she was just, like, “I don’t like that one.” But she wasn’t that mad.”

Blind High Guy (1992)
Art by Marc McKee

“When I was young I really did like the Garbage Pail Kids. I thought they were really funny. And they turned me and my friends into this little series, putting a little twist on it, making them a little bit heavier, a little bit more raunchy. At that time I wasn’t really messing around with drugs or anything, but I had before with my good friends, so I thought they would have a kick out of it, maybe cause I had smoked weed before. Also, there was a cartoon character of myself on the board, which I was psyched on.

How they assigned each character to each one of us I’m not sure, it was probably rhyme-based a lot. Each one though probably vaguely applied to one of us, like Henry was always jacking off, and Rudy was probably doing the rear-end thing by then, you know what I mean?”

Girl Nudes (1994)
Art by Quique Diaz

“Paulo Diaz’ brother, Quique, was always doing art at their house, his brother and sister were a very artistic family. So he was always painting and we’d watch him paint, saying stuff like, ‘If I ever go pro, I’ll put this one on my board, or that one”. And one day it just happened…

Girl had the in-house artists so they didn’t buy too much art outside, but Quique still go to do at least two of my boards, I’m not sure if he did any other ones for other people, including Paulo. I really loved how this one came out, and how Quique did purposedly sort of a symetrical graphic, cause switchstance skating was the trend then, he didn’t skate but he knew we liked to ride our skateboards backwards. I saw him again last year, he does jewelry now. Beautiful gold necklaces tha look like fish hooks, it’s really cool.”

Girl Old Man Series (1995)
Art by Spike Jonze & Andy Jenkins

“We were coming back from a Japan Tour and we ended up at Girl super early in the morning. Spike had told us that he wanted to do a series of boards with us disguised as old people, he was using make up like that with some Beastie Boys stuff. That’s something Spike always does when he has ideas –applying them to Girl. He’s way more involved in the company than you’d think from seeing him do all these big films.

But anyway, we came in and Spike was already there with two make up artists, he had all the clothes ready. It took the whole day. I remember, my mask was put on early and it had time to dry, but Rick’s was done at the end and it hurt his face when they took it out, that was funny.

So they shot the photos for the boards, and they turned this idea into a skit for a video way later, for a Chocolate video skit. But I wasn’t in it cause I I had removed myself from skateboarding already.

It took me years to realize the value of this kind of board. Who would do that nowadays? Have this idea, and then spend a whole day making it happen? It’s not really the way skate graphics are done anymore, that’s too bad.”

Special thanks : Thorsten Bödeker, Andy Jenkins & Marc McKee

Ben Schroeder: “Me and Grosso had this BTVC joke going, for Big Time Vertical Comeback”.

Yeah it has been a minute. My interweb life is a never-ending apology at this point. Actual new stuff coming out soon, most notably silk screen art prints by Sean Cliver and Todd Francis… More info soon. In the meantime:

Ben Schroeder‘s Monrovia house is still the stuff of legends. Until recently, the whole last floor was his and, well, he made it his, big time. Weird skateboards of all sizes all over. Paperwork, memorabilia, skatepark plans, shoes in various states of usage, sculpted or carved skatepark models. A true Ali Baba’s cave, from which he could extract virtually dozens of different skateboards from any given corner. Each one being interesting and having a story to tell. So no, isolating only five wasn’t an easy task but eventually, it did happen. After much debate, “the guy who does eggplants like nobody else” unfolded his carcass of locomotivesque proportions to talk about his five picks, among other souvenirs including how he got kicked out of Dogtown in 1991 (he sent them a letter saying they were turning the company into H Street and that they should rename it H-Town or Dog-Street) and how he earned the nickname “Ben10″ after perfect 10 runs at some 1986 contest. Listen carefully.

Dogtown Big Ben (1988)
Art by Lance Montain & Wes Humpston

I first turned pro for Dogtown in 1987, and around here my local friends were Jeff Grosso, Eric Nash and Lance Mountain, and they were talking, “what should his graphics be?” And Grosso, I think, came up with the idea of the Big Ben clock with the Dogtown feathers behind it. So Lance drew the graphic and Wes Humpston fixed it up. You can’t see much of it now but why I like this one board in particular is because it reminds me of my first trip to Japan, early ’88.

It has the Ascot Park sticker on it, it was one of these amusement parks/skateparks set in crazy forest mountains, they’d give you an ATV and send you up through the forest and all these pros were getting crazy and almost running over each other. Anyway, great trip, I was 18. It’s always brought up in interviews because the 17-hour plane flight there was wild, the Japanese stewardesses couldn’t control us, they were pretty much crying and abandonned this area of the plane. I remember Craig Johnson runing down the aisle, from top of seat to top of seat. A lot of ragers on that trip.

Black Label Dummy (1990)
Art by John Lucero

So this is my first model with Lucero, and it was kind of a cooler thing when it was me, Ricky, Grosso and Lucero, just the four of us skaters and making a company, and Lucero did good art. So I was really happy about that. I was known for taking the hardest slams and keeping skating like nothing, hence the crash test dummy.

But I didn’t take that many then, I slam more nowadays than I used to. I try to do all the stuff without practicing and I’m out of shape, so I still try to pretend that I can do everything that I used to do, but it doesn’t always work out.

What I need to do is swim and stay in shape and skate a lot more. But we’ll see how that works.

Black Label Ben’s Room (1992)
Art by John Lucero

So first, I fractured my right forearm really bad, my bone popped out and I couldn’t skate for six months, so Lucero did a graphic with a handicapped sign. It had nothing to do with the car accident I had, that was another scandalous story, as Black Label kicked me out when I almost died in car accident. Imagine if Antihero kicked out Cardiel, that’s what they did to me. And I had to fight to come back to skateboarding for several years, I’ve been on a hard road.

Anyway yeah, so, following on the public sign thing John made a bathroom sign were instead of “Men” it said “Ben”. Then when I saw the original Girl skateboards logo it made me laugh, I never talked to them about it, I only hung out with them on one of the King Of The Road tours, we had lunch once but that never came up. I think people even forgot about this board. A bunch of these decks said, “BTVC 1991″ on them, me and Grosso had this joke going, “Big Time Vertical Comeback”.

Pocket Pïstols Ben 10 (2007)
Art by Giovanna Withers

My girl Giovanna graduated fine arts from USC and she’s a great artist and does all sorts of great web designs. She did this graphic cause the locomotive is my image now, so this is kind of a modern painting of a train coming right at you.

Cardiel first called me a locomotive in an article he wrote about the Protec Pool Party 2005.

Also, I think they used to call me a trainwreck , I don’t know how to describe my skating but yeah, it is kinda like  trainwreck waiting to happen, it’s not that much the slams it’s just so out of control I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just going pushing ahead.

Homemade Luge
We were seven kids in my family, six boys, and my older brothers Alec and Ted used to go downhill right behind the house we grew up in, that hill is where we all learned skating. They got into luging in the early 90s. And then I built my own luge out of wood for 16 dollars at Home Depot, before getting into aluminium channeling.

All that stuff is out of Home Depot except for the metal. It’s great to have two of these, so me and my friends were able to go out and race each other on weekends. We’d find some good mountain roads with no traffic and hit them at 2 in the morning after going to the clubs.

I mostly like to do roads that have a lot of turns and chicanes and stuff, so you’re sliding around the corners doing 35 instead of going straith and 60 mph. You’re low to the ground so you’re pretty in control. I don’t do it anymore that much but I got a17, 18 years old kids at the local skatepark that I show the ropes to. I wanna get them out to the mountain.