Archive for December, 2008
Saw this on the New York Times website today. Kowabunga, dude!
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If you went to Miami last week for the fair, you may have seen the Vice Guide to Miami Art Fairs. I didn’t go to Miami, but I did write the guide. You can see it here, but there’s no point really- the fair is over.
Anyway, they posted the whole thing on the Vice website and I came across this in the comments section… which was nice.
Interviewed Leila Moss of The Duke Spirit tonight, Dave wasn’t feeling too hot so I offered to do the show.
He said he’d he’d help us get Kiefer Sutherland if I filled in, so… click it.
Gnarly down-hill, click the pic.
From Issue #5… Chri$ asked us to post this up so he can link it to some stuff he’s been doing for the Vans website.
Then you all come over here, read the Ray interview and then go “Ha! That was funny and interesting! I’d like to read more of this stuff!” And then you’ll go to the BUY STUFF page and you’ll buy stuff. Then we’ll be less poor!
When I was a kid, just before I wanted to be Jim Morrison, I wanted to be Ray Barbee. All my friends wanted to be Ray Barbee too (except Ben, he wanted to be Jason Jessee). Ray had the best style of any street skater we had ever seen! He was amazing! We watched him in the ‘Rubber Boys’ part of Public Domain so many times that the video became worn out in that one spot! Seriously! You couldn’t watch it anymore! But we’d learned how to do all-new tricks like No-complys and step-off-shuvits and shit like that. That was some good times man…give me a second…. Anyway, if you’re reading this and thinking, “Oh, another interview with a skateboarder, bor-ing, I’ll skip this,” Don’t. It’s not about skating. It’s about racism…and Jesus and…Hey! HEY! COME BACK! IT’S NOT LIKE THAT! Just keep reading, come on. It’s a good story. Don’t be a dick.
Interview: Jason Crombie
Art: Chri$ Nieratko
Photos: Ben Matsunaga
Hey! How’s skate camp?
It’s good man—Woodward West Skate Camp in California, kinda by Bakersfield.
Cool.
Yeah, I’ve been doing skate camps since about ’95. My friend Dave was like, “Why don’t you come out to camp and be a counselor?” So I checked it out and I loved it man!
Are there a lot of casualties at skate camp? Are kids getting hauled off in gurneys all day?
Uh…YMCA skate camp is mellow, but yeah, there’s casualties at skate camp.
Can we talk about the time you got chased by skinheads?
Yeah, sure.
Now you’re a religious man, right?
I hate religion.
What? I heard you were into Jesus and all that stuff.
Well, It’s just that I hate religion in the…to me religion is just man’s take on god.
Right.
He gets in there and messes it up for his own agenda, so you’ve got all these abusing, conflicting sects, if you will?
Yep. Organized religion, you mean.
Yeah, man, but to me, like, I could care less about the word “religion,” and I could really care less about the connotations that it brings y’know? Jesus made himself real to me and he said he’s the way to the truth and the light, so when people ask me ‘am I religious, am I Christian’ or whatever, I just say: Jesus made himself real to me and he lives in my heart.
Okay.
I believe he died on the cross for my sins y’know? But there’s too much baggage that comes with these other terms, words. To me they have nothing to do with my relationship with Jesus.
Your relationship with Jesus began when he saved you from the skinheads.
No, no. What happened was, me and my friends Ben [Matsunaga] and Bobby [Ferry] went to Huntington Beach. I was living in Corona at the time, which is about 45 minutes from where we were at Huntington Beach. It was about ten o’clock at night and we went to this local coffee shop out there. We heard a band was playing and I thought it was my friend’s band that I had seen the week before at the same spot.
At the coffee shop?
Yeah, so we get over to the coffee shop and it’s not my friend’s band, it’s this skinhead band called Guttermouth.
Guttermouth?
I’m not sure if they’re a skinhead band actually. But at that time all the skinheads embraced them, whether [the band] wanted it or not. So the crowd at the show was skinheads.
Same thing happened to Joy Division. They had a skinhead problem I think.
Skinheads got into Joy Division?!
Yeah! I think because they took their name from a Nazi sex slave camp called Joy Division. Horrible.
Oh man! Really?
Yeah.
It’s hard to imagine skinheads being into that music!
I know.
Well I guess that’s the same deal with Guttermouth. Anyway, so we show up and the show got broken up by the time we got there, so there were a lot of disgruntled fans…
What do you mean the show got broken up?
The cops broke up the show because where the coffee shop was located there was some residents, so I guess they complained about the noise.
Right.
So we got there just after the cops had shut it down y’know? So there were all these lingering gig-goers just sitting around bummed, and then we show up. Right away a kid recognized me from skateboarding—he was a skater—and he’s like “What are you doing here?!” and I’m like “What? I came to see the band play.” And he says, “You gotta get outa here!” I didn’t know what he was talking about, I was kinda like “Whatever.” And then Ben started saying “We better go, we better go….” I was like “We just got here” and I had seen a couple of friends there that I wanted to go and talk to.
Yeah.
And Ben just kept insisting “Come on, we gotta go, we gotta go.” So finally I’m like “Okay, man,” and we started walking back to the car. Then suddenly I hear “WHATS UP!” I knew it was directed towards me and I looked back and there was this 6-foot-4, 250-pound skinhead.
Jesus.
With like, web tattoos down his neck and a tear drop under his eye…
Tough stamps.
Yeah, and there were two dudes on each side of him, so I tried to ignore them and kept walking to the car. And then they were like “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in Compton or something? WHITE POWER!”
Tell me NWA peeled up in a low-rider right at that second.
I wish. I was just like ‘okay’ and then they kept walking up on me. I don’t know where Ben was at that point. (Laughs.) And then I hear “YOU BETTER RUN NIGGER! YOU BETTER RUN!” and I looked and there was this other dude who wasn’t with the other five dudes and he was running towards me, I was like “Later” and I took off. Again, it was a residential area so I’m just cutting corners, and with all the adrenaline I was just booking man!
I’m sure!
Yeah, so I was cutting a bunch of corners and I looked back and I didn’t see them. So at this point, y’know, I’m Corona so I didn’t really know [the area] and I’m thinkin’ “How am I gonna get back to my ride?” I’m on this street corner and it’s all lit up and I’m just trying to figure out, y’know, okay, what do I do now, I lost the skinheads. I’m standing there getting my breath back and I see this truck and a hand pointing at me!
Shit.
It was all the skinheads. The whole thing was planned out. They already had a truck ready. There were guys chasing me on foot but there were guys in trucks looking for me too, it was a bunch of skinheads, it wasn’t just a few dudes.
Jesus.
So I’m standing there thinking ‘what do I do now?’ and I started freaking out, I started running and I saw this van so I hid behind the van thinking that they would just keep going and be like “oh! Where’d he go?” Y’know? But sure enough they stopped right at the van and started getting out.
Aaaaaaaagh!
So I looked to the left of me and saw a park and it had like woodchips inside, y’know? Like tan bark and I thought, I can’t go in there because my shoes won’t have any traction, and it was all lit up, so I ruled that out, y’know?
Yeah.
And then I looked to the right of me and there they were, coming around the van! And I looked behind me and there was a door open, so I ran inside. It was a community center, and they were having a birthday party I’m pretty sure. So I run in and there were all these people sitting around a table and they didn’t speak English and I’m like “Can you help me? Can you help me? These guys wanna kill me!” and they probably didn’t understand what I was saying, I was just some terrified black dude running in on their birthday party. But they understood when the skinheads ran up to the door. I was already looking for the backdoor out when I ran in y’know?
Yeah!
And I remember looking back before I turned this one corner, looking for the backdoor, and I remember seeing these two skinheads come up to the front door and they just had so much hatred, man! And the adrenaline, they were just so ready, y’know? It was so heavy because that moment right there was like frozen, and all I could think of was “Wow, man, I’ve never seen these dudes before in my life!” Y’know? You could understand if I had wronged them in some way but…
So weird.
Anyway that moment seemed like an eternity but in reality it was a split second. So I’m trying to find the backdoor and I see this janitor and he speaks English, and he’s like “I’ll call the cops.” And then men that were at the party went up to the door and wouldn’t let the skinheads in, so they eventually left, and the cops came—one black cop and one white cop, and the black cop was like, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna get on this,” y’know? “I feel your pain” kinda deal. And that call to the cops kinda linked up Ben’s call and then I got back with him and Bobby.
Thank god.
It was heavy man. My parents grew up in the South y’know? My mom was from Alabama, my dad’s from Arkansas, my grandmother, who I grew up with, is from Arkansas. And having that black cop say “Don’t worry, we’ll get on this…” For them there was no cop saying “Don’t worry, we’ll get on this.” The cops were getting on them! So I felt like I’d had just a millimeter, just a little taste of what they grew up with and went through every day y’know?
Right.
And it made me realize…why are we so lame to one another?
And then you got into Jesus.
Well no, that’s another story that happened in Amsterdam.
Jesus.
Exactly.
