I love how he always wrote about people selling out to nike as being disloyal and ruining skateboarding and chasing the money.
Then he does it himself. The very definition of a kook.
Fuck him.
But you’d gone on record a few times about Nike in the Lakai days, and not in the most favorable light. How much flack did you catch for making the switch and how do you look at those previous statements now?
I did. It just got to a point where I was taking things way too personally… which is pretty silly, in hindsight, because Lakai was never even my brand. I just had these emotional attachments to everything that definitely became unhealthy over the years. But when you hear enough times that “big time” is the best move for another dude to make, in the back of your head, you start to wonder why it’s not the best move for you to make as well.
So when the opportunity did present itself to me, I looked at it through the same lens. What’s the best thing for me at this point in my life? And that was it. Of course, I took flack for it and I understand why, but I’m still doing fun stuff for skateboarding with so many of the best skaters in the game. That’s really all that matters to me. The rest is just noise.
How do you react when people try to throw those previous statements in your face?
To be honest, that barely ever happens. Most people were congratulative.
Look, when Nike got into skateboarding this third time, they clearly figured out the right way to go about it. Obviously, their product is incredible, but also the level of service that they were bringing to their riders, compared to any other skate brand, was undeniable.
For those who want to knock Nike, skateboarding had 30 years to figure out how to treat these dudes like professionals. But we didn’t do it. So you can’t be mad at a brand that comes in with an elevated sense of how professional skateboarders should be treated.The other thing is this, and it’s comparable to what drives politics in a lot of the world right now, but I don’t want to be part of that cranky group of people who think skateboarding was only great during a certain time period that they, themselves, say was “the greatest”. Because that’s bullshit. Everything evolves, and I want to keep evolving with it. Of course, I think that the 90’s were awesome, but I don’t believe things have to be run as such in 2018, based on that belief. Because I would’ve much rather walked into that Wells Fargo with a check bigger than $3,000. And I think it’s a good thing that most skateboarders can do that now.
As long as kids are attracted to skateboarding for the same reasons we were, which is being represented by these brands and the kids want to associate with them as a result, I’m okay with being part of that.
Topic: kelly bird chromeball (Read 2546 times)