What have you been up to today? You said you were skating?
Yeah, I was just skating. I hit K bridge, Cooper, did a little Brooklyn tour, and then went to Manhattan, tried a trick, and now I’m here.

How has your summer been?
It’s been great. I’ve just been filming for this video part that I’m working on, and traveling, and making art, so it’s been productive. It’s nice to be back on it. My knee’s a hundred percent, so it’s nice to be skating every day and working towards something.

How long have you been working on this video part?
I just started in January. I was like, all right I’m going to make something. It was a slow start because of the winter. I got two clips in January and February, but once March hit I got three, and then I was getting five clips a month and so on. It’s getting better when the weather’s better. I just wanted to make something just so I can put it out there, and then start on something else.

Who’s been filming it?
There’s a bunch of homies right now. I’ve filmed  with RB (Umali), which is cool. And then Josh got some footage, and  Zach Baker is filming with me too, those three guys. But mostly now it’s just me and RB going out when we can.

Have you gone on any trips or is it all in New York?
I went to LA, I’ve been trying to get this trick twice already and I keep getting kicked out. I’ve never experienced such a thing, but I want the part to mostly be in New York because it’s where I live, and I like the way it looks, so I’ve been trying to just do everything in New York, but there are these two tricks that I want that are in LA.. I’m going to try to go one more time before November. 

Do you know what music you’re using?
I have two songs. Hopefully we can use one of them. I’m going to leave it up to Benny, the guy who does all the Hockey videos, he’s going to edit it, which is really cool. I’m going to send him two songs and see if they work, but I trust his vision. He’s got a good eye. I like the way he edits videos. So whatever he picks, I’m down for it.

And these photos in the interview, are these tricks going to be in the part? Most of them?
All of them.  All of them are in the span of this year. I got the clips first. That’s what I usually do. It stresses me out to have a filmer and photographer at a spot at the same time. I’ll get the clip first, know I can do it, and then I’ll go back and go get the photo. That’s usually how it works for me. It’s just easier. But unless it’s really, really gnarly and I only want to do it one time, I’ll get both of them together. But if I can do it twice, I’ll get the photo second. So the outfits might be different, but same trick.

Do you like trying to get photos?
Yeah I just love looking at photos. I think they’re better than the video sometimes. Your imagination can run wild. I love a good photo, plus that’s what I grew up on, before the part you see the article with all the pictures, and then you watch the part, you go, oh, I remember that from the magazine or whatever. So that’s kind of how I want my career to look like. Like the early two thousands, nineties. Photos first and then the video.

Did you look at a lot of magazines when you were starting off skating?
Yeah. My first magazine was this Transworld. It’s the one with Andrew Reynolds, Bam Margera, Stevie Williams, and Jamie Thomas, they’re all on the cover. It’s the buyer’s guide ‘07. That was my first skateboard magazine. I took it everywhere I went, I just loved skate pictures. They just look cool, especially the ones from back then.

You take photos yourself? Do you shoot much?
Yeah I do. Not skate photos. I’ve never really shot skate photos, but portraits, things I see, my travels. No, I’m not taking serious skate photos. Maybe I’ve taken one and I got a good one by luck. My friend was doing a crooked grind over that ledge in Milan with that grate,, he was doing such a long crooked grind. I had time, he was sitting on it. 

You’ve made a number of zines. Do you make a zine every year?
I did the last two years. I’ve just been going through some growing pains, and I don’t have a desk in this new apartment, but I’m going to move soon, so I’m going to have a workspace. I realized I need to have a workspace because I’m kind of OCD where I can’t have stuff on the table if it’s not meant for that table. So I’ve been working on it slowly, but it’s such a hassle to pull everything out, do it, and then put it back away. Whereas if I have an office space, I can just have it all laid out and just go work when I want to. But I’m working on a new one now, it should be out by the end of the year.

Is it photos or collage or what type of stuff?
It’s both this time. I’m really excited. Last one was collage, my writings and some of my drawings. This time it’s going to be my film photography, some of my writings and then some collages, but mostly my photography. I haven’t had anywhere to put it since 2020. I made this photo book five years ago, and I’ve had so many photos since that. So I’m going to put it in this one. 

Do you write a lot? What kind of writing do you do?
All my thoughts. I have a lot of thoughts. I think a lot of things. I feel like I live such an interesting life. Besides interviews like this, or with my really close friends, I don’t talk much, but I have so much to say either it’s the struggles that I go through as a woman, or a black person, or just growing up, falling in love, falling out of love, things like that. I just need somewhere to put it, or it’ll drive me insane. So I’ll write it in maybe a little cheeky way so it can make someone laugh. But also it’s like, oh, I deal with that too. I just need somewhere to put it. 

It seems like you’ve always done a lot of different types of art and things. You used to paint? Do you still paint?
I paint a little bit. Like I said, it’s a space thing. I don’t have a studio, but I grew up painting. I grew up doing mosaic, art, and pottery. I went to this after school summer camp thing where it was free, which is kind of insane. They had fine painting, sculpture, interpretive dance, Photoshop, oil painting, mosaic tiling, all of this stuff. I did it all after school from 2 PM to 7 PM, and then during the summer from 11AM to 3PM up until I was in high school. It stopped when you got to high school. But yeah, I just grew up painting and drawing.

You’ve worked on a few collections, designing shoes and clothing. Is that something you’d like to do more of? What was that process like for you?
Yeah, I love making colorways and designing shoes. The last shoe I just had was the OTW shoe, which was really cool. They let me do the whole thing and then I did a collection with it. That didn’t come out, but it was fun to get to be a designer. I went to the office every other month and we just worked on stuff and I gave them my ideas and I drew ’em out and they made them a reality, which is cool. I’m not technical, but I can draw what I want, which is nice. But  I don’t have the terms for things yet. I’m like, I want this fabric, and describe it,  and they’ll be like oh suede, or nubuck. I just know what I like, and what I think looks good. I love designing and I want to do more of it. Hopefully I’ll have more opportunities too.

After you got your first board, were you mainly looking at stuff on YouTube? Were you getting magazines or were you getting videos from the skate shop? What was some of the first media you consumed?
I’ve told this story a bunch, but there’s picture day at my school and they have all these props, like a football, a basketball, and one of them was a skateboard. So that was the first time I’d seen a skateboard, not on tv, like Rocket Power. And I was like, oh, Rocket Power is my favorite show. But I had never seen a real skateboard, so I saw that at five and I was like, this is the best thing ever. You know what I mean? And I took a picture with it, obviously not even being a skater yet, and then I went home and I was like, I need one. I just told my mom, it’s this skateboard thing. And she was like, okay, my dad had got me one from Walmart, this mongoose one, whatever it was, shit, it didn’t roll. And then time is so weird. I want to say give it a year or two. When you’re young, time seems like forever, but maybe when I was six or seven, my mom got me a real one. Maybe not even a real one, but it was from boards.com. Probably doesn’t even exist anymore. And it was like urethane wheels, aluminum trucks, fucking wood board. And I rode that thing around the house for maybe a couple of months because whatever, I have asthma. And we found out the carpet in our house was giving me asthma attacks. So she pulled the carpet out so we could install wood, but there were two months where it was just concrete before we put the wood on. I was rolling in the house with the skateboard every day after school. And then, I didn’t let it go, but I was doing so many other sports. My mom had me in soccer and like I said, the afterschool program with the art and stuff. I want to say when I was 13 or 14, I got serious. And I think that’s when YouTube came to be. 

Do you remember some of the first videos that got you hyped?
My mom managed the computer, and when I got computer time, the first thing I typed in was skateboarding, and all these videos came up. Not necessarily pros, just other kids, but I didn’t know who was who yet. There were these kids in Connecticut, they’re obviously rich now that I look back on it, big ass house, big driveway, had the Element flat bar. He used to skate the Nike Tre. His friend’s name was Tyler, but his name was Connor. It was like my first vid. They would shred their driveway, and that inspired me to go to my patio and try tricks and build little stuff to jump off of. Then shortly after I found these kids in my town, they were older than me, but they were going street skating, and they had their clique and a camera. I remember watching them and there’s one of the guys in the video, his name was Kevin, and he’s one of my favorites in their series or whatever, and some kid in the comments wrote “That dude wants to be Jason Dill so bad” and I was like, what? Well, this guy’s cool. I wonder who he’s trying to be. So I typed in Jason Dill. It was still before Mindfield came out, but Photosynthesis was online and Skate More was online. And I clicked on it and I was just like, holy shit, this guy’s the coolest. And that’s how I learned about pros. I’m like, oh, he’s a pro. They skate for a living. 

So that was the first pro you found out about?
Yeah he was the first pro I found out about, but the first pro I met was Levi Brown at this Element “Make it Count” contest. We ran into each other in the hallway. I didn’t know who he was at the time. 

That was a contest you went to skate in or to watch?

To skate in. I had magazines by then, so I had seen an ad for the Make it Count contest in Tampa, Florida. And I only lived four hours away from Tampa at the time, and I was like, mom, we got to go. And I skated it, I did pretty well. I had on Es and this Volcom purple shirt with this Nike SB beanie. Yeah, that was good times.

What’s up with your YouTube channel? You used to upload a lot?
Yeah, that was my thing. That’s how I would send Bill videos. It was every summer or every, I don’t know. Time was different then, but maybe every summer I would film this series called Beatrice one, Beatrice two. I went up to Beatrice #5. I would just basically film sponsor-me tapes, I guess. But it was just me filming myself on a tripod. I’d film for a year, film all summer, edit it, and then put it on YouTube for consumption. And I’d do that every summer.

You mentioned there were some skaters in your town growing up, some older ones. Were there a lot of people who skated growing up around you? Or did you feel like it was kind of more an outcast thing?
It was definitely an outcast thing. They were in the other town. They were in West Palm Beach. Florida is not like New York, whereas if you live in Brooklyn and someone lives in LES, you’ll meet somewhere in the middle or they’ll end up in Brooklyn. If you don’t have a car and you’re young, you’re in your area, especially in Florida. I don’t know if you know the GX dudes, Matt Finley, Jamal, all those dudes are a little older than me. Those were the dudes, like John Flech, Kevin Shealey, they all work in skateboarding now. They were those older dudes at the Boynton Park that I never went to until I got a little older, and my mom was like, okay, you can go there. The park I used to go to was a teen center, it was very monitored. You had to go in, check in at the desk with this adult, and wear a helmet. It was very gated, where Boynton Park was lawless. It’s so funny. I never got to skate with ‘em when we all lived in Florida, but now Kevin’s my team manager. John’s my team manager. 

Shout out Shealey. When you first started going to the skateparks around you, were you intimidated or did you not really think about it?
I wasn’t intimidated. I was just so happy to get the new obstacles that I didn’t have on my patio. I did not care. I was like, I don’t have this bar at my house. I don’t have this long ledge, this long manny pad, ramps. I was just so infatuated with all the stuff that you could skate in one spot. I didn’t even think if someone was like “A girl, who is that?” My mom’s in the parking lot, I have an hour, I’m using my hour. I guess I didn’t have time to be self conscious, if that makes sense. I went to skate.

When did you start skating with other people?
I would say when I went to Boynton Park, I became a regular, and obviously I feel like once you start getting good, people start noticing and they’re like “You skating with us today?” or would hit me up to come skate at the park with them. So I would skate the park, but I didn’t have a car, so I never really went street skating unless it was around my neighborhood. That park is 30 minutes from my house by car. So they’d be like, “Are you coming to the park today?” And I’d be like, “Yeah” and then we’d skate together. But most of the time I was skating by myself at home. My uncle had built me a ledge, that’s what I learned all my tricks on.

What’s one of your favorite cities to skate?
I would say definitely London or Milan, just because the people, I have friends out there and it’s fun to go out, hang out with them, and they’re down to just skate every day, all day. So definitely those two cities.

You’ve worked with Louis Vuitton before. How did that come about?
That was interesting. Sometimes I feel like when I open my mouth, I’m like, how the fuck? I don’t know. One day I was scrolling in my email and I got an email from Louis Vuitton. I kid you not, I don’t know how they got my email. I thought it was a joke. They’re like, we want you to make a chest. You know, like the box thing. So I designed a trunk for them. Basically. I made a movable ledge. I did a trunk you could skate. I was supposed to drop it off at Tompkins, but I signed an NDA so I couldn’t. But anyway, I  just got an email and I answered back being like, sure, I’ll do it. Here’s my address. And one day a fucking massive truck comes to my house and it’s Louis Vuitton, they’re dropping off the trunk. And I’m like, oh, for real? I was like, okay. And yeah, I just worked on it and I waited till the last minute as usual, but I got it done and they came back and picked it up and it was nice. They ended up doing a whole tour with it. It was in Malaysia, LA, New York, I want to say Paris. They had these exhibitions. It was random, but really sick. I want to say it was Virgil who probably gave them my email. I don’t know how else they would’ve gotten it.

Did you talk with Virgil?
Yeah, he was encouraging. I didn’t really know him, but he followed me on Instagram and he’d just randomly write me encouraging messages or write a comment, and I guess just inspire me, really. I don’t know how he had the time to talk to so many people. He was a really cool guy. He would just hit me up and be like, “You can do it” or “nice design” when I would make a Vans shoe or something. 

Do you follow fashion and high fashion stuff, or not that much? Are you into it?
I used to be obsessed with it. I used to get the September issue of Vogue every year. I was super into it, dialed in, and then I got a little bit out of it, like this is so fickle. But I still do pay attention. I’ll watch the runway shows on YouTube. I just love couture. I love nice things. I like clothes, and I love getting inspired. Like, “Oh, that shit’s really cool, but what if I made it like this?” You know what I mean? I’m not as obsessed as I used to be. I’m just one foot in, one foot out.

How do you feel about fashion brands doing skate things, doing skateboards or stuff like that?
Well, that’s where it gets tricky. I guess that’s why I’m one foot in, one foot out now. I see the repercussions of it. It doesn’t give back to skateboarding, and it doesn’t help skateboarding in any way, and my first love, regardless of anything else, is skateboarding. I care about it so much in its entirety, and I want it to continue to be its own thing, its own industry, and not get so washed. I feel like as skaters we give too much away. Anybody who’s willing to give you more than five grand, yea sure, here. You’re giving our culture to some people who are not outside trying tricks. They don’t know anything. They don’t know who Fred Gall is. They don’t know why the banks are so important. They don’t know the pyramid ledges. They just don’t know anything. So I think that’s what I’m struggling with now. We need to take it back a little bit because we don’t realize our own value. I feel like we just give so much away and it’s like, damn. They just take it. Take, take, take. And then skaters wonder why we’re in this weird space right now. We’re giving something up for so little. You have to remember, we’re the cool ones, I think.

How do you know BLP Kosher?
That’s my buddy. He just called me on the way over here. I know him from skating. He’s from Florida, I’m from Florida, we grew up skating together. He used to have this big ass helmet and he would wear a beanie over it. At the time, he was this little dude doing switch everything, switch backside flip, switch hardflip, switch tre, gnarly shit on the pyramid. I’m like, this kid’s sick. If he got a little taller, he’d be rad. I hadn’t seen him for a couple years, and I had this company calledBeatrice Company. It was a place where I had all these ideas for shirts that I wanted to make. I just wanted to make them because I had no outlet. I was like, I should make a little team, and I hit him up one day. I was like “You want to ride for this?” and he said yeah. We filmed a part of me and him just skating around Florida. That’s where we got really close, and ever since then, that’s one of my best friends. He comes to New York, we kick it, just talk bullshit about skating. He still loves skating, but he’s very hyper-focused. So if he’s rapping, he’s giving it his all. He treats it like skating. When we used to skate together, he always had a trick in mind, what time he’s going to do it, and he’d go do it. It was so crazy. So he does the same thing for rap. It’s sick.

So what’s your approach to skating? Do you practice a lot? Do you have any type of routine or anything? Or is it kind of just day by day?
I didn’t, but now I do. Cause I know it works. I’ve heard P-Rod, or Anthony (Van Engelen), they’ll go to the skate park and try the trick that they’re going to try in the street over and over again. So when they get to the spot, it’s just the like at the park. So I’ll do that now. I’ve been skating down the stairs at the Vans park, so I can go try these stairs at 68th Street, Hunters College. I’ll do that sometimes. I skate every day. When I was hurt, I had two hours max, and then my knee would lock up and this whole thing. But I skate every day now for as long as I want. So by the time I get to a spot, it’s not a task. I’m just skating every day. I would skate maybe two days out of the week and then go try to try a trick, and I’m frustrated that I’m not landing it. I’m like, well, I only skated twice this week. But if I skate every day, it just all blends in together. So it’s like I’m just skating, but with a camera, if that makes sense. It’s easier that way.

You skate everyday? You don’t take days off much?
No, unless it’s raining or super hot. I took two years off because of my knee, I really couldn’t. But now I’ll skate every day if I can. The only time I don’t skate is when I get off a flight, because I always get hurt. I’ll do the flight, give it a day, then skate the next day. But I used to try to skate off the plane and it never works out. So that’s the only time I don’t skate.

When you started finding skateboarding and pros and stuff like that, were there any black skaters that you noticed and were particularly inspired by or looked up to?
Kinda. I didn’t know any black women before me, so I just put Kareem Campbell and Elissa as my favorites, and I was like “I could do it”. She’s a girl, he’s a black dude. I’m somewhere in there. Those two were the two where I was like, I could do it. Because Kareem was tall too, like me. You know as a kid you find anything. Chad TimTim, remember him? He has the same birthday as me. I’m like, oh, I could definitely be a pro skater, we have the same birthday. Probably delusional. And then I saw Stevie’s Underworld Element part. That was always really cool to me. He was a younger kid. I saw it late. He wasn’t that young anymore, but that was the first part I saw of him, and then I realized, oh, that’s old footage. 

Would you say you ever feel pressured to be a role model? Do you feel like you have some weight on your shoulders because of that? If so, how do you deal with that?
I’ve never noticed it until maybe recently, to be honest. Skateboarders aren’t role models. My favorite skaters used to do crack. I mean, I don’t have an issue with it. I make mistakes. I be beefing on Instagram with the comments. I’m not perfect, but I feel like I just live my life kind of mellow, so it’s not that hard. Nothing against drinking and doing drugs, but I just don’t do those things regardless. I just skate, and watch YouTube videos, and eat out. I don’t really do anything gnarly, to be honest, but I’m not perfect. I’ve cursed out some kids on Instagram before. They get to me sometimes. I didn’t realize it until Vans gave me my first colorway and little girls were like, “Oh my God!” I feel like a board brand is so niche, and Supreme is I guess niche, and Vans is very worldwide. That’s where it hit me, there are people outside of my community that watch skating, and watch my skating. It’s so crazy.

It sounds like your parents were really supportive. Do you have any advice or stories about how they were supportive of you skating when you were younger?
Yeah, I mean, going back to that Element Make It Count contest. We didn’t have the best car. We had a really crappy Toyota, and she drove that thing to Tampa that’s four hours away, and it started to smoke and overheat. But she was just like, I support you a hundred percent and you really want to do this and you seem like you care about this. So we drove all over to Tampa. The car almost overheated. Luckily we stayed at the park for four or five hours and were able to get coolant, and the car was able to cool off and go back down to Delray Beach where I lived. But it was a testament of her just believing in me. I’m not the only child, I’m the second of four so I feel like that’s a lot of sacrifice for one kid, especially since at the time, there was nothing in skateboarding. It was just something that made me happy. It wasn’t like, this is the Olympic ticket, or this is the pro ticket. She was just like, this makes you smile. This makes you come out of your shell. I was super shy when I was younger. I wasn’t sponsored or nothing. Just out of me being enthusiastic about something.

Do you still talk to Dill much?
Yeah, I talked to him the other day. He’s the same. I’ll text him ideas. He still does all the graphics, but like I said, I’m getting out of my shell more. So I’m like, “I like this, can we incorporate it into my next board?” I just care about board graphics. I think they matter. I want to look back and have a detailed story for each board. I don’t want to ever have a board being like, I have no idea why they gave me this… hawk. So I’ll text some graphics and we’ll go back and forth. I saw him last year at the warehouse. He’s good. He’s just been painting a lot.

Besides watching skating on YouTube, what do you do when you’re not skating?
When I’m not skating, I’ll read books. I like to read, I make my zines, and then I’m really into true crime, sadly. I love a good documentary. I’m watching this new one, I forget what it’s called, but it’s about a school that kept these kids and abused them. And the whole school was just a facade, it was like a pyramid school, and now the kids are going back to the school and telling their story. It’s crazy stuff. It happened here in New York, upstate.

What about books? You read anything good recently?
Yeah, I just finished rereading Man’s Search For Meaning. I read that every year. It’s one of my favorite books. It’s about this Holocaust survivor in Auschwitz, and Logotherapy was something he came up with where, it’s all in the mind. I know it’s kind of drastic to compare my life to his, he was near death, but he did this thing and he made it out alive because all he thought about was making it out alive. He’s in this concentration camp every day, being abused and starving. But all he thought about is like, okay, this is where I see myself. And he ends up making it out of there. So I read that book often. My life is not that severe, but sometimes when I go through things that are maybe uncomfortable for me or seem like hardship for me, I’ll read that book and be like, dude, this is nothing. It just puts things into perspective. And then I read this new book. I like a lot of self-help, but I try to read self-help and then read a fun book. I read Rumble Fish for the first time. It’s like one of those high school books that you read like “The Outsiders”

Who are some skaters you find inspiring right now?
Can I get three? I like Jacopo’s skating from Baker. He’s amazing. What he can do on a ledge is fucked up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone flip out of a blunt like that. Insane. And then I know he doesn’t skate that much, but I just love Sage. Sage skating is just…  to me that’s skateboarding, long grinds, popping tricks. A very good trick selection. Stylish. That’s what I care about. I don’t care about the gnarliest rail. If you can do your trick well, and you can hold it, to me that’s technique. I hate when someone nosegrinds at the end of the ledge. Sit on the ledge like Pappalardo used to do back in the day. And who did I watch today? Elissa, she’s skating. It’s been nice to see her skate. She’s been popping up in the Baker videos. It’s cool to see she’s still doing it. That makes me feel like when I get older I can still do it. So yeah, those three. I like all their skating.

You got anything coming up that you’re excited for? Trips, projects?
I’m working on this video part. And I’m going to have an art show in London around the end of the year, which I’m really excited about. So I’m getting my art together.

Is that a solo show?
Yeah, My first one ever. That’s going to be pretty cool and crazy. I’m excited about it. Nervous, but it’s something to work towards.  And then just skating. I’m so hyped on skating again. I’m just happy to be on my board and skateboarding

Want to do thanks, or last words, or anything?
Thank you, Skate Jawn. Thank you, Marcus. I appreciate it. Fucking Awesome, Supreme, Vans, Yerba, James brand, DB journey, all my sponsors I really appreciate you, and my family members, Mario, Joshua, Amber. All the homies. God bless.