What’s up Charlie, what are you doing?

Hey, doing alright. Having a slow start to the day, trying to conjure up some boarding ideas. Might go get some strip club brunch with some homies for Mr. Purdue’s birthday.

Nice one, they’ve got a lot of strip clubs up in Oregon right?

There are a ton of em up in Portland, I think there are more per capita up there than anywhere else in the states. I moved down to California when I was still pretty young so I didn’t have the privilege of attending them.

Where exactly are you from in Oregon and what was it like growing up there?

Grew up in the Northwoods of Eugene. It was rad growing up there, a lot of open minded people and fresh air. The skate scene was pretty unbelievable, especially the first 5 or so years I skated. Eugene is a smaller town, and we didn’t really have a ton of spots to skate. Before some of the local parks were built you could roll up to a session at one of the schoolyards and there would just be crazy amounts of people there shredding.

Do you remember your first setup?

I believe the first setup I bought was a Zorlac, that or some kind of shop board. My dad skated back in the day and had this old Hobie board that I started tic-tacking around on. It was pretty sick, had some blue Tracker trucks and soft bright pink wheels.

What made you move to SF and how long have you been here?

I always wanted to move to SF growing up. A lot of the local Oregon videos that I grew up watching were split between Portland footage and stuff from the bay area. The Seasons videos as well as all the videos that Tucker Glasow made really gave me the urge to come down here. I’ve been living here for about 5 years now, and have loved every minute of it. There is always something going on that keeps this place exciting.

I heard you’re that guy with the brownies?

I’ve been slacking on the brownies lately, need to get back on it.

Where do you usually skate and how does skating here compare to skating in Oregon?

Really just been skating all over the place lately, pushing around downtown a lot. There are a lot of aspects about skating here that compare to Oregon, just spots being kinda rough and a little harder to skate. It not raining for half of the year is a plus, although it seems people like to gripe about the weather a lot more here.

What was it like going over to Oslo and skating? Had you ever done something like that before?

Going to Oslo was an incredible experience. Norway, and just the region of Scandinavia in general is very wealthy and everything they build seems to reflect that, making for some really unique spots. A lot of my family is scattered about Europe so I’ve traveled around a bit over there in the past, but this was the first trip I took over that way solely to skate.

There were plenty of ridiculous looking spots in that Treat, what was the weirdest thing you skated over there?

The craziest spot we skated at was probably this brand new film school in Oslo that we had spotted these glass banks at. We figured we would get about 10 seconds in before getting booted just because when you were standing on them you would be looking a few stories down into the building, and just the fact they were made out of glass we didn’t think they would be having it. However, after about 5 minutes of skating some of the staff came out and were super psyched on us skating it, and even offered Colton to come inside the school so that he could film up through the glass. We ended up skating there without getting hassled for as long as we pleased, and some of the cooks there brought out some ice cream they had just made for us. There is no chance that we would ever get away with skating something like that here, it was definitely a trip.

Any big plans in the works?

Just booked a trip to Costa Rica next month with the lady. I’m getting pretty excited just doing some more research on the country, going to try and surf a bunch down there. I’ve been trying to film a bunch with Colton lately for this video project we’re working on, which has been a lot of fun. Hoping to take some skate trips this summer back up north.

What’s it like filming with Colton?

Filming with Colton is great. He has such a good attitude, and kills it behind the lens. Like a lot of other skaters I wasn’t really feeling the HD stuff that started coming out, but Colton puts in a lot of work researching methods and experimenting with different filming techniques to give his footage a great look.

Working at Mission you’re dealing with derelicts on the regs. What’s the craziest SF story you got?

That’s a tough one, there are some many crazy people that wander in there that you learn just to space em out. A few months ago I was coming back from getting some drinks, and stopped by the shop to say what’s up. This kid Oswaldo who works there told me that crazy Mike Epps look-alike guy who hangs out in front of El Farolito and Vallarta demanding money and talking shit, had been fucking with some of the younger kids that hang out in shop. I saw he was still just down the block, so went over to ask him what was going on. I had always been cool with him, and thought he would be reasonable with me, but he immediately started getting crazy and ended up spitting on me. We ended up getting into a scuffle in the street, some neighbor vato guy comes out tripping on me so I just took off. Now I see him pretty much everyday, and he is totally cool with me, just acts like nothing ever happened. It’s kinda depressing sometimes to see all the people here with drug addictions and mental health issues that just seem to get brushed aside. Its clear that a lot of them need help, but I feel they usually don’t make it off the street unless they’re headed jail.

Shout outs?

Shouts to Think, Slap, Mission Skateboards, and all the homies here that are out and doing it.