Interview by Marcus Waldron

Photos by Ben Colen

Video by Ryan Mettz

How long have you been in New York?
I’ve been living in New York for the past three and a half years now. Since April, 2021.

What brought you here?
I’ve been always wanting to move here since I was in high school, just always in the back of my head, but I kept putting it off. I was going to move here when I was 18, but just didn’t have the money. Then I just saved up a bunch of money during Covid doing Uber Eats and then moved out here on a whim. I knew some people. I kind of knew Tenzin and Sully, but mostly Andrew was the one person I actually knew, but quickly became friends with Sull and them.

What’s Portland like?
Do you miss anything about it? It’s really sick from later spring to early fall, but then there’s a six month window of rain pretty much. It’s really beautiful and has a rainforest type of vibe, but there’s just so much rain. It’s pretty wearing on the soul, but it’s fucking sick. It’s so beautiful and the people are so nice. I love it.

Do you ever pick mushrooms in Portland? Is that a thing people do?
That is a thing people do, but I’ve never done it. I don’t drive. I don’t have my license, and you have to drive an hour or two. It’s like a mission to go into the woods and get the good ones. There’s nowhere in Portland proper that you can just pick, I don’t think unless you grow.

Have you ever drove a car?
No. Never.

What about the strip clubs?
I know. It’s always so funny. I left there when I was 20, so I never really went to any of the strip clubs or any of the bars, but that’s such a big scene in Portland. Everyone’s always asking me, where’s the best strip club to go to? And I’m like, dude, I actually don’t even know. I just say fucking Mary’s.

How did you end up getting on Limosine?
Just Max and Cyrus. Or how it actually happened was, we had talked about it for a while, once it started, but they already had a set team, so there wasn’t really space for me in the beginning. And then Max was like, no, don’t worry, just hold out. We’ll get you on. I was like, all right, fuck it. I was just getting Habitat boards for a while, and then Cyrus literally one day was just like, “Oh yeah, you want to get boards?” I’d forgot about it, honestly. It was probably after a year and a half of me living here.

You’ve been going on trips with them since then? What was one of the best trips you went on?
Yeah, we went on three trips so far to Austin, North Carolina, and Montreal. Something about Austin was just so sick, and it was my first time going on a real, paid, skate trip. That was the rst time I was like, oh, shit. I got flown out somewhere far. I was tripping, and it was just so much fun. It was my first time meeting Noah, and the spots in Austin are so good, and the food, I don’t know, something about Austin was really sick. It was just so easy for skating. The other two trips were really sick. In North Carolina there was a ton of people and we were constantly moving, so the skating aspect was kind of hard, for me at least. Then Montreal, I rolled my ankle halfway through. I rolled my ankle, but it was still sick.

Is that what you are still healing up from?
Yeah, I’m still healing from that. We went there pretty much exactly a month ago now.

Are you doing anything to heal it? Do you have any routine?
Yeah, it took me a little bit to get into a routine of it, but I just wake up and do PT every morning. I have a fucking band, do the toes, and then to the side, and heel raises and shit. I’ve rolled my ankles so many times. I’ve probably rolled each of my ankles three or four times now, so I kinda know how to do it. It took me a while though. I definitely rolled my ankle a couple of winters ago and it took me fucking five months to heal from it. I just got drunk every day and didn’t do anything. I was just so off it. I could not heal this fucking ankle.

You’ve been living with Max Palmer? How’s that been?
It’s really sick. It’s me and my friend Aidan, who’s also from Oregon, and we both don’t really have anything, so it’s kind of all his shit. We live in his apartment. That’s how it feels,
kind of. He’s about to move out though in two weeks. He’s got his own spot. We’re going
to have nothing.

Did you skate Burnside much growing up?
Yeah. I started skating when I was 10 or 11, and I mostly just skated street spots in Portland, but then I couldn’t skate transition very well. I was always like, fuck that. I hate that shit. And then I got all hyped on
Burnside, but I was super shook to skate there. I could not skate anything, so I went there every day from 15 to 17 or 18, literally every day before I went and skated, I would go there and make myself skate, and I learned how to skate the park. I would just go there and see other people skate, and I was like, why the fuck am I scared? This is so whack. I want to be able to just go anywhere and skate. Yeah, I love that place. It’s changed so much though. They built so much shit since I started going there.

What’s the first skate video you remember being hyped on?
One of the first ones I ever watched was Tweak the Beef. That Enjoi video. We had a movie store in our neighborhood and we would go and rent videos and we would just watch Tweak the Beef or Dog Town. One of the first ones I was really hyped on was probably Pretty Sweet, or once I started actually getting into skate videos and caring, it was like, Welcome to Hell. I used to watch that every day. Then I went to a heavy Anti-Hero phase, and we watched Cow every day probably.

What’s your favorite kind of skateboarding?
Smooth street skating. I know that sounds fucking weird, but my favorite skaters growing up were Huf and Quim Cardona and heads like that, who would just skate down the street and hit shit. I feel like that’s what gets me the most hyped, is just people with good style and powerful skating. I think that’s what I like to watch the most, at least. I have respect and love for all types of skating, transition, and gnarly, tech street skating too. But if I had to choose, probably that.

Any advice for somebody growing up who wants to move to a city and try to get sponsored and shit?
Fuck, that’s so hard. Trying to get sponsored… Stop trying to get sponsored and just film videos with your friends. Just be as pure at skating as you can, and people notice that. I feel like once people start to see that you just want to get sponsored, they’re going to be off it. But if you just want to skate and film because you want to, they’re way more hyped on that. I feel like that’s the only thing that’s ever worked for me.