Kyota Umeki Interview

June 14, 2019

Sup Kyota! Let’s start off with some classic skate interview questions: your name, how old are you, where are you from, and how long have you been skating?

I’m Kyota Umeki, I’m 16, from East Village Manhattan, and I’ve been skating for four years.

Who are your sponsors?

Labor Skate Shop, Frog, Noah Clothing, and Vans gives me stuff. Oh, and Stingwater!

How did you start getting Vans?

James from Labor told the shop rep about me and then he (Johnny Layton) hit me up on Instagram saying he saw me wearing Vans and asked me if I wanted shoes.

How did you get on Frog?

Well actually I didn’t know at first, I knew there were two owners Chris and Jesse, but I would get the two confused. Then I met Chris at Tompkins and asked for stickers. I wanted to buy a board from Labor and asked if he was gonna have any there, and he left one of the Salba boards there for me!

What grade are you in?

10th grade.

Are there other kids at your school who skate? What was it like growing up in the city?

My friend King, we both started skating at the same time and he’s one of the only skaters at my school. I’d see a lot of skaters around growing up, but sometimes they would be dickheads. Other times you’d want to skate with them again.

Who are some of your favorite skaters?

I really like Hugo Boserup, Hjalte Halberg, and Taylor Nawrocki.

If you could have one sponsor, doesn’t have to be a skate brand, what would it be?

Ohh that’s a hard one…Best Buy!

If you got a $5,000 gift card to Best Buy what would you get?

I would get $5,000 speakers.

What kind of music do you listen to?

Well I don’t really listen to music. I started playing drums.

When did you start playing drums? What got you into that?

I got electric drums but I didn’t tell anyone. I was already planning on getting a drum set. When you and Cooper (Winterson) met us at Guitar Center after skating, and I saw him on it it made me want one so much more.

If you had to choose between skating and drumming which would it be?

Skateboarding. Drumming is too hard.

But you just started! You’ve told me your favorite food is acai bowls. How many would you have per week during the summer?

During the summer probably like 4 or 5 a week. Depends how much money I have.

You have a pretty popular video called DS1000/DS2000 where you attached a fisheye to a Nintendo DS. What influenced you to start filming skating with it?

I had one of those iPhone clip-on fisheyes and I would be out filming my friend till 4am and my phone would dieall the time, so I wanted a camera that was just for filming. I looked through a box with old junk and found my DS. Once I realized it had a camera on it, I just attached a fisheye to that and it came out kinda cool.