interview by Sean Bendon

photos by Nick Kraus

You just finished your last day of work in Arcata, California and now you and your wife Jasmin are about to make the big drive back to the East Coast. How are you feeling?
I’m feeling good. It’s never an easy thing to leave Arcata, it’s such a comfortable place. I’ve made so many friends through AMPT skateshop after being here for the past ten years, but I’m definitely excited. My folks are back east, so it’s been a long time to be away from them, and they’re really excited to have us. We just sent all our stuff across the country last Thursday and we head out in the middle of August. Should take us about ten days. This is the first time I’ve driven. I would always fly back in the winter to go home for Christmas.

Both your parents are scientists. Did life ever feel like one of those goofy Disney science movies? Did you see the world more scientifically than other kids, or did you reject that?
Definitely. They got me really interested in marine life and different animals. They’re both marine biologists. So growing up on the water, we’d always go to the beach, and I would just catch whatever I could with my net and then bring it in and ask my parents questions about it. Then I would go and tell all the other kids and be like, “Alright, this is what this is, and this is why they do this.” One of the reasons I came out to Humboldt was to go to HSU (Cal Poly Humboldt). They have a good marine biology program, which I didn’t end up staying in too long, but I’m glad because it brought me out here.

Who influenced your skate scene growing up?
I definitely feel like PJ Ladd’s “Wonderful, Horrible Life” was sick but that kind of came to me a little later. The first thing I remember watching was Baker 3, that was my first glimpse into skateboarding, and it just kind of spread off from there.

What jobs have you been doing since I last saw you?
Since then I’ve had quite a few jobs. I’ve always worked at AMPT on the weekends, but that’s more to just be a part of the shop and be there. It was never my main job. I worked at a glass shop and then I was a painter for a couple of years, and about six months ago I started doing construction for Black Dog Building Company with my buddy Joab Schimmons from Arc Park. We’ve been out in Trinidad, which is pretty close, starting a brand new whole house construction. We’re just framing up the foundation for pouring concrete. All my jobs out here have pretty much only been found through skateboarding. Toenail has gotten me a lot of jobs at the skateshop, you know, working for restaurants and also skate camp as well.

Arc Park is the sun that provides your world with heat to survive – thoughts?
It’s definitely the homebase for sure. It’s a hard place to leave. It’s a really, really fun park and has a really good local scene. But it can also be limiting because sometimes you get kind of stuck skating the same things over and over. After a while, you kind of don’t notice until you’re just like, I feel like I’m in a rut.

I hear you’ve been laying off the liquid bread these days – how’s that been going?
I haven’t drank in the past year and eight months (1-8!) I wasn’t blowing up my life or anything, but it no longer became super fun to just get hammered all the time. I felt like it was a good time to take a break. I didn’t really set any goals for it, I just told myself I wasn’t going to drink for a while. And then it’s been over a year and a half now. I thought my body would feel better, but I think I’m just getting kind of older. Construction and skating is definitely hard on the body, so I thought maybe everything would be super dialed after I quit, but it definitely was a good decision.

You’ve been getting creative and using old skateboards to make keychains. When did that start becoming a thing for you?
I always just kind of fiddled around with woodworking. I mainly use recycled skateboards because I break a lot of boards so I often have boards lying around. I started just figuring out things I could make for fun and give to the homies. I like to make dog bowls and keychains and whatever other random thing comes to mind. I’ve also made planter boxes and jewelry boxes. It’s always a challenge because skateboards aren’t flat and I don’t really like to use the thing where people press them together and just get the color plys. Also, I don’t have the tools for that, so I just kind of work with what I got.

Have you noticed any changes in how skateshops operate in your eight years of working at AMPT? Does it feel like AMPT is still an integral part of the community?
It’s definitely an integral part of the community. I’ve noticed younger college kids that come in are less involved with shops and what they’re doing. And of course, you know, everything’s gotten super expensive over the years. So, I mean, I wouldn’t say at its core anything has changed, but definitely seeing new companies come and go, things change in popularity and having to be more accommodating to not just the things we like. For a long time it was definitely just us getting Anti-hero boards and shop decks.

You also worked there through multiple different owners which means you’re doing something right!
I got hired there when Kelly Nathane owned the shop and it was sick. Things were a little sparse in those days in terms of stock, but it was definitely still a good place to be. And then a couple named Bernie and Nicky Garrigan bought the shop. That was definitely a harder transition because it felt like people not quite from our community were coming in and owning the shop. When Derek Russell bought the shop everything felt right. He was so involved with the community and really took note of what people were doing. I’m really thankful for the work that he did and just getting to be with him in general. It was a tough transition when we lost him. A lot of people really stepped up to make sure that the shop would keep going in his honor like Nick Kraus and Isabel, his partner and Derek’s mom as well, just so many others who were in there making sure that we kept the doors open. Now it’s owned by our good friend Russell George, so it is safely in the hands of the community and is going to stand the test of time to preserve Derek’s legacy.

RIP Derek Russell – our homie with a heart of gold.
Derek is who I’d call when my truck would be acting up, and he’d come over and we’d have some beers, and he just kind of observed as I tinkered around and would tell me things not to fuck up. It was mostly an excuse to have him come over and hang out. But he was always a good supervisor. Anything you needed – that dude was there. We’re coming up on a year of him not being here. And it’s definitely hard. It’s easier than it was a year ago that’s for sure. But yeah just when we do things like, you know, the soup snakes events, you always just kind of feel like he’s going to pop up there.

You have this tendency to get fixated on a word or phrase and say that word a lot. What are some notable ones that stick out?
Yeah, I think that comes with ADHD for sure. I got stuck on “Revs” for a while. Me and Vinny would say “smashing tins” a lot. “Soup” has been the one for a long time. I did skate camp for a number of years and I was going around writing soup with chalk. The kids were like, why are you writing soup? And then they started all writing soup around, and I was really fired up on that. And then they decided to have hip hop graff beef and start crossing out the soups and drawing smiley faces. So I’d run around and draw soup, and they’d chase and cross me out and draw a smiley face. All the kids in Arcata know about soup.

For the people that don’t know – what is Soup Snakes?
Soup Snakes is our fake homie company. It comes from an episode of The Office where Michael’s trying to say that him and Holly are soulmates, but he can’t read his own writing, so he’s like, we’re soup snakes. And I heard that, and I just thought Soup Snakes was funny. So I just kind of started saying it a lot and getting other people hyped on it. And we all started just saying soup a lot. And, you know, we got really focused on the soup part of things over the snakes. But, there’s still some snakes in there. But yeah, we’re all soulmates. Those are my brothers there. We’re all Soup Snakes.

And you guys just had your last soup snakes event. Have you made any actual merch or is it all one off, just like, goofy for yourselves?
Yeah, we definitely do a lot of one off stuff. I think the most professional thing I made was some stickers that I ordered quite a few years ago that said, we hate soup snakes, which I feel like was a good start, but we just make random t shirts and stuff. My wife carved out a sick soup snakes logo on a woodblock so we have that on an old skateboard deck. So every once in a while we make t-shirts and stuff and just print them out. We made a whole bunch for the soup snakes event that just passed and gave them out to the homies and stuff. You know, hype your homies up, turn your homies fake pro, it’s mostly based around being silly hesh, like we definitely want to do serious skateboarding, but we’re also not going to be that serious.

Humboldt is a mystical place. Have you seen the Sasquatch?
I haven’t seen Sasquatch. I have seen a shit ton of Sasquatch carvings and chainsaw log art. That’s a pretty big thing up here, but I haven’t seen anything too strange. I just went hiking up in the Trinity Alps with Vinny not too long ago, and we didn’t see anything too strange. We were probably the weirdest things out there.

Shoutouts?
Shoutout to Nick Kraus and Colin Crespino for shooting photos. AMPT skateshop and all the homies from Arc Park and Humboldt in general. Barn Lifestyles LLC! My lovely wife Jasmin for supporting soup snakes and all my ideas. And of course, shout out Derek Russell for everything he did for us. Everything we do from here on out is for him. DEREK FOREVER!

When I say soup, you say…
Snakes!