Interview by Sean Bendon

You’re in your senior year studying psychology at Baruch College in the city. How do you incorporate psychology into your everyday life?
I really like getting to know people, like getting to meet someone and understanding how they tick. What makes them act the way they do, and fuck up in the way they do, and all that. I think I just try to dive a little deeper into people maybe. I like diving under the surface.

Could you psychoanalyze me?
You seem pretty locked down. Not in a bad way. Like you have a wall, but you seem secure and so sure of yourself. You seem pretty like, what’s the word? Impenetrable. Maybe your mind is like a steel trap. I would say you rely on humor a lot as a buffer when you’re meeting people. You are very charismatic.

Have you psychoanalyzed any pros you admire?
Definitely behind the scenes. I mean especially the skating. I feel like you can understand the type of person that someone is by the way they get mad or the way that they do tricks. I can’t enjoy someone’s skating if I don’t admire their character.

Do you know what a binturong is?
What is a binturong?!

It’s the mascot for Baruch College.
No way. That’s fucked up that I didn’t know that. When I was little I got weirdly obsessed with mascots. I think I met the A’s mascot one time and I was like, “dude mascots are the shit.” I was going to get this t-shirt signed by every mascot. I had multiple mascot bobbleheads. So that’s pretty fucked that I didn’t know.

Who’s the sickest mascot?
Definitely the old Warriors mascot for sure. Before the bridge. Back when Baron Davis was on the Warriors.

Who are your favorite skaters from Marin?
Ethan McKeague and Alex Blanchard, he’s got beautiful long locks. He taught me how to switch frontside flip. That’s one of my best friends. Stefan Werba! Also Nick Gorham. He was in a bunch of Lurk NYC videos. My homies are the sickest skaters and they’re so pure in the way they skate. There’s something about no one filming that’s pretty cool. When they do get filmed it’s really special.

How’d you end up in NYC?
I lived in San Luis Obispo for six months and then Covid happened and I moved home and did community college online. I did it on and off because I was working at restaurants and skating, and sometimes you just don’t want to do school anymore. I finished community college in California and I wanted to live in New York, but I didn’t really think it was feasible. So I drove all my stuff down to LA because my friend told me about a place, and we got there and it was so bad. Like the house next door was burned down with mad squatters in it and I get to the room and it’s a living room with motorcycle parts all in it. Thankfully my friend was with me because she has standards for living and she’s like, “You’re not going to live here.” And then my girlfriend at the time was like, “Oh you should come hang out in New York for a little bit.” She was going to med school in Philly so it made sense. I didn’t really have a lot of friends in New York, but I had some, so I bought a ticket and stayed with my friend. We shared a little room with an air mattress that filled the entire room.

You’re changing your skateboard set up a lot these days.
Fuck, I do. I’ve been getting boards from Krooked and now I have the option to ask for different size boards. I want to be able to skate everything. I love to skate transition. I love skating slappys. I skate switch a lot. I think it’s just like an analysis. I’m just heady. I always think I’m doing the wrong thing. People give me a lot of things for some reason. I have a big ass bag of trucks and wheels and risers and stuff. So it’s like the perfect storm to where if something’s not working, I’ll go home and change my board set up. My friends make fun of me all the time. You’ll never catch me being like, “oh, I suck today.” I’ll say my board sucks, but it’s always me.

I feel like skaters have such OCD on the opposite end of that spectrum. They become so stuck in it.
I was like that for so long and I think it’s because I grew up around a lot of the older guys who were so formulaic with it. Like black and white blazers in the same pants, same tees, with the same brand beanie. 8.25 board and 149 Thunder hollows with the yellow bones bushings on top and blue on the bottom. What if you do that your whole life and you didn’t make any positive changes because you thought you had it figured out? Like not just with skateboarding. I’m scared of not making changes in ways that would be better for me as a person. And so it gets reflected in a really heavy way with my skateboarding.

I heard you’re into collaging and that you made a puzzle with one?
Collaging is sick because I can just take a lot of photos that I have, especially now that I have almost unlimited access to printing, shoutout Baruch! I print out mad photos from my phone and from my little digicam of my friends. And then I just have a notebook and I paste it in with tape and I’ll just put shit down or I’ll cut out stuff that I think is really interesting or looks cool. I was trying to make a calendar. My brother’s autistic and if you know anybody who’s autistic, they love schedules. They love knowing when shit’s going to happen. And so my brother loves calendars. He’ll walk into my mom’s house on January 1st. And if it’s still on December, he’s like, boom, flip the calendar. Like he wakes up in the middle of the night and changes the calendar. It’s so crazy. So I was making this calendar and then I turned it into a puzzle. Now it’s a big ass puzzle sitting under my bed.

Sounds like you’re a pretty good cook. The recipe you gave us for the last issue was dope.
My brother’s a sous chef at the only Michelin star restaurant in Marin. I worked there for two years and got amazing restaurant experience. I’m not the most organized person ever. I’m not good at following recipes, but I love food and I don’t like to eat out a lot. I’m scared to spend all my money on food.

Why do you like Sons of Anarchy so much?
Dude, I don’t know. I like shows that are really long. I’ll get in modes where I can just sit for a long time and Sons of Anarchy is pretty badass. I go to school five days a week and I try to skate every day if I can, so I’m exhausted when I get home. I just want to lock in on watching some dragons or Sons of Anarchy.

What was your cigarette to meal ratio in Paris?
Dude, my mom is going to read this. So this is what’s so sick about Paris, you’ll leave your place, find a spot, get a clip, go inside, smoke three cigarettes, drink a coffee, go back out, go to a park, skate, smoke five more cigarettes. We didn’t have a lot of money at all, so we’d go get a thing of bread and some cheese and we would just smoke mad cigs. We low key stacked.

What is your controversial opinion on skateboarding right now?
That people don’t try that hard anymore? I feel like Cyrus is so sick because he tries all the time, like he’s maxing out his fucking posture when he’s doing a kickflip. Push yourself a little bit. I feel like everybody does the same thing. I don’t think I’m the best person to talk about it, I think I just grew up idolizing people that really skated. People are more focused on their steez, which is cool, but also you can see when someone’s trying to skate a certain way. Also, stop with the cadet hat. The cadet hat is so dead, don’t fucking wear that. Yes, it’s a great fitting hat for a lot of people, but you look dumb as fuck wearing that hat.