This two part episode features an interview with the founders and owners of Old Skull Skateboards, Steve Hild and Bob Stolte, and local skate scene personality, Paul Phillips.

Rory and Greg discuss with the guests their respective introductions to skateboarding. This episode features a nostalgic look back at the developments and innovations in skateboarding and skate culture from the 1990s onward, with particular attention paid to the skate scene in Rochester and Fairport during 90s.

We hear about how Bob and Steve made the transition from their typical 9 to 5 jobs to skate shop owners, the story behind the planning and construction of the Perinton Skate Park and the critical role Old Skull played in helping move the project along and bring it into reality.

The group also discusses sharing their love of skateboard with their children and kids in general, and skateboarding's unlikely progression from a taboo activity for social misfits to official Olympic sport that is loved by multiple generations.

Paul touches upon his involvement and participation in Mike Vallely's Street Plant skate team, his various interactions with notable skaters, and how learning to make Instagram videos helped him rise to a place of local prominence in Rochester's skate community.

This interview was recorded on site at Old Skull Skateboards and features 100% authentic skate shop warehouse sounds in the background!

Mentioned in this episode:

Mind of Magnus

Check out Mind of Magnus at magnusapollo.com, and leave him factoids at 585-310-2473! https://mind-of-magnus.captivate.fm

Lunchador Podcast Network

Check out all the shows on the Lunchador Podcast Network at Lunchador.org

Joe Bean Roasters

Use promo code Lunchador for 15% off your order! https://shop.joebeanroasters.com

Foreign.

Today on Common Thread.

We're here with some guys from Old Skull.

And this is Rory Van Grohl, Paul.

Phillips, Greg Benoit, Steve Hild, Bob Stolte.

All right, so.

And we're recording this on site in the Old Skull warehouse, too.

So who knows how this will sound?

It could sound like shit, but I'll make it sound fine after the fact.

So if there's a little echo or a phone ring, it's because we're in a real live bonafide retail environment slash warehouse workspace.

Deal with it.

Yeah.

I mean, first of all, I mean, I've known Bob and Steve for a very long time.

I don't think either of them probably saw themselves owning a skate shop when we met years and years ago.

But, you know, why don't we start with, like, how you found skateboarding?

Want me to start?

Sure.

Well, yeah.

I mean, my first board was like a hand me down from my, you know, older brother, the old Tony Hawk board.

But I never was all that serious or into it.

Just, you know, I grew up in a cul de sac.

So we just.

I just skated on the circle, rollerblade, big wheels, stuff like that.

And I had, like a Max Headroom like, locker board for, like, KVR2.

So it was like, you know, just like a kid skateboarding around.

And I didn't really get into it probably until, like, eighth grade is when Rory and your brother Dirk moved to Fairport.

And you had new school skateboard, which I didn't know about.

The small wheels and a symmetrical deck.

And so, yeah, that's when I really got back into skateboarding, which led me to meet Eric, her former owner here, and Steve and so on.

So.

I.

On my street, it was really heavy with kids my age, tons of them, which was good because I was an only child.

So we were just loaded up with kids and everybody kind of would go through, like, different phases.

But kind of like my real first memory is this kid that lived like kitty corner to me, that was quite a few years older.

Like, I'm gonna say seven or eight years older.

His name was John Hancock, and he.

He had a Sims Lester board and kind of like a quarter pipe.

Quarter pipe?

It was more of like a bank ramp kind of thing that he had.

And he would kind of alternate between.

He had, like, a Mongoose Californian BMX bike, which I thought was super cool, and then the skateboard, and I just was like.

I used to just kind of like, stand out there in, like, the gutter and watch him and a Couple buddies skate around, stuff like that.

And looking back, like, I think to them, it was kind of like a little bit.

For them, it was like, more of, like, a thing that they were into for a smaller period of time, and I don't think they realized.

I had a chance to actually tell him in the shop when he came in years later, that I kind of feel like everything that, like, really like, the shop skating for all those years, like, such a huge part of my life, started from just looking over at him.

I don't even feel like that it, like, sunk in with him as much when I tried to, like, you know, give him a lot of credit for it.

I don't think he was really even like that.

Like, wow, that's crazy.

But that kind of was where it started for me.

I mean, those inception points you don't even think about until much later.

Sure, yeah.

Like, that time period was probably, like, so short in comparison to, like, how we see time now as adults.

You know what I mean?

Those, like, summers are so magical, and then all of a sudden, like, life changing at the same time, and just, like, it felt long, but it was, like, so short.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I'm sure it probably wasn't very long.

It was probably, like, in the summer or something like that.

And it's cool to, like, hear that story.

Just in general.

We used to.

There was a bunch of kids that everybody.

At first, like, he had that really good board that I imagine he probably got at Samurai or something.

And all of us, we kind of, like, had those banana boards, those hard plastic boards.

Ye.

And there was a kid down the street, Jason Smathers, and that was when Jamie McMahon came around.

It was right in that same period of time.

And we used to do, like, the rock walks across the street and have these little competitions.

And I always felt like, although, like, everything came much harder later for me, but that, like, the initial, like, doing rock walks and stuff like that, I thought was, like.

I felt like I took to it really easily, but I didn't even have my own skateboard then.

And it was weird because it seemed like all these kids had boards and everything.

And I kept asking my parents, like, hey, like, I want to get a skateboard.

I had no idea.

I was probably, like, seven or eight.

And they kept.

I think they went to Kmart because that was local, like, in Fairport, and they didn't have them.

And it seemed like unless they were making it up, it's.

They.

They kept saying, like, that, like, that everyone was telling them that they really don't there's not really like that many skateboards available anymore.

Like the department stores didn't have them.

But it turned out they actually still were looking for me.

And I guess on the same day I remember this.

My mom and my dad separately, not knowing that they each ended up landing.

One came home with skateboards, one was one of those plastic banana boards and another one was actually wood.

There was no graphic on the bottom, it was just this flame graphic on the top it said flame across it and it was like sprayed on grip tape.

And they were like, pick one of these.

And it ended up like I skated both of them to the point like in the first like few minutes that they both were used already.

So I ended up getting both of them.

So I went from like zero boards to having two.

And that was awesome.

Like that was the start for me, you know, before like any of like the good boards and stuff came along.

Like what year is this approximately?

I would say probably like 85 or 86.

Okay.

So like for.

Because at that, at that point in time I was like 2 or 3 years old.

But my brother in law was involved in skateboarding early on, like around that time frame.

And he vividly remembers going to Samurai to get a skateboard around that time.

Maybe it was a little after that, but that seemed.

That's like the first legit skate shop in Rochester, right?

This Samurai.

Yeah.

I actually learned after starting our shop when we were in East Rochester that there actually was a skate shop that kind of started in a van before Samurai, like the early 80s.

And it was the guy, it was the son of the people that owned Harlov Funeral Homes in er.

Okay.

And then he ended up having.

Apparently he had.

There's a garage and it's still there in East Rochester I think on Washington Street.

The garage of the funeral home was where he had a skate shop apparently.

And he used to go to like St. John Fisher and stuff and have this van.

And that's when Art from Samurai linked up with him.

I learned this story like just like within the last decade, Art linked up with him and was like, oh, like I should do this.

So to all of us, Samurai was the first place.

But technically it wasn't.

It was this other.

Whatever it was called, I don't remember.

I mean Samurai is where I got my first skateboard.

Yeah.

See, I didn't get involved into like Hard Packed and Horc.

Hobbies were a thing and Crud company was like kind of the newcomer.

Yeah.

But if you look back at like the history of skate shops in Rochester.

There really have not been very many for a city our size.

And probably it's a product of us being on the east coast that were like exclusively skateboarding or maybe skateboarding and BMX or roller skating or something.

So it's interesting to me to kind of hear about what you had to go through to get a skateboard back then.

Because it also strikes me as the kind of thing that maybe it hadn't fully been embraced by the Sears, Kmart and mail order catalogs that would have, like, a variety of products like that.

I mean, was CCS a big thing?

Cause that's.

I mean, that I remember waiting for that catalog to come out.

Yes.

When I first got into skateboarding, I.

Think by the time jumping forward, like, to.

I think I was nine for my ninth birthday, I believe, like, so that would have been 87 or 88.

Maybe.

It was my 10th birthday.

I got my first skateboard at Samurai.

And I had a track there that I. Ccs.

Ccs.

So I feel like kind of after, like the late 80s is when, like, there was CCS and I think it was like California Skates or something like that.

There was two that were very similar, but their catalogs were pretty cool.

Cause you'd open them up and they had like a standard part of the catalog where it was like a bunch of boards.

But they also just had like a scene where it was like, outdoors and it was like five or six decks and some T shirts, like, thrown into the woods or something.

So it was cool to look in and just see all this stuff.

I used to love looking in that catalog.

The wheels, whatever.

All the wheels and the graphics on the wheels.

Yeah, it was.

It was.

Yeah, it was.

I mean, it was like, for me as a young kid, it was like, let's circle all the boards I want I'll never get.

Yeah, that was the first.

The first complete I got was from the CCS blank.

Like the CCS blank wheels.

Yeah.

Wild to think about in that grand scheme of things.

And like, cataloging and like, you know, it wasn't even Thrasher magazine or Transworld that, like, really spoke to me.

It was that what that catalog of mail order, whatever.

Which is wild.

Accessible to my parents maybe, too.

Yeah, that's an interesting distinction.

Because I never had a subscription to any skate magazines.

It was always just looking at the catalogs because those are free and we didn't have, like, money for extra stuff.

Like, Like a subscription to a magazine for a hobby.

My parents probably would have preferred me not to get involved with.

But I guess I want to bring it back to something you said about how, like, our nature of time changes as we age and how you, like, can have, like.

And I look back on my own life, and there were, like, these chance encounters, and I would think one of them might be with, like, you and stand fast and hardcore.

And we've spoken about that on some of the episodes we've done earlier where it just completely alters the trajectory of your life in the course of one summer.

And how I look back on that with, like, a lot of nostalgia, you know, now that I'm in my, you know, middle years of life, because my summers don't change my life as radically as they did.

And I kind of at times wish they would.

But I think this is like the.

The closest we've ever gotten so far to kind of the central theme of the podcast, which is, you know, set up the elevator pitches.

You're at your high school reunion, and, you know, what are you up to now?

How did you get to where you are now?

How did punk rock and skateboarding and kind of these alternative subcultures influence you in ways you didn't ever expect they would to get you to, like, where you are now?

And we've had a lot of guests, you know, they're, you know, business owners are involved.

They've done something interesting in their life that maybe is adjacent to punk and hardcore but isn't directly related.

And I feel like this, because the three of you, you know, like, knew each other as teenagers, is the closest we've stuck the landing, so to speak, to turn a phrase that fits with the theme of the episode.

And so I guess I'm curious to, like, kind of bring it up to the point, like, where you guys met, you know, what was your life trajectory like, what happened in that magical chance encounter when you were teenagers or pre teens that kind of was the seed that grew into old skull skateboarding and in some ways, like the parent in skate park, which, you know, when I was a teenager skateboarding in the 90s, that seemed like they would, you know, no government was ever going to set aside two legals for a skate park.

Yeah, we tried when we were 15 or whatever.

Yeah, we were on the news trying to get.

Get the, the ball rolling.

Was that when we were 50?

Is that how young you were?

Yeah.

Holy cow.

See, I don't.

I mean, going back.

So going back to.

We all were at a celebration of life on Sunday for a mutual friend of ours, Jamie McMahon.

But I have a terrible Memory of certain things, apparently.

And this.

I thought that was like senior year of high school.

What's that?

Where?

The skate park thing.

Oh, yeah, we were.

No, that was like, early on.

Yeah.

Because I remember joking with people talking about the parenting skate park.

So it was like 95.

Working on this for like 30 years, you know, 45 now.

Because I remember going to.

I don't want to say town hall meetings.

Yeah.

It was like.

Like the village.

Like town hall maybe, or.

Or Parrington town hall.

I don't remember.

Yeah, I don't remember.

I remember the news came and, like, they interviewed us.

It was a big.

It was like petitions.

That's the thing I was gonna say.

Like, that was.

And for whatever reason, I don't know if we were told, but that was always.

The big thing, is that we were.

It was always like, you had to do this petition.

Yeah.

And get people to sign these papers.

Like, that had to be it.

And I have a feeling maybe we kind of were a little bit off on.

On that maybe, like, you know, because it just seems like that always led to a dead end.

Like, you could have a thousand people on a piece of paper and still, like, they were just gonna wave bye bye to us, you know?

So, like, when.

To like, fast forward to old school, being in and around Fairport in East Rochester.

Like, what was the energy like when it became even a possibility?

It was pretty cool.

And we.

We literally kind of.

We had been around for a while at that point, and we watched several generations of kids come in that would be following that same trajectory of this petition thing and like, talk, you know, trying to get something going.

But it always seemed like it was like a group of kids and maybe like one of their parents.

Yeah.

Redbird Market.

Yeah.

Like, years ago, they started getting.

Trying to do something, too.

The same thing.

Yep.

I think what really kind of helped is at that same time period, we started doing these free clinics in the parking lot, these free skate clinics, and just had some stuff set up, and they were very loose.

Like, we wanted it to be loose because we didn't want there to be, like, any expectations of how well we're gonna, like, help people out.

But we did, you know, it was like, basic stuff, but people really seem to like it.

And we kind of, you know, spearheaded that thing and then kind of brought that as a big example of how much interest there is in skateboarding.

And also the thought that the difference between 30 years ago or whatever it was is that it's not just a bunch of 15 year old punk kids that skate anymore, that they're gonna spray paint like weed signs on everything.

Right?

Yeah, that was a legitimate concern.

Yeah, yeah.

It's, it's now you've got all of the parents that used to be into these sports that now, you know, are taxpayers and everything else and they're bringing their kids, they're, they're promoting it and supporting it.

Much different than our generation.

Yeah.

And they, they took to it.

That knew there wasn't even really much resistance.

No, it was a financial resistance, if anything.

Yeah.

But the.

Meredith.

What's your last name again?

Brockman.

Stockman.

Mary the Stockman.

The town on the tumble.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She came in really got the ball spearheaded kind of thing.

Gave us like some, you know, information or how to go about starting it off and doing things and kind of helping us, you know, navigate the ship.

So she used.

Big role.

She was a big role in it.

Yeah.

I think her involvement.

And just for context, she's on the town board in the town of Parenton, which is synonymous with Fairport.

And you've probably already heard us, you, the listener at home or in your car or gym or wherever the hell you may be, probably heard Fairport getting thrown around.

And that's the locality that, you know, we all have some affiliation with, either we live there presently or grew up there, and it's where Old Skull's located.

But she's on the town board and at one point I think it was like one of the sole democrats on the town board.

But I've known her for a very long time, just casually, not like family friends or anything.

But her family was very involved with the public library where my mom has worked all my life.

And her involvement in this shows how much I think the perception of skateboarding probably has changed in 30 years.

Because she's not the kind of person I would imagine would be advocating for skateboarders.

Like when she was in high school, she was like a more studious.

She brought that up too.

Yeah, she brought that up.

She's like, yeah, I'm the last person you'd think she's like.

Until she was on a family vacation.

That's it, that's it.

Thank you.

Have a good day.

She was at an Ohio with her family and they went to a skate park.

You saw how amazing it was.

Yeah, but.

But it's, it also shows too because like I think the other thing that's happened in the 30 years.

And I just want to say I'm pretty sure when I was in sixth grade, Ian Elwood had me sign that petition.

Remember him?

But I remember that.

I think I remember that exact petition circulating around the time it would have.

Would have happened.

I did not skateboard in six.

Great.

So huge poser back then.

But we've had like Tony Hawk and Pro Skater and I feel like that was like such a great ambassador for like bringing skateboarding into a mainstream awareness in a way that it wasn't synonymous with like teenagers smoking weed and spray painting, you know, like dicks on.

On the side of an abandoned building or something.

Yeah.

And I guess I had.

Oh, okay.

So the other point too was, you know, I go to the parented skate park all the time with my kids and it just, it is a multi generational thing to me in a way that like I've seen hardcore become, you know, like when I was going to shows in the 90s, you wouldn't necessarily see somebody with their like 12 year old kid taking them to a show for the first time.

And that's like more of a common sight that you might see at any given DIY punk or hardcore show.

But it is really affirming that what I was doing as a teenager actually had some value beyond just the enjoyment that I had in the moment.

That this is something that like people can build a community and like a culture around.

It's so nice to see dudes that I remember skateboarding at the park and ride with there with their kids now.

It's awesome to see how many like moms are skateboarding with like their daughters and their sons because there was not a lot of, of women, you know, skateboarding, girls skateboarding when I was in high school too.

And that seems like it's improved and a trajectory that like parallels hardcore.

There's like more women involved in bands and running labels and stuff now too.

They even see a lot more like the.

Who was the steamer?

What's her.

Oh, Alyssa Steamer.

Yeah, yeah.

She was like the only pro female escape machine.

Yeah, you go on TikTok or anything now.

Lauren Rigby from back in the day.

Out there that just rip.

Which is cool to see.

Yeah, the sea change, the sea change of that culture has been huge.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I just want to like peel back a little bit.

Steve, you mentioned like posting the clinics and that kind of like driving that community aspect.

Paul, were you a part of that like as far as like.

Yeah, absolutely.

Being there facilitating Paul, is a big part of it.

Still is with the town.

Yeah, I love it.

You know, Bob and Steve said we started, and I remember, I think we had like five or six kids.

The first couple in a hallway.

We did it indoors, right.

The weather was kind of, you know, shitty outside, so we had it indoors.

And every week we might get one or two new ones.

And it was really cool, right?

And I can remember the day because my wife goes, I think they're shutting the world down.

Like, you know, that Covid was hitting.

And we had a clinic that Sunday and I forgot we had been on it that long.

Yeah.

And I said, it's fine, like, no worries, right?

So we had come here, we had set up everything in the hallway, we had, I don't know, seven, eight, nine kids, wherever it was.

And I remember getting home and my wife goes, well, I think that's it.

Like you don't go to work tomorrow, like the world is gonna go on.

Kind of pause for a while.

And it was really kind of surreal because once we were doing them outside, when the world kind of came back into where we could get back outside, we moved it to the parking lot.

And I don't know if it was because everybody was, you know, pent up for so long.

All of a sudden we had, when we, when we came back from COVID and there was like 20 kids and every week it was just like whenever we did it, I think it was once, twice a month or whatever, we'd have like a whole parking lot full of kids, you know, with their parents, and it was awesome.

And I think when parenting looks at that and goes, okay, there might be a need for this.

Right?

What an awesome time to build a skate park, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the outdoor industry as a whole, skateboarding, snowboarding, everything, especially for us, where we see all four seasons exploded.

Yeah.

I mean, it was a hard time.

I don't know if you, I mean, you, you guys can probably speak to this.

Was it a hard time, like keeping boards, getting boards, facilitating like even the need for that over Covid?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we got lucky.

We just had a huge shipment come in before, right?

We get this huge shipment from Santa Cruz.

Boxes, boxes of wheels, tons of bearings.

We were probably the most stocked on everything that we've ever been.

Like, we being a skate shop, we had probably 30 bikes from Kink.

And I remember that was like the thing that I always remember is I only half heartedly was watching the news back then with all this stuff, and I just happened to kind of look over when they said that they were shutting the NBA down.

And I mean, that just stuck with me because I'm thinking, like, man, they're shutting down sports.

Like, this has to be bigger than like, I've even been paying attention to.

And I remember I came in and that was like one of the things.

I was like staring at 30 bikes and I'm like.

And looking around at all the, like the pallets of stuff that we had just committed to.

And I thought we're definitely done, like this whole thing.

Like, we had a really cool run, it was fun.

But this is, this is where it all ends.

Did you.

Were you able to like liquidate those bikes?

Cuz I remember wanting a bike during like that first year of the pandemic.

I didn't, I hadn't had one in a while and I couldn't get, I couldn't get a bike for like less than a grand.

It turned out that we could literally like paint a rock and we would sell it.

Like everything, everything was selling that.

We, we got in.

Yeah.

We were like, yeah, you said this is it.

And it was complete opposite.

Because you skateboard outside.

Yeah.

You ride your bike outside.

And we take, we take turns.

We have one person here a day.

We don't take turns working a day.

And we were responsible.

Like we, we could have like one person here.

Shipping.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it was, it was the best way to describe it.

It was a madhouse.

Then you got.

Sometimes you got people knocking on the door, like, we just want to come in.

Like, how crazy.

You know, like that first, first year, whatever was going on.

Yeah.

People knock on the door and it.

Was like the orders were just.

It made perfect sense.

It was.

All of a sudden it was all these components, like rails and like five different colors of bolts and all these different things.

Because it turned out it was like it was all kinds of people that just had all this time and some people had extra money.

If you're still working and you got those extra checks from the government, you just start buying stuff.

Like, I'll just build another board and look at it or skate it or do whatever.

And so it was.

And it was crazy because I almost.

It's hard for me to even.

I look back and I'm like, I can't believe that actually happened for as long as it did.

Yeah.

I remember one of us today, like Bob said, just like packing orders all day, trying to keep up with it.

Trying to build the completes.

Yep.

Trying to order as much as possible.

And it went on for a while.

And I remember there's access to the people up front.

They have a.

Like an electronic switch company.

And this one guy, one day, like, after, like, two months of not seeing anybody here, like, while I was here by myself, he kind of came out and walking around and he got to, like, here.

It didn't seem like he was stopping to the point where I was like, whoa.

Like, it was.

It was weird, like, how you're so used to not seeing people.

It, like, scared me.

I'm like, stay away, right?

You know, and we all had little kids and everything, right?

And do you think, like, coming from that, like, skateboarding mentality of diy, even, like, that punk ethos, like, spearheaded that, like, motivated you to, like, I guess we're gonna do it, we just gotta keep doing it.

We had zero choice.

It was like, yeah, the only, like, real Covid thing, like, people had like two months off or didn't work for a long time.

Like, we were busting our asses.

And the only, the only eerie thing was the commute to work.

You know, 490 would be like three cars.

And, you know, driving to work every morning on an empty expressway.

And then, yeah, super busy all day.

Paul, when did you get involved with Old Skull?

Were you involved since the jump or did you come in, like, after they had established?

Because I guess I wasn't clear on that timeline.

Well, what's funny is when I moved to Rochester, Krudco was down the street from where I was living, right?

And that was like, this shop, right?

You'd heard about it.

And I got to be friends with, you know, a few of those guys really well.

Like, you know, Aaron and Alan are some of my really good buddies to this day.

But it's funny because I've always, you know, I never really stuck with a certain group of skateboarders.

You know, I skateboard alone a lot.

And even back then, there were a few guys I'd roll with, but more than not, it was one or two guys and generally by myself.

And I remember when I moved to East Rochester, I met a guy.

Our kids were in the same, like, you know, like playgroups and whatnot.

And he would always ask me, oh, my buddy, you know, do you know Steve?

Or, you know, from old school?

And I go, no, no, no.

And he's, yeah, they got a skate shop.

You should check it out.

Well, I remember driving one day, getting on the expressway, and I see this little shop and I was like, wow, there is a shop near me.

And I let it go because, like I said, I'd known The guys from KRUDKO for so long that it kind of like came full circle.

My buddy is like, you got to know this guy.

I moved to Fairport.

He's like, he's down the street from me, right?

So we had this mutual friend and one day I was out and it was like a festival down in.

I think it was like fair Canel days.

Canel days, right.

And I started chatting with stuff Steve and I was telling him some old wheels I had are a board and he'll send me a picture later.

So oddly enough, I sent him a picture of these original T bones I got madly enough for a dollar a yard sale years ago.

They're worth like 200 bucks now.

They've never even been mounted.

And I sent him a picture of these wheels and I think they were on some music or whatever that I was working on.

And Steve said, oh, do you play music?

We went back and forth.

Next thing you know, we decided to get together and play guitars together and we started hanging out a lot, right.

So I started coming to old school and through that interaction I met Eric.

And he and I used to skateboard.

He probably was one of the only guys I really truly skated with all the time was Eric.

But just coming here and meeting those guys and then Bob, one thing led to a next and I had opportunities through them that literally I would not have had without this shop.

You know, for instance, you know, they had a meet and greet with Mike V. Here, right?

And he was real cool, it was awesome.

And a couple weeks later he called me on the phone which, you know, my 16 year old brain and my 40 something year old brain is like, holy fuck.

Like, wow.

Like this is crazy.

And so I got linked up through that for a little while and it was awesome, you know, I mean, I guess I wrote it to the wheels.

For fell off the street Plant battalion.

Yeah.

You know, he had gotten, you know, select people in different parts of the world, different countries even, and that were basically ambassadors to skateboarding that just if you got people that.

I think he would read people, right?

If you got other people that would want to ride a skateboard more, it didn't really matter how good you were.

Right.

That really had very little to do with it.

It had to be if, you know.

It was more your passion level.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

That's the world.

Yeah, exactly.

And it was real cool, man.

You know, it was really, really a wild ride.

I met some real cool people through that.

And it was real weird too because through the pandemic and everything when the world shut down.

And every now and then, you'd get a phone call or you know, whatnot.

It was really neat.

And I remember thinking, how many people would call me and ask me how to do this, how to.

And I was just lucky, right?

Like, I got.

I got lucky.

I got picked to do this thing, and it was really cool.

But the weird thing about it was when that ship went down and it dissolved, I saw, like, everybody else that was hooked up on this little team or whatever you want to call it, they all, like, quit skateboarding.

Got bummed out, right?

And I won't lie, it bummed me out because I kind of found out about it, in my opinion, kind of a shitty way.

But I also thought, you know what?

I rode my skateboard before this, and I'm just coming out hotter, man.

Like, I don't.

This isn't why I skateboard.

It was fuel to the fire, though, because all of a sudden, when you get that association, you're, like, even trying to explain it to my wife, like, this dude, this is it, right?

I had to learn how to use Instagram.

I had to learn how to make videos.

I had to, you know, like.

And I used to rely on everybody else because I suck with technology, but it was really.

It was a lot of fun while it lasted.

And like, I say when that, you know, when it ended, I was bummed, But I was grateful for what I had for the short time, you know, I wrote it out, but I'm still skateboarding every day.

You shared the stoke.

I did it, right?

Mission accomplished.

Yeah.

You know, but I'm grateful for these guys because, like, I've gotten to do a lot of real cool things with skateboarding.

Like, I still teach through the parent and rec center.

You know, I get to teach kids in the summer.

It's.

It's awesome.

And you do that at the skate park now?

Yep, yep.

Which is awesome.

And it all started with my cousin's garage.

They had the little plastic, like, Steve mentioned, banana boards.

Well, we would rip around on those.

And my brother and I, we didn't have skateboards growing up, so we took our roller skates.

And I'm probably a lot older than everybody here, but they had a front and a back that went on your shoe, and you could, like, slide and adjust them.

We took them off and we put a 2x4 between them.

And, like, I think we used, like, duct tape or something and, like, made our own skateboards that are, like two by four.

1964, I think the wheels were still clay.

And, you know, after my parents were.

Like, man, these fuckers are still going back and forth on these.

And I remember going to like the department stores and, you know, getting like your first King Cobra or my Nash Executioner.

Dual colored wheels, bright pink, man.

I was living and skateboarding at that time.

You know, the cool guys.

Johnny Hart.

I mean, the name is cool itself.

Johnny Hart, right?

Yeah.

And my neighbor, you know, like, Roger, you know, they had like Powell Skateboards, real pro skateboards.

And I'll never forget, I was in seventh grade and I got to go on family vacation and we hit a real skateboard shop.

Me and my brother were just like losing our mind.

Right.

My dad and mom let us pick out wheels, trucks.

And I had Renali trucks again, probably don't remember Renali trucks.

They had a grind bar on them, right.

I got blue Powell Rat Bone.

Like a roller, right?

No, no, they were just a raised bar.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it was crazy.

It was like a raised piece of the metal.

Okay.

And I. I got some blue rat bone 85As.

And I got a Pearllander screen for my brother.

Ended up with a cab.

He still has it to this day in almost mint condition.

And I remember riding home and we had them all wrapped up so they wouldn't get scratched.

I look at like, man, go, what a pussy.

You were like, back then, like, you know, like, skateboarding to me.

Like, I look back and I had all this stuff and it was like, wrapped up to come home so they didn't get scratched in the packing.

The drive home from Florida, you know, I had every rib bone, this, you know, guard, you know, and what a magical time it was for me because, like, these graphics were burned.

Like, all you guys, there's certain images that are gonna stick with you forever now.

It's like, I can't keep up with the pros.

Yeah, Steve talks about that all the time.

There was one graphic for that rider for like a, you know, a whole season or whatever.

For the long.

Yeah.

Then a full page ad in Thrasher guys.

Tommy Cheese got new.

It was like a big deal.

You know, I have like four different graphics.

Well, I think art, too, was different, too.

I mean, like, creating that.

And those artists couldn't pump out what they do now with an iPad, you know.

Drew Henley.

That's a good point.

Yes.

They were illustrating those graphics.

Yep.

But.

And the plus, the.

Well, maybe the plus and negative side.

Yeah, you get more.

But is it as iconic?

You know, that's a.

That's a conversation, you know, like, I.

Think less is more kind of thing.

Right.

Yeah.

It was a big deal when we took rails off our board.

What are you nuts?

You're gonna scratch the graphics?

Or even, I don't know, I saw the pros doing this.

Yeah.

I mean, or even, like, when, you know, Bob mentioned new school coming into play, like, you know, having really small wheels, like, basically bearing covers.

Yeah.

You know, like 50 or 39.

Yeah.

The dark time of skateboarding.

Like, that's when I started skateboarding, when it was like the dark, darkest time.

Yeah.

I didn't even realize it back then, but, yeah, Those, like, that early 90s period, like, to me, that was like a high point in skateboarding for, like, all of us.

Like, that was like one of my peaks periods.

And I didn't realize until later, like, how dead skateboarding was in, like, the rest of, you know, it was one of the slowest periods.

It was kind of obvious to the point, like, where Tony Hawk and Birdhouse videos was skating street.

Right.

Looking super awkward and stuff, but.

But it didn't.

See.

It didn't feel that way because we were so enthusiastic about it, you know, like, you were talking about Mike V. Like, just sharing that energy and the community that we had just amongst our friends was palpable.

Like, you look back at it now, it's like these connections are still there.

What's crazy energy is still there.

Yeah.

You know, I don't think it goes away.

And what's cooler, like I said, you know, I still.

I met more people doing that that I still talk to, even on the phone, like, I actually chat with, you know, and it's really weird how many.

Some of my friends in life, some of the best friends, like, including these all because I ride a skateboard.

That's literally the common denominator.

It's riding a skateboard.

What's that?

H Street video.

Useless wooden toys.

Oh, yeah.

That was New Deal.

New deal.

Sorry.

Yeah, that was my first tattoo.

New Deal Summit.

There you go.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

Before we had our driver's license, like, Tim Everdyke's dad would take us all down to Parenton Square for the night or whatever.

Or we would even skate there.

Yeah.

You know, like.

Yeah.

The destination, it was different.

The summers.

I remember the summers, like, for that eighth grade summer, like, either going from your house over to Whitney Ridge to, like, you know, my parents cul de sac there.

And then my mom, she worked in Victor.

And then Adam McGlone's mom, she worked nights at Woodcliffe.

So my mom would drop us off in the morning, and then at night, Adam's mom would pick us up on the way back home.

Yeah, we just spend all day.

You didn't even need phones.

You just knew your buddies were going to be at a spot and you had that core group that no matter what day it was, somebody's going to be out skating.

Drop me off here.

Yep, yep.

Drop me off here.

Pick me up here.

You don't know who you're going to be taken with or taken home.

Right.

And figure it out along the way.

Well, leading into this interview, I was thinking a lot about my own history with skateboarding and kind of the skateboarding culture that popped up in Fairport that I was a part of.

I'm a little younger than, than the three of all of you, but the three of you that grew up in Fairport.

But when I got in, it was through a couple friends.

Chad Pasek was one of them.

And that was like one of those chance encounters where if I hadn't made that friendship, I don't know really what my life would have looked like because I found out so much music.

And then from that, you know, like, my value structure, my beliefs, veganism, you know, kind of all grows from some of these, like, random chance encounters that don't seem like they would be important.

But last weekend I was thinking about this interview at the skate park and just like, how far skateboarding has come, how far Fairport has come.

And it was really funny because I was there with my kids.

They're obviously, you know, they're younger than I was when I started skateboarding.

But I was thinking about how the skate spot that I knew when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, was Qualitrol, which is like right across the street from the official skate park.

But that was like the de facto skate meetup place.

And the story I had heard was like somebody who was in a decision making role working at that Qualitrol office had a kid who was a skateboarder.

And they were like, hey, dad, can you like, can we skateboard in this parking lot?

And the guys at Qualitrol can, like, tell the kids, cops, it's okay.

So we can have like a place where we can go without getting chased around.

And like, that was why no one ever seemed to get hassled in the Qualitrol parking lot.

I don't know if that was, like, true.

That was just kind of a schoolyard legend.

I wonder if that would have just been like, after us A little bit, because we used to skate there all the time.

I do kind of remember it seemed like we used to get kicked out if it was, like, during working hours, but we always used to skate there, like, either at night or.

Or Saturdays and Sundays and stuff.

I wonder if that was like, I graduated in 96 from Fairport.

Yeah.

So maybe that was like a little bit.

Maybe like a year or two difference or something.

Unless I just don't remember the story.

Well, because the qual was great spot because their loading dock dipped down.

It was kind of like a half pipe.

Yeah.

And eventually they put like, two curbs.

They bolted two yellow curbs on the side dock to stop, you know, from us skating in there.

That's kind of like my last.

We only went in the, like, in the nighttime hours.

We were told, like, yeah, if you go after hours, they don't give a.

But if you go during the day, they're gonna be like, yeah, you can't be here.

I love the lore, regardless if it's true or not.

I used to love practicing stuff.

Like when I was a little bit older and I could, you know, pop ollies a lot higher and stuff, I would practice a lot of tricks up it.

Right off of that dip into the grass part.

Yeah.

Try to get as high as possible.

And just because it was the grass.

Because you can roll.

Yeah, that was a great spot.

Common Thread is co hosted by Greg Benoit and Rory Van Grohl with creative support from Rob Antonucci.

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