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DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE: SLOPPY SAM

DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE: SLOPPY SAM

BREAKING GROUND SKATEPARKS
INTERVIEW WITH SAM BATTERSON
INTERVIEW AND INTRODUCTION BY JIM MURPHY
PHOTOS BY PAUL WARNER AND BILL HELENE

You’ve read the interviews and you’ve seen the photos. You’ve probably viewed the video of him starring as Christian Hosoi skating his Emmy-winning final run at Stone Edge in Daytona Beach, Florida. But have you seen his skateparks? How does a guy named “Sloppy” come to build some of the smoothest skateparks in the Northeast? How do you go from an English scholar/ landscape artist / actor / unprofessional to skatepark entrepreneur? Well, as a wise man once said, “Sometimes skating involves not skating.”

“WHEN SKATERS LEARNED TO BUILD SKATEPARKS, THATS WHEN THE BEST SKATEPARKS STARTED COMING IN.”

Sam, Jim Murphy here.
You called at an accurate time.

That’s what we do. We want the full Sloppy life story. Are you ready or what?
Let’s go. I’m ready.

Okay, Sam Batterson, where were you born?
I was born in Hartford Hospital in Connecticut in 1973. I was raised in Simsbury, Connecticut.

Tony Alva was probably skating pools by then.
He was probably figuring out how to skateboard in pools when I was learning how to walk.

What do you think Jay Adams was doing in ’75?
I’m guessing maybe he was surfing. Then someone was like, “Jay, you have to get with this skateboarding thing, too.” Then he was like, “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m more of a surfer.” Then he just did it. And he was better than anyone else right away. That’s what I’m guessing.

When you were three years old, Jay Adams was just coming on to the scene. You weren’t even skating yet.
No, my cousins were riding. I was like, “Let me ride that.” They were like, “No, you’re too young.” Then I was like, “Well, I’ll just sit on it and go down the hill.”

You told me once that at five years old, you’d already heard of the Sex Pistols. Is that true?
Oh yeah, and AC/DC. There was KISS and this other crazy band from England, the Sex Pistols. It was on the news. The Sex Pistols weren’t an underground phenomenon. The Sex Pistols were on the front page of the newspaper. I heard about them being a crazy menace. It was like, “Here’s the Sex Pistols. They’re even crazier than KISS. I wasn’t dying my hair red and going to punk rock shows, but I knew about the Sex Pistols. That was even before I knew about Van Halen.

In the early ’80s, you didn’t even feel the emotional devastation of the skateboard downturn and the parks being demolished, did you?
No, I was excited because they were building a mini golf course and my dad was going to take me to play putt-putt golf.

Tell us about the Simsbury scene. When did you really get addicted to skateboarding?
Skateboarding got popular again in ’86 with the wide boards and neon colors. I wondered why anyone would want those big wide boards. And why were they neon?

When did you get into the ramp-building scene?
I had my own ramp. Everyone in Simsbury had an 8-foot ramp.

Did you build your own ramp?
My dad and I built it. We didn’t even need nails. We had everything cut out and glued. We cut out the ribs, so the 2′ x 4’s fit right in there.

How did you figure out how to build the thing?
My dad just figured it out. He was a contractor. We could have built that ramp in a week, but it took a year. We built it too well. We built the whole bottom frame for the thing with 2′ x 10’s.

Who was riding those backyard ramps with you?
Merk would show up with his posse, the Hardcores. They’d pull up in the station wagon Merk borrowed from his mom. They’d get out and leave all four doors open. They’d just leave it like that in the driveway. They’d come over and we’d skate. One day, I busted out the extension cord and hooked up the stereo. I played some Misfits for them. I’d heard they were hardcore, so I was like, maybe they’ll like this. I was into all sorts of different music, but they were more into Warzone.

Were they into Black Flag?
No, not even. They were into New York hardcore like Sick of it All. They were into the New York/New Jersey meathead bands. I crossed over, eventually, and they took me with them.

Where did they take you?
They took me to a Face To Face show.

That’s how you were introduced to hardcore?
Yeah, punk rock was considered ‘over’ and the new thing was hardcore. It was like, “Why are you listening to these ancient bands like Black Flag and The Misfits when there’s new stuff like Youth of Today, Gorilla Biscuits, Side by Side and Agnostic Front?” That was what was going on at that time.

How old were you when you built that ramp?
I was fourteen to fifteen. It took a long time to build that ramp.

What skaters were you idolizing at that point?
I hadn’t really made up my mind yet. I was like, “Who’s the best?” My buddy Jamie Joy told me that Lance Mountain was the best.

What did you think?
I believed him. I didn’t have any magazines or anything. I had no way of knowing.

He told you Lance Mountain was the best, so you thought he was the best.
Yeah, it’s like, if you asked me, right now, “Who is the best rock climber in the world?” and I said, “Steve Desiderio.” You would be like, “Oh, that guy must be the best.” The first video I saw was “Skateboard Madness”. Everyone else saw “Future Primitive”, but I saw “Skateboard Madness” because it was on television.

When did you start figuring out what kind of skateboarding you were into?
Maybe 1989. The people I liked were Natas Kaupas and Mark Gonzales.

You were looking up to street skater guys?
Yeah, vert was so out of our realm. There were ramps in our town, but I was thirteen and no one was driving me there. I couldn’t relate to vert.

What were you going through in the early ’90s?
I was skating everything that I could. I took a couple of trips to Kona in Florida with my dad. It was basically a father/son vacation. We’d heard there was a skatepark in Jacksonville that had snake runs and bowls, so we went there.

What did you think?
It was amazing.

Was that the first concrete park you skated?
Yeah, it was one of only four concrete parks at the time.

Kona inspired you?
Oh yeah. I came down the snake run and went over that peak and saw Donny Griffin, the Powell wonder kid. He was coming out over the top, airing over the peak into the huge bowl, early grab. That was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. I skated for eight hours in the hot Florida sun after seeing that. I’d go up and do a kickturn and grab off the extension. That was my first frontside air.

Did you see Buck Smith ride there?
Yeah.

Did he have a Mohawk?
Nope. The first year I was there, they didn’t have the vert ramp yet. The next year, they had the vert ramp, and Buck Smith was there killing it. I was learning rock n rolls. I did my first frontside grind on that big steel ramp. There was nothing like Kona in the whole country.

What happened next? Skateboarding died in the early ’90s. Were you affected by that?
Yeah, the worst thing was that you couldn’t get a decent set of wheels. If they had still manufactured big wheels during that era, I don’t think a lot of people would have cared. When you couldn’t get wheels over 50mm, everyone was kind of peeved.

You were more of a vert guy, while the market was going to street skating. How did that make you feel?
We were vert skaters because we’d go skate the vert ramp, but we were really just more about terrain. We wanted to skate more stuff than just curbs. We knew the ledges. We’d slappy the curbs. We’d do some primitive street skating, but we wanted to skate good stuff. We wanted to ride.

Where were you living in the early ’90s?
From ’92-’95, I was going to college at Boston University.

What was your major?
English. I liked reading.

Were you thinking of getting a job in the future?
Nope.

What was your rationale for going to college besides getting a degree?
My grandma paid for it.

Were you into getting ‘A’s’ and passing?
A little bit, but not too much.

What did you ride in Boston?
We had all the spots – C Pool, Screaming Ant pool, Turtle’s, Boston City Hospital and the streets. We were dividing it up between the parks and the streets.

Who were the guys you were skating with?
There was Kevin Day and Jeff and Frank Landon, Digger, Preston Maigetter, Steve Roach, Dave Rogers and Buddy…

Did you ever get down to Newport and hang out with Sid and the boys?
Hell, yeah. That was always good. We had a bunch of weekend destinations in high school.

Did you have any feeling about being from the East Coast?
We were from the East Coast, and California was so far away. They were doing whatever they were doing over there. We were doing what we do over here.

Okay, let’s talk about Hosoi.
Hosoi is like a big air guy in my mind. You have Hawk and you have Hosoi, the crazy showman.

When Hawk and Hosoi were ruling – which were you siding with?
When I started trying airs on vert, I started appreciating Hosoi’s airs. When I started traveling around and seeing Hosoi skate, it was unbelievable. It was insane to see the pools he was riding and the Burnside transfers he was doing. He was blasting airs minimum 10 feet. And he’s talking to someone on the deck at the same time. No big deal. Once you got to see him skate, you knew he was so beyond. He has such finesse and natural ability. He didn’t even have that aggression that some guys had. He’s casual. He was so good that it looked like he wasn’t even trying.

Is that what inspired you to make a video of yourself in full Hosoi gear on a road trip down to Florida for a week? You rode Daytona with a black-hair-down-to-your-ass Hosoi wig and wearing full Hosoi gear. Give us the story on that.
I saw Hosoi at Burnside in ’94 or ’95. I had summers off, so I worked for a month and got together a couple hundred bucks and took the train to Burnside. That was my first trip out West. I got off the train and said, “Where’s Burnside?” Burnside was the only thing worth riding back then. I went and hung out with the dudes, and it was amazing. Hosoi showed up, and he had on some weird fat hat thing. It was like a helmet with a rim. He was in the fat cat Cadillac with Duncan and Reategui. They pulled up to Burnside in this Cadillac and just started burning. They got out, looked at it and then disappeared. Then Hosoi comes out with this huge spiked bracelet, ribbons, three hats and sunglasses. He drops in, and he’s doing the freaking super pump kickturns in the bottom. He gets up to the lip and does an axle stall. He pulls up his board and he’s looking around for a wrench. Then he makes the tiniest little adjustment to his trucks. I mean he barely turned them. Then he drops in and starts doing airs to the middle of nowhere. He was going huge.

That was the first time you saw him skate?
Yeah, there was so much going. I was still trying to get over seeing the Burnside guys like Q, Sage, Little Steve and Pigpen. Red was hurt, but seeing him was cool. There were hundreds of those dudes. Hosoi started doing all these airs, and then he started killing the whole place. He was doing huge transfers and heel flips. He did a heel flip like 4 feet. And he’d kick it out like a judo. He was heel flipping over the pyramid. He was four feet in the air, and his board was just skimming across the top of the pyramid. Somehow he got back on it and rode away. He did a heel flip to axle on the quarter pipe. He was five feet in the air, and his board was like 8 inches wide. Then he’d just come back down from the sky hanging from the bridge – all that hang time – at the same time his board was hitting. It was insane. He has so much talent. There were plenty of guys up there ripping.

Are you looking at Sage vs. Hosoi like a Gauguin vs. a Picasso?
Hosoi was the Picasso, and Sage was like the Jackson Pollock of the crew. Picasso was a highly skilled artist. He did a million paintings and just didn’t give a fuck. He was like, “I’m Picasso. I don’t care if you think it’s good.” Murf, I don’t think this question should be on the SATs.

Okay, so after the Burnside/Hosoi experience, how long was it until you produced this video of you portraying Hosoi?
Six months.

This video was your tribute to Hosoi?
Well, it just sort of happened. Tim and I found these little shirts on the beach for $2, and Bato found a wig at the wig shop for $3 bucks. It just spontaneously happened.

You dressed up as Hosoi and drove south to skate Kona?
Yeah, we went to Stone Edge.

Were you in character the whole time?
No, but I will say that since the video came out, people really want to talk to Hosoi and not Sam.

Why?
Why would you want to talk to me when you could talk to me being Hosoi?

Were you doing this as a show of respect?
Don’t you know that imitation is the highest form of flattery? Hosoi and I are down. At Burnside, I transferred over the spine and Hosoi was coming up the other wall and I landed on him, like four wheels Hosoi. I landed it and he was under my board. Oh God. It was just a mess. He was on the flat bottom and then all of a sudden he springs up like a gymnast and high fives me and says, “That was sick. We made it through that, bro.”

Your Hosoi road trip video was like a tribute?
It was just a bunch of kids with a video camera having fun. Hosoi is definitely fun. If you want to have some fun, pretend to be him and you’ll have as good a time as we did.

Okay, you’ve got skateparks starting to come back in ’97, ’98 and ’99.
I was living in San Francisco for a little bit, skating all the stuff they had out there. There was only one vert ramp in New England at the time.

How did you get out to the West Coast from here?
Well, I lost my license, and I was ready to do something. For some reason, you can move to California, and not really do anything, barely have a job, and you don’t feel bad. So that’s what I did. On the East Coast, if you don’t have a job, you try to live it out and go couch surfing and everyone will tell you, “Get a job.” California was nice. I worked a little and skated.

Did you have an opinion of the skate industry?
Skateboarding was on the rebound to skating everything.

Were you getting into building ramps by then?
I built Julian Stranger’s ramp with Digger.

Then you saw Skatopia. What did you think?
That was insane. People from all over were going there to ride that 13-foot bowl. Now, it’s finally happening, the Skatopia dream. He’s building ‘crete. He’s got the kidney bowl and snake run. It took a while, but it’s happening.

Can you elaborate on your comment, “Sometimes skateboarding involves not skateboarding”?
Well, at Skatopia, you’re going hard all night, you’re partying, you’re skating and you’re going hard. You probably see the sun come up and it’s 10 a.m. in the morning and someone with a camera is telling you to skate. That’s exactly where that comment comes about.

When did you start building concrete?
Like every skater, you have your little doodles on your paper. You’re thinking one day you’ll have a skatepark in your yard. That was always my plan – to have concrete as far as the eye could see in my own back yard. Concrete techniques weren’t really known by skaters back then. Everyone could figure out how to build a ramp, but because of the Burnside thing, skaters learned how to do cement.

When did you start building parks?
It was in Newburyport [MA]. I was talking to Monk, and I said, “You have to let me get in on the crew. I have to learn this stuff and bring it to the East Coast.” Then the Newburyport park came up. Geth Noble was building it. I just walked on the site and decided I’d work until they paid me. I just wanted to do it. I wanted to build.

Were you thinking you’d have your own business?
No, I was thinking, now I could build something like this in my own backyard. Newburyport was my first experience with concrete.

How difficult was it to learn?
It was really difficult. Everyone had to just buckle down for every pour and get it done. We were pouring in the rain. It was gnarly.

What’s a bad pour like?
When you have problems like the pump breaking down or the concrete coming out rock hard. Geth and Steph were the only ones with experience. We were just a bunch of beginners. Every pour was a nerve-wracking experience. You just did whatever it took to make it come out right.

Were you having second thoughts about building concrete?
No second thoughts. I got the feeling, though, that it wasn’t always this hard. There might be an easier way. That park was a lot of volunteer labor. They didn’t have the pump for every pour. It was a little bumpy. A lot of stuff was donated. They had to work with what they had.

What did you learn from that job?
I learned how to finish trowel.

You told me there were some custom trowels developed at that job.
James, this surfer guy that Geth knows, came up with this technique that makes curved floats out of fiberglass.

What is a float?
When you’re dealing with a concrete slab, the finish trowel brings up water in the cement. You need the float to put it down on the rocks. It’s what you do before you trowel. It floats on the top. As the water comes out of the concrete, you float it out. You push down the rock real lightly to get that top layer of sand moving.

After the Newburyport job, what was next?
Next was Jackson Hole, Wyoming, under Airspeed. That’s where I really started getting the techniques down. I think we all started getting more proficient on that job.

How stoked were you to get that job?
I was really stoked.

How did that park come out?
It came out really good. It’s still there.

Did you work with Geth Noble again?
No, Jamie McDonald was starting up New England Skateparks. We did a job in Fitchburg. He was the project manager and I was the contractor. He took a huge risk, signed a labor contract and just went for it.

Now you’re a foreman. Did you think that you could build your own park?
I knew what needed to be done. I knew how to get it done.

What was the next job?
We formed Breaking Ground and did Jamestown.

Breaking Ground is your own crew?
Yeah, and Jamestown was our first gig.

Sam Batterson, sole proprietor.
Yep.

What’s it like dealing with the red tape?
I’m pretty young to be a general contractor, so it was scary.

What kind of problems did you encounter?
There were a lot of problems like prevailing wage, insurance and worker’s comp. We had a serious deadline on Jamestown. We had to finish it before the year was done or not get paid. It was in the contract.

Tell people what prevailing wage is all about.
Prevailing wage is the union wage scale. It’s pretty high. It’s like $40 an hour.

You’re not a union company, but you have to pay union scale?
Yep.

How do you deal with the union?
You just hope they don’t want the job.

Does the town get pressure from the unions to hire union people?
In some contracts, it requires union contractors, but not in Jamestown. I think Carje had to join the union because he was doing work all over.

Are you pro-union? Is it good for the labor force?
Yeah. It is good. I saw a sticker the other day that said, “The Weekend – brought to you by the labor union.” That’s good. The union just wants to work, but I don’t think the union guys really want to do the skatepark thing.

Do you have to compete with those prefab parks?
Yeah, these companies make swingsets, and now they make skate ramps. If you have a situation with a city that has $30,000 for a skatepark, they opt for a couple of quarter pipes and some ledges. I just think those prefab companies should know their place. I think when a city wants a high-quality skatepark facility, the prefab companies should just stay out of it. They shouldn’t present themselves as being that. They have pictures of Tony Hawk and the X Games on their websites.

They have pros endorsing it?
Yeah. I just don’t like these guys presenting prefab stuff as a good skatepark. They shouldn’t use the X Games to prove their legitimacy. The average skater laughs at the X Games. These towns see these websites with X Games on it, and they think they’ll get an X Games-quality skatepark. The truth is the X Games, at best, is just a bunch of temporary ramps. It’s not the best stuff to skate. If the X Games were at a park, like Louisville, that would really be a true contest. That would be a real test of who’s the best.

Do a lot of cities fall for that prefab trap?
Yeah, just because of the money. They look at the bid and the equipment they get. They decide to buy the prefab stuff and pour a concrete slab moat around it for $10,000. What I try to make them understand is that in a concrete park, every inch is rideable, and it’s not like that with a prefab park. When there are skateboarders in the town, they recognize the better product and hire guys like us. They look at it like buying a car. A good skatepark is the Land Rover with the DVD and the works – the best. Some cities just want a Yugo skatepark. The thing is, we make these concrete parks affordable. We don’t go for the gold trim.

How’s it working out?
Well, right now, there’s a huge steel crisis going on in America. The steel prices are through the roof, so the prefab ramps are not cheaper now. When the city says they’re going to get the prefab ramps and the concrete slab, I give them the alternative, an affordable concrete park. I give them the price breakdown, and they agree it’s more competitive than they thought.

Are cities more scared of something permanent like concrete?
Some towns are scared of that, but when they see the designs or they go and look at a good concrete skatepark, you can’t really argue with that. Just looking at the difference between prefab steel structures in a parking lot and a good concrete park, the choice is obvious. Most of the cities go for the concrete.

What are you working on now?
We’re working on Providence Skatepark. Here’s the story. They had a skatepark on the plans. My girlfriend’s friend drew up the trees on the plan for the city. I made the calls and skated down to town hall and picked up the plans. The bid was closing the next morning, so I opened up the plans, and it’s a bunch of quarter pipes sitting on a large asphalt slab. I was like, “Oh man. We’re finally getting a skatepark in Providence and this is what we’re getting?” I fretted about it for two weeks. Then I called the city. They called me back and agreed to meet with me. I drew up a sample park and made a presentation for the sample cost, and the bid was $85,000 with prevailing wage. It had a little bowl on one end and a quarter pipe on the other end. It was a good little park for really cheap. They told me they were really impressed with my work. We met with the council people and they all agreed. I was in. Then after a few meetings, they said, “You drew up this plan in one day. Why don’t you take a week and draw up the best park you can imagine?” It all worked out.

And you kept the price low?
Yeah, it was like $18 per square foot.

Does it have any pool coping?
Yeah, it’s got about 76 feet of pool coping. I know there are stories of the urban skateparks, but this park is really urban. Everything you see on the street is in that park. We’ve got curbs, benches, Jersey barriers, fire hydrants and manhole covers. You can skate it around and never have to push. It’s constant flow every inch.

Do you have handrails?
Yeah, we’ve got handrails, too.

[laughs] Oh, perfect. I just love handrails. It’s really hard to find handrails, so I guess you have to build them somewhere.
Okay, Murf. Look. I’m not building it for you. I’m building it for everyone in the city. Kids that want to grind pool coping can go to that park. If someone wants to skate a 4-foot handrail, they can do it legally in this park.

Why only 4 feet?
There’s a limit by law in Providence. That’s the limit without supervision.

Is that because of insurance?
Yep. I think it can be changed. There’s an argument that something 4 feet tall isn’t necessarily safe either.

Are you aware of the battle going on in California over the 6-foot limit?
Yeah, that’s what we’re all watching. There are a lot of crises in America. Besides steel, the cost of insurance is going up. In a couple of years, nothing will be able to be insured. The insurance cost is just going up and up and up.

Is insurance a big issue with the city?
Yeah, and it’s a big issue for me, too. Thirty percent of the budget goes to insurance. I have to put up a bond.

How does that work?
You pay a bonding company a certain amount of money. They guarantee that if you die or run off to Florida with the money, they will see that the job gets finished. It’s just another cost of doing business. That’s standard construction.

Everyone pays.
Yeah, sometimes it’s good. Since your money is guaranteed, you don’t have to fret about getting paid. The money is there. It’s guaranteed.

Did you ever picture yourself running a park building company?
Surely not. If I had known, I would have planned on it all along, since I first started skating.

Is it a dream come true or a nightmare?
It’s a little of both. It’s not my dream come true, but to have a job this good, you have to work hard.

Is it worth it?
Yeah, of course it is. You’re getting paid to do what you’d probably like to do on your own time. They’re paying for us to build the best thing we can think of to skate.

What about the Saratoga Park?
We went out there and met the lady and started working immediately. I said, “Let’s start digging.” We got it done.

That park turned out great.
I hope they hire us back one day.

What other projects do you have right now?
We’re looking at Nantucket. We’d like to go back to Martha’s Vineyard. We’d like to go to every town in Massachusetts and every town in Rhode Island. We’re waiting for your call. If you want a park, hire a dedicated skater and get it going. I’ll do the work. I want the best park.

Tell me all the parks that you’ve worked on so far.
I worked on Jamestown, Skatopia, Fitchburg, Saratoga Springs, Worcester, Paprocki Park, Martha’s Vineyard and now Providence.

Do you want to say who’s on your crew?
It’s Jeff Paprocki, Tom Dupere, Lenny Earnshaw, George Rocha, Sean Ryan, Andy Ferguson and me.

What is your ‘Duty Now for the Future’?
Well, I built a lot of ramps, and they’re all gone now. Building these concrete parks, I’m thinking they’ll be around for 50 years at least. I’m building things for the future.

What’s the future?
My future is a wheelchair skateboard. I’ll be 80 and still skating. I’ll have replacement parts, but I’ll be skating.

Is skateboarding just as fun for you now as it’s ever been?
Yep. I still have a banana board. I’m trying to do tricks on this little banana board and it’s like relearning how to skate.

I notice you’ve been skateboarding barefoot a lot lately. Is that surf-inspired?
No, it’s just too hot. My shoes are sweaty. I figured I’d keep the sweat down.

How did you get the nickname ‘Sloppy Sam’?
Steve Roach did it. I was up at his ramp and I didn’t have that much board control. I’d go up and start to do one trick and then do something else and still come back in, somehow. That was my thing. I learned smith grinds when I was trying to do 50-50s and missed. I learned lip slides, because I tried to do smith grinds and missed. I’ve done tones of axle stall 50-50s and come in fakie by mistake. I just put my feet on my board. I might have out grown it, because I have a little more board control these days. Now, it’s just easier to make it and get back to the deck and crack a beer.

Do you have any other words of wisdom for us?
No, but I have a comment about skateparks. There was a lot of time when they weren’t really building skateparks. The history of skateparks is important. When skaters learned to build skateparks, the best skateparks started coming in.

Was Wally Hollyday an inspiration to you?
He was a skater that figured out how to do it. He got it going. I think the early Burnside and early Team Pain projects like Crested Butte, CO inspired me the most. Omer from Florida, and Red from Oregon were the only dudes that skated and knew how to do this kind of work. That was one of the early projects that influenced everyone. Florida and Oregon have the best parks. Dokken came from Florida with experience from building Stone Edge in Florida. Red did the Burnside thing. Monk did his bowl. Those are the dudes. They all worked with each other on various projects and came up with ways to make the parks really sick.

Burnside guys were all about grinding coping.
The Burnside guys and the Florida guys like Dokken, Omer, Geth and Red pioneered the whole thing, and Carje too, early on. The crews got intermingled. Now you hire a reputable skatepark building firm and it’s just one stop and you’re going to get something sick. Every skatepark deserves a skateboarder to oversee the design. You need skaters that know the construction aspect.

You’ve become one of those people. Your heart is in building concrete skateparks. You must be proud of that?
Yep, I’m riding it to the end. Once there’s enough different stuff to skate in every city, then I’ll be happy.

Pool coping or pipe coping?
I like them both. Pool coping is good for some things, and pipe coping is good for some things. I think there are other good options, like granite, brick, flint, marble and coping block. Some parks just have the rolled steel ledges. I think there should be some variety. You need to have it all.

It’s all about the grind. It’s all about grinding your Indys down. That’s all I have to say.
What about Thunders? What about Gullwings?

Did you get a Gullwing tattoo?
No, my friend Jaime tried them all and liked the Gullwings.

I’m not feeling it.
When I was younger, I got these Indys with the different bushings, and I hated them. Then I tried to ride Trackers. I tried to go down the driveway and busted my ass. I tried to turn, and the board just went straight. I’m more into carving.

It’s not a matter of choice.
Yep. Murph, this interview is over. Go to the website at www.breaking groundskateparks.com. Do I have a right to retract everything? Oh, and I want to thank everyone too. I don’t want anyone getting mad. Put in there that I thank everyone.

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