{"id":34880,"date":"2012-11-07T13:56:41","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T18:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/?p=34880"},"modified":"2022-06-02T18:28:54","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T01:28:54","slug":"derek-krasauskas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/derek-krasauskas\/","title":{"rendered":"DEREK KRASAUSKAS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DEREK KRASAUSKAS<\/strong>
INTERVIEW by JIM MURPHY<\/strong>
PHOTOS by GEOFF GRAHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Derek is one of those classic East Coast vert sodiers with a sick style and a great sense of humor. The Northeast has its own special brand of sarcasm and D-Rack brings on the Maryland flavor big time! The best people to skate with are those with a sense of humor that also just wanna skate to have fun and grind the hell outta something! No contests, no rules, no posers; just people seriously about having fun. Just throw Derek, Dan Tag and George Draguns in a session, and you will spend as much time laughin’ and bustin’ balls as you do skateboarding! Now that’s what skateboarding is all about! So get loose and get ready for this classic Kruasaukis interview, one of Maryland’s finest!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yo, D-Rak.<\/strong>
[Laughs] Is this the Murf of the smurf?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] That\u2019s right, motherfucker.<\/strong>
It\u2019s one of my original favorite heroes from the East Coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holy shit. Thank you. How are you doing, bro?<\/strong>
Good, good. How about yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good. Are you ready for your Juice interview?<\/strong>
Yeah. As long as you say that me, you and Buster, to this day, still have some of the best slob fastplants in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah, fuck yeah, dude. That\u2019s a Murfplant to you!<\/strong>
That\u2019s right, buddy! [Laughs] That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] So this is how we do it. Name, rank, serial number?<\/strong>
Name: Derek Spartacus Krasauskas. Rank: East Coast vert dog. Serial number: 666.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nice. What year were you born?<\/strong>
1971. I just turned 41.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congrats. Where were you born?<\/strong>
I was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When did you first see a skateboard?<\/strong>
I had an older brother and a cousin that skated, so it was when I was five years old. There was a drainage ditch beside my grandmother\u2019s house. I got on a skateboard and never looked back. I had some orange Krypto 65 millimeters and some two-piece Gullwings where the axels were separated and a wood carver board. It sucked compared to my brother\u2019s Logan Earth Ski, but it was cool for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re talking \u201875, right?<\/strong>
Yeah, I was caught up in the game early.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did you think when you were skating with your brother? Were you doing any other sports, like baseball or basketball?<\/strong>
In Baltimore, it was soccer and lacrosse. I used to practice with this older team in lacrosse and soccer because they let me. I was just a little grommit that was always there. With skateboarding, I lived in the city, so it was easy to just cruise the back alleys and hit it, and bomb hills and do everything. It was freedom to me, for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When did you have your first ramp experience?<\/strong>
One of our buddies had a quarter-pipe at the end of their driveway. It was probably five foot high with 6-foot tranny. Right then, I started progressing a lot more. I was just trying stuff and they were just happy with frontside grinds. I was like, \u201cI\u2019m going to do a fastplant or some layback roll-outs. Stuff just started for me. It was like, \u201cYeah, this is really what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were you looking at the magazines?<\/strong>
Yeah, I looked at the magazine and my dad used to take us to the skateparks. He would take us skateboarding every Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are we talking Lansdowne?<\/strong>
Lansdowne might have been built at that point, but I would go to a place called Cascade Skatepark every Wednesday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did they have there? Did they have any concrete tranny?<\/strong>
Yeah. They had a three quarter pipe. They had something called the Butterfly Bowl that was like a round robin. Anything goes. They had a little mini keyhole attached to it, so that was my favorite spot. The 12-foot keyhole indoor was so gnarly. Pat Clark and them still talk about it. It had no flat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] Right.<\/strong>
I think I was nine at the time and I would roll in and do some shit and the guards would lend me their big 9\u201d boards because I still had my skinny board. The wall was so steep that they would have to help me out of that thing because I couldn\u2019t get out of there by myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a warm day, so we took shovels and shoveled paths out of the freestyle area and rode Lansdowne with snow everywhere. I was like, \u201cCool, we\u2019re still skating.\u201d\u00a0It was awesome. That was my stomping ground. For Bucky, Cabbage and a bunch of us, that was our spot, especially when the ramps died down in \u201887.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Were you hitting tiles?<\/strong>
Yeah, I was already starting to show a little pro skill. I had the worst equipment and I was the best of everyone. The groms were coming up like, \u201cDerek, you can use our board. Use our board. It\u2019s cool.\u201d I was going for it already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you have a crew of kids that you skated with or was it just you and your bro going to parks with your dad?<\/strong>
It was me, my brother and my dad on Mondays. I was the captain of my soccer and lacrosse team, but skateboarding is what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you were into skating, and you were into the jock aspect of things. Did you get into the punk rock scene while you were doing those things?<\/strong>
I was lying to my parents and getting dropped off every Friday night at the Loft and seeing Black Flag and Circle Jerks and all the punk bands. I also have to say, rest in peace to MCA. When I was in seventh grade, I heard Cookie Puss and was like, \u201cThese guys are totally awesome! They\u2019re punk, but they\u2019re hip hop.\u201d Everybody was like, \u201cDude, these guys suck!\u201d I was like, \u201cNo, man, the Beastie Boys are the shit! They\u2019re punk.\u201d Sure enough, it all came around. It all went full circle. As a kid, I was into hip hop and punk rock, but I loved when the Beastie Boys came out. The older dudes taking me to punk rock shows said, \u201cWhat are you talking about? These guys suck!\u201d I was like, \u201cNah, nah, nah. Let it simmer. It\u2019s going to come around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were you hanging with the kind of dudes that were so punk that they weren\u2019t even going to hang with you because you listen to that bullshit?<\/strong>
No. Because of skateboarding, I was always allowed. I was that little annoying loudmouth, like I still am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why we love you.<\/strong>
[Laughs] I was allowed to get away with stuff that most people weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201879, the skateparks started to go away. What was going on in Baltimore then?<\/strong>
It was BMX and motocross. I started doing BMX racing, but I always skateboarded. That\u2019s when Lansdowne came into the picture. I lived really close to there, but I didn\u2019t realize it was there. My dad took me there one Monday. I was like, \u201cWhoa, wait a minute. This is cool. We\u2019ve still got this. We have our old boards. We can still go to Lansdowne. This is awesome.\u201d So we started skating there once a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have any good Lansdowne local stories? I always hear these stories where the people who lived around Lansdowne would show up with BB guns and just start shit with the skaters.<\/strong>
Totally. I\u2019ll give you the original Geoff Graham photo of the Trans Am sitting in the middle of the bowl from the stolen car night. There was also that old guy they hired to sell soda and he would have a contest, the King of Lansdowne. It was so funny because he\u2019d play \u201cI\u2019m the King of Lansdowne,\u201d on a boom box. [Laughs] It was ridiculous. Anyway, I won one year and I was so stoked. It was the time of my life. I\u2019d been up all night. [Laughs] I was like, \u201cI won? Really?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] Oh yeah.<\/strong>
One time, we went with a couple friends of my brother and there was two inches of snow, but we still wanted to skate. It was a warm day, so we took shovels and shoveled paths out of the freestyle area and rode Lansdowne with snow everywhere. I was like, \u201cCool, we\u2019re still skating.\u201d It was awesome. That was my stomping ground. For Bucky, Cabbage and a bunch of us, that was our spot, especially when the ramps died down in \u201887.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s talk about \u201882. The Toke Team was coming up and they had that ramp.<\/strong>
Goshen. You had Goshen, Cedar Crest and Annandale. I never got to skate there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were you and Bucky hanging at that point?<\/strong>
No, he wasn\u2019t even in the game yet. Around that point, Ed Hicks from Fisherman\u2019s stole the old fiberglass ramps from Crofton Skatepark in Southern Maryland. They closed down the park so he went there with a pick-up truck and stole all of these 8-foot tranny pieces. He just threw them in his pick up truck and drove home. That\u2019s where I met Billy, Ed, Rudy and Scott. We heard about the Faction playing and we went down there in \u201885. My mom was like, \u201cAs long as you\u2019re with your brother, we\u2019ll let you go.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cMy brother is worse off than me. I can take care of myself.\u201d So we went and saw Caballero, Doug Meer, Pat Clark, and everybody killing this ramp. It was a piece of shit, but it looked awesome. As a kid, you\u2019re looking at it going, \u201cWow, this is neat.\u201d I had a broken arm at Fisherman\u2019s Inn, right after Annandale. I didn\u2019t even skate Annandale, but that\u2019s where the Faction, Black Flag and Agent Orange played. It was right on the water so as soon as the sun would set, it was ice or water. It was a fiberglass ramp, so the dew would just lay right on it, but I got to see Caballero doing frontside inverts on the extension. We were just like, \u201cOh my god, this is insane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was that the first heavy duty pro you ever saw ride?<\/strong>
Yes. At this point, I was making it up as I went along and looking at Thrasher magazine and then to see not just Caballero but Pat Clark, Doug Meer, Dan Brown… all of these dudes, it was like my first boner. I already knew this is what I wanted, but then it was certified. This is what I want to do in my life. I was blown away. I didn\u2019t skate that day because it was so packed with heavies. That night it was dew point on the ramp and I was rolling in with a broken arm with no pads on and I met my buddy Billy Carlisle. He was like, \u201cDude, you can\u2019t skate now.\u201d I was only 12 and I was like, \u201cYeah, man, this is awesome!\u201d At a point, I had a Sims Screamer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You were killing it.<\/strong>
Oh, dude, I got to see the Faction play. I didn\u2019t have a ticket to get in because I was just a little punk, so Billy and Ed let me in for free. I was like, \u201cI\u2019m seeing the Faction play. This is awesome.\u201d I didn\u2019t get to go to Annandale because we had such a minimal number of people who had their license.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You ever roadtrip to the Public Menace ramp?<\/strong>
I didn\u2019t go for the contests, but I did go as soon as we started to get into it. I skated the PM ramp when it was at the shit plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you meet Radiation Ray Young?<\/strong>
We were tight. I met his dad. He\u2019d come out to the front porch with a tall boy in hand. It was awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s priceless when you show up on the Pennsylvania scene. Those guys are crazy.<\/strong>
Don\u2019t get caught behind the flannel curtain. I had so many good times in Pennsylvania, but they definitely march to their own beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late \u201880s, skateboarding is starting to blow up again. Are you out of high school by then?<\/strong>
I was still in high school when I got sponsored by Skull Skates. Rudy got me hooked up with P.D. and then Todd Prince, that crazy Zorlac guy from Texas. Todd Prince came to the Hell Ramp where I grew up skating and I always wanted to ride for Zorlac. He saw me skating Hell Ramp one day and the next day I got a call from the dude in Texas and they asked me to ride for Zorlac. I\u2019m like, \u201cIt\u2019s on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were you talking with Jeff Newton and Dana Buck?<\/strong>
That\u2019s who it was. Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was that when Craig and John were still on?<\/strong>
I think so. It was when they had the Metallica graphics that were so punk. They\u2019re still rad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How was your skateboarding progressing?<\/strong>
I just got better than everybody around me and then Bucky came into play. I was like, \u201cAre you serious, you little punk? You\u2019re going to step up right now and do frontside inverts the first day you try them? Really?\u201d We\u2019re best friends now, but I hated him at first. I was just like, \u201cYou\u2019re taking away my limelight motherfucker.\u201d [Laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you\u2019re riding for Zorlac. Tell people what that was like because Zorlac was the shit.<\/strong>
It was like I\u2019d gotten into a golden army. I started getting clothes from Vans and and life was good. I was captain of my lacrosse team in high school. I flew to Huntsville, Alabama, for one of the MSA Regionals and made it as an alternate. I was like, \u201cYou know what? I love lacrosse, but I\u2019m done. It\u2019s not fair to you guys that I\u2019m flying away places every other weekend and missing practices. I\u2019m quitting.\u201d They were like, \u201cWhat?\u201d The coaches were so pissed off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did they have any concept of skateboarding?<\/strong>
No, they said it wasn\u2019t a sport and I would regret it. I saw them at a bar a couple years later, and my coaches were like, \u201cWe saw you on ESPN last night.\u201d I was like, \u201cYeah, how about that no sports shit, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] Yeah.<\/strong>
Another first moment for me was watching you and Mike and Bernie at that New Jersey Barn Ramp. I went there one February day and I was like \u201cMurf.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No way. That was so killer. Describe that scene to people just walking up to that barn.<\/strong>
It was freezing cold, snowy winter. As a little kid, all you want to do is ride a useless wooden toy and you\u2019re pulling up and seeing dudes you\u2019ve heard about, but never seen. I walked in like, \u201cWow.\u201d It\u2019s one of those moments in life where it\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019m a skateboarder. This is exactly what I want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. You walk up to that barn. It\u2019s dark as hell. You\u2019re walking in the shadows. It\u2019s cold as fuck. You walk up to this barn and, all of a sudden, boom! Metallica!<\/strong>
[Laughs] Totally. It was so sick!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did you guys find out about the Barn Ramp?<\/strong>
I guess one of the older guys at the Hell Ramp found out about it and we just drove up there. The cool thing was that John drove us, and he had a pick up truck. My brother and the partiers were in the back in the freezing cold. I was so skinny at the time that I could fit in between the bucket seats on a set of speakers, so I rode shotgun the whole way up and back. I was like, \u201cYeah!\u201d [Laughs] They\u2019re all freezing in the back and I was up front listening to music on the cassette player and rollin\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] Give people a perspective of what it\u2019s like to be so hungry to skate that you\u2019d drive eight hours to ride an indoor barn ramp.<\/strong>
When I was a little bit older, I started to drink and party, and I needed my friends to say, \u201cWe have to do this.\u201d You get in the car and you make it happen. You\u2019re just driving there and you don\u2019t care. This is what we want to do and when you get there it all changes. You\u2019re just like, \u201cYes! I\u2019m skateboarding. I\u2019m riding right now and this is awesome.\u201d It sounds corny, but it really is that good when you\u2019re blood starts flowing and you\u2019re sweating and you smell like beer from the night before, but you\u2019re cruising. You\u2019re sitting there with Tom Boyle, Darren Menditto and Sean Miller and you\u2019re like, \u201cWe\u2019re doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember being on the road one year skating with Sean and Darren at Cheapskates and they were riding good. I came back next year and they were both doing 540s and overhead ollies to fakie. I was like, \u201cWhat the fuck is going on?\u201d Darren Menditto is doing his ollie to fakie over your head with a nosebone to the platform.<\/strong>
Yeah and that\u2019s like his twenty-first trick of his run. [Laughs] You had Doctor Moose. \u201cWhat are you doing here, kid?\u201d It\u2019s amazing some of the clowns that came out of there. Cheapskates was a whole other realm. [Laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was a trippy scene. I remember going there when I lived in Philly and Tag would live in the mini ramp underneath the platform. It was sick. He was committed. He was like, \u201cFuck it, man. I have no where else to live.\u201d He killed it.<\/strong>
It\u2019s amazing. The story of the skateboarder, if you\u2019re a real skateboarder, it goes on and on and on. It\u2019s so amazing what we\u2019ve all had and done and are doing. It\u2019s a wonderful thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, ORDER ISSUE #70 BY CLICKING HERE…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DEREK KRASAUSKAS INTERVIEW by JIM MURPHY PHOTOS by GEOFF GRAHAM Derek is one of those classic East Coast vert sodiers with a sick style and a great sense of humor. The Northeast has its own special brand of sarcasm and D-Rack brings on the Maryland flavor big time! The best people to skate with are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4028,4041],"tags":[11090,14499,4061,12486,4421,4055,12485,4052,4068,12429,12484,4851,4591,3818,14255,12424,4417,6056,4069,14262,4226,14361,3165,11209,3472],"class_list":["post-34880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","category-skate-2","tag-baltimore","tag-bucky-lasek","tag-buster-halterman","tag-cascade-skatepark","tag-cedar-crest","tag-cheapskates","tag-crofton-skatepark","tag-dan-tag","tag-darren-menditto","tag-derek-krasauskas","tag-doug-meer","tag-geoff-graham","tag-jeff-newton","tag-jim-murphy","tag-juice-magazine","tag-juice-magazine-70","tag-lansdowne","tag-pat-clark","tag-sean-miller","tag-skate","tag-skateboarder","tag-steve-caballero","tag-todd-prince","tag-tom-boyle","tag-zorlac"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/KRASAUSKAS1-2.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34880"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89313,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34880\/revisions\/89313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}