{"id":56518,"date":"2015-03-01T10:31:08","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T18:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/?p=56518"},"modified":"2017-05-11T13:18:50","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T20:18:50","slug":"duty-now-for-the-future-jim-murphy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/duty-now-for-the-future-jim-murphy\/","title":{"rendered":"Duty Now For the Future: Jim Murphy"},"content":{"rendered":"

DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE: JIM MURPHY<\/strong> INTERVIEW by JEFF AMENT<\/strong> PHOTOS BY JONATHAN MEHRING<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jim Murphy is 100% East Coast ripper.\u00a0A true gentleman with a big heart, an artist who paints with his pick and shovel, a humanitarian who backs it up with action and a skater who rolls with g-narly commitment and passion.\u00a0If you doubt any of this, get in a car and drive to the Pine Ridge skatepark on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota that Murf was the catalyst in building.\u00a0One of the seven skate wonders of the world towering over nearby Rushmore, brought to skateboarding by Murf, Monk, Walt and friends. \u2013 JEFF AMENT<\/em><\/p>\n

I want to cover a few basic things, and then we can talk about Wounded Knee and New York.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go, bro. Shoot.<\/p>\n

Tell me how skateboarding changed your life. At what point did you realize that you were going to be skateboarding for the rest of your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Skateboarding came into my life right when my dad left my family. He broke up with my mom and left all the kids high and dry. Skateboarding was the one therapy I had. I would be in the basement rolling around for hours and hours, just trying to figure things out, after my life was turned upside down with no dad. Skateboarding was something that became therapy. It became something more than playing basketball or football. I just rolled. As years went by and I kept skating, I realized that I was going to be doing this for the rest of my life. Nothing is as fun..<\/p>\n

Where was this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was in Eatontown, NJ. That\u2019s where my family is from. I was brought up on naval bases. I was born down in Florida and we traveled around a bunch, but we, eventually, ended up in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

You were born in Florida?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. I was born in Pensacola, Florida, on the naval base.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of skateboarders and surfers that came out of Florida.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yeah, man, Kelly Slater.<\/p>\n

Jimmy the Greek.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, Jimmy the Greek. Buck Smith. Chris Baucom. Billy Beauregard… Did you ever see Billy Beauregard skate?<\/p>\n

No, that\u2019s probably in the era when I was least connected to it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Those Florida guys killed it. They still do.<\/p>\n

Yeah, they\u2019re tough.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They\u2019ve got good surf style too.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re not skateboarding, what are you doing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right now, I have a full time job where I do stained glass restoration, so my days are basically doing that ten hours a day. When I have time off, I\u2019m doing Stronghold Society non-profit work, doing interviews for Juice and working on Wounded Knee Skateboards and getting decks to the kids out at Pine Ridge. I skate on the weekends when I\u2019m not working and travel and hang out with friends and do a little snowboarding when the snow hits. I go to gigs. I go to a Pearl Jam gig or two and check out guys kicking ass.<\/p>\n

With the stain-glass work, did you go to school to study that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. After I was pro in the \u201880s, skateboarding completely died and we all got kicked off our teams because we weren\u2019t street skaters. My ex-wife worked at Elektra Records back in the early \u201890s. That\u2019s when skateboarding started to die and then she got transferred to Charlotte, NC. So I\u2019m down there, ex-pro skater, and I really didn\u2019t know what I was going to do because I was broke and skateboarding wasn\u2019t happening. I needed work and this guy said, \u201cAre you afraid of heights?\u201d I said, \u201cHell no, what do ya got?\u201d He said, \u201cDo you think you can take this window out with me?\u201d I said, \u201cSure.\u201d So he took me to this huge church up to this scaffolding and we took the window out and then he taught me how to cut and build windows. Then we moved to Boston with Elektra, and I did the same thing up there. It became a skill that I got paid pretty good to do. The whole time I was skating, it was something that paid the bills. Eventually, when we came back to New York City, I hooked up with a high-end studio and we work at The Met at the Cloisters. We do all these high-end museums and cathedrals across the country. It was a new kind of career, and it was cool. I\u2019m still doing it today, since 1996.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s so rad. There are so many churches in New York City too. You can\u2019t drive two blocks without seeing a giant gothic cathedral.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We do all the Sotheby\u2019s art auctions too. We do the tiffany windows and high-end stained glass lamps. They contact us to do the repairs to get them ready for the shows, so I\u2019m constantly busy. I\u2019ve had that solid work since \u201996, and I\u2019ve just been living in New York City. In \u201998, I hooked up with Kessler and we started Wounded Knee Skateboards. We wanted to do something for the boys because everything was popsicle sticks. It was like, \u201cScrew this. We have to make some big boards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where did Wounded Knee come from?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s funny. I don\u2019t know if you ever met Kessler, but he had a pretty good sense of humor. We were up at 108 Street and we\u2019d just built this metal park, and we were trying to come up with a hardcore name for a company. We were talking about how we were all banged up. We\u2019re vert skaters. We\u2019re old and we\u2019re all banged up. Kessler looked at me, and he giggles, \u201cWhy don\u2019t we call it Wounded Knee?\u201d It was a play on words for a hurt knee. He wasn\u2019t even thinking about South Dakota. I was like, \u201cWhoa, man. That\u2019s a cool name, but it\u2019s a heavy-duty name. If we\u2019re going to use that name, it\u2019s got to be about that massacre that happened in South Dakota, and we could do something with Native graphics and basically educate kids.\u201d Kessler was down with that, so we talked to a lot of people about it. They said, \u201cThat sounds cool. Go for it.\u201d So we hooked up with an artist and got some Native graphics going, and the rest is history. Andy and I were completely conscious about using the name, Wounded Knee, and we would sit around and say, \u201cIn using this name, we definitely want to give back to those people in memory of those that died at Wounded Knee.\u201d We never knew if we could pull it off, but we thought it would be cool if, someday, we could get some skateparks built out there on the reservations, because skateboarding did for me, the same thing it did for Kessler – it saved our lives. Back in \u201998, no one made vert skateboards. They thought what we were doing was cool, but no one was buying it and we weren\u2019t selling a lot, but we just kept doing it. We never thought that we would be able to afford to do anything, as far as building a concrete skatepark. We just always kept that in our heads as a cool fantasy.<\/p>\n

When was your first connection to the people in South Dakota?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2005, someone told me there was a gathering in the Black Hills and Arvol Looking Horse, the Holder of the Sacred Pipe, was going to be there. I was like, \u201cI can\u2019t keep doing this company without making a connection to the people and I\u2019m still not sure that it\u2019s cool that we use this heavy duty name.\u201d I just decided to go out there and meet Arvol Looking Horse and ask him if he thought I was doing anything disrespectful. I just wanted him to know what I was doing. So I went out there and asked him. He said, \u201cIt seems like you have a good heart and what you\u2019re doing is good. We need help with our kids, so keep doing what you\u2019re doing and keep your word to what you\u2019re saying here today.\u201d He made me get up in front of this huge group of people that he was giving a speech to. He said, \u201cYou have to go up and talk to these people.\u201d It was crazy. I got up there and told people my story, and two hours later, we just did a beeline right to the Wounded Knee gravesite. I brought a bunch of boards and t-shirts and we went right to the site. They were having a cookout out because it was summer solstice, so all these kids were there. We gave them skateboards and shirts and then the kids took me by the hand up to the Wounded Knee gravesite and told me the whole history of what happened to their people. We\u2019re talking kids that are 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, and they were totally schooling me on what was going on. I saw the whole skateboarding thing and the looks on the kid\u2019s faces and the looks on the parents\u2019 faces and how happy they were that someone cared enough to hook their kids up. It was mind-blowing. I had no idea what to expect going out to the reservation. I knew it was going to be heavy, but from then on, I\u2019ve been working hard out there to get something going.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s amazing how it all stemmed from you and Kessler just standing on the ramp and talking about what you were going to call your company.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It came from the fact that it\u2019s skateboarding. Kessler was a recovering addict, and he was helping friends get through drugs and addictions. For him, skateboarding literally saved his life and he knew this could help all those kids out there. Hats off to Kessler. He\u2019s not around anymore.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s around.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. He had a big heart. I just wish he could still be here today to see what went down out there.<\/p>\n

Yeah. You wish he could have rolled around in that bowl.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know.<\/p>\n

You just have to pull a Kess move every time you go there.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. You have to do a slash grind and call somebody a pussy if they\u2019re not grinding. He was good like that.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Was he friends with Sean Mclean?<\/strong><\/p>\n

He probably met Sean Mclean.<\/p>\n

Sean has that same thing going on. It\u2019s that East Coast thing, like \u2018Don\u2019t be a pussy.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Totally. That\u2019s the Boston attitude.<\/p>\n

\u2018I want to see that kingpin sparkin\u2019 or get the hell out of the bowl.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hell yeah. Total attitude. Get up on there and take the copers off and grind those Independent Trucks.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] So you\u2019re talking about giving these kids a chance and giving back. When you started skating in New Jersey, was there an older guy that kind of took you under his wing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a pretty cool scene. I was pretty isolated because I had moved around so much. By the time I got to Jersey, I had moved at least eight times from different Navy bases. Then my dad was a traveling salesman after getting out of the Navy. When I finally got to Jersey, it was all about trying to make some friends and I was a skateboarder, so it was really punk. I heard about these guys who had a ramp over at Fort Monmouth on the army base. I pull up there and it was Jef Hartsel, Steve Herring and Brad Constable. They had the Army build them a halfpipe. Those guys had shaved heads and they were wearing homemade Sex Pistols t-shirts and I pulled up on my BMX bike. I probably rode about ten miles to get there and those guys were totally cool and open to me, and that became my family. I just wanted to skate.<\/p>\n

What year was that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was \u201978 or \u201879. Those guys were so punk. We\u2019re talking punk when it was totally uncool to be punk. If you showed up to school wearing something punk rock, you were going to get beaten up or in a fight. Those guys just opened my world, and that\u2019s where I first saw Skateboarder. Those guys told me about Cherry Hill and we road tripped to Cherry Hill and then we met Groholski. All of a sudden, this killer New Jersey family got together and we\u2019re all skating Cherry Hill. We were taking three-hour bus rides just to get to Cherry Hill on the weekends. It was that camaraderie that blew me away. I\u2019d go to high school and I did not have that camaraderie at all. I was heckled for being a skateboarder and listening to weird music, and I was called all kinds of names for doing that. You probably experienced the same thing to where you were just an outcast but you didn\u2019t care. It\u2019s like, \u201cWhatever. We\u2019re skateboarders.\u201d<\/p>\n

That can be empowering too, especially if you\u2019re a kid that\u2019s looking for an identity or some individualistic thing. I think only certain kids have that, like skaters and punk rockers, and people attach themselves to that. For me, I wanted to do my own thing, even though it was pretty easy in a little town. I sort of liked being heckled. I appreciated it. I was like, \u201cYeah, I\u2019m not you, asshole!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Laughs] Yeah. Would people freak out listening to the punk rock that you listened to? People in my world were like, \u201cWhat the hell is this crap?\u201d Everyone was listening to Zeppelin and stuff and we\u2019d come out with Fear and some Circle Jerks or Black Flag punk rock. People were looking at us like, \u201cWhat the hell is this?\u201d Did you do the punk rock look and get the shaved head or Mohawk going?<\/p>\n

You know, it\u2019s crazy. In the town that I was in, it was so small that there weren\u2019t any cliques. I was already playing basketball and football and there were only 800 people in my town. So we were just doing it because we were bored and we just wanted to hang out with our buddies. At the same time, I had a ramp in my yard. I built my first ramp in \u201977, so I\u2019d come home from football practice and ride my ramp for three hours. That\u2019s just what I did. Nobody really gave me any crap about it. By the time I was in junior high school, we were listening to the Sex Pistols and The Buzzcocks in the back of the football bus. We might have been one of the only football teams in the country that was listening to that sort of music. We were also listening to AC\/DC and that kind of stuff, and there wasn\u2019t a whole lot of difference when you put those things back to back. It was all heavy music.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was hard rockin\u2019.<\/p>\n

Yeah. My senior year, I got my whole basketball team to shave our heads. Our coach\u2019s nickname was Chico, so we made these shirts that said \u201cChico Punk\u201d on it and I drew this picture of him and put a safety pin through his face.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nice.<\/p>\n

We sold like 150 shirts in this town of 800 people, so one out of every five people in this town had this purple Chico Punk t-shirt. By the third game that we sold the shirts, the whole gym was covered with people wearing these shirts. I was like, \u201cOh my God, I pulled off the biggest caper this town has ever seen. This is insane.\u201d [Laughs]<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Laughs] That\u2019s bizarre. With all the traveling you\u2019ve done around the world, being in a town like yours and not be getting into fistfights over that stuff is just bizarre.<\/p>\n

That came when I went to college. In college, you find your handful of bros and everywhere you go, people are yelling and throwing shit at you, and that\u2019s when we started fighting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Were you following punk rock and skateboarding in Skateboarder, like we were?<\/p>\n

Oh yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019d see Devo in there and then on Saturday Night Live you\u2019d see the B-52\u2019s and you\u2019d be like, \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

Remember that show \u201cFridays\u201d? I was totally into that. This was a time when magazines ruled the day. I also subscribed to Creem magazine, which had punk rock. That\u2019s how I ordered the first Black Flag and the first Minutemen single. They had a little ad in Creem magazine. It was a way smaller world then. Everything took three weeks to get to you. If you ordered a skateboard from Val Surf, it took forever to get it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Laughs] Yeah, man. Do you remember when things turned to Action Now, and there were photos of a chick on a horse jumping a rock.<\/p>\n

Yeah. I didn\u2019t know what was going on. Our world wasn\u2019t California, but I\u2019d been to California, so I looked at that magazine and it made me mad because we didn\u2019t have girls that were that hot or beaches or access to BMX tracks or any of that stuff. I just put all my apples in one basket, and that was this ramp I had in my yard. The fact that they were doing other sports, I was like, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d That\u2019s when I tuned out a little bit. The next few years I\u2019d buy a Thrasher magazine, once in a while, but I didn\u2019t really buy magazines that much then.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So you weren\u2019t in there when Thrasher came out?<\/p>\n

Yeah. I have until about \u201984, where I bought Thrasher here and there, but I moved to Seattle in \u201983, so I didn\u2019t have the money to spend on magazines. I had a Caster Tom Inouye board that I just kept chopping down. It was probably only 26 inches long and barely had a kicktail. It had the Sims street wheels. That was my board until I saved some money, by the end of \u201984, and I got a Blender.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Was it a G&S purple metal flake Blender?<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t metal flake, but it was lavender with the guy falling off the building.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was sick. I loved the shape of that board.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the first time I skated big ramps around Seattle. I skated with Hubbard, but those guys were like little kids. There was Tom Peha and Ryan Monihan, who ended up being a New York boy. Wez Lundry was there.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Was Red on the scene?<\/p>\n

No, Red was in Oregon. It\u2019s crazy to think that all those guys were little kids, all the guys that ended up becoming the big Seattle rippers in the \u201880s. When I met them, they were all 14, like Mike Ranquet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I just skated with Wez. He was up at Attleboro.<\/p>\n

Oh wow. Where is he living now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u2019s in between Arizona and Massachusetts because his girl\u2019s family lives up there. Sounds like he\u2019s back and forth. Wez Lundry and Davey Rogers were up there and we skated Attleboro. It\u2019s a small world. He was killing it. He was ripping doing boneless ones to tail and grinding the hell out of the ramp. It was sick.<\/p>\n

What is the future of Wounded Knee? What\u2019s next for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right now we\u2019re just trying to build up and stay strong so we can keep supplying these kids on the reservations with quality boards and help finish off the Pine Ridge Skatepark, that you helped hook up big time. Thank you, Jeff.<\/p>\n

Yeah, man.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What we\u2019re trying to do with the skateboard company is to continue to educate people, inspire people and just get big enough, so we can give every kid on the reservation a skateboard.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s great.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We just want to keep doing our Stronghold Society non-profit and just keep working with these communities to get these concrete skateparks built. I just try to instill in everybody that we need to get these kids quality boards, good trucks and good wheels and just make sure these kids are staying focused and having fun. That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about.<\/p>\n

How did you hook up with Walt?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I was working with an organization down in Albuquerque. We were doing the All Nations Skate Jam and Walt hit me up. He saw that I was using Wounded Knee and he\u2019s from Pine Ridge. He grew up out there. He said, \u201cHey, man, what are you doing with this name, Wounded Knee? It\u2019s pretty interesting.\u201d So I called him up and we talked. At that time, I was frustrated because I wasn\u2019t able to make the right connections in Pine Ridge to get a skatepark built. I was hitting dead ends left and right. Walt helped me and we found the right path to get something done. Walt was great and his family took me out to the reservation and, eventually, we found a spot where we could build that first park. It was cool. Walt grew up out there and he knew the whole nine yards. He was a skateboarder and he knew about the struggles on the reservations because he grew up around all that gnarly shit. He knew exactly what we needed to do to secure that first skatepark.<\/p>\n

We have to get Walt back on a board.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. I know. He went and skated Mott\u2019s pool, and he slammed so hard that he kind of swore it off. I don\u2019t know if he knocked himself out, but he flipped over or something. Mott\u2019s pool took him out.<\/p>\n

That thing looks kind of mellow, but that deep end is no joke. It\u2019s a gnarly backyarder style deep end.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. You better know what you\u2019re doing when you come down that waterfall.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all tight trannies. It\u2019s a tight wall.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love that thing. That thing is fun.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really unique. It\u2019s not like anything I\u2019ve ever skated. It\u2019s pretty cool.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s just great to grind. It\u2019s not about doing tricks. Just get up there and grind the hell out of it. With all the skating you\u2019ve done, when you go to Denver, what\u2019s your reaction when you see how big skateboarding is getting with all the concrete parks?<\/p>\n

Well, you know what\u2019s funny. Colorado is in the third wave. They had their first wave in the \u201870s. They were building parks right after Burnside started. They built parks in Ft. Collins and Crested Butte and some of those places in the late \u201890s. Then they sort of fell off and they didn\u2019t have much going on for awhile and then, three or four years ago, it just started blowing up again with Team Pain building stuff. They quickly went from being the third or fourth best company to now, you could argue that they\u2019re even with Grindline and Dreamland in terms of quality and unique designs. Skateboarders are building stuff and they care. They know the history and they know design. That Arvada park is one of the craziest things I\u2019ve ever seen in my life. How do you get $2,000,000 to build this skatepark? That is crazy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. Just when you think that skateboarding is going to level off, and they\u2019re not going to build any more parks, you see Denver getting park after park. You\u2019re up in Missoula and you\u2019re starting to help build parks on the reservations up there. How do you think this will be able to sustain itself? Do you think building all these parks will keep growing skateboarding or will it level off and fall?<\/p>\n

I had someone tell me a few years ago that because snowboarding is here to stay, there will always be skateboarders that want to ride tranny, and there\u2019s always going to be guys that want to roll around. I think because the lower middle class is growing right now, skateboarding is always going to be there too because it\u2019s a pretty cheap thing to get into. If you can scrounge up $100, you can have a blast for a year. You can ride the shit out of that thing for a year, if you\u2019re not stupid and focusing your board every two seconds.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Laughs] Yeah.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what it was for me growing up. I would make the wood last for a year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Duct tape and shoe goo, right?<\/p>\n

Right. You\u2019d wear down the tailbone and then you\u2019d throw epoxy on the nose. You\u2019d do whatever you had to do. Paint it and make it look like it was new.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a question for you that people ask me. When I tell them that the bass player for Pearl Jam helped us build this skatepark on the reservation, it takes a while for them to get it. People don\u2019t understand why you\u2019d do that. I\u2019m like, \u201cHe\u2019s a skateboarder.\u201d They\u2019re like, \u201cI don\u2019t get it. Why on Native land?\u201d What would you tell people? Obviously, where you grew up in Montana, you were exposed to some reservation life. What inspired you to build on the reservations?<\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t think it is race specific for me. I think it\u2019s more kids that are isolated and faced with alcoholism in epic proportions. The Native people, the numbers are horrific in terms of suicide. I witnessed the same thing growing up in a small town in Montana and being ten miles from the Chippewa-Cree Reservation and we had the Flathead Indian Reservation. I mostly saw kids that were bored and they\u2019re kids, so they\u2019re hyperactive. They have things they need to work through, and skateboarding is just one of those things. If you learn how to roll around and you learn how to toughen up and fall a few times, and you work through that whole process, it\u2019s so empowering. You try it a few times and then one night you finally make the move you\u2019ve been working on and it\u2019s like, \u201cWhoa. I\u2019m kind of doing that thing that I saw in the magazine.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

If that hits you at the right age, it can turn into anything. That little teeny bit of self-esteem that you created, you didn\u2019t get it from anybody else. If you figure how to do that at an early age, it will last a lifetime. There\u2019s nothing that can hold you back.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you were young, did you go out on the reservation and interact with any of the kids?<\/p>\n

Oh, yeah. Starting in fifth grade, when I was playing basketball, we played the two towns up on the Chippewa-Cree reservation. There\u2019s Box Elder and Rocky Boy and we played both of those schools. I ended up being friends with a bunch of those kids, and they\u2019d have a pow-wow every year and we\u2019d go up and hang out at the pow-wow and play basketball. To me, they were just kids that liked to play basketball. They were kids that were the same as me. The only place that I got the prejudices from was from the older adults, and I was already leery of them, so I didn\u2019t really buy into it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Would they vibe you when you were on the reservation with their kids?<\/p>\n

It was both ways. You\u2019d get vibed by the older people there and then you\u2019d come back and if you said something about being on the reservation, you\u2019d get vibed here. People in your town or somebody\u2019s parents would say something derogatory.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know from talking to the people at Pine Ridge, they say the racism they face when they go off the reservation is similar to Mississippi-style racism. Was it the same way where you grew up?<\/p>\n

From the stories I always heard, it was more to do with welfare and jealously over welfare. It was like, \u201cWhy are we paying taxes to support those people?\u201d It always came down to that. You\u2019d hear people say, \u201cI make half of the amount of money that person makes on welfare.\u201d I lived in a really poor community and there were a handful of big farmers that made money and everyone else was struggling. My dad was making $15,000 in 1980 with five kids and that\u2019s poverty, basically. It\u2019s just small town jealousy and not understanding the big picture. They\u2019re just seeing what they\u2019re seeing and they\u2019re frustrated by it. My dad was friends with a ton of those families. My dad was a barber and they all came in to get haircuts from him and they\u2019d have frank conversations about things. It was great to have my dad to look to for that because he had a really positive take on the whole thing. For me, I want to help kids in those areas and it\u2019s not just on the reservations. You can finds kids like that anywhere. What better place than Pine Ridge, which is in the middle of South Dakota, in the middle of America? The closest city is Denver, which is seven hours away. It\u2019s a hard place to get to and, in the winter, it is brutal. You want people in those areas to have something to look forward to, you know?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Talk to us about the first reservation park you helped build at Saint Ignatius. How did that come about? At what point in your life were you like, \u201cI want to help build a skatepark on a reservation?<\/p>\n

That was because this lady, Kristie Nerby, and her husband had two kids that liked to skateboard in their driveway. She got it into her head when she realized that there were a handful of kids that skateboarded and she saw that they were starting to build parks around the state. They had just built our park in Missoula, and she wanted some version of that. She got a few people involved, like Chris Bacon and Ross and the guys that I worked with to help get the Missoula park built. They were on board from the very beginning. That\u2019s usually what you need. You need one person with the enthusiasm to get it done. That\u2019s all it takes. If that person goes around and talks to 100 people, you\u2019re going to get 50 of those people to donate because it\u2019s going to be infectious. Most people want to help kids, so it\u2019s a pretty easy sell.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Did you go to a tribal council meeting?<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t, but she did. That was about 40 miles north of Missoula. Once they said they\u2019d been talking to Dreamland and they were going to build a pool, I was like, \u201cI\u2019m in. I\u2019ll buy the pool block for it.\u201d I tried to do things to make it unique and a little bit better.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nice.<\/p>\n

There are all kinds of places around the state and sometimes it\u2019s hard. You have to go and do what you did and get up in front of the tribe and tell them what you want to do. You have to make sure they know that you don\u2019t want anything back, because people are leery. They\u2019re like, \u201cWhat are you getting out of this?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cNothing. I just want to go skateboarding.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, you\u2019re a skater. You want to skate it too. What was the reaction? Did you have any of the elders or the Indian families come up to you and ask you questions or say good stuff to you? What were the reactions?<\/p>\n

Yeah. For the grand opening, you sent us a bunch of boards and Bones sent us tons of wheels. Shrewgy sent me a bunch of trucks and we had a sticker toss and the whole thing. Basically, you\u2019d see a little kid rolling around on a Walmart board and you\u2019d go over to him and give him a whole new set up. Maybe you\u2019d help him put it together, so he could pick up on how it worked. Then if something actually breaks or goes wrong, he knows he needs a wrench and all that stuff. There were tons of people that came up to us that day that thought it was so rad. They couldn\u2019t believe it happened in their little town of only 1,200 people. I have a sense of pride with that, because that\u2019s the sort of town that I grew up in. I\u2019m like, \u201cWhat if someone would have come to our town and built a skatepark? That would have been mind-blowing.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Laughs] Heck yeah. Do you see things evolving now at that park and are you seeing more generations of kids continue to skate?<\/p>\n

Yeah. There is never not a handful of kids there skating. We go up to Flathead Lake all the time, so we stop by there and there are all these kids there. There are at least six or seven kids that are just flat out rippers. We\u2019ll get you out there. We should just pencil it in for next summer and we\u2019ll try to get some things going with the Blackfoot and try to get things moving.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d be honored to go out there. I want to check out the Montana scene. It\u2019d be killer.<\/p>\n

FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, ORDER ISSUE #73 AT THE JUICE SHOP\u2026<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"DUTYNOW-JIMMURPHY1-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE: JIM MURPHY INTERVIEW by JEFF AMENT PHOTOS BY JONATHAN MEHRING Jim Murphy is 100% East Coast ripper.\u00a0A true gentleman with a big heart, an artist who paints with his pick and shovel, a humanitarian who backs it up with action and a skater who rolls with g-narly commitment and passion.\u00a0If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56519,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4032,4027,4028,4041],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duty-now","category-featured","category-interviews","category-skate-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/DUTYNOW-JIMMURPHY1-2.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56518","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=56518"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62639,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56518\/revisions\/62639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}