{"id":7909,"date":"2010-05-01T02:38:38","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T02:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/?p=7909"},"modified":"2022-06-07T22:26:15","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T05:26:15","slug":"chris-haslam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/chris-haslam\/","title":{"rendered":"CHRIS HASLAM"},"content":{"rendered":"

INTERVIEW BY STEVE OLSON<\/strong>
\nINTRODUCTION BY STEVE OLSON<\/strong>
\nPHOTOS BY ALEXEY LAPIN AND SERGIO ALVAREZ<\/strong><\/p>\n

The apple, the wizard, the beard…The tricks, the travel, the doubt by others…Fuck \u2018em I say. When you\u2019re right, you\u2019re right…The only way to do anything is the best one can. Here it is again, one that makes it happen for one\u2019s own beliefs, and proves the doubters wrong again… It gets kind of old; the idiots that have no sight of the future, or the talent that\u2019s so obvious. This will always be the case, but will always be proven wrong… Mr. Haslam has, and always will be the one that has nothing to prove… Already it\u2019s known, not many do what he can do, just a select few…Ride on Son of the Sword…. Roll on, and take as many prisoners as possible…<\/p>\n

\n

“I WANT TO SKATE FOREVER BECAUSE SKATEBOARDING CHANGED MY LIFE. YOU CAN\u2019T JUST LEAVE SOMETHING LIKE THAT.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hey, Chris.<\/strong>
\nHi, Steven.<\/p>\n

Hi, Christopher. Right now I have security at my doorstep. They were watching me while I was talking to a guy on a flight from Dallas to Vancouver. I wanted to go through the x-ray machines and they wanted to pat me down.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] Yeah. That security is kind of crazy.<\/p>\n

The last time I went to Canada for the Machotaildrop thing, I didn\u2019t have a work visa and they threw me right into that secondary line. I was like, \u201cOh, God.\u201d I was sweating because it was so hot in there. Everyone else was totally calm and dry and I\u2019m beading up with sweat.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] That\u2019s because you\u2019re in peak physical condition. I hear you sweat more when you\u2019re in peak physical condition.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Settle down. So I\u2019m sweating because I have on a jacket and you can see them watching me like, \u201cWe\u2019ve got a hot one.\u201d The lady said, \u201cWhy are you coming to Vancouver?\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m here to take a skateboard photo.\u201d She said, \u201cCouldn\u2019t you come up with something better than that?\u201d<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] It\u2019s the physical appearance. You should have told her you were there for Machotaildrop and see if she would have understood what that meant.<\/p>\n

She would have been like, \u201cWhat is that code for? Drop the bomb?\u201d I told her to check it out. She said, \u201cWhere is your skateboard?\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m using one of\u2026 the company\u2019s skateboards.\u201d<\/strong>
\nYou paused. That\u2019s the first thing they see when you\u2019re lying. You can\u2019t pause. There is no pausing in skateboarding. Were you super confident?<\/p>\n

I was getting into that country without a doubt. Then she turns away and she\u2019s looking at something. I said, \u201cC\u2019mon. Just let me in. I just want to get in and get out.\u201d She goes, \u201cHey, Bulky.\u201d I said, \u201cAre you out of your mind?\u201d She was laughing at me. She said, \u201cIs that your nickname?\u201d I said, \u201cWhatever.\u201d She said, \u201cThat\u2019s what it says right here.\u201d She turns her computer screen and she\u2019s got this interview pulled up on the computer. I said, \u201cSee those skateboarding photos?\u201d She laughs, \u201cYes, Bulky.\u201d<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] I got the Russian guy that didn\u2019t want me to go through the x-ray machine. He wanted to pat me down 50 times.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] It\u2019s weird. The first time I went to Canada, when I was 16, it was the same. I go there and had no idea why. Someone said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to Canada. Get on this plane. You only need your license.\u201d So I got on this plane and they ask what I\u2019m doing coming to Canada and I say, \u201cGood question.\u201d<\/strong>
\nGood answer.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t really know and I didn\u2019t want to be there. The guy was like, \u201cOh, no. You\u2019re not coming into Canada.\u201d I was like, \u201cGood. Put me on the next flight home. I didn\u2019t want to come here anyway. I don\u2019t even know why I\u2019m here. I\u2019m not lying to you.\u201d He said, \u201cYou have a bad attitude, son.\u201d I said, \u201cYeah, I do, and you have a bad job. It\u2019s not my fault that you\u2019re miserable. Don\u2019t take it out on me. I just wanted to come here and skateboard for the kids. It\u2019s all about the kids.\u201d<\/strong>
\nThat\u2019s a good angle.<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cThe kids are going to be disappointed, man.\u201d Anyway.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] Was that when you went on the Indy trip with us?<\/p>\n

Yeah. It was just to realize that I never want to do that again. Wait a minute though. Why were we on the Indy trip if they wouldn\u2019t even take us to dinner?<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] It\u2019s because we were skating for the kids. The kids don\u2019t need to see us eating.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] No, but if we don\u2019t have any energy, we can\u2019t perform for the kids.<\/strong>
\nWe have to be like camels with our food. Remember that steak Grosso ate. I think he ate the whole thing. It was like the leg of an elephant.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Right. Okay, now we\u2019re going to do your interview.<\/strong>
\nOkay.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get too serious though. You\u2019re already too serious.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] I paused.<\/p>\n

It was a dead giveaway.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs]<\/p>\n

I need to inform you that I\u2019m drunk too.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] Well, I could have assumed that.<\/p>\n

So where did you grow up?<\/strong>
\nHalf of it was in southern London, Ontario, and the other half was in Singapore. I don\u2019t know at what age you\u2019re considered a grown-up. Is it 18?<\/p>\n

Well, yeah. I guess.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] I was 16 in dog years. When I was 17, I moved to Vancouver. Basically, I grew up in Ontario and Singapore.<\/p>\n

Why were you in Singapore?<\/strong>
\nWhen we were in southern Ontario, my dad was working at the university there. He wanted to move, I guess. One of his friends went to Singapore and told him how great it was, so my dad got a job at the University of Singapore. That\u2019s when we moved.<\/p>\n

What did he do at the university?<\/strong>
\nHe does kinesiology, sports stuff. When I heard we were leaving, I was at a track and field meet, in eighth grade. It was raining that day so I wore gumboots. I was trying to run in gumboots, and I was bummed because I lost everything.<\/p>\n

What were you doing?<\/strong>
\nI was doing high jumps and triple jumps. I choked so hard and didn\u2019t get any medals. I went home and they told me we were moving. I was like, \u201cOh, great.\u201d I got super bummed.<\/p>\n

You were a track and field dude?<\/strong>
\nWell, no. In eighth grade, you do everything. I don\u2019t know if you can remember grade eight. Can you remember that far?<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Yeah. I did high jumps too, in grade eight, bitch.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] We should have a reunion and see if we can still do them.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Oh, sure. I can\u2019t even jump six feet now. Did you do the roll or the flop?<\/strong>
\nI did the flop.<\/p>\n

Of course. Who were the cats that you liked that were high jumpers?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t know. I didn\u2019t know anybody. I just did it because I thought we were supposed to. I didn\u2019t know we could choose. They wanted me to run, but I was wearing these gumboots and everyone was making fun of me.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Why were you wearing gumboots?<\/strong>
\nWell, it was raining at the beginning of the day, so I was thinking they weren\u2019t going to have the track meet that day. Sure enough, it was like a desert when it was time for the track meet. I just went for it with my gumboots on.<\/p>\n

How high did you jump?<\/strong>
\nI can\u2019t even remember. I just remember I was wearing gumboots. You probably skate in gumboots.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t even know what gumboots are.<\/strong>
\nWhat do you mean you don\u2019t know what gumboots are? Didn\u2019t you go to school?<\/p>\n

Yeah. I went to school.<\/strong>
\nGumboots are those boots that gardeners wear so they don\u2019t get their feet too muddy when they step in puddles.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Ok. When did you start skateboarding?<\/strong>
\nI got my first board on November 22, 1994. It was my brother\u2019s birthday. He got one and I got one on the same day. It just went from there.<\/p>\n

What brought you into skateboarding? Was it the skateboard or were there people skateboarding around you?<\/strong>
\nThere was one guy that skated in Singapore. He was this French dude. He lived in our neighborhood, but he went to a different school. We\u2019d see him skating around. He had the meanest mongo push of all time, and he could only do heelflips.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] So that\u2019s where you learned it. I remember seeing you push mongo all around England. What kind of skateboard was it?<\/strong>
\nIt was a Santa Cruz. My brother had bridge bolts on his. I was bummed out that I couldn\u2019t get them, but then I realized that they were terrible.<\/p>\n

So you were stoked at the end.<\/strong>
\nYeah. I was good. My brother got a Real board with the San Francisco city skyline on it. That was the sickest thing ever.<\/p>\n

How old were you?<\/strong>
\nI was 13.<\/p>\n

So you were just skating around Singapore? Did you think it was cool?<\/strong>
\nYeah. There wasn\u2019t really any scene there. There was one guy that had a shop there that he opened in the \u201880s, so we just skated in front of his shop. There were times when there were five or six kids out there.<\/p>\n

[Squeak…]<\/strong>
\nWere you just farting?<\/p>\n

[Laughs] No, that was the door shutting. I wish I had that kind of pronunciation through my butthole.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] Maybe I will after eating all of that meat in the casino.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Wait a minute. Do you eat meat? I thought you were just a vegetarian weirdo.<\/strong>
\nI eat meat. You never pay attention to what I eat, Steven.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] All I know is you were eating apples whenever you could on that tour. It was like, \u201cLook. Haslam has another apple.\u201d<\/strong>
\nActually, when the Russian guy was patting me down, I had a banana in my coat pocket, and he pulled it out.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Oh, that freaked him out.<\/strong>
\nYeah. So we just skated around the local shop in Singapore. The shop owner wouldn\u2019t even sponsor me. My brother and I were the only white dudes skating. The other guys would come and go, but we were always there. Finally, I asked him if I could get sponsored and he said no. He sponsored this other Malaysian dude I skated with all the time. We were at the same skill level, but the shop owner said no. That was me getting used to my first denial in asking for sponsors.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] That was your introduction to rejection.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] Yeah. It went on through today.<\/p>\n

Yeah, but you have your own truck on Indy. That\u2019s ill.<\/strong>
\nI know. That is sick. I don\u2019t know what I did to deserve that. I\u2019m just psyched that it happened.<\/p>\n

In Singapore, did you watch skate videos to see what other people were doing around the world?<\/strong>
\nYeah. They were like three years behind in Singapore though. The first video I watched was Vanishing Point from Invisible Skateboards. Over in the States, Welcome to Hell was already out on Toy Machine. We were like 100 years behind, but I didn\u2019t know the difference because I was 14.<\/p>\n

Did you just fall in love with skateboarding?<\/strong>
\nYeah. I did a bunch of team sports, too. My dad was really heavy into soccer, so I played soccer all of the time. I played basketball in school. As soon as I started skating, I stopped everything else.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] What did your dad think of that?<\/strong>
\nMy dad blamed skating for me not being a professional soccer player. He was pretty good at soccer, but he chose to go to work instead of pursuing it. He blamed skating for me not being able to go into professional soccer and making a ton of money.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Yeah, but now is he stoked on your skateboarding?<\/strong>
\nYeah. When I first told him what was happening, he was bummed, and then two years ago he got really bummed because I was making more money at skateboarding than he was at work.<\/p>\n

Ouch. That hurts.<\/strong>
\nThen he got another job in Abu Dhabi and now he\u2019s kicking my ass three times over. Well, he\u2019s winning now, but, hopefully, I\u2019ll get ahead in a few years because he\u2019s close to retirement.<\/p>\n

When you skate, do you have a competitive edge from doing team sports as a kid?<\/strong>
\nI think that\u2019s always been in me. I think it\u2019s in every skater. Otherwise, you just fizzle away. I like the feeling of doing something that I\u2019ve never done before. You never do that without that drive, unless it\u2019s lucky.<\/p>\n

FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, ORDER ISSUE #67 BY CLICKING HERE…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

INTERVIEW BY STEVE OLSON INTRODUCTION BY STEVE OLSON PHOTOS BY ALEXEY LAPIN AND SERGIO ALVAREZ The apple, the wizard, the beard…The tricks, the travel, the doubt by others…Fuck \u2018em I say. When you\u2019re right, you\u2019re right…The only way to do anything is the best one can. Here it is again, one that makes it happen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7910,"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":[3544,14455,14255,6176,1863,14262,29,14362,14385,4383,4384],"class_list":["post-7909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","category-skate-2","tag-chris-haslam","tag-jeff-grosso","tag-juice-magazine","tag-juice-magazine-67","tag-machotaildrop","tag-skate","tag-skateboarding","tag-steve-olson","tag-toy-machine","tag-vanishing-point","tag-welcome-to-hell"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/haslam1-2.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909","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=7909"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89621,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909\/revisions\/89621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}