{"id":90654,"date":"2020-11-09T18:13:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T02:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/?p=90654"},"modified":"2022-07-10T21:00:18","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T04:00:18","slug":"brian-drake-interview-by-todd-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/brian-drake-interview-by-todd-johnson\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Drake Interview By Todd Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>BRIAN DRAKE Interview by&nbsp;TODD JOHNSON with PHOTOS by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/longwood_skarty\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/longwood_skarty\/\">@LONGWOOD_SKARTY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Paging Brian. You have a call on the courtesy phone. How are you doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: I\u2019m pretty good. Stoked to have a killer session yesterday on the ramps.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: I saw some pictures. You did a finger flip lien to tail over the channel.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yes. It\u2019s been about two years since I had that one.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Ok, this is your Juice interview. You\u2019ve been an avid reader of Juice since they were in Wilmington.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. Juice is definitely the raddest magazine out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: So when did you start skateboarding?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: It was probably \u201984 or \u201985 when I got a wider deck, big board. I learned to skateboard on one of those banana boards when I was 7 or 8, skating around the cul-de-sac we lived on.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: What was your first real board?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: It was a Sure-Grip Kilroy model from a roller-rink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Shut up. From the roller rink?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. There was a little shop for roller-skaters, but they had skateboards there too and I saw that one. One kid in our neighborhood had a JFA board and that was the first fat board that I had ever seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"648\" height=\"953\" src=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-835.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-90656\" srcset=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-835.jpg 648w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-835-204x300.jpg 204w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-835-614x903.jpg 614w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 648px) 100vw, 648px\" \/><figcaption>A big ol\u2019 Madonna over the channel to the inevitable wood tail smack on THE pool coping. Nothing like that sound ringing in your ear while you\u2019re on the platform.&nbsp;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Sure-Grip made roller skates, so that would be appropriate for them to be in the roller skate rink pro shop.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yes. It had Sure-Grip trucks and Sure-Grip wheels. It was pretty cheeseball, but it rode all right.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Where were you skating back in \u201984?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: We were just riding quarter pipes. It started with boards with a piece of luan. Actually, the quarter pipe was probably the first thing. It was two pieces of plywood with a little luan at the bottom to learn to pump on. We looked so stoked in the photos, but the ramp we skated was kinked all up.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Did you construct this ramp?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: I helped with it, but Jim Payne, my neighbor, his dad had carpentry skills, so he headed it up. We showed him photos and the ramp plans in Thrasher. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: You progressed rapidly. I first met you in \u201986, when I came down and skated with you guys on a vert ramp that was near your house, and you were holding your own. I\u2019m only a year older than you, but you were ripping it then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: I got into it pretty quick and we would skate every single day. We had that ramp in the backyard right across the street from my house. I remember being in high school and writing down six or seven tricks to learn and then I\u2019d go home that day and usually learn a lot of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: That\u2019s what separates you from all of the others, because nobody does that. Nobody learns six or seven tricks a day.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: [Laughs] Well, some of them would be a take off from a lien to tail and you had to learn Madonnas and crails and finger flips and every different variation you could. Then we built that ramp into a vert ramp. Did you ever skate the Clearwater ramp?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: I remember that I skated with Tony Simotis at the Dollhouse, but I don\u2019t remember the names of the ramps.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: The Clearwater ramp was a little north of St. Petersburg. You\u2019d have remembered it because, on one side, you\u2019d step off this little deck and you\u2019d be standing on the guy\u2019s roof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Oh, that sounds familiar.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: It had a solid two feet of vert on it, 16 foot wide. We went there when our ramp was still smaller and we saw this guy Ralph Holjes skating it. He was doing inverts and lien to tails and airs and our jaws were on the ground. We couldn\u2019t believe it so then we went back home and we tore our ramp down and built a 12-foot wide, maybe 9-foot tall with a foot and a half of vert ramp.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"648\" height=\"885\" src=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-833.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-90657\" srcset=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-833.jpg 648w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-833-220x300.jpg 220w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-833-614x839.jpg 614w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 648px) 100vw, 648px\" \/><figcaption>The gatherings AND EVENTS that Brian has at his ramp are legendary and fun. This huge backside air with the clouds gliding BY in the background with people relaxing in the grass lets ya know that everything is gonna be all right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Who is this guy Ralph?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Ralph Holjes was the local ripper in the area. He got hurt really bad at the concrete full pipes at Tampa. He smacked his head really hard and it almost killed him, I think. He came back from that and the doctors didn\u2019t want him skating anymore. He still skates a little bit now, but that dude ripped back in the day with killer style.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Were you aware of Grigley and the guys in St. Pete? Where were you growing up? I thought you were from St. Pete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: I was on the other side of St. Pete and those guys were five years older than me. It was like two ships passing in the night, so I missed that scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: You never got to go to the St. Pete ramp?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: No. It was already done when we started getting into it. We didn\u2019t know about it until it was done.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: How did you find out about it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Cleo Coney would skate the Suncoast ramp with us and he\u2019d tell us stories. Bruce Whiteside would tell us when Grigley was in town visiting his folks and we\u2019d get to skate with him on the mini ramp.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Okay. I skated Bruce\u2019s mini ramp.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: That thing was super fun.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Yeah. I can\u2019t believe you found out about St. Pete\u2019s just a couple of years too late.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: We were bummed like, \u201cThere used to be a big vert ramp around here and vert contests with pros?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Yeah. Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Monty Nolder, Rob Roskopp&#8230; I think Neil Blender won the first one.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: You didn\u2019t go to one of those did you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: No. I was too young. I had Kona, so I was happy. I couldn\u2019t drive yet, so I wasn\u2019t traveling. Those guys would come to St. Pete after Kona. There was a contest on New Years Day \u201984. They flew out from California. That didn\u2019t have anything to do with the Kona contest.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. We had just started skating, so we had no clue, which is crazy because stuff was in your own hometown. We had no clue it was going on. You\u2019d just read about it later and be like, \u201cOh, that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: So you skated and progressed and then&nbsp; you graduated high school in \u201989 and then what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: I was still 17, so I was living with my parents and they said I had to go to college. I called it 13th grade because it was the same people from my high school that went to St. Pete\u2019s Junior College. My dad talked me into going into Business Administration, which totally sucked and I ended up dropping out. That\u2019s when I moved to Daytona Beach to skate Stone Edge.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"648\" height=\"810\" src=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-834.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-90658\" srcset=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-834.jpg 648w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-834-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-834-614x768.jpg 614w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 648px) 100vw, 648px\" \/><figcaption>Slob plants are at their best when you\u2019re stretching them over a channel, which keeps you honest on the landing. the payoff of a huge smile is worth the effort! Drake boosts one WITH STYLE.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Let me ask you this. Who is administrating your business now? You are, so props to dad.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. I had to erase the hard drive they taught me in 13th grade for that though. [Laughs]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: When you were 17, you realized that you wanted to keep skating.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. There was a freshly built skatepark in Daytona. Stone Edge went up and I skated that Lake Helen ramp on the way over there. I think I\u2019d been to Stone Edge once before I moved out there.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Stone Edge was the skate mecca. Who do you remember skating with there?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: You never knew who was going to show up. There were different skate tours coming through and we skated with everyone that came through, like Remy Stratton, Peter Hewitt, Sean Andrews, you and Barry Floyd. There were tons of Florida guys like Bob Umbel and DR Bono and all the guys from down south and Frazier and the Tampa people, like Brian Schaefer.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Mark Lake. Monty Nolder. Blaize Blouin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. I got to skate with Tom Groholski all the time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Mike Frazier. Rob Mertz.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Greg Hiler. The locals killed it \u2013 the Glug crew.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Yeah. I was skating Rodney\u2019s ramp last year and there was this little kid. His dad might have been co-owner and he still skates a little bit and he stayed friends with Phil Hajal. I skated with his kid last year. He grew up at Stone Edge.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Garrett was a little blond kid back in the day. He\u2019d have his whole gang of kids. They\u2019d come through and hit &nbsp; everything in the park. It was awesome.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: We can\u2019t forget about Adam Luxford.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Oh, man, yeah. You definitely can\u2019t forget that dude. He destroyed everything at that park. There was Team Steam and all those guys, like Captain John. Chris Hawkins skated switch just as good as he skated normal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Are you talking about the Silver Surfer, Steve Silver? Jeff Thrush. Vinton Pacetti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. Ol, Vinnie. He\u2019s got 187 now. Where did you and I skate together the first time? Was it the Suncoast ramp?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Yeah. I have a memory of being at a ramp across the street from your house. Tony Simotis and Brett Applefield introduced me to you in \u201986. Then we skated together a bunch at Stone Edge, but every time I tried talking to you, your buddy, Matt, would not let me talk to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE:&nbsp; [Laughs] What\u2019s up with that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: I don\u2019t know. Why don\u2019t you tell us about Matt and how you guys met?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: We knew each other from skating Leonard Trubia\u2019s ramp. That was Mike Frazier\u2019s local ramp. Brian Schaefer had a ramp in Brandon, Florida that was nice too.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Leonard had his own ramp?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. It was in his backyard right next to a lake. Your board could shoot off and go into the lake. Rob Mertz and Ken Sigafoos would come down to Florida every winter and skate all our local ramps. Those were some of the first power skaters that I was able to skate with and see how to stall an invert and how to smack your tail on a lien to tail and put power into everything.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: What are your memories of first seeing Rob Mertz and Ken Sigafoos?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: They pulled up on the side of our ramp in that blue van they were living in and it was stacked full of gear. Mertz was riding for Santa Cruz at the time, so he had all the Santa Cruz wheels and boards and griptape and Indy Trucks. They piled out of that van and completely destroyed our ramp. They just completely shook that thing. We had never seen stalled inverts like that. We had to bang the nails back into the ramp after those guys were done skating it. [Laughs] It was awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: How did they find the ramp?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: They were linked up with Tony Simotis. Rob Mertz said he was sleeping under his mom\u2019s piano at her house. That\u2019s who linked us up because they were skating the Clearwater ramp. They found out about our ramp and came over and started skating that. To see those guys skate and what you could do on a skateboard was mind boggling. That\u2019s what pushed us to come home from school and be like, \u201cI\u2019m learning this, this and this today.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u201cI feel like a kid again after we built this vert ramp in the backyard. It\u2019s brought back the same feeling of learning tricks and skating vert and hanging out with your buddies. It\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: What about them living out of their van? Did that influence you in any way?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. It showed you a way of life. You could live in a van and go skate and do things that way. It wasn\u2019t all about having a home. They introduced us to all kinds of punk rock music and straight edge music and that kind of stuff too.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Were they musicians then?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Rob was playing some guitar, but I don\u2019t know if they were in a band at that point.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: When did you start playing guitar?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: It was around then, but I just tinkered with it. Later on, I got into a band and started playing a lot more.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Did you purposely get a perm and grow your hair out like Rob Mertz did?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: [Laughs] I purposely did not. I did have long hair in \u201985 for a little bit, but I ended up moving to San Francisco and I was surfing one day and got pummeled. I came up and I was just breathing in my hair and choking on it. That\u2019s when I shaved it all off and never grew it back out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Well, I was bringing up the influence of Rob and Ken living in a van and driving around skating because I saw two guys from South Carolina, Mike Thorvelson and Hank Beiring, and they were doing the same thing around the same time, but they had moved to Gainesville because there was a rad ramp there. I remember tripping out and I was like, \u201cWhat are you guys doing here?\u201d They said, \u201cWe liked the ramp so much we moved here.\u201d I was like, \u201cNo way.\u201d That was really rad.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: That ramp was good. I went and skated it once.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: There were a few versions. The one I\u2019m talking about was in \u201986. There was one in \u201989 too.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. That was the era I skated it, when it was red.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: What year did you leave Stone Edge?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE:&nbsp; I was living with Rob Mertz and Matt Howe in an apartment and Matt and I became good friends. We\u2019d save up our money all year and then we\u2019d take a two-month road trip. We went to the Turf one time and to California another time. On one of those trips, we\u2019d gone through Wilmington, North Carolina, and stayed with the guys at the Dog Bowl \u2013 Rob Scull and Bailey Webb. They were super cool and they let us borrow their surfboards. We got back to Stone Edge and we were like, \u201cDaytona Beach is an armpit.\u201d That\u2019s when we moved up to North Carolina. I think it was \u201992 or the end of \u201991 and I got a job with Reggie Barnes at Eastern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Reggie rips. What was there to skate in Wilmington at that time?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: The Ramp House was going and they had a killer bowl with a mini ramp and a vert ramp. In \u201894, when that went down, Reggie built a vert ramp at Eastern. It was a 24-foot wide, 9 1\/2 foot tall ramp with metal coping.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"648\" height=\"856\" src=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-851.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-90659\" srcset=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-851.jpg 648w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-851-227x300.jpg 227w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Image-851-614x811.jpg 614w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 648px) 100vw, 648px\" \/><figcaption>It\u2019s rad that Andrecht handplants are still in the mix 40 years after their inception. Brian does them justice when he cracks an extended one like this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: So when was San Francisco?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: In \u201894, I left Wilmington and moved to Colorado. I went and visited my folks and then picked you up in Jacksonville and we drove out West.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: We stopped in El Paso and spent the night with Jaime Favala and then went straight to Denver. Then you stayed in Colorado how long?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: I was there for one snowboard season and then I ended up blowing my knee out, and then I got a job with Deluxe. I was stoked to be the team captain guy. They flew me out for an interview and I was 24. To be overseas and use their credit card, you had to be 25. They wanted Mickey Reyes to do it first and he couldn\u2019t. All of a sudden, he could do it, so he ended up getting that job. They said to me, \u201cYou sold skateboards at Eastern, so do you want to do that here?\u201d I was like, \u201cSure.\u201d So I moved to San Francisco and started selling skateboards for Deluxe and I hated it. [Laughs] Then I saw a commercial for Sequoia Institute to work on cars, so I went to school for that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: What was San Francisco like in 1995?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: It was awesome. I liked it. We were living down by Ocean Beach about seven blocks up. I was surfing with Aaron Astorga and he was a really good surfer. You\u2019d be out &nbsp; surfing at Ocean Beach and, within an hour, the surf could double on you and then you were crapping yourself figuring out how you were going to get back in.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: You\u2019ve got cold water and great whites.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: It was huge surf that just pounds on the beach there.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Did you catch it good?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. We probably went out a few times that we had no business being out there. I remember Matt got stuck out there one time when it had gotten&nbsp; really big. I got in and I was waiting for him to get back in and the sun was going down and it was starting to get dark. He was on a fun board and went over the falls and got destroyed. He came in and his forehead was split open. He said, \u201cThank god I made it in alive!\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Ocean Beach is heavy. You also surfed in Indonesia.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: We took a boat trip out there.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Where do you think you caught your best surf?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: I\u2019d say Indonesia was consistent and good. That trip to Panama, I caught it really good. If you can get out in hurricane surf on the East Coast, it gets really good, as you know, since you surf down in Jacksonville. We caught it good at that Florida Vert Series contest.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: That was a great weekend. You guys drove from Wilmington and camped at my place. We surfed in the morning and skated Kona in the afternoon. It doesn\u2019t get better than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: That was an epic weekend.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Okay. I think it\u2019s important to say that when I spent time with Jeff Phillips in \u201993, he told me he was stoked to have you on his team and he was looking forward to that next wave of vert ramps coming and then he died. It took a while for that next wave of vert to come after that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. He was thinking it was going to happen sooner and he could have pushed to have it happen sooner, but he had so much stuff going on with his park. He was skating awesome at the time. He was a super rad dude.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: How did you get hooked up with Phillips?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Matt and I took a trip out there and camped in his parking lot at his park in Dallas. We started talking with him and skating with him and he was like, \u201cYou guys can crash at my house.\u201d So we got to stay at his house for a few weeks and he took us around to skate pools. I remember he had this Honda Civic and he was like, \u201cHop in!\u201d He was flying around town and we hit one of those metal domes in the streets that mark off turns and I thought we were going to flip that little car. He was driving like a race car driver and it was awesome.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Did you go to his tree fort?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. That thing was awesome. Fred Smith was there that day too. Did you do the rope swing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1296\" height=\"792\" src=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/77-BRIANDRAKE.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-90655\" srcset=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/77-BRIANDRAKE.jpg 1296w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/77-BRIANDRAKE-300x183.jpg 300w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/77-BRIANDRAKE-614x375.jpg 614w, https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/77-BRIANDRAKE-768x469.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1296px) 100vw, 1296px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: I just remember climbing to the top of that tree fort and Jeff said, \u201cA lot of people don\u2019t climb all the way to the top.\u201d I was like, \u201cI like climbing trees, so it was no big deal.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. I just remember there was some crazy rope swing that you could swing out of that thing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: It would be rad if he were still around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yeah. He\u2019d definitely be lighting up the vert scene.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Who do we have from that generation lighting up the vert scene now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Bob Umbel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: We\u2019ve got Henry Gutierrez, Allen Midgette, Sam Boo, Buck Smith and Rob Mertz. Mertz needs to get back to the East Coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yep. He does. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: You settled in Wilmington and built a vert ramp. Now you\u2019re hosting sessions for skaters from all over the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: I feel like a kid again after we built this vert ramp in the backyard. It\u2019s brought back the same feeling of learning tricks, skating vert and hanging out with your buddies. It\u2019s incredible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: That\u2019s the great thing about getting older. You can relearn an old trick and consider it a new trick.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: It feels like relearning it is a new trick because you did it again. Learning something you\u2019ve never done before is even more insane.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: What is the latest on your list of newest never done before tricks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: It would probably be the ollie to rock slide to fakie over the channel. I saw Darren Navarrette do it at Phishlips and he made it look so easy. He said it was so easy, but it was pretty hard to learn how to do that. Travis Beattie and I learned it out here at my ramp. Travis is a super rad dude. We have a good crew with JJ, and the locals up here, Randy, Chad, Eric, Curren and Tyler. Curren and Tyler have been turning it up out here lately, learning more stuff. It\u2019s good to have a couple of younger kids getting into it. You\u2019re always going to have kids that want to skate transition and go up in the air and do inverts and that kind of stuff. Certain kids are going to have vert ramps and, hopefully, there will be other people that want to skate vert with them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: I\u2019m just thinking of the reliability of having vert ramps for the next 50 years.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Well, there\u2019s a vert ramp in my backyard for the next ten years at least.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: We\u2019ll have to rebuild that in ten years because by then it will have been up for 15.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: Yep. We\u2019ll have to rebuild my body too. [Laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOJO: Is there anyone you want to thank?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DRAKE: I\u2019d like to thank my sponsors Moonshine Skateboards, Superfly Bearings and Speedlab Wheels. I also want to thank my daughter, Myla June.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, GET ISSUE #77 AT THE&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/the-juice-shop\/\">JUICE SHOP HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BRIAN DRAKE Interview by&nbsp;TODD JOHNSON with PHOTOS by&nbsp;@LONGWOOD_SKARTY TOJO: Paging Brian. You have a call on the courtesy phone. How are you doing? DRAKE: I\u2019m pretty good. Stoked to have a killer session yesterday on the ramps.&nbsp; TOJO: I saw some pictures. You did a finger flip lien to tail over the channel.&nbsp; DRAKE: Yes. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90655,"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":[4027,4028,4041],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-interviews","category-skate-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/77-BRIANDRAKE.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90654","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=90654"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90742,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90654\/revisions\/90742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}