“So…23, born in Regina Canada, started skating in 99, grew up skating with Richie Eisler, took a 2 yr post secondary photography course,  then quit this last spring to drop everything and be free. broke off a 5.5 year relationship, quit my job, gave up my license, lost my id, smashed my iphone etc… hitched out to the coast to start a new and truly let my skating and photography develop.” – Dustin Werbeski

Do you have a constellation of skaters and entities who influenced different aspects of your blading?  How would you describe it? Do you feel like a product of this constellation or is your skating style a result of something unique within you?

Well I decided to start on #2 cause that question sparked some interest at the moment. So I’d say go read that one first and I’ll keep it going from here…

Actually I don’t really care where you start, or even if you do. Chances are, you probably just skimmed for the photos and edit, but if you are reading this… enjoy!

So, I’ll start by saying it’s pretty difficult to just watch some talented skaters and not have new ideas pop into your head. Like new ideas on what’s possible or even a new look on that same old soul grind. It’s the people who spark these ideas most often that you could say influence me in one way or another, every once in a while. I’ve noticed people like Stockwell, CK, and yourself (Yee) to repetitively catch my interest and could be referred to as influences. The reason, you guys have continued to produce a refreshingly original view on skating, while performing it with a pristine personal style. This is prone to attract curiosity, because you don’t just blend into the rest of this misleadingly large blading community of followers. I more or less enjoy watching anyone who is doing what they love, while doing it well and making it interesting by doing it in an original intelligent manner. It doesn’t matter if their blading or not, influences are everywhere.

As to how my skating has evolved to what you see today… I started about a decade ago, in the SMALL flat city of Regina, Canada. It had such a dinky scene that I don’t think the amount of active bladers was ever in the double digits. Every skater who lived there would just come and go from the sport randomly, that is everyone except Richie Eisler. When he wasn’t gone on skate trips around the world, he was there and always down to skate some more. I could more or less say that he taught me everything; I was his prodigy learning the ways and he was the over gracious teacher willing to show me it all. We would spend every winter hibernating in the indoor while honing our skills, then come spring we would travel to distant cities containing actual skate spots to produce the content we needed for our own pleasure and self promotion. We would even go through these phases of what you could call blading-training, months of style or switch or switchups or airs or spin tricks or even filming techniques. Until we could produce the final images we were happy with or originally had in mind. I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve had to say the annoying “just one more try.” Being picky is a tiresome habit that DOES pay off. In the end Richie would move to Sydney then I to Vancouver. Since then I’ve been on my own, and I’ve truly gotten to study and express my own skating. My own skating, not the skating I did after the many years of trying to play catch up, but my own ideas of what’s cool, my own vision of what’s possible, and my own expression of what I’m doing, my imagine-blading. I feel as though my skating is developing in something that I really see working for me, it’s feeling more like true skating from within that’s growing in uniqueness everyday.

Do you consider yourself a ‘creative skater’?  What is creative skating?  Is it really any more ‘creative’ than hip-hop style blading … or has it become just another genre?  — instead of switchups its toe-rolls, and instead of jumping big gaps its jumping through small holes, you get what I mean?

I really do see myself as a creative skater (now). Creative skating is hard to define, because creative skating is a little different to everybody. This is because everybody’s view on creativity is different. Some people just aren’t creative, while others can paint, dance, and make music with ease. Of course, all of which can be done on different levels of quality. People like Hendrix and Dylan were great musicians, because what they did was original, they expressed their own personal creative thoughts. Is it creative to try and replay a famous song on the guitar perfectly? Not really and it’s the same for blading. You can spend your years of skating trying to recreate what you see, or you can be creative through learning to enjoy, embrace, tweak and adapt your own vision of skating to the surroundings your given or purposefully choose to skate.

Now to try and define what I personally call “creative skating”… I’d have to say its any rollerblader who takes in some information from the outside world (angle of bank, texture of cement, size of rail, suiting chain, a perfect rock, the tree, that little lip, ledge, bolt or pipe sticking out. Anything aka skatespots) and uses it to create any original idea of what he or she thinks would A) look nice B) impress C) lead to an even better idea or trick… (the factors that govern the decisions we make on tricks to do are always changing.) But that’s only the first part, the thought. Anybody can learn to see the best potential tricks on any given spot, but creative skating still takes the expression. The best creative skaters can perfectly think up and express their unique vision of how they best see themselves interacting with the outside world while on rollerblades. This is why creative skating isn’t just another genre, proper creative skating can show up everywhere in every genre. That hip-hopper, punk-rocker, hippy or businessman just has to see that original idea for themselves and show everybody else how much fun it is. This is Imagine-blading, and I love it.

What does sponsorship mean to you?  Does riding for xsjado mean anything more to you than getting free skates?  If so what?

Sponsorship is this nice little deal I have worked out with a couple of overly supportive and kindly gracious companies. (Shop-Task & The Conference) It works in a way where every once in a while I will receive just enough product to keep me practicing this sport while filming, shooting photos, skating comps, etc… in means of promoting myself and my favorite companies in it.  Although it is so easy to lose the appreciation for the value of all this product when it has always come with such ease and always for free, but I am very grateful and do not take a greedy advantage of my situation. I have been known to skate my skates till no longer possible, then some. I treat them just as any other “thing” I’ve owned (photo cameras, video cameras, computers, cars, cellphones, etc…) and that’s as a tool, which will most likely receive a lot of abuse through its short-lived practical life.

ps. My new setup isn’t even xsjados, Im working on a setup sessions for the conference and be-mag right now. It’s a fun little carbon setup again.

Is skating just about having fun for you?  Or is there something more to it … if so what is more important than having fun, or what is valuable about skating that isn’t reducible to the ‘fun factor’?

Yeah skating has been a lot of fun for me, so much, but it’s far from the only reason I’ve stuck with it for so long. The more you skate, the more reasons you find, but the ones I’ve loved the most or the ones that still have meaning to me. Are the ones like the unbeatable physical and mental exercise you get every single time you roll, or all the experiences and friendships you receive through traveling to places you’d never be if it wasn’t for blading. Example: I type this, in my homemade bedroom, in a city far from my hometown, in a draped off dining room, in a house belonging to a couple of respectable rollerbladers, who’ve agreed to let me crash here till spring, all because I too blade…

Also, rollerblading has had one of the biggest impressions on my perspective towards the world. It has significantly altered who I am and where I’ve gotten to because of it. It is just like anything else we do, it all affects the subconscious and how it selects the things we choose to focus on, or in other words how we choose to see the world. As policeman, prostitutes, pick-pocketers, politicians, painters and photographers see the same busy city street from quite obviously different views… Like the latter, I enjoy the possibility of composing a beautiful scene with my eyes, while practicing to see it as I so commonly do, as through the lens of a camera. Or like wise the ability to listen to a song while visualizing it as a soundtrack to my next editing project. But like I’ve said, blading has had an even bigger impression on my life than photography or anything else I’ve chosen to study and practice. It raises your overall physical health, your flexibility, your pain tolerance, lowers your stress levels, increases focus and reaction time, and most importantly it opens your mind to these new perspectives. I don’t think it’s normal to have the ability of spotting spots from a moving car or train, imagining yourself doing potential tricks, all while quickly searching for any and all flaws like cement quality, height, distances, security, caps and cracks before it passes in a split second and is out of sight for ever. Visualizing skate spots out of natural or manmade structures has become as hardwired into my brain and automatic as the of beating my heart, or as my lungs taking a breathe of air. I would feel so foreign and powerless if I was to somehow to be swept clear of this ability to see the world in this unique way we all share as rollerbladers. It is a very powerful feeling to walk down the street and think to your self “yeah I could jump from that to that, or grind that then spin off that on my rollerblades.” Where as most people could barely get up onto any of the rails we choose, with a stepping stool, with a helping hand, while wearing their own shoes, and if they did slip and fall, well, best of luck. We have a lot to gain from such a simple fun set of rollerblades.

What defines an artist?  Do you have to have an audience?  A viewer … Does one have to ‘make’ anything?  Can you be an artist of the imagination? Or is there something inherently public about being artist?

This is a humorous question for me, for lately I’ve been asked the question “are you an artist?” quite frequently, with a comedic climax coming from the most random coffee cashier. The question always stuns me with a smirk as I contemplate defining myself as an artist… “I’m a photographer so yes…” I do see myself to be very artistic but as the second part of the question states, I do believe my lack of audience may be the leading cause for the contemplation I’ve been forced to face recently. This lack of audience has been sustained due to this pesky little habit I have of hoarding my art. This trait is now just beginning to implode in a way that, as we speak I am wrapping up the development of my portfolio site along with a photography and skating blog. I guess you could say I’m doing this to get these so called viewers that we all strive for.

As for art being a question in result of creation or the process of making something. Of course. Imagination is art. Thinking anything is art. The creation of an image in your head is just as much art as Warhol’s Campbell soup cans, soapboxes or all six hours of his film Sleep. Imagination is the act of creating or thinking up something for you to toy with in you mind, something to question, and something to stoke even more imagination. But after enough of these personal gallery openings in your head, you begin to get bored of your own work and realize that there is so much more potential pleasure out there, waiting to be enjoyed by allowing others to toy with these same ideas you’ve created. We want more people to level with us while understanding our vision, the more people we connect with or the bigger audience we can obtain, the more support we receive to back our adventures in our artistic worlds.

(I am involved in this new video project “IMAGINE BLADE SHUN” which you will hear a lot more about in the near future, when you do, if you enjoy and are in any position to support, please do contact.)

Whats up with Canada?

Thumbs, thumbs up to Canada. It’s a very chill, laid-back country with a good diversity in just about everything. I lived in the middle of it, explored to the west and back many times, never east, then moved to the west coast. So Canada to me is more or less just Regina to Vancouver with everything else in between and around. I just grabbed this image off google, and in doing so realized that the amount of Canada I know is far from the amount there actually is, so I must also ask what’s up Canada? Umm… We are hosting the Olympics this year, actually in the city I now live and they’ve just started. Basically it’s a good home country, but I’m looking for a new home soon. I see a summer of traveling ahead of me, as I’m leaving this area come May, then who knows, maybe some of you will see me in your parts soon.

How did you get into skating?

It all began back when I was young and my best friend Devon Hanofski made the comment “You should do something, but don’t skateboard cause I do that.” Soon after that I got my parents to buy me some green and gold “cheetah” rollerblades, and even quicker than that I was addicted. This friend would take me to the indoor and it was there where I remember some random old bladers telling me that taking out my middle wheels would help me with the learning process. Right after I acted on their advice, I took it further by creating my own freestyle frames with a cigarette lighter and a metal coat hanger. I was customizing all my friends cheap plastic fitness skates into rail grinding franken blades. Oh yeah it didn’t take long before Devon saw the fun I was having and ditched his board for his own pair. I moved up into aggressive Oxygen’s, but it wasn’t until I got my first pair of Salomon ST-70’s, met Richie and got shown all the revolutionizing videos that I actually took it seriously. I had no idea what I was in for…

How do you negotiate others peoples demands on your life with your own self development?  Bottom line, whats more important?  Tell us a story.

I don’t really, I have never been one to do something just because someone or society says to. I’ll do it my own way and figure it out for myself, and if I made it more difficult than it had to be, well that will be figured out down the road. If I do run into this “what could have been avoided” hassle, well then I’ll just deal with it when I’m forced to, at least I got to choose and see it for myself, on my own terms. I do have to thank my parents for raising us in this laid back, worry free, open manner, where we were guided but were given the right to choose for our selves.

As for a suiting story…  When I was around 4 or 5, my mother was taking my little sister and I to our first day at church, or Sunday school, or whatever that starting step is to the little kids connection into the Catholic Church. Somewhere between driving and parking, I had decided that I would rather not go to these churches, not only for the day, but forever.  So once we arrived in front of the church, I locked my mom out of the car with my sister and I in it, refusing to go. Once I got forced to open it, I ran around the car, being chased, yelling “church sucks…I’m never going!” After a bit of this childish chaos, my mother managed to get me back in the car to cut me a deal. I would never have to go, but I would have to return home and get a spanking for causing such a scene. I took the soar ass and never had to spill my sins to some sucker on Sunday, ever.

What effect did blading media have on you when you were a kid?  Do you think that putting videos on the internet alters that effect?  If so, in what way?

The viewing of videos in my younger years always seemed to have a greater exciting explosive effect on me than it does today. Being blown away with goose bumps from witnessing such “next-level” skating wasn’t as scarce as it seems these days. I can’t even recall the last video that has had that same impact on me personally, or the progression of rollerblading as most videos did back in the day. In terms of progression I don’t mean crazier and crazier tricks, but those memorable marker tricks that respectably set the bar of possibilities in the sport much higher. The reason these old videos did such a good job was that they were always showing you something you’d never seen or thought of before, it was the best of the best pushing their sport to its limits. It is not as though the best aren’t doing so today, but the power of technology is definitely dumbing down its “wow” effect on us. Technologies rapid growth has so quickly allowed everyone and anyone the ability to produce “pro-level” quality edits/videos even if they don’t have the skills to do such. All while potentially allowing themselves a much larger audience then that which the filmmakers could of ever dreamed back in the days without our lovely internet. The Internet is filled but far from filling up with bad blading edits.

I remember racing to the computer lab back in elementary school, just to be one of first ones on one of the 30 computers sharing the same dial up internet connection, just so I could wait an hour to watch a single minute of streaming skating. I have almost watched rollerblading on the internet for as long as I’ve skated, but until lately I never had to deal with sorting through the ridiculous amount of junk I see on the internet today. For our podium websites like “youtube” and “vimeo” to produce that same effect on us as the blading media of 10 years ago, they would need to embark on a serious weeding of the skunk skating that is flooding and drowning out the quality hidden away in the depths of our web. Even after such a task, the effects would still be degraded though the experience of viewing it via the internet. This is because at this time in technology the overall experience of internet movies is nowhere near the same as it is from DVDs. As watching Hollywood movies at home is incomparable to that of a theater viewing. Technology is as much a cure as it is a curse.

How important are the clothes you wear when you shred?

Not at all while also very much so. If you feel good in them, it will show and it will pay off. Where as if it is just an act, you will only play a clown. I can recall certain sessions where certain pants have thrown off my whole vibe towards my skating, resulting in a rather blah session because I didn’t like what I saw when I looked down. Tis the luck of the draw on that particular day I’d say. This is because I don’t have any clothes for skating. All my clothes are for wearing whenever. I pull out a box from under my bed or choose from the pile on it, just for what ever I am feeling most at the moment. I do also only own a couple of shirts with blading logos. This is because they are all usually designed too fakely colorful with huge horrible logos and bad sizing. This is not for all, there are some well designed blading clothing companies out there. I do appreciate the quality of pieces both Ucon and Inri have produced; both for different reasons but both companies are doing something right. So, in exchange for this anti-skate clothing closet, I do all my shopping at vintage, thrift and second hand shops, but when the right blade piece fits with the style of my wardrobe, I wear it, why not, we are perfect billboards to promote these companies.

SHOCK: DUSTIN WERBESKI from Wolfman on Vimeo.

Why film?

Who could remember it all? ITS BEAUTIFUL. & fun…

I became obsessed with capturing moments and memories onto a more permanent medium at a young age. I’ve inherited it from some of my family, who have kept photo albums and hours of home movies for us to now enjoy, as we are now much older and actually have an appreciation for them. The moment may now seem so natural and unenlightening, but when and if you can look back on it will not seem so. As everyday life seems so everyday because the change to get there has been so gradual, take a big blind leap and be blown away by it. This is why it’s so interesting to look back at yourself or situation through time, made capable by films or photos. To be able to study them, while getting another chance to remember even more about the whole experience. Once I realized that I could start capturing my own aka got my own cameras, I was hooked and haven’t stopped since. I have collected boxes of minidv tapes, prints, a binder of negatives, a collection of polaroids, GB’s of digital images, and even several reels of undeveloped super8 and 35mm film. It’s a tiresome task to try and hold onto your memories forever, but I will do my best to continue.

Shout outs?

You the reader- I personally thank you for enduring such a read, hopefully you took something from it.

Something like a different look on your own skating or a better view on how I see mine, it works for me, maybe it will work for you.

Shock- Thanks for the opportunity, I really enjoyed the questions, intelligent and thought provoking.

Shop-Task & The Conference- I’ve got your back because you’ve got mine, thanks so much as always.

The Ontario House- Thanks for allowing The Regina Room, it’s a dream of an upgrade from surfing that couch.

All my friends and family, every last one- For quite obvious reasons.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 12:05 am and is filed under Blade Ripping, Uncategorized, lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.