I’ve seen a lot of sick footage of you online lately. What has been motivating you to put so much skating online? It looks like your trying to ‘come up’ but your Iain Mcleod…haven’t you already done that. What are your thoughts?

Thanks man! I guess the reason for having so much exposure lately is due to moving into a new place with one of my best friends Alejoh Candelo. Also living down the street from Winston Wardwell, and starting up our RK crew and blogsite www.rockillers.com. We all have been real motivated to skate lately, and everything going on lately has me been focusing on just having fun, and pushing myself. The crazy part is no one I skate with that lives close to me owns a video camera, but from borrowing cameras and hunting down clips we were able to put together an edit. Hopefully I will be picking up a new HD camera soon. Since we started all this up some cool things have happened for me like picking up new sponsors and getting some exposure. I feel I already ‘came up’ so to speak, but I love rollerblading so I haven’t disappeared just beacause of the industry not doing so well. I’m still just trying to challenge myself to what I’m capable of, drop more sections and leave my mark in rollerblading.

You have a very alien way of moving on your skates. There are a breed of skaters who just don’t move at all like normal people, Franky Morales for example. You are definitely in this club of bladers. Are you aware of this, did you always have your own way of moving or did this develop?

I think my way of skating came from watching other people skate over the years that I looked up to. I always liked seeing some really fast tech trick, and I used to be into swimming so maybe my way of skating came from that hah. I try to do tricks solid. Sometimes I like to imagine myself as a ninja or spideman while I’m skating. Hah. Franky Morales is as great, so I’m happy to be in any sort of category similar as him.

In other parts of the country I have heard people saying nobody blades in So-Cal. Obviously this is an exaggeration. But do you think there is any truth to what they are saying?

It’s funny when I hear people say this about southern california at least. I believe people skate in cali more then most places actually because the weather here is perfect year round. Most people used to say they don’t skate, because when they would come to visit they would stay at the FP house or the Esco house/houses. No offense to those guys of course, but those guys weren’t really skating everyday probably because all the parties that would go down every night hah. Myself and others were always skating everyday. As for nowadays in So-Cal, people are always skating in SDSF when I’m there, there’s an Etnies Thursday night skate in Lake Forest, Monday night skate in Long Beach, LA guys always are skating as well, and there’s groups of skaters spread out all over the place. The difference between spots in southern ca and other places is it’s not like somewhere like Philadelphia were most of the spots are close and you can skate from spot to spot. It’s more spread out, and you have to have a car to get around. I think people are lazy sometimes, but there’s always people blading for the most part.

What were you like when you were a kid? Did you play sports? What tight little kid things were you into?

When I was a kid I was very active. I did it all. I was constantly running around, climbing, going to the beach, swimming or anything like that. I played soccer for a few years. I also got into biking/skateboarding/rollerblading. When I was in elementary school I used to build dirt bike jumps for my BMX bike with my brother and friends behind my school, and jump gaps on them. I would also rollerblade down to my school and jump off lunch tables on my blades, then rollerblade down to the mall and play video games with friends. I was also really into drawing and video games, and also getting into trouble.

How old are you? You have been ripping forever, do you feel that all the impact is starting to take a toll?

I’m 26 years old. My body definitely takes longer to recover from injuries as it did when i was younger, but for I still feel pretty good and don’t see any reason to slow down how I like to skate. I haven’t had too many major injuries, and I’ve never had a cast from an injury so I think I’m lucky. I’m aware I can skate this way forever, so I been trying to take more care of myself by stretching before skating always and eating healthy when I can hah.

How has your perspective on the rollerblading industry changed since you were initially exposed to it?

Too many ways. Some downsides are: Way less money being thrown around. Another main one for me is a lot of the old legends not being in the scene as much besides a select few. This disappoints me because I feel if they were still around it would help skating have a stronger foundation. A lot of people skate smaller stuff now, and focus more on style then big hammers. That could be good/bad depending on how you like to see skating. I also think skating is better in a lot of ways, like way more skater owned companies, progressing and people taking a closer look at the problems with skating to make it that much better in the future. People just need to remember where stuff all came from I think, because if you forget your roots the tree will fall down!

I read this quote on Franco Cammayo’s wall the other night, “If you always put a limit on everything you do, physical or anything else… it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them… – Bruce Lee”. Whats your take on this? Do you think that your skating will ever, or already has reached a limit?

I think that when I stop progressing, learning or if I just do the same trick on everything is when I should quit skating. Doing new stuff is what makes skating fun for me. The same thing goes for anything in my life.

What kinds of things do you get into when you aren’t blading? Describe both your ideal day and your actual day.

I actually just filmed a Day in the Life for Quinns site AChosen-Few.com so you will see a day where I actually wake up early and skate…other then skating I like to wake up grab coffee, go to school, hang out with my girlfriend or friends, go to the beach, party or go to bars/clubs sometimes on the weekends, hangout with whoever is at my house visiting, work on stuff on my computer, edit, draw, update the rockillers.com blog, travel…i don’t know I’m pretty much always busy doing something hah.

In a New Years edit you said that you were going to have a good year if you landed the trick in that moment. You landed it. What do you want out of this new year?

This year I want to hopefully do some good tricks, make a RKedit number 2, rep my sponsors, travel, film/skate with new people, have fun, do well in school, get pics in print mags…I would also like to win the lottery.

Shout outs and etcetera?

Thanks to my friends, my girl, my sponsors Usd, Kallusive, JinJoint, Create Originals, and AChosen-Few.com. Thanks to Shock and whoever read this interview!

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