Had the opportunity to interview Antoine Asselin and Phil Lavoie, two of the principal figureheads behind Dime, for Dank, everyone’s favorite grown and sexy Norwegian skateboard magazine. We discussed their origins, the invisibility of Canadian skateboarders, Peace Park, the mythology behind Eric Reidl, and more.
In the opinion of our award-winning international low impact skateboard media institution, Dime is the finest skateboard thinktank in operation today. There are a few great companies and crews out right now, but there is no other crew that incites envious feelings of “Damn, why didn’t I think of that?” to the extent that Dime does with their consistently brilliant output. (Check yesterday’s “Legend of Joe Valdez” video.) They make you laugh, say “holy shit,” and hyped to go skate all at the same time.
For a sample of the Dime crew’s ability to do all three of those things, we compiled a bunch of their Instagram videos into one ten-minute compilation a la Worldstar.
Dank No. 8 should be available in the States soon. Theories typically stocks copies, and Labor has sold them in the past. It’s pretty much the only magazine worth keeping back issues of going today. This edition also has a cool Bobby Worrest feature :)
Excerpt from the Dime interview below.
Why did you guys stop using the logo with the girl throwing up the devil horns? What’s the story behind her?
Antoine Asselin: That girl fueled everything there is to know about Dime.
Phil Lavoie: There was a website called DoYouLookGood.com, which was like a Hot or Not sort of website. You put a picture up, and people rate it. Hugo Balek sent us a photo of this young girl throwing up devil horns, saying “Check out my new girlfriend” as a joke. We go “Ha ha Hugo, nice one,” and forgot all about it. A few years later, my homie is going through my computer and finds a photo of that chick way down in my downloads folder. He goes “Who’s this?” and we started getting so hyped on her.
Antoine: She was a random twelve-year-old girl throwing the horns, and it made no sense for us to use it.
Phil: The photo was a perfect representation that we’re not sure what we’re doing, so we got stoked on it. We started using her in all of our videos and she became our mascot. Eventually, we added this little laugh. We had a whole session of recording laughs, imagining “How would this girl laugh?”
Antoine: We were never making fun of her. We were worshipping her, craving the day that we would eventually meet her. Eventually, she found out because some dudes at her high school saw one of our videos. She got in contact with us through YouTube. “Hey, I’m *the* girl.”
Phil: She was kinda bummed, like “I would appreciate it if you stopped.” I responded saying, “No, we worship you. If you want, you can be part of the crew.” She said, “I’m down to be part of the crew, just don’t use my photo anywhere besides your videos.”
Then we blew it. Some dude in a local magazine printed an ad, like “Subscribe to the mag and get a free copy of the Dimestore video.” It was a full-page photo of her in like 20,000 copies. She got bummed and sent an e-mail saying she was going to sue us. We were shattered, man.
Antoine: That day, we lost everything, and had to start from scratch. You have no idea how many good times that girl brought to us. We’re dreaming about the day that we make enough money to hire her as our full-time model.
We can’t use her picture anymore, but she’s always there laughing in the background. We even gave the laugh to one of our friends who DJs, and he’ll play it at big parties, so it’s like she’s partying with us.
Previous Hard Copies: Alex Olson Thrasher Interview, The QS Guide to NYC on a Microbudget, An Interview with Bryan Chin for Nike SB’s Go Skate Day ‘Zine
shouts to dime, and the god reidl
I really enjoyed that article. Also I bought Eric Reidls snowboard.
VOTY!