Brooklyn Banks Week: Lamont Macintosh Interview

July 15th, 2010 | 12:34 pm | Features & Interviews | 2 Comments

Interview by Ted Barrow on September 24, 2006

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I was in junior high school, my first year, [when I] started skating. Someone taught me how to skate. This guy named Junior. He had a Santa Cruz, I think it was a Slasher. Around ‘87, ‘88. I’ve been skating a long time. He was doing acid drops and stuff. He told me to try it. I gave it a shot. The first time I slammed, landed on my knees. I don’t know why I was fascinated, so I just kept trying, about the third time I landed it. He was like, “Yo, you should skate, you should skate.” It was a bunch of Spanish kids that taught me how to skate.

Where was this?

In East New York. Not too far from Cypress Projects, matter of fact. We used to skate around there. Everyday I would skate at some fast food restaurant area. I think it was Wendy’s or KFC. There was this long rail, probably about 5 car lengths, and we’d wax the whole thing and slide the whole thing backside and frontside. We’d get all psyched off of that, and play our music and scream out Natas Kaupas, “Natas!” or, “Hosoi! Hosoi! And we’d go blazing fast.

What kind of music were you playing?

I would play rap, and some alternative. Some alternative. At that time the only alternative band I knew was maybe U2. Yeah, it was U2 as a matter of fact. And The Smiths. Yeah. Those Spanish kids put me onto that.

Yeah, Spanish people love The Smiths.

[Laughter].

When did you start going to the Banks?

I started going to the Banks when everybody – all the kids in East New York – they were getting into trouble, you know, selling drugs and stuff.

These were the kids that you used to skate with?

Yeah. The crew that I had in East New York. There was a guy named Chris, Junior, all these guys, Juni. They taught me how to skate, taught me how to ollie. They pretty much got careers, got cars, just disappeared one by one. So, I had to find somewhere to skate. Somebody told me about the Banks, so I took the train, and lo and behold, there was like a million people skating the Banks, and it was these big round bubbles to skate on, and you know, I just skated it, man.

Did you go into Manhattan to skate much before then?

No. Manhattan was like, I don’t know, another country to me. I knew nothing about Manhattan.

Who do you remember skating at the Banks at that point?

At that point, I could remember the Shut team.

Brooklyn Banks Week: Charles Lamb Interview

July 14th, 2010 | 12:43 pm | Features & Interviews | 5 Comments

Part 3 of Brooklyn Banks week. Couldn’t find any nineties / Banks footage of Charles, but the Lurkers 2 part (alternate edit) is always worth a revisit.

Interviewed by Ted Barrow on August 27, 2006

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I first started skating in Staten Island around the neighborhood of my parent’s house. The whole way I started skating was, I lived on a hill, and I used to hear the bearings roll down the hill, and the locals around the hood were skating. I used to watch them roll down the hill and it was a bunch of white dudes, a bunch of black dudes, and two Spanish dudes. They were all going to this one kid Jose’s house like three blocks away from my mom’s house who had like, a piece of shit box with nails coming out of the side.

What year is this?

I guess I was nine or ten. I skated around before that, but on little blue banana boards with crazy wheels and not doing tricks. But I saw them doing ollies out of curb cuts going down the hill, getting this high, and I was like, “Oh I gotta do that.” So I started creeping around that dude Jose’s house and eventually got a Santa Cruz, like, Jim Theibaud board. This is 1990 I guess, in the spring. I started hanging out at that dude Jose’s house all the time, which eventually led me to these other kids at McDonnell Lane Park, where there were people from all over Staten Island skating a ledge and 4 stairs. From there I met some kids that were really good, and I learned a bunch of tricks, and then it started.

I was always going to the city to skate the Banks, but it was only when I was like, “I don’t want to take a bus or ask for a ride to go to this park in the middle of Staten Island and have to come all the way back, I could just skate down the hill to the ferry, take the twenty-five minute boat ride, and be at the Banks, five, ten minutes after that.” Skate with people from all over the world that are super good, get really psyched. That’s what I started doing, all the time. Saturday, Sunday, when I wasn’t in school, it was just like full-on Banks.

How early would you get there on a Saturday?

Oh, I was getting there at like 9:30 in the morning at first, and then it just became like, I would always get the twelve o’clock ferry boat, skate until seven, go back home, eat dinner, maybe go back out, somewhere on the Island, you know, skating around. So I guess that’s how I got introduced to the Banks and skating was just like, 360 flips, impossibles, a few switch things were coming out, but uh, pressure flips…

So this is like, ’91, ’92…

Yeah, by now, by the time the Banks had become a regular thing in my weekly schedule, it was a time of like, I saw the first pressure flip and was like “Wow.” It was at a Blue demo at the banks. There were mad Banks contests. One summer there was a Banks contest like every other weekend.

Brooklyn Banks Week: Shane Bovell Interview

July 13th, 2010 | 12:15 pm | Features & Interviews | 2 Comments

Part 2 of Brooklyn Banks week.

Interview by Ted Barrow on October 26, 2007.

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I grew up in East Flatbush, in Brooklyn. One day I was coming out of my high school, I think I was in either 10th or 11th grade, and this guy had a shop. He used to sell little trinkets or whatever, but then he tore it all down and sold just skateboards. It became a skate shop.

I thought about it, I was like, “Yo, I want to put my artwork [in the shop].” That’s a way for me to get my artwork out, and so I got into skating. I saved up a little bit of money every week and I paid him off to get a set-up.

I started skating. Then I bumped into this kid that I used to go to Flatbush Boys Club with, his name was Anthony, and he was already a sick-ass skater, and he introduced me to all these other kids that were skating in Flatbush.

Where were you guys skating in Flatbush?

It was like [a] Burger King, that was on Church Ave, between Flatbush and Bedford. Now it’s a Veggie Castle. We skated a Wendy’s on Empire Boulevard that had these double-sided parking blocks inside it. All around the whole Wendy’s was an embankment with benches that went all around them. It’s still there, still a sick-ass spot. You know those plastic benches that are super slick? You can grind them? It’s got those all the way around them.

Who was the crew of skaters you were skating with then?

What did they call themselves? Oh. Team Aggression. They had boards and everything, man. They used to sell boards to kids and shit, it was crazy.

What was the first board you had?

A Santa Cruz Cory O’Brien. The one with the skull, throwing the fire. I still remember that shit. Thunder trucks, and 52 OJ II’s.

Did you go into Manhattan around this point?

Yeah. I remember one day, we were all skating in Flatbush, and this kid Mike was like, “Yo we should go to the Banks,” and I was like, “What’s the Banks?” And we get on the train, and he took us to the Brooklyn Banks. You know, I couldn’t skate it at all, I didn’t know how to carve at first, so I just rolled around. I got so obsessed with learning how to skate transition. I was like, “Ok, if I’m going to be a good skater or get sponsored or anything, I’ve got to learn to skate all this stuff.” So I made it my duty to skate this stuff as much as I can, even to the point were I started cutting school to go there. In the beginning, I’d say I would cut school on Friday, and go Saturday, Sunday. But when I got done with high school, it was pretty much every day. For years. When I think back, it was every day for years.

When did this start?

’88. I would say I skated there straight until about ‘93.

How many people would be skating there then?

Tons. I remember at a certain point I would stop going there on the weekend because it was so crowded. I probably would cut like three classes, and go there by myself. Be it summer, winter, I didn’t give a fuck. I’d skate there by myself, get my tricks down, stuff like that. Then they started throwing contests. Dead-End contests. I started entering those, and Dead-End started hooking me up with boards. I remember this really big contest one time and Airwalk was sponsoring it. I got second place, and they gave me this coupon, which was pretty much a sponsorship. So I started getting shoes from Airwalk. I’d get boards from Shut, they’d hook it up. That was like my spot. Where I would go to skate. Plus they had the handrail right there, so it was pretty much a well-rounded spot.

Brooklyn Banks Week: Rodney Torres Interview

July 12th, 2010 | 12:45 pm | Features & Interviews | 8 Comments

Interview by Ted Barrow on April 18, 2007. Supplementary commentary by Rob Campbell, German Nieves, Ray Wong, and Louie Louie.

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Rodney: When I used to skate the Banks, that pretty much…Rob is interrupting my session.

Rob: I used to steal niggas boards back in the day [laughter].

Rodney: You were theivin’?

Rob: Shit was crazy. Growing up, I ain’t have that much, so I couldn’t afford boards. Sometimes I’d do it by myself, sometimes with friends. It was like, dumbass niggas from Jersey or out of state would show up to the fucking Banks or whatever, and they’d go to Burger King, and leave their board there.

At Burger King or at the Banks?

Yeah, yeah. At Burger King.

Rodney: Burger King was the hang out spot after the Banks. Go to the Banks, go to Burger King, and then go to Seaport, or skate all around Water street. Then go back to the Banks. From the Banks, when it got dark, then go skate to Astor Place. Chill and skate at Astor Place, drink 40s, smoke weed, and then after that, skate to Union, do the same thing over there, and then from there skate to Midtown. All day, all night. Everyone would meet up at the Banks at noon, and skate ‘til like midnight. Then skate to Midtown and like, break night. Stay all night skateboarding. Just causing ruckus, you know? Drinking, smoking, skating. Hopefully hook up with some girls, but if not that then skate, have fun. Just doing little kid shit, you know?

What era is this?

This is like early 90s, right? Yeah. Early-to-mid 90’s. It’s not like that anymore.

Why do you think it’s not like that anymore?

Because everybody now is on some sort of agenda. Everybody’s got to film a trick for a video, everybody’s got to be all secretive, everyone’s got their own little clique of people that they roll with. I guess that back in the day everybody rolled together.

Rob: No doubt, like back in the days, if you wasn’t real, you couldn’t show up at the Banks. I see like half of these cornball ass niggas that look like Pharell and fucking shit like that, goofy asshole looking motherfuckers, like them niggas would totally get robbed for everything they got. It was like everybody that skated at the Banks knew each other.

So if you were from out of town?

It wasn’t even that. It was like, snake sessions? Oh, man. You’d get your board focused. Remember those days?

Rodney: Everybody in New York has a lot of pride in what they do and basically, it was almost like you were stepping on toes if you came out here and tried to run shit. It’s either you got your ass whooped or you got your product stolen. One or the other. It’s still kind of like that now with all the older people, you know? Skateboarding in any sense, if that’s where you grew up, it’s like you’re a part of a fucking huge family of people, a huge mafia in a sense, you know?

People would come here and try to run shit, for no reason. They tried to step on toes. They tried to fucking come up off people, and use people, in a sense where it wasn’t anything genuine.

Brooklyn Banks Week

July 12th, 2010 | 3:16 am | Daily News | 1 Comment

***The above covers have nothing to do with the interviewees, just wanted to post some covers from the Banks, that’s all.

From today (Monday), on through Sunday, the full interviews meant to make up the next week of updates will be put up around the noon / early afternoon portion of the day, so you can read them on your lunch break, or when you’re half awake trying to remember how you made it home last night while wondering where your BlackBerry is.

I’m going to spare you of an explanation as to why one spot, which has more or less not existed for the past seven years, merits a full week of content on the website, because frankly, you should already know. Some of the interviews are long, but none of them are boring. Altogether, it’s about thirty pages total in Microsoft Word, so it’s a bit of reading. The upside is of course, that they are quite entertaining, particularly if you fall into our age group that missed the often heralded “golden era” of New York skateboarding and been left to fill in the blanks with what you can gather from remaining skate videos produced in that era.

As someone who does not typically read interviews of people I have not heard of, I’ll urge anyone that might be turned away on the basis of “Oh, I don’t know this guy,” to give them a shot, especially if you like stories about people getting robbed, being chased by guidos with bats and whatnot. Some of the names may not be immediatley recognizable, but all of them have insanely entertaining stories, and the overall scope of each interview is very subject, as oppossed to individual, based. Obviously there is a bit of personal relativism, but more or less, each one is just a clump of stories about the Banks, skating Downtown, and the nineties.

I’d like to give a huge thanks to Ted Barrow, who conducted each interview back during a period of unbridled productivity in 2006 and 2007. Also, thanks to the always reliable Chrome Ball Incident for hooking me up with a ton of photos from the Banks. I might just throw up a gallery in the next few days. I tried to get relevant photo and video content for each one, but the availability of supplementary materials for some of these names was a bit hard to come by, so you’ll just have to deal with plain, old, simple words.

If you run a skateboard media institution, or have the power to influence one, any links would be appreciated, since such rich and detailed skateboard history seems to be hard to come by.

And if you need a quick starter to bring you up to speed to the late-eighties / early-nineties (which is when most of them begin from, 1986 is probably the earliest date mentioned), this article written by Eli Gesner in the late-nineties is definitley worth a read, or a re-read.

Updated Links:
Part 1: Rodney Torres
Part 2: Shane Bovell
Part 3: Charles Lamb
Part 4: Lamont Macintosh
Part 5: Dave Mims
Part 6: The Chrome Ball Gallery
Part 7: Steve Rodriguez
Part 8: Ian Reid
Outro: The End

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