Danny Supa Big Brother Interview from May 2000

If you pay attention to conventional skateboard media, you may be aware that Danny Supa recently signed on with BLVD Skateboards. He’s got a new commercial over there, a new interview on 48 Blocks, and hopefully an ensemble of other new things surfacing in the future. The skate media world has been sparse in Supa coverage since his Nothing but the Truth part, which featured him grinding a ledge maybe two times. When you have flip tricks like those, that’s not exactly a bad thing.

Historically speaking, like many who spent the last golden days of VHS (somewhere around 1999-2001) constantly replaying the Mixtape cassette, and treating it as an outdated tour guide to what skate spots New York City had to offer (and calling Paine Webber “the Mixtape benches” for many formidable years of skateboarding), his part from that particular video has always been a favorite. If not for the top-tier backside flips, and successful only-5050 incorporating ledge lines (switch front 5050 180 out, nollie backside 5050 bench lines, and the like), than for the part’s status as probably the only skate part to be filmed mostly in basketball shorts, some of the most comfortable skateboard attire short of Polo sweats. Until your shins get hit.

The interview below is from the August 2000 issue of Big Brother, taken after a brief hiatus from skating for Zoo York. It discusses Guess watches, Ryan Hickey, and Mike Hernandez, so it’s worth five minutes of your time. All of the photos are enlargeable, and a text-only version of the images is at the second half of the page so it is easier to read.

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Big Brother’s Hated & Misunderstood Issue: Billy Rohan Interview (From May 2003)

Billy’s presence in this “Hated & Misunderstood” issue of the much-loved (and unfortunately defunct) Big Brother magazine was brought up in that Slap Magazine questions video from last month. The interview is from May of 2003, some time after Billy moved to New York, when he still rode for Zoo, ABC was still around, and the Koston 3s were among the most popular skate shoes in New York. Billy is definitely a long way from being hated and misunderstood these days, and it is amazing to think he once shared that title in an issue that featured other notorious names like Chad Fernandez. The key difference, of course, is that Billy was more on the misunderstood end of things, and C. Fro AKA “Just call me Hair” is actually “hated,” if you want to put it that way. There was an interview with someone else in this issue who falls under that title, but I can’t remember who it was.

This post is a collaborative effort between The Chrome Ball Incident for unearthing the scans so that we may use them, and Quartersnacks, which has given Billy numerous deserved headlines this year. But not too many, just so that we don’t look like we are losing our focus in being the #1 Dylan fansite and news resource.

The interview sheds light on many of the classic Billy moments (“To show the officer I wasn’t drunk, I ran up his car and did a backflip off of it”), and is all the more reason to start annoying Rob Harris about releasing his documentary on Billy from last year to the public. Plus, that grind on the rail at White Hall Street, next to the Veteran’s Memorial, is tall as hell.

The magazine format has been modified to fit this site’s layout. All of the images are enlargeable.

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