Tag: DGK

Kalis is one of those dudes that has been around for many of the ups and downs of real, old-fashioned, straightforward street skating these past two decades. The Pier, The Banks, Love Park, the Barcelona exodus, hiding out in Chicago instead of a schoolyard somewhere, etc. Since this is the sort of thing we tend to try and keep going over here with QS, as much as the park/plaza climate of today seems to push us all in different directions, it seemed only natural to sit down for an interview with someone who has been through more than a handful of eras in street skating.

To start it off, what have you been up to this past summer up until now?

I moved from Michigan to southern California.

Any particular reason you moved out to California?

Quite frankly, I was just tired of flying out here so often. I’ve been flying out here twice a month to be involved with stuff. Everything’s a little bit different now, because the internet now has videos and web blasts, and all this shit is happening so fast that they want you out here. And I couldn’t be so instant living in the Midwest, just trying to skate and film.

Is it because skate media and all that has changed so much recently, that you have avoided doing it up until now? It’s like, everyone moves out to southern California but it seems like you’ve been everywhere but there.

When I first got put on, I moved out here, just to see and I couldn’t deal with it. But it wasn’t really necessary for me, because I was trying to take care of my business elsewhere and I didn’t really have to be in this mix. But now, you still don’t have to move out here to be in the circle of pro skaters or whatever you want to call it, but it’s just to be as relevant as you can be, you have to produce five times more than you used to. Before it was like, do your thing, shoot your photos, film you video part, and it gets released at whatever date it comes out. Now it’s just like… you got warehouses, podcasts… It’s just like non-stop now.

What’s it like to finally be on a team with Stevie after you guys have been associated with one another for pretty much all his career, but a large portion of your career as well?

It’s the illest thing ever. It’s no sweat, no people breathing down necks, its just homie shit. “What do you want to do for this thing?” And you just have a little pow-wow and boom, it’s done. It’s so easy to brainstorm because we’re on such the same level, in terms of what we think about, what we want to do, and the future and direction that we hope to see skateboarding go. It’s just some back in the day shit, like it was growing up.

Do you guys still get a chance to skate together out there?

We haven’t much because he spends most of his time in Atlanta, and I’m out here, but now when we talk on the phone, we get to talk about shit that we’re both involved in, even though he’s doing his thing there and I’m doing my thing wherever I’m doing it. Even though I live in southern California, all my street skating stuff happens elsewhere. We got this new warehouse cracking in Atlanta, so we will be [skating] soon.

Is there truth to the fact that he was supposed to have got on Alien way back, like in the mid-nineties?

Oh yeah. There’s a lot of truth to that.

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