Page 30 - BackSIDE rollbrett-heft VOL.4 25th Anniversary

21:36
JonnyGiger
Darkslide - Ohio, USA Brian Amps
What is your most embarrassing moment?
There aren’t many embarrassing things if you don’t take it too seriously. But lately I
uploaded a video where I tried to do a muska hardflip but I actually flipped it heelflip
instead of kickflip. I didn’t no�ce that un�l it was already uploaded it and I was like
„maaan how long have I been ska�ng“ but then I reminded myself: „it’s just
skateboarding“ we skaters praise skateboarding as absolute freedom with no rules.
But in reality people are ge�ng hated for doing a mall grab, doing pressure flips (or
making videos on YouTube) which is sounding like a lot of rules to me. Anyway what
I’m trying to say is that if you take skateboarding too serious it could be embarrassing.
Does that make sense?
Totally. Have you had any major injuries?
I rolled my ankles like a billion �mes. Both of them. It always threw me back a couple
months and I had to relearn a lot of tricks. Other than that I once fell on my tailbone
pre�y bad. That was nasty. I dislocated 4 fingers and smashed my face on a BS tail flip
out a�empt (I was actually seeing green stars for let’s say 5 seconds)
‘Anyway what I’m trying to say is that if you take skateboarding too serious it could be embarrassing.’
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21:37
JonnyGiger
How does skateboarding shape your life apart from providing food on the table?
Good Ques�on. I learned many things from skateboarding, so many that I can’t count
them but I’m very grateful that I learned to take care of my mind and body. I wasn’t a
very disciplined person in my early 20ies but now I do a cold shower every morning,
which is just as hard as it sounds. You never get used to it. I’m also a vegetarian and I
do yoga and medita�on every day for an hour in total. Great. Now I sound a bit of an
esoteric. But there’s actually a lot of decent studies and scien�fic proof for the
benefits of all these things.
Is there anything you do not like about skateboarding?
Hmmm there are a few li�le things but the major issue these days is with young kids
(almost babies) overcrowding skateparks. Which is more like an implicit aspect of
skateboarding. At least the irony behind it is kinda funny. We hear „this is no
playground“ a lot when we’re street ska�ng and we react like „yo we’re not playing,
we try to make something happen, art, or whatever“ and most of these people don’t
understand that. On the contrary we’re at the park today and we’re like „yo! This IS
NO PLAYGROUND“ because we don’t understand or be�er said we don’t want to
understand it. Nonetheless this is a small consola�on.
You turned pro in 2016 when you were 24 years old. Sounds a bit late to become a
professional these days.
Haha yes that’s true. I started to skate when I was 13. Making it to a pro model
in 11 years is kind of an achievement.
Be�er late than never I'd say. Your Street Part 2021 is pre�y sick. Reminded
me when I first saw H Street's Hokus Pokus.
Thanks for the kind words. It’s definitely not a conven�onal skatepart that you’d
expect from a „Pro street part" these days. The ska�ng reminds a lot of Mullen.
Here we go again haha. Some people think I wanna be like him or be�er than
him, but I honestly just like his tricks. It’s also a ques�on of the spot choice, I
usually don’t travel far for spots so I try to skate everything i find in the area. My
friends don’t dig the spots that i love (primopads, flat banks, hippy jumps) thus I
some�mes go there by myself and set the camera up on a tripod. We also don’t
have a single metal coping ledge in miles. I’m almost finished with another part
which I’m gonna name „flat banks, no handrails".
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