Jenkem Magazine recently caught up with HUF team rider Brad Cromer and discussed energy drinks, the VX1000, and recently turning pro. Check out a preview of the interview below, and click here for the full feature on the Jenkem site.

You just turned pro and picked up a new clothing sponsor, Brixton. Would you ever draw the line with sponsorships? Like would you ever take on an energy drink sponsor?

I was actually just talking about this the other day with my friend. We were talking about an energy drink that’s in skateboarding right now and he was telling me about what the riders have to do. How you have to wear certain stuff in photos or how you gotta go like reshoot photos if you don’t have a certain hat on. Crazy stuff that I didn’t know went down. By the rules he was telling me and what they have their riders do, that’s almost like, you might as well be in a cage. Someone is just ruling you. I could never do that, it doesn’t seem right. It’s almost like you might as well wear a hat that says “I’m in it for the money”. Do these guys just go home and chug these energy drinks and just love’em? Is that what they’re about?

I think you would die if you were constantly chugging energy drinks while skateboarding.

That’s what I’m saying, it just seems crazy to me, of course people would like some extra money, but I think it’s degrading to yourself, personally. I feel like I would be cheating myself almost. I like to ride for companies that I really believe in and back, and like the people that run it and ride for it. That’s what skateboarding is about, doing what’s in your heart and when you ride for a company it should be something that you believe in and fully back. I wouldn’t like having that guilt of riding for something where you’re just in it for the money.

You don’t have to do stuff like that for other brands?

I mean you wear their stuff but you want to wear it. You skate their boards, use their wheels, ride their trucks, wear their clothes, shoes, but all the companies that I ride for, I want to ride their stuff. They are companies that I believe in and love.

Besides skating, you created your own independent skate video, Lofi. How many copies did you sell of that video?

I ordered 500, ended up getting maybe like 525, and I have probably less than 25 left. So I probably sold close to 500. I sold to a few different skateshops and personally mailed out some from a website I set up for it, like a Paypal kinda thing. Got them to local shops and there were like 2 distributions that ordered a bulk amount too.

Damn, so even in the digital age, you can still move physical DVD’s if the product is quality it seems?

Yeah, I totally didn’t know how it was gonna go, physically making a skate video these days is rare. Sure I could have put it straight to the internet, but that’s another reason I made this video. We filmed for about a year and I wanted to capture it. I wanted to have physical copies so it’s always there and I can always look back at it, instead of it getting lost on the internet like a lot of things these days. I can physically hold it, and put it into a DVD player and pass it to a friend. Sure you can send a link to someone but nowadays it seems like things pop up on the internet so quickly, all these crazy parts. People work so hard towards these things, and I don’t know if I’m just speaking for myself but I feel like things get lost. You almost forget because there’s millions of things on there.

Back in an interview in 2011 you said, “Fuck that high def shit. It’s ruining skateboarding. Looks like shit. Just because Ty [Evans] did it doesn’t mean we have to forget about the VX.” Do you feel the same way now in 2013?

I mean I don’t take back what I said – I still stay true VX. I really do think that VX is obviously one of the greatest ways to capture skateboarding and watch it. With the colors, the audio, the way it looks through the lens. I wouldn’t say like, fuck HD, people are progressing so much with HD and how you use it these days, with the cameras. But in the beginning I felt like one person did it and then everyone thought they had to stay up with the times and it seemed kinda messy in the beginning. It didn’t have the same feel, everything was just almost too crispy looking, it reminded me of like, a soap opera.

Click here for full interview.