chrome ball sits down with SF's top ranking dirtbag for conversation.

Let’s get this out of the way… the infamous “helmet hair” was over 15 years ago. Are people ever gonna let that shit go?

Ha... yeah, I think its officially over. There may be a few people holding on to the dream but I am over it. My hair doesn’t even grow like that anymore!

Alright, so on with the standard intro... How’d you start skating and what was your first set-up? Who were your favorite skaters growing up?

I've always had a board since I was 4 years old. It was just a green plastic board that I would knee board all over on. I got my first real board at 13. I was a Vision Jinx, OJ2's and Thunder Trucks. I didn’t have any favorite skaters to start but when I started to follow skateboarding, I was really into Gonz, Natas and Sheffey.

Who did your crew consist of in the early days? How’d you end up meeting Keenan and Gino?

At first, it was just me and the kids in my neighborhood. Once they all stopped skating, I started going out of my neighborhood. There was this kid Justin Stack in my hood. We would skate all over the place. Then I meet Keenan Milton just from hanging out, probably at the banks or somewhere in the city. We really clicked and became best friends right away.

I meet Gino through Ray Mate, Ray used to live in Brooklyn and moved to Long Island. I would go chill at his house and I met Gino and the Long Island crew that way.

Growing up with all these dudes… did you ever think that so many of you would go on to actually turn pro?

Shit, we didn’t know what we were doing. We were just street kids in NYC. We skated around in packs and all loved skating. I guess when we were in our later teens and guys started getting lots of product flowed there was some light of being pro one day.

We all just did it because we loved it and somehow we all made some sort of career out of it. Either being a skater or being part of the industry somehow. Pretty fucking awesome!

Read the rest of the interview at chrome ball