Street Fingerboarding, Knife & Community | Andy Cole | S4 E150

On this week’s episode of the podcast, we welcome a very special guest, Andy Cole, also known as @andyfingerboarding! We dive into Andy’s early skateboarding roots and how fingerboarding first entered his life in the mid-2000s. We talk about the Chicago stop on the USAFBL Tour that reignited his passion for fingerboarding, his long hiatus from the scene, and how everything changed after reconnecting with the community.

We also get into Andy’s creative relationship with Knife Fingerboards, and the process behind filming one of the most impactful outdoor street fingerboarding edits to date. Andy breaks down his approach to style, aesthetics, music, and why authenticity matters more than chasing trends.

If you enjoy the show, please like, follow, and share!

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Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00.098)
Right on. He's right on to the stories. I like it. I like it. All right. Well, for those who don't know, Andy Cole, probably more recognized for your video part with the human, you military.

Utilitarian?

can't pronounce that so bad. I want to so bad. Man, all right. So you are, I would consider to be like a local celebrity for sure.

I have a lot of friends here for sure.

People know you, you're like the guy. You're that guy.

Speaker 1 (00:42.542)
Okay, that's when I got back into finger booting.

Okay. So the Chicago stop on the USFEL tour, the hotel, basement memories, that's kind of where everything kind of started a little bit.

Getting back into it, yes. That's where I restarted to, was that event.

So let's backtrack a little bit. So skateboarder first, right?

Yeah, skateboarding from when I was probably like nine to when I was 17, 18.

Speaker 2 (01:11.63)
When did fingerboarding get involved into your life?

Right around the same time I was skateboarding, you know, everybody plays with tech decks when they're in middle school and stuff. Found the Elias Aspen's fingerboard video, the one at night on the park on that video and then me and my best friend, we skated together. We started fingerboarding together, we looked at boards. So think I started around like 2006.

I heard 2006 was like actually you tell me what 2006 fingerboard is like

2006 finger boarding was a lot of people doing like, collab videos on YouTube. FFI was around still at that point. I probably went to like two meetups, but it was pretty dead. It was all online.

So does that mean you were here in Chicago pretty much all your life? On a race?

Speaker 1 (02:03.378)
30 minutes 30 to 45 minutes away in Indiana like right over the border. Okay. Yeah, lived there until I was about 21 Chicago and I've been in Chicago ever since

more I come out here, the more I fall in love with Chicago. I don't think I can convince the wife to live here, but I am slowly becoming a Chicagoan. Is that what you guys call it? Yeah? I don't know. I'm feeling the city. I love the vibes.

local? Coggle in, yes, your friend.

Yeah, Chicago's awesome. I tried to live in Minneapolis for a very brief period and I couldn't do it. I think I'm just so used to this city. There's so much energy here.

You never really match with that city. It feels very... Blaine? Maybe if you compare it to like here or compare it to any other place but it's like it's a big city but it doesn't feel like it's got like any soul or culture.

Speaker 1 (02:49.71)
Exactly. It's hard to go from like a big city to a smaller city.

Yeah, it just feels like shopping mall and very corporatey. Yes. Yeah, so I'm like you want like some culture a little splash anything I'm like, I don't think that's the city but I heard if you want to open up a daycare out there you make crazy money You wanted the mean? You haven't heard about the means the whole day. maybe you need to get on a daycare tick tock

Probably, yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:13.568)
My girlfriend was a nanny out there so I was like, yeah, guess that makes sense.

It's a whole thing. It's a lot. don't want to get into it. I don't know if they'll let us air that. But yeah, it's pretty crazy what they're doing out there. Pretty much Chicago since then. We're looking at the finger boarding journey. You got back in basically in 2022. So there was a hiatus basically from

when I was 18 that would have been like 20 beginning of 2013 until 2022 when I met that event was like the first day I started to get

That event changed everything for Chicago. I don't know if anybody's putting timelines together, but it's like when I met Andy knife daddy, like in Indianapolis and he came on tour with us. That was the very first city that we went to and he met all the locals there. Like box lunch, you like.

I mean, even my friends now, like I've met Vinny and Jay and my friend Warren. A lot of the locals here were at that event as well. So it's cool to just see everybody come together now.

Speaker 2 (04:15.298)
I know. I look at all the old photos and some of the footage and stuff from that event and I'm looking around in that room and I'm like, dude, there are so many cool cats in that room. And the crazy thing is I don't even know if all you guys even knew each other yet. So this was like the base level.

I don't even know who else was there.

We have start releasing some of the archives. Yeah, we're sitting on a crazy ton of footage. We need to really start releasing some of the archives of that stuff. But for us, that was the first stop on the tour and it really kind of, you guys helped set the vibes for sure for the whole rest of the tour. It got Andy, Knife Daddy, super excited about the rest of the tour and doing everything and connecting with everyone. I feel like that city...

that can see pictures and stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:58.594)
Connecting with you guys, Boxlaunch, a few of other guys, really kind got his artistic juices flowing for sure.

Yeah, I mean he was able to like see all the styles of the different people like finger boarding and like getting people together that were in the area like me and you know just seeing the community and he would want a part of this company too. Definitely I would have had an advantage like building everything and being able to see everyone in the US.

So kind of walk us through the, cause it's weird cause like, know what's like the story of this on my side, but it's interesting to see the, the Andy Cole story from that event to getting to this point here with index here in Chicago.

Um, yeah, my story's kind of boring, but I just like fingerboarding and so Andy films me. And, uh, so we do a lot of missions. Uh, we go out and film and we collaborate on like music and like the aesthetic and, you know, he looks to me for advice sometimes, but, you know, I chop it up all to Andy because he hit me up after that event and we stayed in contact and it turned out that I was like right down the street from him. And so I brought my fingerboards over. I met him and Brendan with Fox lunch, um, one day.

and we just started talking about finger boarding and talking about his brand knife that he wanted to start and I was somebody that he could film and it just kind of lined up that way.

Speaker 2 (06:21.07)
You guys are like two peas in a pod, because he loves to film and your style of fingerboarding is unparalleled, so almost everyone.

I appreciate it. I didn't I don't even think about it. We didn't even think about it like it was just what we were into like it was You know the music the aesthetic everything was we just kind of clicked in that way, and I think it just came together It's supernatural, and we're just being ourselves, and I think that's why

You met Andy before he was creating Knife and he was, so you had like some, he saw the whole progression then before the company started during the company and where it's at now.

I think that

Speaker 1 (06:59.48)
He had just started it with Brendan. But yeah, think it was like right after they put out their first little video. I don't know if he knew exactly what he wanted to do with the company yet, but I think once I was on and we started talking a lot more, I would go to his house and we would just sit at his kitchen counter and just fingerboard and talk about knife all the time. I think that's the progression happened after that.

You were basically always basically a team rider for Knives since you guys were pretty much always kind of just friends from the beginning. Yeah. It's just always this kind of like a part. It wasn't like you started the brand then decided to bring you on. were pretty much there from the get go.

Yeah, I think we connected at that event. And he invited me over to like fingerboard and stuff, but we just like became best friends. Yeah. You know, and I think both of those like were hand in hand.

So I know the new edits, the Unitarian, which is I can't even say it. I'm not going to tell you to say it. I'm just going say it now. But yeah, that out. mean, that video is literally the best full length outdoor street skating I've ever. It inspires people in myself to literally just go out and find spots. Like I'm traditionally not really like an outdoor street skater kind of guy. Yeah. Like.

You guys made that look so dope that it's so slide. All right. Now I've got to actually like start really adding outdoor street skating to my repertoire.

Speaker 1 (08:27.724)
Yeah, again, I'm going to just chop it up all the handy because it's, you know, we'd have these timeframes where we could go fingerboard and I would just grab my fingerboard and he'd film me and then, you know, a lot of it was he doesn't want to show the art before the arts finish, not even to us. Like I don't want to see it either. So the whole thing was pretty much him and we would go film and I wouldn't know what the tricks really looked like. A few clips here and there, but.

I was also surprised by the video because the first time we watched it here was the first time I'd seen any of it or saw like, you what music he had chose for everybody's part.

So it was just as much of a surprise for you.

you

Got it?

Speaker 2 (09:18.136)
I got blessed that he kind of walked into the storefront and wanted to go on tour with us as our photographer and videographer. Like you look at any of our old recap videos and stuff like top tier recap videos. Over the top. I'm like, bro, like I was at the event and you made like the event just looked so crisp. I'm like, this is crazy. Who artists? This is wild. Yeah.

He's amazing

Speaker 2 (09:48.086)
All right, so any other sponsors? is it I fear only one?

I'm on Sun Power. It's a wheel company from Hiroshima. That's wild. He's really stoked on knife stuff. And so we were connected with him and we'd sent him some stuff before. He sent us product before. That was another just like natural connection that it just, you know, we reached out and I didn't have a wheel sponsor. And so we just reached out to him and he was like, yeah, absolutely, immediately.

Also that.

Speaker 1 (10:22.67)
It wasn't even a thought, you know. It just made sense, I think, for everybody.

Impressive, man. An international sponsorship. That's wild.

I say more just like my friend that sends me wheels

Yeah, no, I mean, either way, I mean, just to be able to be connected with people literally on the other side of the world like that. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. That's cool stuff. Doesn't happen all the time. I don't have too many stories like that. Yeah. Outside of my German friends like that's about it.

I don't know, I just feel like I'm just making friends and everybody's my friend and I'm just, you know, we're all just sending stuff to each other, like stuff we make, and that's like how I look at it.

Speaker 2 (10:57.55)
So what new projects, anything in the works, anything you want to leak on the pod?

not right now my life has been so hectic I've just been like here working and finger boarding and just like getting readjusted back into a new place so I do want to start a cement sculpture company side project thing.

Fingerboarding types matters, completely self-suffocates.

It's going to be like art, like just sculptures, but also incorporate fingerboarding into it in other ways. I'll sell one-off sculptures, but also sell some fingerboarding obstacles.

I know we featured you and applies magazine for a month with the triangle and all that stuff. know it's kind of a touchy subject a little bit. You want to get into it.

Speaker 1 (11:46.478)
get into it? Yeah, I don't care. so we, um, me and Andy were talking about the next obstacle that we wanted to design. Um, and a video came up and it was, were skating the Miami triangle and I think we both at the same time, maybe he had the idea before I did, but they're like, yeah, that would be the perfect spot. Um, so think the next day, maybe even that day I, uh, me and Nash, I'm sorry, we, uh, we made like a cardboard prototype.

and that just became essentially what we designed the master off of. We didn't have a 3D printer, so we sent the dimensions to somebody to print it out for us and make the master like the silicone mold. And then we ended up just making our own mold after that.

It's one of the most sought after obstacles on the planet.

I make a bunch of them. I'm making them all now, so. Okay. They are going to be in stocks still. For sure.

All right, so all the obstacles at this point now are all handmade by you?

Speaker 1 (12:55.193)
the cement. Any cement obstacles we are selling, yes. in the store I do as well.

Some this stuff in here man, most of this, all this stuff, honestly, it's crazy. I don't know what you guys got going on in the back there. The casting that goes crazy in here.

Yeah, I'm pretty proud of

Speaker 1 (13:12.076)
of that new park that we have. I'm pretty proud of that. The cement feels amazing on that. I'm still getting used to it. I'm still figuring out the formula and the ratios perfectly. it's a process. Yeah, it is.

Anything you wanna have that people know on the

Speaker 2 (13:32.142)
We're live, we're live here at Index, I don't know if I've mentioned that before, you can probably see it with everybody in the background. Man, Andy, where can people find you on

Basically just at Andy Fingerboarding on Instagram. And I also have an old YouTube. I changed the name of it to Andy Fingerboarding, so I think you can find it on that. You got some extra sauce? No, it's all of my stuff from when I first started until about 2013. So you can see my whole progression during that whole timeline. OK, OK. when I came back, everything that you see is the knife. Nice.

this guy's

Speaker 2 (14:04.558)
Well, Levine, USFPL on all platforms, Andy, appreciate you coming on the pod. It's been a pleasure.

Thanks man

Until next time.

Speaker 2 (14:37.814)
Take tight, I'm soaring like a bird Every trick or story, every slide or word Climbing on the edge, I'm breaking the mold Fingerboardin' dreams worth their weight in gold Hear the wheels as they scream In this fingerboardin'

Speaker 2 (15:22.76)
as they scream in this fingerboard

I'm flying free With every flick I'll write my story On this board I'm never alone In the skatepark I found my home In the board and field of thrill Chasing field into never ending will