Big Badass Brian Talks Vintage Tech Deck History, Philly Scene, and Fingerboard Collecting | S4 E163

On this week’s episode of the podcast, we welcome a very special guest Big Badass Brian from Instagram and eBay. We dive into Brian’s background in art, sticker culture, gardening, and how all of that eventually connected back into fingerboarding. We talk about vintage Tech Deck history, old KB Toys contests, Philly fingerboard culture, collecting rare pieces, and Brian’s unique approach to vending, creativity, and community.

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⚑CONNECT WITH BIG BADASS BRIAN ⚑

Instagram ➜ https://www.instagram.com/bigbadassbrian/

Etsy Shop ➜ https://www.etsy.com/shop/BoredHippieGifts

Ebay Shop ➜ https://www.ebay.com/usr/bigbadassbrian

Transcript

speaker-0 (00:06)
Welcome to USAFPL's Finger Work Podcast. I'm your host, Levine Cunningham. And today I've got Brian, Brian also known as Big Badass Brian on Instagram. Brian, welcome to the pod. How you been?

speaker-1 (00:17)
Yeah, doing great. Thank you

speaker-0 (00:21)
Man. All right. We go way, way back, but before we get started, this is actually the second time we've been on the pod. We actually did a mini pod on the road last year, 2025 at the Philly location, the regional event on the tour. And I'm sad to say that I had a corrupted file and I lost it. And I was like, no, devastated, like devastated. And I'm like, we've got to do another one, which

Honestly, I don't want to say like I'm mad or like that we lost it because I feel like you needed a full length episode anyways. I feel like a little mini pot just didn't do you justice.

speaker-1 (01:01)
I saw you recording, you were a busy man. doing all that recording on everybody, trying to get everybody on there, moving the cameras around, it's bound to happen, you know? It's not the first time with me and the internet where things of that nature has happened. It seems like it's just trying to keep me away, but yeah, I'm always available. You know, that was fun sitting there at that time, going around the tables. There's ⁓ possibly more to always discuss from the vintage days to the current stuff, you know?

speaker-0 (01:27)
Definitely and you're like a jack of all trades like you go back you go back within the community You're a collector like you do all kinds of cool stuff. Yeah

speaker-1 (01:36)
I do.

I've been part of the art community for a long time. Before I noticed there was a finger boarding community. I was doing graphic design for a company. I was into the street art community, asked to be part of different sticker clubs, sticker crews. At different points, bars would approach me and ask.

if they could put my name on the flyer to be part of the art shows. So that was something that was always fun. occasionally they would ask Abby too, they in the street art community, they're unsure who's who. So we even got Abby's name on a flyer too. We had both had some canvases, different things, stencils, everything you can kind of imagine. We got to help with the Eagles mural too. So from the low end of, know, stuff you might see on the streets to the high end of a mural that's still currently outside of the Eagles stadium.

Right out on the outside of the building, there's a huge Eagles mural. We did a giant paint by numbers, two different nights. It was a really fun night. The Eagles cheerleaders were there actually cheering us on as we painted. was very simple though, giant five by five squares where you just painted in the numbers. But that would be kind of the peak of the art career, know, certain things on that resume that I had done. I had been in the gardening community for about 15 years. Me and my friends ran hydroponics stores in New Jersey.

Pennsylvania, and then eventually I went out west for about 10 years. And that's kind of why you never saw me on the internet. I was always finger boarding, but very active in different little communities, different groups. Each one would have its trade shows. I would go to those trade shows. I would run booths there. I would help people set up at those trade shows. So it's kind of like, I've always done a similar thing with a different presentation in front of me. But yeah, I got to go up and down the West coast, opening up hydroponic stores for different investors, different companies.

I helped with the Discovery Channel. ⁓ Jim Belushi has a show that I really wouldn't recommend watching, but you can see the family grow generation. You can see us in him, how he navigated through his cannabis business there. So that was fun, know, going up and down the West Coast during the pandemic, a lot of people wanted to garden, they wanted to be self-sufficient. So I was working a garden store, managing the store, selling nutrients to companies.

three days of the week and then the other four days I would work 40 hours or more for those companies. The same people I was selling the nutrients to, I would go and be a trainer at those facilities, teaching people how to start seeds, take clones, go full through harvest with whatever they were doing, oftentimes in the cannabis industry, but other times as well with seed sprouts companies trying to start from the ground up. Yeah, man of many different hats, but always in the art community, you know, we do logos for those people.

I would draw the logos, Abby would print them on her sticker machine. We have an industrial sticker machine downstairs. We would do that for the cannabis industry too, for their labels, for their jars. I would oftentimes help with the art images. They would maybe change them to their liking, get the fonts they wanted and we would print them. you know, nothing really new when I started doing stencils on tiny fingerboards, crafting the fingerboards myself, putting the art images on there. It was just a different...

Canvas, you could say.

speaker-0 (04:49)
Man. All right. So art has definitely pushed your creativity to the max. And I like the gardening side of things. I've always wanted to kind of get into it. I feel like I've never really had any real dedicated spaces to really kind of get into being sufficient and growing your own vegetables and crops and things like that. And just really taking advantage of, you know, mother earth to as fullest for sure. I also

speaker-1 (05:16)
Specialized

in selling the tents, you know, the indoor garden was the specialty not the giant farmers with the mass ⁓ Fertilizers, but the guys who had apartments houses who needed to find a space oftentimes a small garden tent Maybe above your fridge, you know, I have a tiny little setup above my fridge because I am six foot five I can reach it I can garden above that with a couple strip lights Have some small basil different things up there. You know, that's a nice doesn't need a lot of light

But that's really what was the specialty. And then going out west, the boom of the cannabis industry.

speaker-0 (05:51)
Man, double dipping on that too, I like that.

speaker-1 (05:55)
Yeah, selling them the nutrients and then gardening with them too, you know, because I had all the answers. So when they asked if I was available, it just made sense to go there. And then I would do everything you could imagine from training in the facilities, ⁓ hiring, help hiring, sadly firing sometimes, but everything you could imagine for a small garden company trying to be a big company. The company grow generation I worked for, they were tiny.

And then we went to the stock exchange. were one of the only two companies on the stock exchange for the cannabis industry. And then they went, you know, from five stores to 80 stores going across America, huge warehouses of nutrients. So yeah, it was was a quite an interesting ride. And after COVID, as that went down, we all got laid off. So I just kind of stayed at home, relaxed for a year, did a little retirement, even though, you know, I'm obviously very young.

I felt confused, was unsure what we were up to. So I just finger boarded a lot. And that's when I noticed that there was a little community, you online. I realized there was a store up north. was a pro scooter store at the time. They sadly went out of business, but some of those scooter stores on the West coast, had fingerboard displays. And that's where I got my first Black River. And I didn't realize, but I got a Berlin Wood and I, you know what I say, I didn't realize they're pretty much the same thing in different boxes.

but different art graphics, slightly different feel to them. But yeah, that was really when I realized that there was a community, people making professional boards. So I was just using tech decks and things until I guess about six years or so ago. And I could do all the tricks on a tech deck, but really had no clue that anyone else really could. I would still skateboard regularly. Every night after work, I'd skateboard in Tacoma, Washington.

When I lived out here, we're now in West Philadelphia and I'm skateboarding around St. Joe's College every night. But yeah, I didn't really notice there was a what was going on for the longest time.

speaker-0 (07:56)
You're like in the East. Like you're, you're in it. You're in the city of brotherly love.

speaker-1 (08:01)
Yeah, currently we've I've been moving around a lot as you noticed, but we just got here. My little fingerboard world is behind me. I tried to get some of it in the shot there and yeah, we're in the city. We're right by Saint Joe's and I'm excited to do this summer here. See what's going on. See the community skateboard all around a lot of college kids, a lot of college atmosphere right here.

speaker-0 (08:22)
Yeah, there's some legendary spots and stuff like that out there for sure. Definitely some legendary spots.

speaker-1 (08:27)
FDR

is huge. FDR grows every year. I've been going down there as a kid, 41 at the moment. And when I was little, there was just a half pipe and some bumps. And you can see on old skate videos with, I believe, twin machine like Ban Margera and maybe the 90s, the late 90s, what FDR kind of looked like. It was just like a little hub with a giant half pipe, like the 20 foot half pipe.

And then, yeah, that keeps growing. So that's still there, thankfully. That keeps growing. ⁓ When I was a kid, people would be at Love Park, but you would get in big trouble. You could get fined. You get in a lot of trouble there. So that was like kind of shutting down at the time. And they said that they would build a skate park for the community, which finally happened. You I moved away. I haven't been there yet, but I'm excited to see that one. That one's at the art museum. And that was the city's answer to Love Park because they had taken it away from everyone.

And it's rather close to Love Park too. You could honestly walk from where Love Park still currently is, the fountain, to the new skate park at the art museum. And there's a little fingerboard park there too. So very excited to get there. Check that out. Park? Yeah, there's a tiny, the skate park is outdoors next to the art museum. If you're looking at the Rocky steps, the famous Rocky steps, it would be to the left of that. And there is a fingerboard park apparently there too that some of locals are making.

speaker-0 (09:36)
An outdoor

That's crazy. So you got the Rocky Balboa stairs, the legendary stairs and the Rocky, I think the original Rocky, I have to go back into the classic classics, but yeah, wait. And so you're saying like there's an outdoor fingerboarding park somewhere around those stairs at the bottom.

speaker-1 (10:06)
It's at the skate park, so it's attached to the skate park, you know? Yeah, right with it. But yeah, you can be on the Rocky steps and see the kids skateboarding and see the park. But like I said, I haven't been there, just been driving by, waiting to get there, waiting for a nice sunny day. Yeah, Rocky and his famous steps when he ran up those things, there's a statue that they move around for some reason. It used to be at the top of the steps for the longest time.

speaker-0 (10:09)
okay, gotcha, gotcha.

speaker-1 (10:30)
and they moved it to the bottom, I believe a new boxer is getting it, like Joe Frazier or somebody's getting a giant statue built down there. So the Rocky is moving around and I think they want them at the top of the steps. The people say it's iconic, you know?

speaker-0 (10:43)
It is iconic. think anywhere, anywhere else besides the top of the steps is just, I feel like it's frowned upon.

speaker-1 (10:49)
Yeah, it's blasphemy. They up

it every day and they do that. They run up it and they're like, struggling to get up it of all ages. Little kids, the old folks, they run up it, you know, it's wild. If you ever come to the city and you go to the art museum, spend 10 minutes, guaranteed you'll see somebody run up it and do the Rocky Chan at the top, you know?

speaker-0 (11:09)
You have to you have to you're not even living life if you go there and you don't do that. feel like it doesn't matter how crazy you look. It's just it's standard standard protocol.

speaker-1 (11:13)
Exactly,

You don't look crazy because people will be racing each other and after wedding dresses, nice events, know, from casual events to bummy people. They'll all be running up a cheering, you know.

speaker-0 (11:29)
All right, so talk to me about the local community there, because I know that there's events that are going on out there. I know like there's other brands, companies, like I feel like Philly or even Pennsylvania as a whole, like it's growing, like that community out there is getting big.

speaker-1 (11:44)
Definitely is. see mad science and Mr. Mustard. They're doing their thing. They're trying to run more and more events reaching out to the skate shops. We got a skate shop, the Zembo that moved. They were on the border of Kensington. They just moved. They're still in the city. I've not seen their new location, but that was a great guy. That shop too. ⁓ Sausage ramps had an event there. He had his cardboard classics there where he

Reminisced on the days of the past where you would use textbooks and cardboard anything you had duct tape pencils things like that so he had a really cool event again that sausage ramps Tanner and That just was very fun reminiscent of the old days You know he had contests for who could make the best ramp He had a giant ramp that was you know six feet long with a big gap and it made out completely out of cardboard and at the end of that night

the owner walked around of Zembo and he said, you know, please let me buy some of this stuff. I'm going to wait till the end and whatever merch you still have, let's talk about getting it in my shop. And he did that for everyone. He went up to each booth and said that, which is so rare and so hard. You know, I've gone into skate shops before and, you know, get to the door and try to polish myself up and get my best approach on and walk in with my best energy.

They never take anything, you know, they don't seem to want it. say, tech decks, you know, I remember those. And they have a case, they have that counter right there. And I have some nice counter displays for them, but it's really rare that a skate shop might pick it up. And obviously a store like in the mall, the, zoomies, you know, they're not gonna do it. I've asked them before.

And they don't want to even have the discussion. The managers there, the regular skate shops kind of feel the same. yeah, for Zembo, the owner's name is slipping my mind at the moment, but very friendly guy, great shop there. And there's another one in Maryland that, ⁓ the roll around workshop, he is kind of the same vibe, you know, I met him at an event, ⁓ right as his shop was opening up, he said him and his wife were investing in it. And, he wanted to take some products right then and there, whatever we had.

And he went around to everybody and tried to fill it with the local community. ⁓ that is pretty cool. That's kind of what's going on as far as what I've seen on this coast so far. know, a lot of small people kind of doing their thing with their followers and their Instagrams, but those two shops are ⁓ there. They want to be there for the long haul, you know, roll around workshop and Zembo.

speaker-0 (14:20)
on you have to check in the Zenbo I know Dan with Roll Around we've been working together here for the last three or four months with Plies and getting that in there and stuff like that and yeah he's been doing some advertising work and boosting some stuff in the community and stuff and he's a good dude he seems like he's on his stuff and he's really about the community and stuff so I'm glad that he's reaching on a local level for you guys so that's awesome

speaker-1 (14:31)
yeah, I've you.

Yeah, he has a, I believe a little party every Sunday, but he's in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm in Philadelphia and with my schedule, I have not been able to get there, but he does that, you know, and those little meetups are what it's all about. There's a shop in Washington, which really got me out there a little bit more. And that's all aboard shop in Washington, Puella, Washington with Seth is the owner. He's been filming since like the eighties or nineties. He has filmed some big.

people like Steve Owen with Fulfill the Dream, Shorty's different people like that. So he's in the Washington scene. I believe he went to college for film and videography. And he's had his shop for a long time and he's now the one running it. You'll see him there. He's had employees too. But every Sunday he does the same thing. He has a meetup. And the first Sunday of the month, he has a big meetup where he goes and gets pizza for all the local kids.

You know, that's just a great thing. You'll see a lot of young teenagers there hanging out a safe spot for them to hang out We'll put a bunch of ramps out on the sidewalk, which is ⁓ kind of tucked in off the road So yeah, that's really great. You know, I went there and ⁓ I was rather shy I can be shy sometimes, you know I go in if I don't strike up a conversation I just might do a lap and leave and I did that a couple years ago and as I was leaving I walked in

Did a lap around, was like, all right, I'm just gonna walk out, you know, I'm shy person. As I was leaving, big shout out to Justin and Chris Daniels, they were there, the Washington boys. And they were like, hey, where are you going? Why are you, it seems like you're about to leave, you know? And they were right, I was about to leave. And I noticed Chris's voice and I said, ⁓ I think I just saw some of your videos, you know, on YouTube, your different edits about vintage finger boarding. I was looking up vintage finger boarding on Google, took me down that avenue.

So we started chatting, me and Justin started chatting. I hung out, know, had a great night, met David, who's Earl, finger boards. And we really clicked a lot of people there at such good energy. I was glad that they grabbed me, you know, and I saw what the community was about. Really almost didn't want to go home that night, you know, stayed out all night with them. They said they were meeting back up at David's house, at Earl's house. So said, you know, I could probably go out.

They said, yeah, you gotta see it. You gotta see it. He's got ramps, all these black river ramps. No, we're not talking like the tiny ramps, you know? He had the huge parks. And I was like, all right, you know, I'm gonna see what's going on. So the boys are all hanging out. We all love the same things. We love hash a lot. So no surprise there. We're collectors of glass. So we're all like to hang out, know, have a good time. And the part that really blew me away with him was he really only had one stool in his house, one spot to sit.

You know, there was a big apartment, but again, only one spot to sit because there was all these fingerboard parks, huge, massive parks. And when you went to open up his drawers, he had this beautiful kitchen with all these drawers. Every drawer you would open up was organized with fingerboard ramps like rails. You go to open one drawer and it just be rails. You know, I got a next door and it would just be cement curbs and stuff. Like, what the hell's going on here? Where's a cup to drink? You go open the top and there would just be bigger ramps up there. This is nuts, you know?

and the giant half pipes, the playgrounds. He has one by the door and like his coats and stuff are hanging on it, you know? And then he's got another one and donuts are on it. He's got food on it for the friends, you know? He's like, I got donuts for everybody. So there's like literally no real normal person space. I was just blown away. I was like, what, is this what everybody's doing? You know, if I can come to find out that is not what everybody's doing. I have met some very rare people in the community.

speaker-0 (18:36)
That is super rare. All right. So we're talking about you're over like, he's only got one stool. But I'm like, to you might be like, that's a weird priority over everything else. And then for us finger boarders, we're like, I don't know. Like I'd rather have a house full of finger boarding stuff and only one stool versus 10 stools and no finger boarding stuff. And I'm like, this is kind of a wild story. Like it's like the fingerboard house. It's like the fingerboard trap house.

speaker-1 (19:01)
Yeah,

exactly. And I so wanted to take photos, but we had just met. But I asked, you know, and I felt awkward asking him like, Hey, do you mind if I stand in the corner and take a quick photo? And this is somebody who you kind of just he was like, Yeah, I guess so. You know, he wasn't like, definitely take a photo of everything.

speaker-0 (19:19)
Yeah, I mean, just Matt, so I mean, could be a little...

speaker-1 (19:27)
the price tag on some of those Black River parks were not only that to get it shipped to you was almost the same price tag and then to get it to the third floor of the apartment building is like to really what you had gone through to make this one giant room was insane you know and I think you have helped with David over time right you met him on Earl FD

speaker-0 (19:46)
See ya.

speaker-1 (19:52)
Yeah, he said he chatted with you about ramps and early ⁓ vending days and stuff, I believe, in the past. So, you know, it's a small community. Everybody eventually gets to know everyone at some point.

speaker-0 (20:03)
Yeah, I think the, I mean, the more you're involved with the community, the more you end up meeting people just naturally and stuff like that. We've been doing this now for a very, very long time. So it's getting to a point now where there isn't too many people I don't know of or haven't heard of or haven't had a conversation with at this point. So.

speaker-1 (20:18)
What number of podcasts will this be? ⁓

speaker-0 (20:22)
163 maybe 164.

speaker-1 (20:26)
Okay, yeah, that's a lot of stuff to be said.

speaker-0 (20:28)
There's a lot of history, a lot of tips, lot of documenting, a lot of stories. We've come a long way. It's kind of weird looking back and just looking at the archives. And I'm just like, there's so many great episodes and great interviews and great people and great stories. And it's a collection. I think that anybody who wants to go back through the archives and stuff, like if you don't know anything about finger boarding, think if you listen to all of the episodes, like you'll have a, an extremely large knowledge of finger boarding.

speaker-1 (20:58)
Exactly, yeah. I agree.

speaker-0 (21:03)
But now I'm glad that you're part of the part of the journey, part of the story.

speaker-1 (21:07)
Yeah, yeah. Did you have specific questions for me? I know you probably want to know the first big contest that I won.

speaker-0 (21:14)
Should I just with that one? get into that. mean, tell us what got you into fingerboarding? Like, I know you skated, but when did you transition really into more of just fingerboarding instead of skateboarding?

speaker-1 (21:27)
It was, I feel like it was always toys, you know, I, I always had cool toys as a kid and some of them would have came with little skateboards. There would have been, uh, again, I was born in 1985, so some of the toys, like these bendable action figures, they would have came with boards and the term rad was everywhere, you know, awesome. And the, the flashes, the colors that would have been reminiscent of, say by the bell, they're

their triangles and squiggly patterns or Rocco's modern life. know, those types of colors and words were everywhere. People saying totally, you know, and skateboarding came and went. It had its trends. So at that moment in time, a lot of the toys had that style or that look to it, you know, they sometimes were packaged with them. So I would get those as a kid and I would play with those types of things. ⁓ You might get like before McDonald's thought about making a fingerboard toy.

you might get like a Kermit the Frog with a finger with a skateboard, you know? And there was other action figures that had little skateboards. ⁓ I believe I have like a big collection of stuff. Let me just grab something like weird, you know? So like this, this would have been from Toys R Us. This is Snoopy and he has a skateboard. Now this is before me. This is 1971, you know, essentially just.

Yeah, since we moved, lot of I have a lot of vintage things that I could showcase, we could send to the magazine, you know, things like that. But you could play with this as a fingerboard, you know, before the term fingerboarding was out.

speaker-0 (23:02)
You can use this mini skateboard, that's crazy.

speaker-1 (23:05)
Yeah.

And you know, again, like those aren't, there are plastic wheels, but it's going to spin, you know, it's going to do what you want. And you got Snoopy on there, which is cool, you know? Yeah. So there were a lot of toys even before I was born that had little skateboards and things with them that you could really just fingerboard with. So it's hard for me to think of when my first true one was, but I would have had key chains. I should have got it out too. There's a little key chain one about this big that's yellow.

And I still have that and it had similar wheel system, but plastic rod going to the plastic wheels, you know, just one piece of plastic. And I would kind of, it would kind of stick a little bit to my fingers, you know, because of the plastic. So I realized that I could oddly as a kid with that. And when I would go to putt putt or Dave and busters, I would see those little key chain skateboards. get excited, you know, and I can remember having a lot of them in the junk drawer as a kid with the pencils. You would open up that junk drawer.

And there would be key chain fingerboards, different things in there that depending on, I could play within the tub, know, during tub time, um, seven years old and younger, obviously. And then as I got GI Joe's, they might be with them. They might be in that, that little world, you know, and then skateboarding came really heavy. Uh, 99, right. Uh, I would've been 15 years old. So I was skateboarding very, doing a lot of tricks from like 12 to age 15.

And then Tech Deck came out with the same ones, you know, the fingerboard companies were already out and the company that McDonald's chose was just go by fingerboard. You know, that's like their brand with the little finger logo. But, ⁓ everybody knew Tech Deck, like just like yo-yos, like fidget spinners. They were a trend that happened at that moment. And everybody had one, even people who couldn't do anything with it were like, I'll collect these too, you know, beanie babies.

speaker-0 (24:55)
Mm.

speaker-1 (25:02)
were the next thing. There was always something at that period of time. And I don't know if it was because all the, obviously all the wars we kept going through as a society in America or what, but toy stores were very popular. ⁓ They were huge warehouses, you know, that came from Toys R Us. The shelves would have just been endless. The options would have been endless. And when I saw Tech Deck, they were the same ones that you had on the board.

And the price point was the same too, which is kind of interesting. You know, they were $3.99 then. They're still $3.99, which is kind of interesting. You know, you can get them cheaper. You can get them more expensive.

speaker-0 (25:40)
but that's actually accurate because I was thinking about that the other day. I was just like, I don't think tech decks have really inflated their price. I've always remembered tech deck being like two to $4. Like I've never really, even when they first came out, I don't remember them being under $2. Like they've always been like in that two to $4 range ish. I mean, there might be some inflation in there, but it's like very minimal. Like they've always been, you know, just bucks.

speaker-1 (26:10)
399, 399 would have been like the standard. I'm like, I gotta grab some now. know, since we moved, we got to see if I have a sticker on some. We got some old hookups here and I love it when the sticker is still on there. You know, if, so there it is. Here's a great example. So they would have came out, you know, KB Toys, 599, they would have walked around and scratched that out with a pen and put on the sale price.

for everybody $3.99. And this would have been in the mall. And currently in the mall, when I went to Tacoma mall, one of the last times I was in Tacoma about a year ago, it was kind of funny to me that I walked through the mall and I saw Tech Deck and a lot of different stores. I started at one end of the mall and I went into the FYE, you know, they sell DVDs, but right by the register was mini brand stuff and Tech Deck. And they had a price on one. It was a

finesse board or whatever. ⁓ I said, okay, you know, that's the price. And I went to the next store and it was a clothing store. And they caught me because of some stance socks, some skateboards on the wall. But then at the register, they had a different price for the same series, you know, like a dollar more. I was like, huh. And then I kept going down the stores, zoomies had a different price. PacSun had a different price and they were all the same set and series.

And for some weird reason, went up a dollar each store as I kept going to the other side of the mall. And, you know, I get to the last one and I just can't believe it. was like $12 or whatever, $12.99 for the same tech deck that we started way back at the other end of the mall for, you know, $4.99 or $3.99. And I told the register employee, because I was just like befuddled and I thought it was an interesting topic. They didn't even care to have the discussion with me. So...

You know, that's just the retail world that employee at that moment. But, uh, yeah, they had said, so I said, buddy, buddy, I can't believe this tech deck price. It goes up a dollar each store that I go to. said, this is really weird. And he said, respond something like, I don't make the prices, you know, I just work here. Okay. But, uh, yeah, the point of that is, uh, yeah, they really haven't gone up. You can find them again, you know, from on sale 399, sometimes 599.

It just would have depended when you got them, where you got them, guess, you But yeah, the price never really went up, which is kind of interesting on finger, finger boards.

speaker-0 (28:38)
Well, know you've been an avid collector. mean, last time I saw you at the affiliate event at the regional, the USFPL regional event, like you had a, like a vintage, like 2001, like tech deck t-shirt, like an original, like tech deck t-shirt and everything on and like, had all kinds of like, just vintage stuff. Like normal people like me would be like, this is going to like a box frame. You're like, nah, dude, I'm wearing this. Like, I'm like, okay, okay, I see you.

speaker-1 (29:05)
Exactly. They stay wrapped up for the longest time because we moved right now. There's stuff kind of scattered around me on the ground that will be going like on display in cases, stuff like that. But the t-shirts, yeah, I would have bought them years and years ago. And it's a special event whenever I open them up, you know, I'll let everybody know too. It comes out of the wrap for that event and

I'll wear it after that too, but yeah, it's from 1999 to like 2001 usually. Tech Deck would have had their own tags, know, which is cool. can tell they had a lot of stuff. had shoes, hats, wallet. I do have a wallet from them. Probably watches. They had a video game on Game Boy, which was not fun or good at all. But yeah, Tech Deck really went hard on it with marketing X concepts at the time.

And that little thumb character too. I love the thumb, know, ⁓ tech tech needs to bring back the thumb. I don't know what happened with, ⁓ from X concepts to spin master, but I feel like they bought everything except the thumb, you know,

speaker-0 (30:14)
not really sure what the kind of dig into that I know they've been they've been doing some weird stuff a lot of transitional stuff I almost feel like they need to circle back to the beginning and just bring all the old school like little tech tech dudes and all that stuff back into like the picture and bring back like all the true nostalgia bring us back an updated video game like give us a

What is the PSP version of it kind of stuff like we kind of need to get all that stuff kind of back and retroactive for sure.

speaker-1 (30:46)
They're remaking those dudes. They just had series one of those like plastic-y bigger guys, you know? But they don't look the same, but it is cool to see. I went to the Target and I noticed it was a really big box, like a car, you know, a giant car and like the little dudes were in it. That's kind of fun. So yeah, they keep bringing back stuff. I don't know what's ever going on with Tech Tech. Sometimes I go into a Target and the shelf is like being filled. actively see it being filled.

And then other times, if I don't see it being filled, it's completely sold out. And I feel like they, I don't know who's collecting them or like if they are really selling out or what, but ⁓ if you want something specific, it's a little tricky, you know, to get that specific thing from them. You have to go online or eBay or somewhere because no skate shop has the same stuff. The zoomies, they don't ever have the same ones in the store. could say each zoomies will have different tech decks, you know.

So yeah, they're an interesting company, but ⁓ it's cool to see that they still exist. Hot Wheels has always done it too. People think that Hot Wheels is now just doing it, but Mattel, obviously under the name, under the umbrella of Mattel, they've done stuff a bunch of times over the years ⁓ with different people, like maybe Danny Way, when he was popular, they would have had different boards for different people. And now again, with Tony Hawk, I think this is their second time making fingerboards with him.

But yeah, it's cool to see, know, the shelf spaces are going hard, which makes me feel like something's, you know, storms are brewing, something big could happen.

speaker-0 (32:25)
There's definitely some movement. will definitely admit to that because I have seen stocks of tech decks where I'm just like floating through like Walmart or whatever. can just, you know, walk down the toilet and stuff and like, you'll see the stuff stocks and come back and it'll be empty. And so like, I know like,

movement, people are collecting it, things like that. think that skateboarding is getting a nice fresh of breath air. And I think a lot of people are looking to start collecting their favorite graphics from their favorite skaters and things like that. And so I think the whole collectible side of, even if they're not finger boarding, like they're still picking up those tech decks for those licensed art.

speaker-1 (33:00)
Yeah, I agree. think Tech Deck Collector, who you had in the magazine, I don't know that guy Finger Boards. I think he just collects the decks for the artwork. I think he likes the artwork. It's easy, but I might be wrong on that. I have chatted with him in the past before he got really more notability, you could say, because every now and then I look on Instagram and I'm curious and he was building his wall, you know? I what's going on with this guy's wall?

And obviously, I think it's Tech Deck Collector.

speaker-0 (33:30)
Yeah, I that collector's STL St. Louis.

speaker-1 (33:34)
Yeah, so I don't know if he finger boards, but if he doesn't, that's still super cool. Just like you said, it's art graphics that you can hang up that don't take up as big of a space. A real skateboard could be $60 and plus, you know, just to have it and then to hang it is a little tricky too. So yeah, I always loved it for that aspect. The Wet Willy Flame Boy, you know, World Industries ripping off a Mad Magazine Spy versus Spy.

That was always hilarious to me, just saying that I was a fan of Mad Magazine as a kid. My grandpa would have had the subscription. So the moment I saw them, I knew they were ripping it off, but I thought it was cool. It was for kids. It was for the nineties, you know?

speaker-0 (34:16)
Definitely, All right. So I know that you make a huge array of products. I know that you do everything from little Nike shoe waxes to the actual like shoe boxes to decks, to all kinds of stuff. Kind of walk us through all the products and the creativity of things that you got going on.

speaker-1 (34:38)
Yeah, definitely. We have a lot of fun with it. Abby would have been making candles for a while and printing the labels herself. Like we said, we can come up with the graphics. So she was already doing that. So she had a sea of different waxes, different things, always organic. Generally American made. We are kind of health nuts in how we eat, how we live. No fragrances, just essential oils, stuff like that. So she was already selling candles.

I had gotten some different waxes that I had just not liked at all for fingerboarding and for skateboarding. They were hard. They would be scented, know, overly scented with fragrance too, not essential oil typically. The stuff that gives you headaches, the stuff that just messes with your body, you know, your brain, your chemistry. ⁓ So I had gotten some waxes I didn't like. I was buying Black River ramps. Some of the waxes had a lot of dye in it and they stained my ramps.

So I think to myself, this is bonkers. They're not even that great. They're tacky. They're not as slick as I want them to be. What else is out there? My girl has a whole sea of options. Let me test some of these. So I started messing with the waxes on my ramps. I see what I like. I mix some together. I say, I don't like this one. I go through a couple of different things. I finally find the wax I really like.

I'm just doing my own thing. know, I'm casually waxing up my Rams, keeping my board fresh, not scratching it up as much, going a little smoother across the bricks. Now, obviously you don't need wax on like plastic. You don't need it generally ever, but if you have bricks, it helps a lot. It's going to save your trucks. You know, that's just going to grind down your trucks and slow you down too. You'll feel the friction and you won't be going at the same rate. know, finger boarding is all about physics. It's all this math.

in science and that element is slowing you down. It's adding the equations. So keeping the equations nice is just helpful, you know? And that was kind of the first thing we noticed. I was selling boards with Earl, with David, when I met him. He made his own boards. I don't like to step on anybody's toes in that sense. So since he made boards, I said, hey, let's make some together. We had made ⁓ some glow in the dark.

Once to see mine I have mine here, but it's all scratched up and it's got like stickers on it But it says Earl is glow in the dark and it is ⁓ glittery. So he made those specially for me. There we go These ones this would have been the first boards. We started selling okay and glitter would glow in the dark words He added my little head logo to the top A lot of people see that out there in the world on stickers on crosswalks ⁓

of different zones, might see my little sticker head. It's obviously me with my hair whipping. You may know from me sending you the logo for the days that we worked with you, sponsoring, vending. But yeah, the first item that we really sold were these, handcrafted in Washington. And I loved it. I absolutely love his boards, the time that he takes, the glues that he uses, the thought and the passion.

the things he went through in his life and the focus that he just puts into these boards. know, some artists are good at doing art and then there's other people who just use that time to get away and to focus, you know, and he's one of those people who puts his all into those boards when he makes them. And I really generally love them, you know, that's my to go one. So that would be the first thing, not to ramble too long, but we would have started selling his boards first.

we would have made my wax second and then realized I wanted a fun mold. know, before I ever sold it, we decided to make the mold and it is from Vans, the high tops, the original skate shoe they called it, you know, and let me just grab something here. This would be for a display for the shoe displays at the stores. This would just be on the rack, you know, and the shoe would be sitting there.

This is in my little world in my little shoe store. have a tiny shoe store, which I can show you in a moment. But the Vans, the Hightop original, we figured out pay homage to that. So got a mold of that, pour the wax into the mold. It's all organic, American made soy. So you can use it as chapstick. You can cook with it. You can eat it. Feel 100 % safe, confident with it in that sense, which is great. I love it. A lot of people really, really like it on the ramps, the rails.

The shoes look cool when they sit in your little world. They don't look out of place. The box itself is rather fun too. It is a little origami project that is one piece of paper can pop out two shoes. So on each piece of paper, we designed a program with the Cricut Maker. Abby really helped me with that. That will cut out the paper, the stencil that we need. We went through a lot of paper too, thinking of what's the best thickness, know, what feels the best.

So we tell the Cricut maker, ask it nicely, know, please cut this design out. It does. I pop them out. The next step is kind of insane. We have to fold it. So each box is one piece of paper that you can unfold. It is a true origami project. Yeah, once you unfold the box, the box takes a lot of time to make. ⁓ I'm spending an insane amount of time making each one from pouring the molds, letting the molds obviously cool overnight.

speaker-0 (40:04)
That's crazy.

speaker-1 (40:18)
to cutting pieces of wax paper. And that's from a company, I believe it's called, If You Care, a very healthy wax paper company that, you know, they kind of like their name. They have high standards for you for cooking, things of that. But I'm putting that wax paper in the shoe box. I'm folding up the shoe box, putting the wax, two slices of wax in there to make one shoe. And then we're stickering it with little stickers.

The logo is on the side of both of them. I'm going to grab a box too while we're talking, but it is a big, project. know, ⁓ we're a Gami, ⁓ the art graphics, the drawing of the logos. ⁓ we'll go with, I guess we'll go with a green one. So we have all different colors. You can see on the back, the holographic logo. ⁓ these are very small. You know, the holes punched in up top that we punch out.

speaker-0 (41:06)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (41:13)
Holographic sticker keeping it together.

speaker-0 (41:16)
attention to the details that I like. When I saw those, was just like, man, these are crazy. But I didn't realize this is all just one piece of ⁓ paper. That's all just origami. That's crazy.

speaker-1 (41:27)
Yeah, so we'll destroy one right now just to show you too. So once you pop it open, you can see on the top what's going on. And ⁓ let's just get it going. So yeah, that all folds in together. I have to make a whole bunch of folds, tuck the folds in together. And then the bottom, what you're getting is two slices of wax for only $5, this whole little set. So you know.

speaker-0 (41:54)
It's

a steal. And the fact that you the waxes looking just like shoes and Jordans and Nikes and high tops, it's wild.

speaker-1 (42:01)
We only have one mold at the moment. It is the Vans High Top Original. I will make some more at some point, but no other ones right now, just these ones. And you know, great scale for the little world. They can be in next to a trash can. They can be really anywhere you want. You you grab a little trash can, let's say you put that there, you throw a shoe next to it.

It's not out of place, you know, you can have the box on the stairs under the stairs. It really adds to it. And this is the whole package. I don't like to have plastic waste out in the world. I like to be able to use that, you know, in that sense. And then, you know, let's take this one. So, right. This is. Kills me to do it, but yeah, every every box that I have to fold, you can see ⁓ even on the edges.

There is a lot of folds. is about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 different folds I gotta make.

speaker-0 (43:07)
a small piece too, which is kind of crazy. Cause when I look at it, I'm just like, even with a step-by-step instruction manual, that still seems complicated.

speaker-1 (43:15)
It was a lot. The fun thing is, me and Abby sat down after we figured out the program on the computer, which took a while, we told the Cricut maker to cut it and we said, okay, now we have to fold this. And that was interesting. The two of us like trying to fold them and different sizes too. We printed a bunch of all different sizes. We have tinier boxes, bigger ones. We kind of had to do the Goldilocks and see which one felt.

best and finger boarding world. You know, not which one did I like in my hand, but which one sat in your little zone, you know, and just looked good, looked in like it should be in there. You know, I'm going to chuck a red one on there. think you can say it. And they'll just be part of the little world, an action figure and all that, whatever you're doing. I've actually had people buy them off of my eBay and say that they were just little box collectors.

Another person said that they were just a little shoe collector. Somebody else said that they collected Barbie stuff and this would go great in the world. So that's kind of the truth we feel. Yeah, not just finger boarders, but yeah, that would be a huge one for us that really took off the sea of different colors that I can make when I have the time. know, we only sell black online, black on eBay. The skate shops that did pick them up, Roll Around Workshop, Zembo.

They sell the black, they might have colors, but when we do the colors is at the events. That's kind of the special thing for the people at the event. I'll have a bunch of different colors that you can only get there. Still $5 classically. If you buy something, I usually give you something for free too. It's kind of like my secret. You know, even on eBay, nothing really is the price that you pay. Once you decide to commit to that small amount, I usually send you some extra too, just for the love.

speaker-0 (45:06)
Yeah, that's usually what do as well. That's kind of, I don't know. It just feels good to get a little extra, especially when you're not expecting it. Just makes you feel good.

speaker-1 (45:14)
It's quite cool. Yeah, if you wanna keep talking on the products too, that would have been the first. The next one would have been bushings. Now we were getting these made for us. I sell these in little tiny, tiny containers. I'm not thrilled still about the package, but they're fun little containers that can go in the world, go on the steps. These I get made for me overseas. Sadly, I can't get these in America, but intriguing thing, this is all organic plant waste material.

So it's vegan. It has a lot of the standards that I like, you know, it's not ⁓ a plastic in that sense. And it's from a plant waste industry. So where they had trash, ⁓ we score and get that item, which is rather cool. So that would have been kind of the second one that we really started doing. We were putting little labels on them too, but they don't stick too great. So it's hit or miss. If you do get a label, there's a tiny barcode. It does say

little badass bushings on it. And again, Abby really, really helped me with this. This can go in an action figures hand and look like a little soda, a can of pop, something like that. So as I go down the avenue of what can I bring with the industry, I want it to look cool too in your world. I want to kind of pour out a basket of my products onto a little action figure, a model railroad set, you know, scale set and have it all look nice like dollhouse. ⁓

memorabilia dollhouse merchandise to say.

speaker-0 (46:43)
Well, that's what I kind of like about the stuff that you have. have the, you have a unique crossover that you can actually hit like three or four different markets, including, you know, finger boarding as well. Cause you do have the, the miniature world, the dollhouse world. What do they call it? Like diorama? that the word I'm thinking? They have all of that. mean that there's a whole other niche market for all of that stuff. So it's kind of interesting that you can literally make one product that is suitable for multiple different industries.

speaker-1 (46:58)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I hadn't thought about it until somebody had mentioned on eBay that they were shoebox collector, you know, that intrigued me. And my dad was always a big model railroading fan. So where I got that from him, how to make tiny little trees out of nothing, you know, you can find some sticks in your yard, cut certain bushes, put glue on them, roll them around in this fake grass that he creates and he's making his trees. He's getting styrofoam.

putting down the glue, he's making the grass, know, he's laying out the track. I got all that education as a kid and kind of do the same thing with my finger boarding world. I'm not making the floors and going to the same detail that he did, but I do buy the floors. So in my little world, there's like an arcade pads. The arcade machines are all on at the moment. You might be able to see it on there, but they're all active, you know, they're all playable.

which is great, Street Fighter is playable, they're all playable. And I kind of do what my dad did with model railroading, but in the current sense with the toys that we have available, know, kind of our thing.

speaker-0 (48:18)
Yeah.

I've seen like a really large like tabletop model train set. It's probably like a 20 foot by 20 foot. Like it's pretty big and he had like the light poles and the

what do call it? Like the electrical wires and stuff that are connected to all the telephone poles and stuff like that. But you saw the miniature finger shoes that we used to like, you know, lot of the community uses to like, you know, fingers skate on. so like it was tied around the light pole electrical lines, just kind of hanging there and stuff. And I was like, ⁓ I see what you're doing there. But it looks really good. It actually fit the scale. It looked pretty good. But it's like, man, like it's crazy to have some of the stuff just crosses over. You don't even like, you know, look at it or think about it.

speaker-1 (48:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, you're good with Instagrams. Is it the gentleman HW Rowland, something like that? He's got a great mini world where the shoes are hanging from the streetlight too.

speaker-0 (49:12)
Maybe that's where I find I scroll. feel like I deem scroll all the time, also never deem scroll either. So it's hard to tell where I found it, but I remember seeing it somewhere.

speaker-1 (49:21)
Yeah, it probably was him. I'm never too quick at it. Yeah, I think it's a hw underscore high rolling. Let's see if I got the right person. I just like shouted out somebody else by accident. I think it's his little, I think it's his little world where he has the little shoes and stuff too. I don't know, this guy's definitely got a little world, but yeah, the little worlds are great, you know, in that sense. Yeah, yeah, it should be, it should be his. If you go to his page, you see some little world stuff.

My buddy Isaac, who I became good friends with through Dank Man. Dank Man had a little event, you know, a couple of years ago, I got to meet Alex there and met Isaac there. Isaac's a big fan of the little world too. We send each other things. Funny enough for Christmas, two years or so ago, I actually got some mini world products, you know, really little products and I wrapped them up like you would a regular present.

And then I sent them to him for Christmas so that he had like these like tiny, tiny presents to open on Christmas. But we bounced up back and forth. Some of the action figures in here, he would have sent me. He sent me the bizarro Superman and the little rat guy who's working on the machines in the back, the mouse. But he's a big fan of the little worlds too, which is cool. He loves the shoes. As you might have seen on IG, he's one of the few that can wear the ES, the S shoes.

and really fingerboard, which is just nuts, you know?

speaker-0 (50:52)
Yeah, we're talking about a Izzy, right?

I don't know how he does it. Maybe. I ⁓

speaker-1 (51:01)
He always goes by Izzy at the shows and stuff, is he? Yeah.

speaker-0 (51:06)
Yeah, he's killing it with the shoes. He gets the whole, the whole persona. He's got it all down. It's pretty cool.

speaker-1 (51:11)
Exactly. It's quite fun. I have the little world and I'll show you our chat and about the shoes I have. I have them in the in the zone. You know, like funny enough, here's the here's the shoe store from the outside. And then when you go into it, Chuck Norris fell down a minute ago, I took some

speaker-0 (51:24)
Okay.

P. Chuck Norris.

speaker-1 (51:32)
Yeah, but can you see it? this a good good angle? Yeah, all the ES shoes are on display as shoes. The older vans, some cool. These are mostly made by gonk toys. Gonk makes some fun, fun stuff. The little shoes that you can wear. But yeah, that's what it's all about. You know, we got Ash down here from the Evil Dead Army of Darkness. He's picking out his board. He got a goo board.

speaker-0 (51:35)
Yeah, yeah, I can get in there.

So whenever you're doing those photo shoots and all those photos, this is what we're looking at and stuff.

speaker-1 (52:05)
Yeah, exactly. When you get to see it in the stories, that's what you're looking at sometimes. The other day, Ash was shopping through the store window. We had a little memorial for Alex up there. Abby's able to print this stuff. Everything's miniature. So when Alex often passed away, put that on the little story, you know, to say, yeah, you know, it was so sad that,

speaker-0 (52:30)
Shout out Alex.

speaker-1 (52:35)
It was just a nice touch to put that on the store too and make it seem like the store was closed for a little

speaker-0 (52:42)
You gotta pay tribute, gotta pay homage.

speaker-1 (52:46)
Yeah, and for anyone that doesn't know, the only team writer, know, we had Alex Austin, FB, no dots, no underscore Alex Austin FB. You can see some wild tricks there. Upside down tricks, great shots, great edits, perfect camera angles, you know, and that wasn't rare for him. He wasn't spending hours trying to get those. He could just do it, you know, which is incredible.

speaker-0 (53:12)
He was gifted, was talented. had the opportunity to meet him a couple of times on tour whenever I did come out to Philly and host those regular events. And he was kind of like the life of the party. was just such a overall positive man.

speaker-1 (53:26)
Yeah, he could speak multiple languages, which is nuts and kind of what you need as a ⁓ friend or a team writer in finger boarding because there are so many people that are passionate, but there aren't a lot of people passionate in your area. They're coming from all ends of the earth, from Germany, from Spain, different spots. And yeah, he could communicate with anyone, which was great. You know, I can only speak English, but he was ready at an event. He was ready. made it. Like you said, anybody feel welcome from

a little kid to a foreigner who really struggled to speak with other people.

speaker-0 (54:01)
I always felt like that's like a crazy superpower to have. It's just like being able to speak, you know, two, three, four or five languages and stuff like that. whenever you get into like those old James Bond like videos and like, you'll see like this character or whatever that has like the ability to speak like 10 languages and like, you know, simultaneously. I'm just like, that's a low key like

probably one of the craziest superpowers that you can have in real life. Like just to be able to do it. It's actually attainable, like, which is kind of crazy. It's not like far-fetched or anything, but I was like, if I had that power just to be able to like communicate with like really half the world at any given time, like I feel like that's a pretty cool thing to do.

speaker-1 (54:39)
It's rare too, it can be a job, know? Like you said, it's not unobtainable.

speaker-0 (54:44)
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely like you can actually set out and make it happen. So it's not like, you know, I'm trying to be like Hercules or or anything like wild or anything like that. Or, you know, Goku or Super Saiyan blue type stuff. But definitely.

speaker-1 (54:56)
Yeah. ⁓

Something you already know the word to. Yeah. In that perspective. But yeah, I haven't learned any of them.

speaker-0 (55:06)
It's been on my to-do list for a while, but I definitely need to pick that back up. I do a lot of traveling too, so I feel like I need to pick up some German when I go to Germany. I need to pick up, you know, some Spanish and things like that. So I'm like, I need to get more culture in that way.

speaker-1 (55:20)
Yeah, especially since you're going the simple things, where's the bathroom, stuff like that.

speaker-0 (55:24)
Yeah. Yeah. I've been once before they're pretty accommodating for the English language. think that's like their second language for the most part. I really didn't have any issues or struggles, which to be honest with you doesn't help me want to learn German because it doesn't force me or give me that urgency to be like, you need to know this stuff. So it's like kind of take the lax way out, but yeah, no, we're excited to go fast fingers this year. We've got Tanner, Chris Daniels, Mitch Rush, our national champions, like

hopefully killing it and maybe take home the trophy. That'd be kind of cool. Put you in limelight.

speaker-1 (55:57)
I agree it would be fun especially since I got second place to Tanner in Pennsylvania that that would be cool if you won the world championship because then that boosts my bragging rights and I can say I was only

speaker-0 (56:11)
Yeah, that's an honorable loss. I like that.

speaker-1 (56:15)
And you know what's nice about that too? I am the number two headband. If you know Afro Samurai, everybody will come at me, you know, in Afro Samurai's world, the number two is the one, know, number one can't be touched. Number one can only be challenged by number two. And if you're unfamiliar, definitely catch up on Afro Samurai.

speaker-0 (56:34)
It's a good show. It's a really good show. Man, no, I'm excited. I'm excited for the summer. I'm excited for the legacy. I think when this pod comes out, Fingerboard Con should be this weekend. So I know we've got Fingerboard Con going down this weekend. We'll have a whole lineup of sanctioned events and stuff announced way before then as well. So I think event season is definitely upon us. 2026 is upon us. We're in it.

speaker-1 (56:57)
Yeah, we're in it. Are you going to fingerboard time?

speaker-0 (57:00)
I originally was, and then I am actually going down about two hours south of me, Gary Graves. He's got the brand new skate park that he's been working on for like four or five years. That grand opening is the same weekend. He's also got the, ⁓ the new concrete, the most expensive finger boarding, outdoor concrete parks that are going to be released to the public during that grand opening and stuff as well. So.

speaker-1 (57:27)
I didn't hear about that.

speaker-0 (57:29)
⁓ as you're listening to, like we're recording all this stuff now, like the flyers, all that stuff for the event are just now getting posted and things like that. They're wrapping everything up. Bama, Jara, all of those guys are going to be out there for the grand opening. The whole city of cordon, Indiana is going to be, ⁓ putting on a whole show festivities and stuff like that for the weekend. It's a pretty big ordeal.

speaker-1 (57:51)
That's super cool.

speaker-0 (57:52)
Yeah, to a tough decision to go to that or go to Fingerboard Con and I was like, man, I can't let my boy Gary down. He's been working on the skate park for like forever.

speaker-1 (58:01)
Okay,

yeah, yeah, that sounds cool. In between that's all stuff I do both, you know, I skateboard to only went to FingerboardCon last year for the first time as I wasn't really even too aware of community existed as I guess, I probably noticed maybe five years ago, when I met David Earl and everybody at all aboard probably like five or six years ago when I met them and realized that there was

the community online, know, hashtags weren't really a thing anymore where Instagram, ⁓ initially when Instagram started, you could make up a baloney hashtag and input it into the system for like a wedding or something, you know, random letters, random numbers, and everybody at that wedding could use the same hashtag and it was all good. They didn't seem to mind, but somewhere along the way they seem to mind and hashtags. You couldn't really make up a random hashtag anymore. wouldn't get noticed or clicked on.

So somewhere along the way, I stopped kind of just like messing with the internet as a whole and just really went skateboarding. You know, I think that the commercials of early 2000s just were too bonkers. Like the axe commercial with the the pits to chesty, if you remember that it was just becoming like so there's like a product for everything, you know, like

I can just skateboard and skateboard. don't have to smell a certain way or look a certain way. know, there was not to say like Janko jeans were for skaters or any, any one thing was directed at them, but they're skateboarding and there's all the other products you could do with skateboarding too, you know, and that just started to make me feel like it was fogging down me actually skating, you know, like I just want to go out there and do it. So somewhere around then.

I stopped paying attention to the internet world, kind of stopped watching TV. I didn't have cable. If I wasn't in a relationship, I wouldn't have the internet. I would go for years without having the internet. I would go for years without having a cell phone. ⁓ The only reason I currently have a cell phone is because my father ⁓ got it for me. said, you you really should have one in society. And funny enough, he kind of pays for it. I'll send him some money every now and then, but

Yeah, I just keep to myself. You I would play with my toys and fingerboard and stuff, but very happy to have got out. Mostly Abby making me realize, you know, that things are occurring. Events are happening. She would have saw the flyers, saw the meetups. She would have sent me this necklace that a lot of people comment on. Yeah. It really reminded me how much I tech deck fingerboarding, just toy skateboards. When she got this for me, this was about seven years or so ago that I got this.

And this is from two brothers. I wrote down their IG just so I wouldn't forget too, you know. And that's the, the underscore shack underscore glass. it's the underscore S H A C K K underscore glass. But they were kind of one of the last things that we picked up to sell. So we now have a Pelican case of their little medallions that we're going to take to the next event.

and kind of go full circle. If I really like something and you make it, I want to see you succeed. I want to give you some money, a couple hundred dollars, if anything, to invest into you. so, you know, like I said, we we deal with Earl, we deal with Isaac. Isaac was making us some boards with the NFC chips. Yeah. Yeah. So any of his boards, you can tap on a phone.

speaker-0 (1:01:37)
yeah, I remember that, yeah.

speaker-1 (1:01:42)
and it pulls up whatever website you want, which is great. know, the NFC chip boards are incredible. I still have a bunch of them, different mix and models, graphics to sell. But now that he's rolling with Nick and nice finger boards, he's taking kind of a pause on orders. He might make some special ones for celebrities, friends, fans like that. But selling his for the future is kind of on a slight pause, although we do have a really cool drop that we made with him.

and a really big movie company. ⁓ Believe it or not, I reach out, you know, I go out and about because of Abby. And when people meet me, we tend to just have a real connection. So I was honored enough to meet ⁓ the creator of the Toxic Avenger, Lloyd Kaufman, at the drive in the Mahoney Drive in that during the summer, asked him if he

had finger boards along the way because he made, you the Toxic Avenger, the Toxic Crusaders. He has Troma, his own movie company. I had had a subscription, I still do. And I just loved it. I thought that the story of the Toxic Avenger, are you familiar with it?

speaker-0 (1:02:54)
little bit. I've heard of it. I'm not too inept in it.

speaker-1 (1:02:57)
I feel like everybody kind of has because of the wave that he made in the eighties. That's when the movie originally came out. Now there was a remake more recently, but he had toys. had some of his toys are in my little world right now playing pinball and stuff, but he, had a game on Nintendo. He has a game coming out on the switch. He had a game on Sega. You know, the toxic crusaders were big. had comics, a TV show, actual cartoon.

that aired on Saturday morning cartoons. So when we saw that he was going to the drive in, we like, wow, this is insane. I love this movie. It's a comedy horror. It's a horror, but with comedy, like puns and stuff. They do silly things when they beat the bad guys up. And he's all about the nerd in society, the little guy who fights for good. Long story short on that, we got to meet him. He has all this merchandise, cards, trading cards with tops, all this different stuff.

And I couldn't find a finger skateboard. So I asked him, you know, do you, do you make fingerboards? And he said, no, we've had skateboards. We've had a lot of merch over the years. I said, ⁓ that's sad to hear. Cause I collect these, you know, it is hard to find on the internet, but since you're the, obviously they're the creator, you might know. And if you Google a picture of him at his desk, this is a wild thing to see because him at his desk is literally the desk that he takes calls at.

but it's covered with all the products and toys that he's made over the years. And almost like somebody just dumped a giant trash bag and all these things are just pouring all over him. They're behind him and they would have been at Toys R Us. They would have been everywhere. You know, he made a big wave. And ⁓ so he says to me when I ask him if he ever made these, says, no, but ⁓ if you and your friends make them, we can team up. Here's my business card. Give me a call. We'll talk about making some sometime.

And I really couldn't believe it. You know, ⁓ I thought to myself, well, I don't make the boards. Who can make some boards? You know, Isaac, Earl. So we got them to make them, you know, and this is an exclusive you're kind of getting. We didn't announce this at all yet, but the boards are stamped with Troma's logo. So when you tap it on the phone, it will take you right to the app. Lloyd gave us full permission to make them. They won't be selling them through Troma, but he said we can sell them. We can do what we want.

We can meet him at events, sell him side by side with him. One of the nicest men ever. And while that he's the top, he's the owner of the company. You know, it's like as if Walt Disney said, yeah, you can use Mickey, you know, like feel free to use Mickey, you know? And, ⁓ he's kind of cool. He's, I feel like a lot of finger boarders would probably like the toxic Avenger because of the story, the little guy, you know, who becomes the savior.

of humanity and he's against all evil corporations, things like that. But point of all that is, is that's the next boards that will kind of secretly be releasing a very limited number, all handmade by Isaac, ⁓ laser engraved, hand painted, approved by Troma, which is great. So yeah, we got a lot of like weird things in the works. Yeah, it is very big, but ⁓ some of the things that we do, I kind of like to just keep secret or private.

speaker-0 (1:06:05)
a lot of stuff.

speaker-1 (1:06:14)
until the time of that one's that's going to be announced. You know, that's going to be really big, but we've made resin boards and never announced them before. We've made over like 50 resin boards, sold them at events. And when people say, I never saw this, I say, I don't post about it. It's kind of a secret. The people grin and they say, I'm not going to post about it either. So somehow everybody that's ever bought the resin board is keeping the secret going. The prices are usually $10, although like the shoe box.

I am spending way more time than what we're asking for. And same with the wooden boards. I might have posted once or twice on the actual feed that I had some wooden boards available, but they are very secret. They're oftentimes wrapped in 24 karat gold. am, I don't have any, this is going to blow you away. I don't have any hand tools except the Dremel.

So I generally am hand sanding down the edges for hours. I'm rounding them and hand sanding them like a nutball. And each board takes me over. It's a process of a couple of days. I don't finish one fingerboard ever in like a whole, like it might take me more than a month to finish one fingerboard because I keep hand sanding the edges and getting it to like exactly how I like, you know, even with the drill holes.

speaker-0 (1:07:18)
Crazy.

speaker-1 (1:07:36)
So lot of the things that we make are kind of secret in that sense. You'll see it at an event and no price tag too. And the price is going to be insanely low, just like dramatically low. Cause I, I didn't like a lot of the prices that were happening, you know, in finger boarding and ⁓ to jump to the next item, the board rails, they're only $5 too. And why we made them was because other people were selling board rails for about $15 or more plus a shipping fee.

of about four to six dollars. So say I want one set of board rails from a company. I'm not going to mention them. I dislike them for a little bit. I'm now liking them more and more, but they are active company. They had glow in the dark board rails around 15 bucks. And then I had to pay the shipping. So $20, $21 just to get me one set of stick on glow in the dark board rails, you know, and they didn't stick that great. I had to read he's of them then myself, but I wanted more.

And when I went back, they were sold out. I said, yeah, well, I didn't really like the price and they're sold out. Yeah. Can't we find like a local printer? I struggled. You know, I got into coma. I sent guys the sizes, the images, everything that I wanted a store that was a 3D printing store. Claimed he made them, claimed he sent me the demos. I never received the demos. It was like the never ending conversation. We kept doing this conversation, you know,

claiming that he sent them to me and no tracking, things of that nature. I finally moved to Philadelphia where we meet a buddy, a Wawa, and his Instagram is bydavidge. So that's B-Y-D-I-V-I-J. And he is our 3D printer. He is a local artist. He loves graffiti, street art, things of that nature. So he is an artist by trade.

Again, if you recall, at a point in time, I was heavier in the community. So he would have gone to a person who has essentially an art gallery in their house and he would have been buying pieces from them. And he bought one of my art pieces. And he said, oh, you know, he reached out to me, sent me a photo. I believe it's maybe a canvas on the wall, a metal canvas, maybe some other canvases, paints, different things like that, that I would have been into.

But needless to say, he reached out to me, very excited, said he bought some art of mine. And ⁓ if I ever needed any 3D printing, that's what he does. So I said, this guy seems like he likes me to a certain degree. He obviously went out and bought some of my art, hung it up on his wall. So I fired back right away. I told him how appreciative I was. I'm glad that he had the art, had it up on his wall. And I was intrigued about board rails. Could we do this?

This was about two years ago. He fired off right away. He gave me different sizes, options, you know, and he came over. We found out we had gone to some of the similar concerts as youth, know, infected mushroom, ⁓ techno style band. We had both seen them their first time in America for the 4th of July around like 2006 or something like that. So, you know, that was like 20 years ago. So we're realizing that we were in the same building.

doing the same things. And we became good friends from there. You we clicked, he's trying to fingerboard now, which is great, but he's our 3D printer. He's printing us the board rails in all different colors. Sometimes they have the font on them that glows in the dark, the badass glows. Other times the rail glows. But yeah, he's another person. Again, like I said earlier, if you are passionate about it, if you already do it, I want to reach out. I want to be...

with you and if we have the same hobbies, we like the same music, things of that nature, we're the same age, ⁓ then that's even better. You know, these are all pluses on how our friendship and our, I don't ever like to say business, but it is a business, you know, with these friends, but it's to some degree not when I want to sell their items, you know, I just want them to succeed as well as have the item, talk about the item, use them myself too. If nobody buys these,

I am fine with that. You know, I will use all of these boards myself over time. I'll use all the board rails, know, all that.

speaker-0 (1:12:00)
Yeah. And it's weird to kind of think of it as a business relationship because we're all so passionate about everything. It's like as far as finger boarding goes, even like for like me and stuff, it's just like,

Everyone was everyone that I deal with, talk to, hang out with, like we're all finger boarders. Like the base level of our real connection is like our passion for finger boarding. And so like you might be a deck maker. He may make obstacles. Like he might be an artist, like, but like we're all here because of finger boarding. And so it's like, I don't ever really kind of see that business relationship really kind of either. It's like, yeah, like he runs this brand, but we also hang out or we talk finger boarding and we do this or we do that kind of a thing.

speaker-1 (1:12:44)
Yeah.

None of it's really that big. know, obviously none of us are on the stock market. None of us are really having those type of business meetings. The, the, the buying that happened with like Joy Colt, you know, the rare moments that we're not really doing that. So none of us ever really look at it as a business in that sense, you know, although we're all having fun. feel like there's one or two that are more passionate. The people that have the big skate shops, the website, you know, that you can tell that they

It's a business for them. They might really like it too, but ⁓ it's obviously a true business.

speaker-0 (1:13:19)
It's, it's interesting. It's all, think, a perspective, like, especially from like the consumer standpoint, you know, they see us as brands and, know, we make stuff and we sell stuff and they all full, you know, a lot of times they'll just forget that, you know, we're just finger boarders that just like making cool stuff or doing cool stuff.

speaker-1 (1:13:38)
Hey, remember the first time you met me? I just told you, I just told you my name was Brian. I just started talking to you. I wanted you to get to know me. And then you had said like after a couple of minutes, you said, wait, are you your big bad ass Brian? I said, yeah. You said, I already follow you. You said, why didn't you lead with that? And I was like, no, that's not how I ever go. You know, I meet everybody in life the same, you know, I whether, and that's, that's how Lloyd Kaufman was too of trauma.

speaker-0 (1:13:56)
Yeah, it was like that, right?

speaker-1 (1:14:08)
He said when he's on the film set, he might be the director, he might be the writer of the movie, but everybody made that movie together. That movie was made with a team, that's team Troma right there. So he said, like, I'm part of team Troma, we're all part of team Troma, nothing happens without this big, the wave in the ocean isn't just the wave, it's all those drops, all those water molecules.

speaker-0 (1:14:35)
Well, that's what I liked about you. You're like just so nonchalant because most people, you know, if they feel important or entitled, they're going to be like, yeah, I'm Levine with us. FPL. Like kind of run stuff, but like, you know, I was chit chatting with you for like five or 10 minutes and it's like, yeah, by the way, I'm big bad ass Brian. I do all this cool stuff. And I'm like, what's like this entire time? Like you just, just left a new back pocket kind of a thing. And I was like, man, I had no idea. And I was like, okay, cool. And so like just super nonchalant. like it.

speaker-1 (1:15:03)
Yeah, that's the best way to go through it. You you obviously could use some stature sometimes. I don't have much, but I have a long resume. So that's why I worked with the Discovery Channel and I got to get in some back doors, know, parties before the parties were announced. Like my friend's mothership, the t-shirt I'm wearing, they make some of the world's most expensive glass, different rigs for dabbing, different cups.

necklaces, things like that, t-shirts, clothes. But me and Abby, we would see their drops every Tuesday at two o'clock. They used to do drops and we would look at the glass. Big fans of art, you know, we were just blown away by the glass that they made. Eventually I sold nutrients to somebody who was in with their crew. So as I kept selling fertilizer and nutrients, they would get to go to mothership. They'd get to go to the factory, you know, so I got to go to the factory.

and become friends with the owner there, Scott Depby, and Isaac, the manager, and all the glass makers. And if I ever posted in my stories, people would say the same thing, like, who are you? How'd you get to go there? Like, how are you in this spot? There's a photo of Snoop Dogg in that same factory, you know, holding a ⁓ skull, a giant glass skull. And ⁓ it's like rare, like nobody can get in there. But ⁓ you know, if you just, if you keep it real,

Point to that is if you just be yourself, you'll find the things that you like in the group that you should be with. And that will make you feel fulfilled, you know? If you want to be with a certain group, but you're not really like, that's not really the fish that you are. You just don't push it, you know, don't push things too hard. But now, nowadays, I'm friends with them, know, mothership, I'm friends with everybody that I try to meet, all the avenues I go down. And yeah, they now have parties where you go.

pay them to hang out, you know, because it obviously costs a lot to have any party, know, damages, things can happen. But yeah, there's a lot of fun avenues, whether it be with high end glass, high end art. I know a lot of artists who ⁓ you just be very surprised, you know, ⁓ cornbread was ⁓ big for Philadelphia. If you type in original graffiti artists, me and cornbread had a quick connection.

where he gave us a bunch of stickers, did a canvas for my wall. So I actually have one of the walls of the house, a canvas, cornbread lives. If you look him up, he's from the 60s, he's still alive, which is really cool. There's a lot of people in my Rolodex that I could call, reach out to, possibly say hello to. ⁓ Great encounters in the video game industry. I got to meet some different people too, like the artist for Plants vs. Zombies. He did a really

amazing sketch of me. So I got to see myself in that world. You know, I have a lot of sketches of myself from even the 90s before I had ever reached out. My dad was in the computer graphics and I have a drawing of me from 1994 with Wolverine from a Marvel comic drawer. His name is stuck in my mind at the moment, but I have so much artwork and drawings of myself from just fun people in great times. So that's kind of

compiles, composites, know, who I am, all these different avenues. I've never really had the same job, never really lived in the same area. So I got to meet people. And as I went out and about, ⁓ just being a leader in these different fields, you're oftentimes gonna meet people, whether it be for work, for passion, you know, going to the trade shows, I've been to trade shows for everything now for finger boarding, for art, for cannabis, and that teaching chong.

at different things ⁓ of that nature, know, big grand openings for an Indian pot shop, a Native American pot shop in Washington state. So yeah, just the amount of different fun people. When you get out, that's when things start really happening, you know? But yeah, I don't really ever post too much in the feed that keeps it there, it keeps it lingering, you know? So when people see me, when I have all these stories, it's got a lot of stories. And yeah, I do.

speaker-0 (1:19:24)
Man. So last issue of Plies Mag, that's issue number 16. There was a, we did a feature of a park of the month that was built out of straight ice. It's like an ice sculpted finger boarding park.

And I saw that. And then I know that you kind of commented on it and stuff. And we kind of collaborated on this article, but you were like physically there at that event, right?

speaker-1 (1:19:54)
yeah, Abby, that was all Abby noticing things that happen on Facebook, Instagram, the internet. This is media Pennsylvania and they had an ice festival day, another avenue of art, know, another great avenue that art can take you down. And down the street, down the main street, they had all these different giant ice sculptures. One was for hot wheels. So the big ice track, you know, the loop and it goes down and stuff, or was just a straight loop, that's it.

And then it went into a bucket, you know, and there was different ice sculptures, a really big, thing, the bean bags that you throw the cornhole. So they had one of them carved out of ice. They had tic-tac-toe and then yeah, finger boarding, which she knew initially she saw it about 30 days prior. It was going to be there. She, didn't know what the park was going to look like, but we did see that they had boards available. Oh yeah, here it is. So for a $20 donation.

you could get one of these the Delco skate park coalition and Delco skate park coalition. Twenty dollars got you one of these. It went to building the skate parks in Delco. That's for Delaware County. So that's apparently going to help some new skate parks. But yeah, nice little foam tape, you know, standard wood board wheels. I love buying these. I have a lot of these if it's for a skate shop that's doing something a good

you know, raffle money going somewhere out by these. These boards aren't anything you really want to play with, but they're nice to have, you know, obviously I grabbed it from the boards of my mini world. So yeah, they had those going on, which was cool. You know, decks right there if you want it, if you needed. So we got excited, you know, we go out and ⁓ we were initially told it would be out front of a certain store. So Abby's super excited. You know, I have to be at work at one o'clock, something like that.

and it's got to start at 12 o'clock, think, or 11 o'clock, something like that. Maybe it was 11 and I had to be at work at 12. So we had one, about a half hour where we could really play on this part. And then I had to leave because it would take me a half hour to get to work. So we go to the spot where it's supposed to be and it's not there. we're like, oh, well, know, where's the big ice sculpture? And we look down the street and they're still setting up different ice sculptures out front of the stores. They're still unwrapping.

them taking them off of trucks, they're wrapped up in giant blankets, things like that, canvas blankets. So they're still setting up a bunch of different ones. Now this is the only fingerboard one, you know, all the others are tic tac toe things. So we go into the store that it's supposed to be in, you know, we're a little confused. We asked the employee there, where's the where's the fingerboard part? You where's the ice park? She says she's not really too sure, you know, not doesn't really know what we're talking about. When we turn around, there's a table right there with

boards on it, those boards. So we're like, well, these boards, these boards go with that park, you know, like, what's the story with these boards? She's like, you know, I don't really know, they're there and there's a donation thing. She didn't really seem too excited, you know, sort of like, okay. So this was the employee of like a ⁓ vintage store, vintage t-shirts or something like that, purses, things of that nature. So it was a little confusing too, cause it's not a skateboard store or anything that even has toys, you know.

And so we're hovering over the table and me and Abby are like, you know, we want these boards. There's a QR scanner on the paper. I guess we'll do this. And we turn around, hey, do we give you the money? Do like, what do we do? just QR scan it. Okay. So we do it. We send some money, I think 20 bucks each board. We both got one. Sent it to wherever it was coming. We're like, do you want to see this? You do you want to see it on the phone? She was like, She wasn't really like that enthusiastic. So she didn't even really verify that we paid for it.

Oh, he did, you know, when we left the store, like that was weird. Like, where's this ice park? You know, so he started walking down the street. Uh, it was cold. It was, uh, I think we did. You get the record of that low that day in Pennsylvania. I think it was like seven degrees, 14 degrees. I am not that type of person. You know, I like it to be 77 in the house, seventies high seventies. So my coat is powered. It's heated.

You know, have heated things in my gloves. This is all electronic for me to even go out into that type of temperature. Yeah. And Abby's excited. She's like, she's starting to get antsy. She's like, I'm, I want to show you this and I got it. You got to get to work. So we started walking down the street. We see the Hot Wheels one. We're like, fun. Drop some Hot Wheels cars. Guy pops up out of nowhere and he's asking us if he can take our photo. Like, yeah, sure. You know, so we drop them down. We don't realize he's the professional photographer for the event.

So come to find out, we see ourselves a week or so later on the actual website, which is great. A really cool photo of me and her doing that, playing with the Hot Wheels. And then we go back down the street and the finger boarding still isn't set up, but we see the table with more boards. We're like, cool, cool. Where is it? Where is it? And the other guy's like, it's in the truck right behind you. they're still taking it out. It's still wrapped. It's still strapped up. So time is going. We're looking at the clock. I got to be at work.

I gotta be at work, know, I'm like, nobody else was really out there because of the temperatures. Yeah. And nobody that finger boarded went that I know, you know, we were telling people I was shooting it off, sending it to people on the instant message, the direct message. So we stand there for a little bit, utterly freezing. We go into a store too. And like, we're watching through the window, seeing if they're setting it up. They leave their table. They go inside to like the bank that's there. And we're like,

because it's so cold, like they're standing inside, they're waiting. So we run out of time, you know, so like, man, we can't play with this. We gotta go, I gotta go to work. So we leave and there's a storm, it's a state of emergency. Like the next two days actually declared state of emergency. And they weren't able to or decided to just leave all the stuff for one reason or another, they were on the sidewalks, it wasn't in the street. So we were able to go back like the next day or two days later.

It was in the shade, the sun hadn't hit it, the sun wasn't able to hit it. And yeah, it had kind of built more snow around it too, which made for great photos. So we jump out, you know, pull in somewhere close to it, fingerboard by ourselves, took a couple of photos, did a couple of lines really quick. My hand got numb instantly, you know, it was like insane. I got Abby's photo, got my photo and then ran away, but she got a photo or so.

from the other crew that did show, like you posted in the magazine, a good amount of people, you know? So once it was active and up, people just stopped by, people say, what's going on? But I didn't get to show off the skills or see the heart of that little community in that photo. You know, when you go through the magazine and you see that one photo with like...

the young kids and you see them all there. We weren't, we saw those people but we didn't get the fingerboard with them sadly, you know. When we went back we were by ourselves because of the temperatures but we got to make it, you know, which was wild. Never saw an ice park before. It was actually a fingerboard ice park. These weren't just slabs of ice. They carved the half pipe. I believe it was supposed to be a representation of one of the parks they're gonna make with that company getting the donations.

So that's always cool if that ice park is supposed to be a real park. Yeah. That's interesting. You know, yeah, was super excited to be in the magazine, a collab with you and Abby. I did not know that it was going to be that big of a page. Obviously when you're looking online, it's a little different than when you have the magazine. The magazine is a large magazine, know, watchers who are there who haven't gotten it. That's a big boy. My, my collection. yeah. Here's my collection.

speaker-0 (1:27:41)
That's a full size, yeah.

speaker-1 (1:27:47)
So the new one just came in yesterday, which is awesome. It's still wrapped up though. But here's a little issue 15, know? This is a big magazine. When you get this and ⁓ the issue I was in like Levine's talking about is downstairs, but like let's just flip open to some random page with some random guys. You know, when you see yourself dominating a whole page, you're like, my gosh, this is incredible. know, funny enough, ⁓ I was all bundled up so you can't tell who I was.

And same with Abby, Abby's all bundled up. But that's how it was, you know, that was the essence of it. If you wanted to be out there, you had to have that heated jacket, the little pocket warmers, the electronic pocket warmers.

speaker-0 (1:28:27)
Definitely, you gotta stay safe out there.

speaker-1 (1:28:30)
Yeah, it's cold streets.

speaker-0 (1:28:32)
Hell yeah. Man. All right. So I'm sure you got a nice little list of people you want to give a shout out to. You want to recognize.

speaker-1 (1:28:40)
yeah, definitely. There's always somebody out there, you know, ⁓ by the Vage, ⁓ the 3d printer, the shack glass, little Izzy official, Earl FB, my girl board hippie gifts. She's got the underscore board hippie gifts and then underscore. That's generally the stuff, the candles, things like that. she's got another one. I am a thug hippie. That's just kind of her personal one. Alex Austin FB.

You can always see his stuff on there that's going to live there, hopefully. And he did have a YouTube channel too, which is kind of cool. You can go there, see longer edits, things that aren't on Instagram, always some fun stuff there. But yeah, those are the people I want to shout out. ⁓ We totally didn't talk about them. Maybe we should talk about it just really quickly. The first contest I ever won was... Yeah, Tech Deck was...

speaker-0 (1:29:34)
We did talk about that.

speaker-1 (1:29:37)
Apparently giving away giant checks and I didn't know you know somewhere around 2005 I guess they start giving out these big boys and I just Disowned the community. I was just like I'm just gonna play by myself You know, I don't want to know what's going on So I had no clue tech deck was to that level the contest I had one was in 1999 right when I was 14 or 15 the VHS was just out it was about to be put on the shelf and that was

the prize for that contest. So we go to the Springfield Mall, me and my mom, casual regular day, but KB toys dominated. There was sometimes a KB toys on both ends of the mall. In the gallery in Philadelphia, there was three KB toys. As a kid, I couldn't believe it. was like, there's one there, there's one in the middle, and there's one on the end, you know? And you could get tech decks at all these. You could get all the fun action figures, know, all kinds of cool stuff.

So we go into the Springfield Mall, 1999, and we're right around them. ⁓ they're having, say, you know, we bring some tech decks to the register. The guy says, we're going to have a contest in a little bit, about, you know, 15 minutes. And it's going to be on that half pipe, the new Tony Hawk half pipe, you know? And he had the big half pipe and that yellow and like red box. And he had the big loop-de-loop and he had a couple other things that were about to be on the shelf, you know? You know, we're opening these boxes. This is new for this month, everything.

So if you win the contest, you get to win this VHS and a big discount to all the items. So they maybe don't, you know, don't buy the items right now if you want. And you do, you know, you win the contest. I believe it was like something like 40 % off or maybe 50 % off. They weren't just giving you things for free. They gave you the VHS for free. So my mom was cool. You know, at the time she said, 15 minutes. Okay. You know, but like most mothers, 15 minutes had come and gone and ⁓ she went, you know, we went back and she said, come on guy. ⁓

15 minutes is up, you are we doing this thing? And he wanted some more people, you know, he had like maybe six people that he had convinced. you know, this was before the time of the internet. So to even find out about this would have been maybe a flyer and a circular for the mall or something like that. I didn't know, you know, I wasn't pre-prepared knowing that day that there was something fun at the mall. There was always something fun at the mall. There was autograph signings, you know, the movie Mallrats would have showcased.

how the malls really were back then. Everybody was there. So the 15 minutes comes and goes. My mom says, ⁓ you know, hey, are we going to speed this along? What's happening? The other guy says, yeah, any minute. gets on the bullhorn in a couple of minutes, five minutes. My mom goes, yeah, know, five more minutes. Time kept coming and going. It got pushed and pushed and pushed, but luckily she was cool. We waited, you know. Eventually he had enough people. There was like 15 or 20 people to compete.

And there was a lot of parents, the store was packed, you he gets on the bullhorn, he's making the announcements. And there was somebody, at least one or two people in front of me who just couldn't do anything. And back then you really couldn't, it was hard to do tricks, you know? So they might've dropped in on the half pipe, but we were using the Tony Hawk half pipe, drop it on the half pipe. They were just like, not with it, the board would fly away or whatever, you know? And they'd just step back, all right, you I'm done. So.

I just shot for the stars. was like, you know, I could probably catch a 360 flip going into that half pipe. And so I was like, either I'm going to do it I'm going to miss like all these other people, you know, and just look like none of us know how to use this toy. So I did that, you know, I 360 flip going in, caught it, went down the half pipe, start doing some simple tricks, simple stalls, you know, some simple just playing around with the vert, know? Unbeknownst to me, people just step back. People are like, I'm not even going to compete. So once I was done.

there was like only a couple people that still wanted to compete. You know, I was able to ride up the ramp, do a little blunt stall kick flip and then back down. I was able to do that on command. couldn't 360 flip like on the vert. I could only really catch it like on a table, things like that. You know, tricks were in their infancy at that moment. But yeah, when I got that, other people faded back. They were like, I'm not even competing. So like I looked back and like where are all the other people? There was parents, but not a lot of competitors all of a sudden. It looked like I had scared them, you know?

So one or two more kids steps up, we step back. Me and my mom are chatting, know, they keep doing their thing. I'm not really looking. She's like, I hope they announce this quick, you know, we've been here forever. Sure enough, they go through it. A couple more minutes goes. I can't really see because there's so many people crowding the table, you know, there weren't cameras, there wasn't a big screen projection or anything. And ⁓ then it all goes down. The people disperse. They give it a couple minutes. They announced me the winner, you know, they give me

this VHS to make me come up by the register. You know, it like a mini like, what is happening here? You know, so they gave me the VHS. They don't take my photo. I think they wrote down my name and asked me some info. But then they said that, you know, the things that we had on the table, could buy for cheaper. So I said, you know, great, let's get these things. And mom, can I buy, you know, the Tony Hawk bench, the table, which I still have currently to this day, this would have been the table that I bought that day.

and one, know, the metal is broke a little bit. I put a bunch of stickers on it as a kid. These weren't current.

speaker-0 (1:35:00)
Yeah,

I used to have one of those back in the day. I think mine was blue.

speaker-1 (1:35:04)
Okay, so you remember. Funny thing, my mom put me on the spot right then and there. was like, you really want a dollhouse table?

speaker-0 (1:35:10)
That's great

speaker-1 (1:35:12)
I'm like

in front of like the cool kids at the KB Toys. I'm like, that's not a dollhouse they found, you know? That's a four finger skateboarding. She's like, are you really going to use that? You know, like it's a table. And like, I can see what she meant at the time because you know what it is. I'm like, I'm like a 15 year old boy skateboarding getting in trouble every other night, you know? And, ⁓ but yeah, I loved it. You know, this was going to replace my textbooks. This was going to replace my cardboard ramps. Like we mentioned with a Tanner's event. Yeah.

I got this, I got the VHS and yeah, that was the first time I had won a contest. And then I did not know that they were really giving out the big checks until I started looking at the internet and I said, Whoa, what was happening here? And then it seemed like they had kind of stopped doing that too. You know, like I missed that whole big window of taking home a giant cool check and yeah. And then, and then all the other small contests, you know, which were happening at skate shops and stuff, you can go there. I started winning some of those where I would

win like a whole handful of boards and I get to try these boards sponsored by, you know, these random companies. And we'd get out and about, which was nice. Abby would keep finding them. We'd go out and then eventually we decided to start vending too. As we vended, you know, we saw your trophies and stuff. And I was like, this will kind of solidify that I'm a good finger boarder, although I don't need to justify it to anybody, but it will help cause I don't post anything online, you know? And if

If we want more people to just say like, yeah, he's in it, his heart's really in it, one of your trophies would be a good way to really prove it, you know? So the night before, we were looking at those trophies at the event in Philadelphia, the regional, we're like, these are beautiful, you know? The necklace, the sac, the engraving.

speaker-0 (1:36:57)
We went all out on those, yeah.

speaker-1 (1:36:59)
Lay them out like first thing you're like these are like your babies you're like laying them out as you're setting up other stuff so like we're like looking at the table you know like damn these are great you told me you know you you're not even like a fingerboard you're not ranked or anything you'll have to ⁓ play against the amateurs you know sign up and play against the ams is it okay that's cool you know whatever and whatever we gotta do i think like you said i maybe got first place against the amateurs or something was going right to the pros you know you're like yeah you're

speaker-0 (1:37:27)
Yeah, you got a guaranteed spot the next day. Yeah, I remember.

speaker-1 (1:37:30)
was

like, okay, cool, cool. And then the same vibe. I didn't have my head fully in it because I was vending. Every time you called me, I had to run away from a conversation or run away from a person at the table. Say, what are we doing right now? What's the trick? What do you want me to do? Throw it down, try to do it first try, which I classically can, and then just back up and be like, all right, is that good? I'll be over there. So the next events, I'm gonna be full like.

watching what people are doing, I realized afterwards that Tanner was watching me and other people are watching and taking mental notes, you know, to like be the best to see what's going on. And I was not. I was having random conversations. was running around the room. Yeah. You're like, Hey Brian, it's time to compete. So yeah. Luckily I did, you know, I got second place against him for best trick. got like maybe fourth or fifth or other things.

speaker-0 (1:38:13)
a little bit of everything.

And a trading card. about the trading card. I don't know how we forget about the trading cards.

speaker-1 (1:38:34)
I was going to say that I was not not going to leave that out. have a nice display case. ⁓ Obviously, I collect too much stuff. But there's a display case downstairs with the trading card in it. ⁓ Isaac's trading card, I got to get the other friends I got to get Chris Daniels, Justin, and Nick, you got to get their trading cards all in there. And I really like that you're putting them in the plastic hard cases when you buy an individual's card. You kind of know as I guess the seller that this buyer

is a little more passionate about this individual. So it's going out in the nice plastic, you know?

speaker-0 (1:39:06)
Yeah, we to get the hard case for them. They just look good. They feel good. And then when you get one, you open it. And even as a single, you're like, OK, like this, this means something.

speaker-1 (1:39:15)
Yeah, that's super fun. yeah, everything that, you know, everybody's doing for the community. You to thank you again for all the ⁓ effort that you're putting into it with the trading cards, with the magazines. I was searching for magazines and like, I got like nothing out there. You know, like I found like a reprint of this magazine, Five Ply. I wish this is a reprint. This isn't even like the original, you know, I was trying to find and collect things.

Non-stop. So I'm always going into Google, but to have the physical media is just great. You know, I want to be more of a contributor, but yeah, again, thank you for everything. The events, the little events to the biggest events, they make the friendships, you know, you get to see who's in your area, who's far, who lives close to you, how long they've traveled, you know, it's a really cool community in that sense. And then the makers, it seems like, what is it like one out of every three finger boarders wants to be an artist or have

speaker-0 (1:39:52)
I it.

speaker-1 (1:40:12)
an avenue where they say, I'm more than a fingerboarder. I'm this passionate about it where I'll sell it with you. I'll make it. I'll try to make it. Even if I make it and it's not the next biggest company, a lot of people have made their own fingerboards.

speaker-0 (1:40:26)
Yeah, I think everybody wants to do it their way. Everybody has a way that they see it in their mind. And so you get a lot of people that come in with a lot of passion. They're like, why isn't anybody doing this? And then like that creative spark in them was like, all right, cool. Let me go do it this way. Cause this is what I want. And so they'll go out and find their own way.

speaker-1 (1:40:47)
Yeah, last shout out to that. gotta say ABC Parks, we collabed with him too. Like you say, he wanted his signs his own way. He makes the signs. Now there's a little sign right here, but true, true metal signs. And we collabed with him. This isn't a collab one, but my little sticker head is on the collab ones. Abby stickers on the collab ones. So anytime like somebody's really passionate, you know, we link up with them.

And you never know what I'll bring to an event. If I have as much space as I could possibly have, we'll have everything you can imagine at an event.

speaker-0 (1:41:21)
I believe it. You got your whole vendor set up. It looks good.

speaker-1 (1:41:24)
Yeah, but yeah, last person I had to shout out. He was one of the more recent ⁓ wholesalers too. And we haven't taken him. We haven't taken ABC Park signs to an event or the Shaq Bros, the glass to an event, but we have two new things to bring to the next times we've been.

speaker-0 (1:41:42)
Gotcha.

speaker-1 (1:41:43)
obviously vending under the big badass Brian name and sometimes sanity fingerboards. I wanted to lock that in a long time ago, whether we really go hard on the name or not. A lot of my boards, the resin boards, the wooden boards, they are branded sanity because of all the fun puns you can say. Like I don't want to lose my sanity, keep a grip on my sanity. There's an endless sea of ⁓ poster style puns I can come up with for advertising within that name.

speaker-0 (1:42:12)
I like it, the mean marketing going strong.

speaker-1 (1:42:15)
Yeah, exactly. So you should see a lot coming from me. Just depending on how much free time I have, know, is when you'll see it come.

speaker-0 (1:42:24)
Fair enough, fair enough. Man, all right, so where can people find you on the internet?

speaker-1 (1:42:30)
Mostly on Instagram, big badass Brian, as well as on eBay. The eBay is handled just by me. You can message me there, obviously shop around, you're gonna get some extra stuff. That's big badass Brian on the eBay. Abby is very helpful with the communication, as you know, if you really need me, you can email her, reach out to her at that underscore, boardhippygifts underscore, but mostly on...

Instagram every now and then you send me a message I'll reach back to.

speaker-0 (1:43:02)
And then I'll make it super easy for you guys. I'll have all those links in the description for you. Man, Brian, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming on the pod.

speaker-1 (1:43:10)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I know, like you said, it's been a long wait. were like one number 115 or 120 on the mini pod.

speaker-0 (1:43:19)
I still feel bad about that. It was a good pod. I was like man. You do need a full length for sure

speaker-1 (1:43:24)
get another one where the table's in the background and all that, but yeah, it's been a great time and within all the moves, I'm we both found time where we could do it together, buddy.

speaker-0 (1:43:32)
Definitely, definitely. Till next time.

speaker-1 (1:43:35)
Yes, bye. Thank you.

Take tight, I'm soaring like a bird Every trick or story, every slot or word Grinding on the edge, I'm breaking the mold Fingerboardin' dreams worth their weight in gold Hear the wheels as they scream In this thinkable

speaker-0 (1:44:17)
JAAAAYYYY

speaker-1 (1:44:23)
With every flick I'll write my story

as they scream in this finger-boding dream. Finger-boding, I'm flying free.

You think I'll write my story