Interview | Elijah Akerley

Let’s chat about your upbringing; you’re from Maine originally, right?

I'm from Lewiston, Maine.

I can’t think of many other skaters from up that far. Did it feel isolated growing up out there?

Maybe thinking about it now, yes, but I was just a kid stoked on skating so I didn't really think of it like that. I just always wanted to go to California because the winters sucked.

I figured that was the case. Was the weather the main reason that you got out of there?

Yeah, the summers are really hot and the winters are really cold, plus I had the classic teenage angst of wanting to go as far away from home as possible.

Before you moved, who turned you on to skating out there?

I did whatever my brother did, so he picked up a skateboard for a short period of time and I ended up getting into it. He wasn't a real skater, he just had a skateboard and through that I got hooked.

Once you get a taste, skateboarding tends to swallow you whole.

Totally.

Was there anyone else in your town that skated or were you guys the only ones?

I had friends that skated when I was younger and there was a pretty good skatepark built in my hometown. 

I think I might have seen a video of that park. This is going super far back, but I used to watch all the old edits from when you were on Bump Skateboards with Chris Peterson and TJ Hernandez. How did you start riding for them? 

I don't know how but Chris Peterson connected with Bump first. At the time, I had a camera to film my friends and they would film me. Chris was into that too so we'd skate together a lot and he got me involved.

It was run by this guy that was just into skating. He would get me and Chris bus tickets from Maine to New Jersey. He had a house down there where we’d stay and catch the train to New York every day to go skate. Honestly, I struggle to remember all that shit because I was pretty young.

I will say that that time period in my life, being a young kid from a small town and getting the opportunity to catch the Greyhound and go to the big city at 14 or 15, was sick. I think that's what made me want to move to a city like San Francisco. I was just like “fuck, I want to skate around this metropolitan area with my friends and do whatever I want.”

Getting to break out of your bubble and skate through Manhattan for the first time is an eye-opening experience.

Definitely. My father's house didn't even have a paved driveway to skate in, so going to New York City and seeing that the curbs had metal on them had me tripping.

I’m sure moving to San Francisco was a similar feeling. Do you live out there full time now? 

I've lived here for the last 11 years. I moved right before I turned 17 and I'm 28 now, so maybe a little bit more. There’s been a lot of travel in between, but I’ve pretty much lived here through and through.

SF is a beautiful place to put your roots down, especially when you’re a part of the skateboarding world.

For sure, San Francisco is the reason I’ve gotten a lot of opportunities in skateboarding. I think there's a lot of people that are more talented per se, but I just happen to live in the city and know a lot of people. I get to skate all the shit that people see all the time so it makes it a little bit different for me.

It certainly seems like you’ve gotten into the mix with all the Thrasher features you’ve had over the past couple years. Does it feel crazy to have such consistent coverage in the Bible?

Of course, dude, I'm fucking stoked. Growing up staring at the mag and now getting the opportunity to be in it is pretty surreal. But also, it's more than just me. I'm lucky enough to have friends that are super good at photography and friends that work there. Thrasher is huge, but it's also a family business. I think being here and being friends with everyone is why I get those opportunities. If I was doing the same thing somewhere else, it probably wouldn't play out the same.

I’ve had a similar experience since moving to California. You’re so surrounded by the culture that it's not like you're going out of your way to form relationships with people in the industry.

Exactly. It's not some forced thing that I'm thinking about. 

Is that the same sort of relationship you have with Black Label? How did you end up getting a board with them?

That's actually pretty random because John Lucero is from Southern California and I'm actually not into Southern California or any part of California other than San Francisco. I probably wouldn't even live here if it wasn't for skating.

Anyway, he just called me out of the blue one day. I didn't have a board sponsor or any other sponsor for that matter. I think he had seen some footage of me on the internet and got my number from someone. It's funny because I would always get wheels and trucks from NHS but once John gave me the opportunity, all of a sudden, it seemed like everyone else started wanting me to be involved more.

Lucero is a legend so his cosign is a heavy one. 

Definitely, he opened a lot of doors for me.

It also sounds like the perfect example of letting your skating speak for itself. There are a lot of dudes that go out of their way to get sponsored, but the age-old sentiment is that if you do radical things, people will eventually notice.

It's cliché, but I agree. It's not like I'm some Sheckler prodigy. I still work a job and skating is still just a passion project.

It’d be different if you were cashing those Street League checks…

Moving on, I had some questions about that last Black Label video ‘Light the Match.’ You originally did a 5-0 on that ledge-to-ditch spot that Taylor Ballard ended up shooting the 5-0 to switch crook photo at. How long after that first 5-0 did you go back to do the second? 

I think it was the same trip. It sucked though because we went there and I did the 5-0 and I was able to ollie into the ditch and bomb out because there was no water. I think we went back in 2 or 3 days but the whole thing was full of water so that's where the board went every time I bailed. I thought that half of the trick was, after you make it, you get to ollie into the ditch but it didn't work out like that. I think what happened is that we skated all day and then went there as it was getting dark. That's really all we could do  originally and on the last day of the trip we were like, “oh fuck, we should probably go back there and try to get an actual trick.

It’s gotta suck to have the idea down in your mind and then all of a sudden the spot completely changes on you.

Shit happens every time.

What about that big ollie over the fence that you got towed in on? Any memories from that session?

That's a classic spot in the East Bay, people have done a bunch of shit there. I think Mason Silva rode this one bank and then ollied a flat gap into another bank there. We just cut the lock and drove my buddy's car in there. I thought I could ollie it but it was a huge battle. 

I finally got it but then someone sent me some footage of this guy who actually jumped it on a motorcycle a few years prior. I was like, “there’s no fucking way someone had already done it.”

He sized it up for you.

I didn't know that at the time. After a few months went by, there was a Volcom trip in SF and we were showing some people around so we went back and cut the lock again. I tried to front 180 it for fucking forever and just never got it.

The ollie still looks hefty from both angles. 

The last trick I wanted to ask you about was the lipslide on that barrier propped up inside of a dumpster. That looked like a hectic setup. 

That’s a pretty funny story too. We had been into skating barriers in the city and I went on this trip to Texas. I skated this barrier out there that had the big circular cutouts in the middle of it, but someone had taken the caps and made these perfect Bondo molds that made the whole top flush. When I got home, I really wanted to make one. I had a truck at the time so I stole a barrier, brought it into my backyard and poured some Bondo for the top of it. For the next week, me and my friends went on a rampage bringing this barrier around everywhere.

Right next to that spot is this prop-up to fire hydrant. I brought it over there to try gapping over the fire hydrant to the barrier. I got a trick on it and then right down the street, there was that ramp set up and these workers were just wheelbarrowing dirt into the dumpster. I was with my buddy, Blake Norris, who ollied it as well. We were just like “can we do this?” and they were like, “yeah, we don't care.” We had a metal sign with us so we just put that down and started trying to snap ollies. It’s funny, we posted my homie’s ollie that day and it went viral.

That makes way more sense. It totally just looks like you guys built that plywood kicker leading up to it.

Nah the ramp was already there, we just happened to have the barrier on us.

I feel like that could have been the ender, but it was sick either way.

Wrapping things up, I always wanted to ask about your username: @stonedspork. Can you give the people an explanation about where that came from?

I get this one all the time. I made an Instagram account when it came out, which was right when I was old enough to get a phone. I needed a username when I was a freshman in high school and just getting into smoking weed. I was like, “alright, I gotta use weed somehow,” so that’s where the stoned part came from. 

Then, we had metal silverware in my high school and this kid ended up stabbing this other kid with a metal fork. It was the talk of the fucking town at the time and they took away all our metal silverware so all we had were these plastic sporks. I just randomly changed it to @stonedspork and never changed it.

That answers that! What about your bio? I feel like that phrase “indebted to skateboarding” sums up how so many of us feel about it. Can you elaborate on what skateboarding has brought to your life?

Oh man, everything. I am who I am today because of skateboarding. As cliché as it sounds, it changed the way I look at the world in every aspect of my life. I'm very happy to live the life that I do in the place that I want with the people I love. It’s all because of skateboarding. I'm so thankful for skateboarding that I feel indebted -  it's my whole life.

You hit the nail on the head. It already means the world to us now but I feel like it's going to mean even more as we grow up, because more of the things and people that come into our lives will be because of skateboarding. 

Totally. Getting older, I can say for myself, maybe you can say this too, but I can't skate every day. I get so fucking sore.

I'm right there with you.

Everything I do is based around skateboarding though, so even when I get old and I'm not skating, I'll still be a skateboarder and I'll still be skateboarding every day. Even if I'm not doing the action, skateboarding is more than just riding a skateboard.

Photos: Daniel Stelly, David Gutierrez, Tom Shattuck & Taylor Ballard

Originally published in Issue 5 - January 2025