It sounds like you’ve been a bit banged up this year. What exactly happened?
There were a few things that led up to it that were pretty annoying, but the main one was that I dislocated my pinky toe pretty good. I've never done that before. I was skating this gap and popped out of place, and I thought I broke my toe. I took my shoe off and it looked insane so I popped it back in place and that was at beginning of a trip. Then I went to fucking Copenhagen and Barcelona afterwards on a couple of filming missions and I was just hurt the whole time for that. After coming back I’ve been dealing with it the whole time.
Yikes - how do you even heal that? Is it like breaking a finger where you have to tape it to the toe next to it?
I went to the doctors and they taught me but it’s a little complicated. Basically you use KT tape on your whole foot and to hold it all together, and then you buddy tape it to the the next toe after that. It’s a whole process, which is also so fucking annoying because every time I want to skate, I have to tape my whole foot before I can go out.
What a pain in the ass.
It still hasn't healed up yet. We just finished up this video and then went straight on this New Balance tour. I have a little break between now and the next tour so I can finally let myself heal a little bit. I had been jumping on it and it's gotten better but then before I left for that New Balance trip it went out again.
Hurting a toe is one of those things that you don’t think will affect your day to day activities as much as it actually does.
It's like, you think you're good so you try a trick and then you bail it and it totally pops out. It's so annoying. I’ve never done it before so I don't know how it’s supposed to heal or what the timeline is. It's been so slow.
Is it on your flicking foot or the back one?
It's on my right foot, which is my popping foot. It doesn't hurt to pop on it, but it does hurt if I'm doing a switch ollie in the morning. It's kind of scary sometimes. I'll have days where it feels great but not right now.
That sucks to have it in the back of your mind like that.
On another note, Tim Fulton mentioned to me that you’ve been super into biking lately. Have you still been able to do that as a form of rehab?
Yeah, it's been really dope to get into something off the board because I think skaters have a really hard time dealing with injuries. When I hurt this toe, it put me on the bike more and then I just fell in love with cycling. I built up my bike while I was hurt and then I got a new bike. I'm not really a morning person, but it's been getting me out super early and I've been doing these 50 mile rides. It's just nice to have something to exert your energy towards and be active while you're injured. Cycling doesn't hurt my foot at all and keeps my legs moving. It’s good for the knees and I'm building strength. It's been my savior for these past few months to be honest. It's been such a nice outlet.
I think a lot of skaters tend to get addicted when they eventually find themselves a different hobby that's not as physically brutal on their body.
Yeah I know skaters that have caught the surfing bug or the golf bug and I’ve seen a few skaters catch the cycling bug also. You're going fast, it's not really impacting your body and you're exerting this level of energy that’s really similar to skating.
At the end of the day, you’re still rolling so that makes sense.
Are you trying to build up the strength to go longer distances or are you just trying to explore different routes?
I think it’s good for the legs so it’s cool to see an improvement in your body and being able to go on longer rides or going faster. I’ve also met a few people through this avenue and gone on a few group rides where you’re surrounded by a different community. It’s not something I'd pursue as a career, but it's a really fun hobby.
I've been skating for so long that it's nice to have something else that I'm so foreign to where I can pick up and meet new friends or have another way to challenge myself.
It sounds constructive. There are so many people that pigeonhole themselves in skating and never expand their horizons to anything else in life.
It's almost humbling to be around these dudes that have been riding for years and to see how much power they can put out through their legs, It's just so different than skating but I definitely caught the bug.
Switching gears - you mentioned that New Balance Numeric ‘Running Numbers’ tour that you just finished up. It was rad to see you guys skating some of those indoor parks up north. Which one was your favorite?
I love indoor skateparks, so Modern was dope but then there was that other one called Food Court up in Buffalo that was so fun to skate. I feel like it’s a rare commodity to have an indoor park in your city right now so it was cool to go to two of them back to back. They're both so different but so fun.
Totally. Modern has been around forever but Food Court is still so new that people are still breaking it in.
Yeah, it had all the fresh Skatelite and everything. Plus I was really sore on the trip too, so it was nice to just, like, getting to go to those places and like actually really warm up and get the body flowing, get the juices flowing? It was really nice.
It’s always nice to hit some transition before throwing yourself at something.
I don't want to pop my board in the morning like like pumping out a little bit first, you know?
No switch ollies before noon!
You guys had a pretty massive squad out there as well. Obviously it looked like Jamie Foy shut some of those spots down but is there anyone else on the team that really shocked you to watch in person?
Frankie Villani. He is such a one of one skater. You never know what he's going to do. He does stuff so fast and he looks great on the board. He's exciting to watch because he can do anything but you never know what exactly he's going to do. This trip was insane to watch him just skate like he's so talented, he’s like a unicorn.
I feel like that comes across in his footage too. He could be at any random spot and you have no idea what weird trick he’s gonna pull out.
Dude, he’s like that at any spot. You could give him this crazy ledge to ledge and he'll figure out this insane combo that no one has done before. Then you can take him to a big double set and he'll do the most fucked up jumping trick. If he wants to skate something, he's gonna do it.
He's got that eye to pick out something at any spot.
There's only a few people in this world that look at stuff so differently and actually have the talent to execute and he’s one of them.
It sure seems that way. Were all of you guys hitting a lot of spots on the way to those parks?
Yeah we made a big trip out of it and we're hitting spots in between. We had three Sprinters, it was insane.
Did you guys have the whole “sober van” vs party van” thing going on or did everybody just mesh together?
There was definitely, like a stoner van and like, what is it called, like Stoney and Bologna?
Is that is that where you were?
I feel like everyone just picked their spot in the can and stayed there. Some were more chill than others but I was in the stoner van for sure.
That’s such a wildly different group of personalities coming together.
Oh dude, there’d be nights when we’d be at dinner and I was looking around the table and you had Brandon Westgate in one corner, I was sitting next to Andrew Reynolds and I look over and there's Tiago Lemos. The whole crew is insane but everyone's friends. That's the dopest part; everyone’s so nice to each other.
A true meeting of the minds!
With this many superstars, there could be egos or people could be weird but everyone on this team is normal. It’s pretty refreshing to see.
How does that compare with touring with all of the heavy hitters on the Real team?
I feel like there's a little transition period with Real right now. We're all friends but over the past few years, everyone’s been doing their own thing with different brands. We all go on trips together and it’s good energy, but it’s maybe not as close as the prior Generation of real because everyone’s such a superstar that they’re doing their own thing. Mason [Silva] might be doing some Huf thing or Ishod [Wair] could be doing some Nike thing. Everyone just gets so pulled one way or the other that it's hard to have that team chemistry all the time but it does happen when we all go out as a crew.
I suppose that’s bound to happen when you have so many household names on one team. How long have you guys all been filming for this new video, ‘Oval’?
I want to say maybe a year and a half. I mean, this idea of filming a new Real full length movie has been tossed around for so long but like I said, everyone has been getting pulled in different directions. It’s hard to get everyone together. I feel like it got solidified a little bit over a year ago and we went on a few trips this year where we all started really putting footage towards this thing.
All things considered, that's pretty quick nowadays.
It’s so hard for companies to spend like they would have back in the day when you could you could take 4 or 5 years on a full length. It’s insane to think about, but that’s how you had all those crazy videos that come out. I think nowadays, you need a cap for how long you film a video for.
It’s gotta be tough to pick and choose what goes into all the different projects that everyone’s working on at the same time.
Totally. You can see why a full video like this is hard to make happen because everyone wants to put out good footage, but then your shit's getting split up. It's hard to just be like, “no, we're gonna work on this and we're gonna put this out together as a team.” I think Real needs this to showcase the team right now.
Do you like having a plan for what to film next or are you more spur of the moment when it comes to stacking clips?
I like having a plan, it’s just annoying sometimes. For example, I went on Jamie's like SOTY trip and I was healthy for that one and we went to these crazy ass spots. The energy with the crew was insane and everyone’s doing insane shit so you get insane footage. Besides that, this past year and a half, I really haven't gone on a trip that felt like that or where hit spots that I really felt like worked for me.
Sometimes you're like, “damn, I got like some of the best footage on that trip and it’s not even going for this big project I've been working for. I wish I could just save that and put it towards this other thing” but that's not how pro skating works. I went on that trip, I need to be in that video. Hindsight is 20/20 and you can think back to different trips like that but yeah, sometimes that's the hard part.
That’s gotta be super frustrating.
What about your recent trip to Norway to visit Hermann [Stene]; was a filming mission for anything in particular?
I think Andres [Garcia] had planned a trip with him to Norway right after he had turned pro. We went on a trip together and then I got invited on and I think two other guys came with us. We stayed with Herman in Larvik for two weeks and then we went to Oslo and stayed in the big city for two weeks. I think we were just filming at the time. I didn't think we were going to be working on a full length so all of that was me still working on a solo project.
He was hurt for that trip too which kind of sucked but he was a dope host so I appreciate him a lot for that.
Was he trying to take you some crazy long rail spots or was he keeping it mellow for you guys?
He was keeping it pretty mellow. He had some hidden gems he was showing us. I grew up watching Herman skate Oslo spots and I've been such a fan of him before we became friends. To go there and skate those spots with him and and Pekkaaa [Per Christian Løvås], who was the filmer that he's worked with for years, and to meet all their friends was so sick.
I definitely started paying more attention to the Norway scene after seeing all of Pekkaaa's footage filming Deedz out there.
There are so many spots over there, it’s insane.
I wanted to ask you about a couple of those spots that are featured in the photos for this interview, like that gap to Noseblunt on the curb. I thought was kind of cool because we usually never see you skating small stuff like that. Did you just randomly come across that one?
We just came across it. I think few people had skated it before and it was kind of near our Airbnb. The street gap was pretty big but it looked really sick on film. We took out the poles to make it skateable and it just worked out. I feel like that we got that kind of stuff in Oslo - not big handrails like skating like Hollywood High and shit. It's more stuff like that, but I would like to think it translates.
For sure. Even though the photo of your bs 180 nose grind down that shotgun rail looks pretty intense. How did you get comfortable doing that one?
It’s definitely a lot of trust. That's one of those spots where you have to be on it because you don't want to be trapped in the bear trap right in the middle of the rail. I guess that’s one where you grind one good and you let it go and you’re like “oh, I could have done that.” That happened a few times where I grinded it perfectly and I was like, “I need to just trust myself” because you don't want to play with that for too long, you know?
You gotta strike while the iron's hot.
The traffic there was pretty gnarly too so we had homies watching out for me but it just looked so cool. The rail didn’t have the craziest dimensions, the only thing that was scary was like that little bear trap at the end. You almost get lucky sometimes. When I landed on the back of my heels, I think it was like on my toe so my whole truck was over that bear trap and somehow I just didn't hit it.
You almost gotta just close your eyes and wait for it to be over.
You gotta just trust it. Even the nollie front crook, there were times where I would lock into it so perfectly and then I would try to pop out and I would hit that bear trap and it just threw my board. Kind of crazy but it looks so cool. That city looks amazing on film.
We are hyped to be able to run those pics!
Last but not least, what’s next for you as we start to close out this year and head into 2026?
I'm trying to let this toe heal up and let my body get back to normal for a second. That shouldn't take too long and then I have this New Balance tour coming up so that's next on the agenda. Besides that, there's nothing planned right now. I'm not really mad at not having anything in the next few months. I'm excited to get a nice reset. I feel like I've been juggling these injuries and I've hadn't had time to really feel good on the board. I'm excited to get back having a routine, then I can start digging at the next thing. For now, having no deadlines hanging over my head sounds really nice.
Photos: Sebastian Bjerkvik
Originally published in Issue 7 - December 2025