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| TOM KNOX / PRO/CONFESSIONAL. Part One |
| BLKPRJKT |
The guard has changed in skateboarding so many times, it would be hard to do a proper historical accounting of it. It might take a solid year to sift through every skate mag going back to about 1975 and directly correlate the paradigm shifts and leaps in progression with the responsible individuals, in proper detail. Taking the easy way out and trying to get it done in about 45 minutes might not guarantee optimal results, but you would certainly be able to pull some key names of the revolutionaries, the skateboarders who have changed the game. Most of these guys were not out to "change" anything by agenda. They simply had a different approach, in a different place and time, and the skateboarding world could not help but take notice. Tom Knox would certainly qualify as such an individual. One of the young guns that appeared out of nowhere and became one of the elite in the skateboarding rank and file. Almost nobody had ever heard of Visalia, California until the local YMCA erected a vert ramp and every vert pro at the time passed through to ride. Once there, they were confronted by the scrawny local kid who spent his entire days skateboarding everything and anything he could get his wheels on, only to show up and rip the vert ramp to pieces until dark and issue a challenge via his skating, not his mouth. What none of these guys could have predicted was that very soon, the sun would set on their era and rise on his. In short order, the fledgling genre known as "street skating" became the focal point of the industry and the media, with Knox being one of the most marketed and documented skateboarders of this brave new era. Vert was "dead", street was the shit. What most people weren't aware of however, was that for all of the marketing, Knox remained the all-terrain skateboarder. Vert ramps, pools, ditches, street, anywhere, any time. But perhaps this is simply indicative of the life he leads. All-terrain skateboarder, martial arts master and instructor, airplane mechanic, heavy duty drummer, and hot rodder. Simply excelling in a multi-disciplinary fashion. We're keeping this intro short because the interview is long, and his story is best told in his own words. Without any further delay, we now present to you, Tom Knox. Skateboarder.
Hey, what the fuck? I thought that dude was a street guy? Sorry to disappoint you, our lead-in just happens to be a large backside air in a backyarder.
Ah, that's more like it... Well at least a certain guy who makes a certain magazine can breathe easier now, we even aged it to perfection. Almost 20 years to the day since Knox last had a photo at this classic spot, he gets up on a lengthy tailslide.
CD: Well the first and most obvious question, how long have you been riding a skateboard?
KNOX: I got my first board in 1983, I was 12, in sixth grade, it was a Variflex, not a pro model. It was just the basic Variflex board, the Variflex trucks and wheels, it was the first board that I would just ride around the neighborhood on. Not long after that I got my first "real" board which was a Santa Cruz Ramp/Street Concave with the dot on the bottom, the baby blue one, with some stage II Indys and some used original OJ's. Back when I started skating in the early 80's the only companies that mattered to anybody around here(Visalia) were Santa Cruz and Indy. Even around here nobody rode Powell or Vision, maybe a couple of people but you'd go around town, and everyone had Santa Cruz and Indy. It was a no-brainer.
CD: Were there a lot of people skating around here at the time?
KNOX: There's always been a pretty good skate scene here, There's always been ramps and pools, it was always a good scene. So many guys came from here that ended up really going somewhere in skateboarding or the industry and being involved with pro skating. Jeff Klindt (RIP), Ron Allen is from here, Nanda Zipp, Karma Tsocheff, Richard and Jesse Paez, Brent Fellows, Scott O'Bradovich, and other guys too. This is a small town too, now it's about 125,000 people but back then it was maybe 50,000 people. Just north of here is Fresno, which was maybe a half million people at that time, and the only dude that they tried to claim as coming out of there was Alan Peterson, but we claim him too, because he was always down here skating with us.
CD: Why do you think so many guys came out of this one little hot spot?
KNOX: Simple. There's nothing to do here. Unless you just wanted to sit around your house, drink beer, and smoke pot, what else was there to do? Fucking skateboard, right? In the big city or at the beach, you can go to the beach go to the bars, go do a lot of things, but there is just nothing to do here. All of the dudes I mentioned? We just used to skate all day long, mini ramp, vert ramp, pools, street, you name it. I think that's why so many guys came from around here. Nothing to do. No distractions. No media circus. You've seen how it is down south, go to a spot, there's a million guys there, a bunch of goons taking pictures. When we'd go to a spot here who was there? Us. We had our shit down.
CD: People saw your spots in videos and just wondered "where the fuck is that?" Maybe they assumed it was in San Jose or Milpitas or something... they had no clue.
KNOX: Well that's just it, the magazines used to piss me off. Every issue of Transworld was all San Diego spots. Every issue of Thrasher was SF spots. There is way more to skateboarding than where a magazine is based. It's still like that. But now that I've seen the way the industry operates I can understand why. Why would a photographer want to leave a place where 90% of the pros are based, especially if the magazine isn't paying for the gas money to go anywhere, and the guy can barely make any money selling shots to the magazine or to the sponsors. Why would he go anywhere? Fuck. There are good photographers everywhere but if you're not in the right clique' your shit isn't getting printed. It's just weird shit, industry politics. Some hot scenes just get largely ignored. The kids up in the northwest are just insane rippers. They just skate all day long up there, without a bunch of distractions. It's similar to what it was like here. It's crazy... it's good. That's the kind of stuff that's keeping it raw.
Rock and Roll boardslide over some very legit stairs.
Most kids nowadays might grab this but Knox uses proper compression technique to keep his board on his feet on this massive hip leap.
Time Tunnel #1. Front Hurricane. Photo: Miki Vuckovich.
CD: So when you first started out here, were you skating by yourself a lot or did you start hooking up with kids right away and getting into it?
KNOX: Not really, right in my neighborhood there was a guy who had a halfpipe in his backyard, it was the only ramp in town, so there were a lot of the kids in the neighborhood that skated there. I was only 12 years old at the time, but there was also the older crew, the guys that were almost out of high school, or already out. Guys like Scott O'Bradovich were here, He was probably 19 or 20. He was the older guy and we were just the kids, but over all the was a good group of skaters from out here.
CD: Skateboarding may or may not be a crime. What would be the worst crime you've committed?
KNOX: Skateboarding or otherwise? I never obviously, went out and robbed anything, I never stole anything other than maybe from corporations, like stealing cable and the sort of thing. I don't really consider that a crime. I was raised in a way that you don't really steal, especially from people, so I've never really committed any crimes, all of my so-called crimes have been on a skateboard. Destroying property, breaking stuff, trespassing, you know. I did get accused of a gnarly crime that I had to go to trial for, I got accused of assaulting a police officer. I had to hire a lawyer and I had to go to trial.
CD: What was that all about?
KNOX: It was in 1992, I was skating a parking garage down here in downtown Visalia. It was a spot that everyone used to skate, and the company got sick of all of the skaters hanging out skating. The cops used to always drive by. Early on one Sunday, there was a session going on and this dude drives up in an un-marked car, he gets out of his car and just pulls me off of my skateboard, literally just grabs my arm, some guy who was in his 60's. I pulled away and I'm like "Hey, don't touch me. Keep your hands off me". The guy said a bunch of shit to me, and I said "fuck you" and I left. Two blocks down the road I get surrounded by four cop cars. They just pull up and surround me, and I can see that that old guy is with them. They say "Hey did you just have a confrontation with this man here?" I said "Yeah, he pulled me off of my skateboard, and I told him to fuck off because I didn't know who he was, he didn't identify himself to me". Well that guy turned out to be the chief of police. He told these cops that I was swinging my skateboard at him, and trying to beat him up. So they arrested me for assaulting a police officer, trespassing, and vandalism. Assaulting a police officer is a felony. So they took me to jail right there, I had to get bailed out, hire a lawyer, it was just fucked. I went into court, a full jury trial, it was a gnarly deal. The jury was out only 5 minutes deliberating, and they came back with "not guilty". Even the judge said it was all the biggest waste of time. I had four witnesses that watched the whole thing go down, and they all said that I never once swung my skateboard at this guy, I didn't assault anybody, all I did was simply pull my arm away and say fuck you. And I guess that's a crime you know, if it happens to be the chief of police. That's the closet I've ever come to a serious "crime".
CD: Where is that chief of police now?
KNOX: He's retired. From the day I was arrested, until the day I went to trial, it was almost exactly one year, and in that one year period he had already retired. I'm sure that this guy probably has some good karma coming to him anyways, just from being a fucking cop you know.
CD: Is that sort of how things went out here in Visalia with skateboarding and cops?
KNOX: Well, back then in the late 80's and early 90's, skateboarding was still frowned upon it was not the "mega-sport" that it sort of is now, that all these people and companies can make millions of dollars off of. The average person on the street didn't even know that there was such a thing as professional skateboarding, they thought skateboarding was just a fad like anything else or just something that kids do, so when they somebody who was in their late teens or early 20's riding, it was was that same thing, "aren't you too old for that?" There weren't any cool cops, no cops that said "oh I used to skate." Now, half of the time you get busted in a pool, it's some cop who used to skate. A few years ago we got busted in downtown L.A., and these cops knew who the pros were. "Oh that's Eric Dressen." Crazy. But that's just how it was.
Time Tunnel #2: Tom abusing curbs in the early days. Hey buddy, nice Germs tape job! Photo: Mark Waters.
Still got the Smith on lock. Joker's.
CD: So let's jump back in time, when you got on Santa Cruz, it was like one minute it was just the vert guys and all of that and then suddenly you were just the new hot shit. It seemed like it just happened overnight.
KNOX: In 1986, the YMCA here in Visalia built what was at the time, the biggest vert ramp in the entire state. 48 feet wide, 11 feet high, extensions, channels, a state-of-the-art vert ramp. There was nothing like that around anywhere in 1986. So all of these pros started coming in from all over the place, the heavy pros, Lance, Stevie, Tony Hawk. I could name every vert pro from the 80's and they all came through here. A lot of those guys were coming through and camping out for a week at a time, and couple of those dudes just happened to be Jason Jessee, and Steve Claar. I was just a local at the ramp so I was out at the ramp every day. Usually we would show up and hour or 2 hours before the ramp even opened and we'd just be skating the curbs out in the parking lot out in front of the ramp. I got to meet Jason, and then Keenan(Steve) was coming through. So I had met all of these guys, and in 1986 or 87 I was working at the San Luis Obispo skate camp at Cal Poly. I was just working as the whatever kid there, tell me to clean something up, I'll clean it up. 15 or 16 years old, I just wanted a job at the skate camp so I could be there skating. Jason and Keenan and Roskopp and a lot of these other guys were there, they saw me skating and they just asked me if I wanted to be on Santa Cruz. That was like my dream come true, you know?
CD: You skated everything. But they were MARKETING you as a street skater right?
KNOX: Well yeah, they did, but that's because that's where it was all going you know? That's what we did around here though, Me, Karma(Tsocheff), everybody who was a local at the YMCA ramp, that's just what we did. The ramp didn't open until 4 o'clock. During school, half the time we didn't even go to classes, we would just street skate from like 10 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, just street skate all over town, finding spots, doing shit until boom, the ramp opened at 4 o'clock. We'd go to the ramp and skate until dark. The ramp shut down when it got dark and where did we go? Right back out street skating until 10, 11, 12 o'clock at night. I don't even remember eating. You didn't even have time to eat, you'd just skate all day. And if there was a pool, we were all into that too. We'd just skate all over town and find pools. It was just non-stop skateboarding every day. We learned to skate everything. But it wasn't just me, Karma can shred anything too, not just the street stuff that you saw in the mags.
CD: Well that's sort of the way it was back then, before the ledge specialists and gap guys came along...
KNOX: Exactly. I went up to San Jose a lot, and the dudes there just rode everything. Mini-ramps, pools, vert, street. It wasn't so segregated back then but then at the same time there were a lot of guys that just rode vert, and they sort of sealed their own fate with that, and those guys some of them would only ride flat wall vert ramps. And they didn't really like the street dudes.
CD: That's the funny thing, most people think: Tom Knox. Street skater. But every time we get out and skate and shoot photos, it's a pool or tranny situation. You've been skating it all, pools, vert, street, everything since the very beginning, that's just something a lot of people probably don't really understand. It seems like back at some of the old NSA contests where you had vert and street at the same event, some of the vert dudes would hate on the street guys, fights might have even broken out. Did you ever get any of that yourself?
KNOX: Well there was a lot of animosity because of the way vert was going. They were saying "fuck these street guys, they're taking over." But I do remember the exact day I felt respected. An NSA mini ramp contest in Dallas, at Jeff Phillips' skatepark. That was on a Saturday. The very next day, Some super mega-corporation put on a vert contest where the Dallas Mavericks played in some giant arena, with big money on the line. I skated the mini-ramp contest and I think I got maybe 6th or 5th place. It was a good mix of street skaters and vert skaters on the mini-ramp, I think Miller won it. He was just ripping it. Phillips got 2nd and I think Dressen got 3rd, I ended up in the top 10. The next day, I went with the whole Santa Cruz team to the vert contest. I'm just sitting there watching this big heavy session go down on the vert ramp, just minding my own business. I'm just watching, thinking I'm not entering this vert contest and Jeff Phillips walks right up to me. Phillips at the time was huge in vert skating, and he comes up and says "hey Tom, what's going on? You're not riding in this?" I said "naw, it's a vert contest" He says "Dude, you'll make the cut" I said, "dude I don't want to ride in it, I just want to watch you guys" I was intimidated, I mean it's Hosoi, Phillips, Chris Miller, the hugest names in skateboarding. Phillips tells me, "No man, you should be skating in this". That's when I felt that I had these guys' respect. I think a lot of street skaters didn't get that respect because they couldn't do it. I would even think to myself, fuck, this street skater can't even drop in on that ramp because it's 11 feet tall, and you call yourself a fucking pro skateboarder? an 11 foot vert ramp intimidates you? That's sad.
CD: Did you personally ever experience any sort of animosity from the vert guys?
KNOX: Oh man, I got animosity at our own ramp. In 1990, they had a NSA "Backyard Series". It was actually kind a good thought. The NSA was trying to get away from the big arena sort of format, like here's a giant vert ramp and let's just sell expensive tickets and have a big pro contest that's very exclusive. But at that time there were a lot of vert ramps popping up all over the place and a lot of heavy scenes. So the idea was, let's take this series to these pre-existing ramps and have contests and have the locals get in on it. Well, they had one here in 1991 at our YMCA ramp. All of the heavy vert pros showed up, Miller, Bod, all the top guys at the time showed up. And dude, this is MY ramp. I wasn't about to NOT skate a contest at my local ramp. Grosso was there with a huge swollen ankle, he still skated, so of course I was going to skate the contest, and I ended up getting 4th or something and this was against heavy vert pros. I'm not going to name names, but there were a few guys who were just "vert pros", I overheard them talking, and they were saying "I can't believe that 'street skater' beat me, blah blah blah, this and that". I started thinking, "I don't care how I'm being marketed, this is my ramp". I was going over head high with my stuff, and I remember some of these pros that were talking shit about the street skater were having problems going over 3 feet. Whatever, they could talk all of the shit they want. To me, I was just a skateboarder. It wasn't my fault that a lot of these vert pros at the time didn't pay attention to what was going on and they couldn't or wouldn't street skate. I just simply rode a skateboard. Period. That's what I was into.
CD: Do you think that that whole rivalry still exists now?
KNOX: It's different now. It's a lot more image-based than anything else. The image of each group is more of a conflict than anything real. Back at that contest, here was a guy I grew up respecting, a guy I watched win the Vision Skate Escape when I was 14 years old, come up to me, and respect my ability to ride a vert ramp. This happened to me a lot around those times actually. In 1990 they had the NSA street and vert contest in Del Mar. I think I won that street contest... wait, I take that back. It was a 3-way tie between me, Matt Hensley, and Tony Hawk. The day before was the vert contest. I thought fuck, I'm going to go over and ride the ramp in the practice session. I'm skating and a lot of heavies are practicing, and Jim Gray walks up to me and says "wow, you ride vert too?" I said, "I just skateboard man". He said, "man, this is a changing of the guard" I asked him what he meant and he said, "you guys can ride everything now, you and Omar are the same way". Jim saw the evolution of it. He recognized that the new generation coming up could skate everything now.
CD: But you and Omar and guys like Danny Way and a few others, you were sort of the first and last generation of that type for quite a while. From there, the divide between street and vert seemed to get much wider...
KNOX: It has come back now though, kids just riding everything. That's where it's headed.
Tail grab over the hip.
Lien tail slide transiting the set-back. Lost ramp.
Knox will slap a rock in any pool you take him to, that's just the way it is.
CD: Does it bother you that a certain guy at a certain publication that wanted to do something on you told us that any photos we submitted should only be on curbs?
KNOX: Well, I can see that because of the the way I was marketed as a "street skater" and because of the time at which I was being marketed that way, curbs and ledges were the big thing, that's just what was the hot thing at the time. I look at it this way. At one point in time you would have a ledge. Guys would right straight up to it, and ollie and maybe they would do a nose pick, they would grab their board and come off. It didn't matter whether the ledge was 50 feet long or 1 foot long because everything was stationary. Static. And what me and some of the guys around here did was that were started taking these tricks and thinking why do we have to just do that and come to a stop. What if we take that nosepick and slide it or go into a nose slide rather than just coming to a dead stop. So now we are sliding along these ledges. What if we take a lipslide and go into a smith grind while we're still sliding. We started doing combination tricks. I guess it was considered cutting edge at that time and that's pretty much how I got marketed. In the Speed Freaks video, I might do a blunt to kickflip, or a kickflip to wallride, but that was just beacuse I would think "Okay I can do a wall ride here, so what would make it harder"? I'd see if I could kickflip into a wall ride. At the time I was trying to get a little more technical and I just got marketed that way.
CD: But did you feel pigeonholed because of that marketing?
KNOX: No. I didn't really feel pigeonholed. I mean, at that same time, vert was dying. Believe me, at the time that I had a board out, in 1990, that's when they started marketing me this way, Santa Cruz had about 10 vert pros. Jeff Kendall, Bod Boyle, Jason Jessee, Mike Yousefpour, Ross Goodman, Mike Prosenko, and more. These were guys that just rode vert almost exclusively. And then overnight, their potential careers just disappeared, because vert was done. I still had this "career" because I was the "street skater". And from that point on they really only marketed myself and Eric Dressen, because we became the driving force of the whole Santa Cruz deal. I sort of felt bad because Jeff Kendall was marketed as solely a vert skater but he was an amazing skateboarder all the way around. He could skate anything. Jason(Jessee) could too, IF he wanted to, but he was just Jason. He did what he wanted. So I didn't feel pigeonholed, I just rode what I wanted. But I know what you're saying. That guy said "only shoot him on this because that's what he was famous for". Fine. If that's what I'm famous for, that's what I'm famous for.
CD: You were one of the very first guys to start doing the more tech lip tricks on curbs, was this influenced by what guys started doing on vert at the same time or is it the other way around?
KNOX: I will tell you the absolute truth right now. I did a lipslide to smith grind on a curb because I saw Ben Schoeder doing it at Raging Waters, at the contest there in 1986. I saw that and I just thought "let's go do this on that curb right there, or let's go do this on this ledge." That's where the transition was. Vert was the stuff. Everyone did everything on vert. And street skating was just imitating a vert air on a jump ramp, and imitating a vert hand plant with a street plant. Once the ollie took over, street skating entered it's own phase, but I still wanted incorporate the stuff I was seeing on vert. If it could be done on the vert lip, it could be done on this ledge over here. I have footage of me doing Smith grinds on a 2 to 3 foot ledge from a really long time ago, ollie-ing into it, at a time where some guys were still doing bonelesses up into nosepicks. That was the transition of everything. Going from static to moving. Early street skating was completely influenced by vert. But it evolved. The ollie really changed things and street became it's own entity, we just kept adding the vert influence to it as it evolved.
CD: So where do you think skateboarding is headed? You've been around through so many different phases of it, vert died, street took over, what's your take on what's going on now?
KNOX: I think it's becoming a hybrid now. Now there are skateparks in almost every town. A lot of them are getting good skateparks. I've seen this around here, where the park just opens, the kids just stay in the street area. They stay on the ledges, the stairs, maybe they're hitting the little banks or hips once in a while. Then, they start getting bored and start screwing around on the transition. Then one day you go back to the park and all of the sudden this kid is doing smith grinds in the bowl, and then he goes over to the rail and he's doing back lip down the rail, and you're like fuck, these kids are turning into all-terrain wizards now. It's gotten hard for kids to just go out and street skate, everything around here has been skate-stopped. So it's going to be a whole new generation of skatepark kids, and they're going to be able to skate everything. There's going to be a bunch of Tony Trujillos going around, because they're growing up in these parks and these parks aren't going anywhere like the parks in the 70's and the 80's. These parks are here to stay. That's the way I see it going. I mean, big-time vert skating is just made-for-TV, and there isn't much of a "new generation" coming up. For every 100 skateboarders, there might be 1 that even remotely wants to skate vert. All of the 30 something guys in the x-games are going to be done, and there aren't too many guys coming up. Who is going to take their place? There are so few guys, the learning curve is tough, and not everybody has access to a 13 foot high vert ramp. Everyone has access to the streets and to a skatepark.
CD: That's probably why street just took over everything, it's right outside your door...
KNOX: It is right outside your door. I just love riding a skateboard. Whether it's street, pools, skateparks, whatever, I just like riding a skateboard. But a lot of companies for example, that fell away, it's because they didn't realize where skateboarding was going to be. Street took over, and it still is the big thing. But it's getting harder to street skate, I'll tell you that.
CD: You touched a little bit on the x games, is there a comparison between that and the old NSA contests that you used to ride in?
KNOX: I was just talking to somebody about this the other day.The NSA contests were true skateboarding contests put on by skateboard companies. You would look at all of the banners around, they were all skate companies. There was no fucking Pepsi or Frito-Lay or Monster, every company was a skate company. And the event, in the arena was just a skateboarding event. There were no bikes, no motorcycles, no fucking mountain climbers, it was a fucking skateboard event and they would fill arenas and venues with skateboarders that wanted to just see skateboarding. It didn't matter whether it was a vert contest or a street or obstacle contest, it was just skateboarders, and it was supported by skateboard companies. Now obviously, the fucking prize packages were nothing compared to what they are now, but it was just a core event. Now, we're going to have this giant multimedia affair, and we're goint to have skateboarding, and there's going to be bikes on the ramp, there's going to be in-liners, and outside of that we're going to build these motorcycle jumps, and everything is just extreme to the fucking max. Nothing is the single focus of the attraction and it's certainly not focused on skateboarding. Everyone is just there for the extreme event. The stunt show that's just made-for-TV. It's just all bad.
CD: It's interesting to think back on it, when it first hatched, the x-games was good in a way because it somewhat legitimized professional skateboarding if only from the sense that these guys have dedicated their life to this, and they should be making more than 250 dollars a month.
KNOX: I absolutely agree with you. If someone is a lifelong skateboarder, if you have dedicated your whole life to skateboarding, why not be able to make money on it? Why should you have to live poor because you have dedicated your life to skateboarding? A lot of these guys, they didn't go to college, they don't any real job skills, they ride a skateboard. So, they have to make money, and if they go to the x games to try and win $100,000, that's an awesome thing. I wish they were handing out $100,000 checks when I was riding in the contest series.
CD: What were the top prizes when you were at the peak of your contest days?
KNOX: I won at Chicago. I got about 4 grand. In the late 80's and early 90's the prize packages had gone up a little bit. You might get 5 grand if you won a contest, not like back in the early 80's when you might win $500. But now, you might get 15th place and get 10 grand or something? I don't know.
CD: So now that skateboarding has become "legitimized" or perhaps just more "socially acceptable" with municipal parks being built and people looking at it differently makes it better or worse?
KNOX: Well we just have a different view because in the era we grew up in, we were more or less outcasts, skateboarding was "bad", skateboarding was illegal, we grew up on punk rock, we grew up in a subculture that was considered bad or maybe subversive. It wasn't normal, you know, you were expected to play some kind of ball sport, a team sport, if you shaved your head like this you were a freak. If you dressed like a skater you were a freak. But now, parents accept it, a larger majority of our society sort of accepts it. These kids now don't know what it's like to grow up in a society that doesn't accept it. They aren't the outcasts, they are probably cool at school now because they skate. Girls probably like them. Before, we were all vandals, subversive types, not because we tried to be, we just were.
CD: Sal Barbier mentioned it in Thrasher, he talked about how there was a time where nobody skated, it wasn't cool. So if you saw another dude on a skateboard you would roll right up and say hello, like a brotherhood sort of...
KNOX: It was like that, you'd see another skater and you were psyched. You'd go right up to them ask them where they were from, share some spots, just go skate whatever. But now it's different, it's like "fuck that guy, I don't like him", there are all these different cliques. You see some dude skating down the street now, it's not the same way any more. You're sizing him up.
CD: Do you think that it's better or worse?
KNOX: I don't think it's any better or any worse. I mean, who am I to say what's better and what's worse? I miss the days of getting chased by a cop for skating a spot, because I felt like an outcast, whereas now, your parents are willing to take you to a skatepark and drop you off.
CD: So back when you were on Santa Cruz, the first time around you were pro exclusively for them except for that last minute when you rode for Sonic(Gavin and Corey O'Brien's mid-90's company)
KNOX: Yeah, I rode pro for Santa Cruz from the beginning of '87 to '94. Right around that time, Gavin O'Brien who was my team manager at Santa Cruz the whole time, he quit Santa Cruz, and he had already started Sonic skateboards with his brother Corey. Gavin left after they moved him from being team manager to something lame like international sales. They considered him "old School". He just wasn't feeling it. He went from dealing with the team to dealing with joe shop owner. '92 to '94 was a really weird time for skateboarding, so many skaters had started up their own companies. I was still riding for Santa Cruz and Jeff Kendall had transitioned from being a pro skater to working the business side of it. He had taken over the team manager spot. They had gotten rid of Eric Dressen, so the team was pretty much just me and a bunch of super new-school street skaters. It was becoming a really bad time for street skating, all of the super slow tech moves, the tiny wheels the baggy pants, it was just really a rotten time. I'd be out on the road with these dudes, and it wasn't that I didn't like them, I just had nothing in common with them, and it wasn't even fun. When you're out on a tour, you want to be with guys you like to hang out as well as skate with, and these guys didn't even want to skate the same shit I wanted to skate. At the same time, in '93 and '94, Santa Cruz wasn't really the "brand to be with". They were tanking, World Industries was just blowing up, all of these skaters had started their own companies and Santa Cruz was "owned by some evil man" as some people saw it, some guy who didn't even skate. So the brand was sort of bad at the time, it wasn't that they were making any bad products, it's just that nobody wanted to have anything to do with it. Board sales were suffering, everything was just bad. I had to take a pay cut, and I thought "you know what? I need a fresh start". I called up Gavin and told him I wanted to ride for Sonic, if they wanted to have me and Gavin said sure. So I rode for Sonic for about 3 years and it was good times, Corey and Gavin ran the company and Simon Woodstock was the team manager. Nanda Zipp from Visalia was also one of the Sonic pros, Kit Erickson was on, Mike Crabtree was on, it was a good team. They were good guys to be on the road with.
CD: So when you were on Sonic did you just reach that point where you felt like you were done in terms of trying to keep a pro "career" going?
KNOX: Sonic was a small company, it never really grew and when you go from making x amount of dollars with a big company and you're big time in skateboarding to where all of the sudden you can barely pay rent with the company you're on you think "man I have to do something, because skateboarding is barely paying the bills." That's when I decided I have to go to school, I have to get an education. I can't depend on skateboarding to pay my bills because even though I love skateboarding, and I'll always do it, my sponsors can't pay my bills. It really doesn't matter. One minute you're hot, the next minute you're not. Your sponsors don't give a fuck. If you're done, you're done. You could be best friends with them, but if you're not the shit anymore, usually you're cut. That was one of the hardest things to deal with. When Kendall took over the team, we were good friends we'd travel together, but one of the very first things he had to do when he took over the team was to call me and tell me I had to take a pay cut. That sucks for him. That sucks for me. I wouldn't want to be in that position
CD: On top of that, he's one of you. He's that pro guy who is now evolving into a business-side guy because his deal is sort of done, they aren't marketing him anymore...
KNOX: Yeah exactly. So with Sonic, I could just sort of tell it wasn't going to get any bigger, that that was sort of it. I decided to just step away and go to school and just told those guys that this is what I'm going to do now. I put myself into school full time, but I never stopped skating. That's what sort of sucks about being pro and being in the spotlight. People don't see you in the magazines or in videos or ads anymore and they just think "oh, that dude quit." Fuck. I've always had a fucking skateboard. School sucks. I mean you're going to school full-time, you're there all day, you come home and you have homework. All of the sudden, fuck, it's 8:30, I have to eat, I have class at 7:30 in the morning, I have to go to sleep. Fuck. I didn't get to skate today. Now you can't skate 7 days a week anymore. Anybody who has gone to school or worked or both, they know how it is. But you just have to prioritize, you have to get things done. It's sucks that people assume, oh you're not in the mags anymore, you quit. Fuck. I never quit. I've always ridden a skateboard, I always will. The thing is, after Sonic, I didn't have a sponsor until 2003. When Santa Cruz asked me to ride for them again. I was buying boards that whole time.
CD: Was that a little weird?
KNOX: Yeah, I mean, I wasn't buying boards exactly, my buddy owned a shop so I could go in there and get things at cost. But in '99, I couldn't even find a fucking deck that was 8" wide. I'm fucking going to the skate shop and getting a 7 3/4" and I'm asking "where are your biggest wheels", and the guy is telling me "oh, we've got these 49's right here". You know, I'm wanting to ride a fucking pool, and I have to buy... yeah...(laughs). Actually around 2002 Tom Miyao(sp?)who used to skate the Y ramp, part of the original Modesto crew was managing the team at Black Label. He started flowing me some boards because Black Label was the only company making a wider board right around then. A wide board was like 8 1/2". Crazy.
CD: When you got heavy into school did it make you value your skateboarding time that much more?
KNOX: Totally. I had that feeling. You remember that feeling when you're in 7th grade, pinned down in school all day and all you thought about was skating when you got home. When you finally got out, you just felt good. You didn't get paid back then, nobody was making any money, nobody gave you anything free, but that feeling of riding a skateboard was just the best feeling there is. You know, after you get paid to ride a skateboard and people give you free stuff and they fly you around the world it sort of does something to your head. You think this is what skateboarding is. I get all of this shit, I do this, and then it come to this point where suddenly you're not making this money anymore, and nobody wants to fly you around the world, and you get sort of bummed. But I came to the realization that I was a lot happier when I wasn't getting paid, when I didn't get everything for free, that was when I had the most fun in skateboarding, and I had to get that feeling back. It was actually sort of good to go without a sponsor for 6 years, because it gave me back the old feeling of skateboarding. I don't have to go skate for some guy at his shop. I don't have to go do this contest, and I don't have to go out and film a video part and try and keep up with whatever is cool. I can go and do whatever I fucking want, if I want to just slappy a curb for an hour or go skate a pool, that's where that really good feeling that comes from skateboarding is at. I think a lot of guys lose that. Once they start getting paid, they forget about the real reason they skateboard in the first place. I got that feeling back, by going to school, and NOT getting paid to skateboard. It kind of messes with your head when you go from being a top pro, somebody everybody knows, to just feeling like nobody even remembers who you are because maybe you haven't done anything in the mags for 5 or 6 years. But getting that feeling back, of why I even started skating in the first place.
CD: People still remember you though, don't people recognize you out on the street or when you're skating somewhere?
KNOX: Oh yeah it happens all the time, and especially now that I've had some stuff in the magazines again. I'm glad when people remember me for something, they say they used to have one of my decks, it was their favorite deck, or they watched my video part in something, and they really liked it. That stuff is cool. Nowadays though, I don't care if I ever make a penny off of skateboarding, as long as I'm having fun. There was a time where sponsorship was getting in the way and taking the fun out of it. Out of almost all of my friends, I'm one of the only guys who really did anything with skateboarding as a career, but these guys all had fun and they still have fun with it and I should be just like them. That's what I always remember. 99.99% of the skateboarding world doesn't get paid to do anything, they don't get free product. Why are they doing it? Because it's fun. Fuck the politics of it. It should just be fun.
Wheel-bashing the beach chairs at Orange Cove. Yeah, it's a make you snivelers.
Indy air. Culver City.
Sensei Knox.
Knox tapping one of his students out.
CD: So how did you get involved with martial arts? Was it something you started as a kid?
KNOX: When I was 4 years old, our parents had just moved us up here to Visalia from Redondo Beach and they put us in a judo program here in town. I went from the time I was 4 until basically when I was 17 and I was skating and traveling a lot. I didn't totally stop doing it at that point, but I didn't have as much time to train. That was the sport that we did when we growing up, always going to judo tournaments, traveling to events. Judo was something that parents put their kids in and a lot of kids grow out of it or get bored but I really liked it. It's a contact sport, and as a kid I always liked wrestling around so I just kept doing it. It really actually helped with my skateboarding. They sort of helped each other, but what really helped from the judo was learning to fall and roll out of everything. I just grew up doing it. I actually missed it when I was traveling a lot and getting to skate all these places but I wasn't getting to do judo. So when I went back to school and I didn't have to travel all of the time, I started do it a lot again. Probably in about 1998 or 1999 that's when I started going to the tournaments again. In 1994 when the UFC started, I was still traveling a lot but I was watching Royce Gracie win UFC bouts using jiu-jitsu and jiu-jitsu and judo are very similar. I started training in jiu-jitsu in '98 or '99 and it's just kept going from there.
CD: Are there any other skaters that you know of that are into it?
KNOX: There are a ton of skaters that train, but as far as guys who have advanced really far in it? Joel Tudor just got his black belt in jiu-jitsu. As far as pro skaters go I'm not sure, but Joel has his black belt.
CD: Could you kick his ass?
KNOX: Joel? I'd fight Joel. He's in a lower weight division than me. A lot of the surfers train in judo and jiu-jitsu.
CD: If everybody in pro skating was in martial arts with you, is there any one guy you would want to fight? Not out of any sort of animosity, just someone who would be a challenge?
KNOX: Well I don't want to fight anybody in terms of, yeah I fucking hate that guy and I want to kick his ass. If I don't like somebody I just don't even think about them. But I'd go against anybody, I don't care, skateboarding, the fight world, I'm pretty confident in my jiu-jitsu, I'd go against anybody. I'd maybe be afraid of, as you go up in ranks, (in jiu-jitsu) all of these fresh young guys coming out of Brazil that are just animals...
CD: Kind of like the skateboarders coming out of Brazil?
KNOX: Yeah, the same way exactly. These guys live and breathe jiu-jitsu like they live and breathe skateboarding. They don't go to school, all they do is train. It's just a different culture. And they aren't 38 years old, they are all 23. In the skateboarding world, when I was 18, I weighed something like 138 pounds. Now I weigh 181 to 185 on any given day. I look at these kids now, and they're all scrawny little 125 pounders, even the older skaters. Some of these dudes probably don't even eat. But I was the same way, I'd skate from 10 in the morning until midnight and I'd just drink big gulps between spots.
CD: So as far as the martial arts are concerned, and since a lot of people probably don't know, can you tell us what you have achieved in judo and jiu-jitsu? You've gotten rather advanced with it right?
KNOX: In judo I'm a second-degree black belt. In '99 I won the California state championship. In 2000 and 2001 I got the award for outstanding judoka / middle California, which means I went to all of the tournaments and then I competed with the Fresno State judo team for a while. Once I got into Jiu-Jitsu, In my weight division I've won the US national tournament 4 years in a row. I just went to the Pan-Am Championships at Cal State Dominguez a month ago, and I got 2nd, I lost in the finals by one point. That's been the biggest tournament so far, the Pan Am. Last year I got 3rd and the Pan Ams, a couple of years ago I got 2nd again. I won the Copa Pacifica in Huntington a couple of months ago, so I guess I've won some pretty big tournaments.
CD: Is there any special preparation for the tournaments?
KNOX: Not really. Just regular jiu-jitsu training mostly.
CD: And you opened a school here in Visalia to teach judo and jiu-jitsu. How is that going for you?
KNOX: It's going really well, I've got a bunch of jiu-jitsu students and it's really taking off.
CD: When are they going to erect a Tom Knox statue in the middle of this town?
KNOX: (laughing) You know, they really don't like me here...
CD: Well you could have the former chief of police out there polishing it...
KNOX: Seriously, but as far as the school is concerned it's really going good. To me, skateboarding and jiu-jitsu are really close. In skateboarding there is really no limit to what you can do. There are always new tricks, there is always something new to learn. When you land a trick whether it's an old trick or a new trick, it gives you that good feeling. Jiu-jitsuis the same way, there are the submissions and the reversals and it's almost limitless, the only thing that sucks is that you need someone else to train with. With a skateboard it's me alone, the skateboard and I'm gone. With jiu-jitsu too, it can be like a chess match. When you're fighting somebody it's really calculated, and you have to plan your moves, execute your moves, and if you make one mistake, boom, it's done, you're getting submitted or you lose. It's as much a strategy game as it is a physical game.
CD: You mentioned the UFC, it seems with Tapout and all that kind of stuff, it seems almost like a trendy thing in some ways.
KNOX: It's blown out just like anything can get blown out. Remember what snowboarding was in the 90's? How ridiculously big it was and everything was just snowboarding this and that? Same thing. Right now MMA(mixed martial arts) is just reaching it's peak, it's getting into the mainstream, companies are pushing it so hard, marketing it.
CD: Do you have guys coming into your school saying "hey I want to come in here, I want to kick some ass"?
KNOX: Oh yeah. Every day, there's somebody that comes in and says, "I want to be an ultimate fighter". Okay, so what's your background? "Nothing. I'm just tough." Okay, come inside, let's see how tough you are.
CD: So then you kick their ass and take their money?
KNOX: Not at all. These guys can't even make it through a 15 minute warm-up without gassing, and they want to be a fighter? Show up in shape! Or show up with the right attitude, "Hey, I'm here to learn, what can you teach me? I want to learn." Not, Oh I'm a tough guy, or oh I go to the gym every day, I can bench 400 pounds, I weigh 205 and I've got 3% body fat. Okay, let me introduce you to this 125 pound guy who is going to tap you out right now, because he's got technique. That's just the way it goes. When the UFC first started it was guys like me guys who were truly into the mixed martial arts training aspect of it. There still are a lot of guys like that in it, but there are also a bunch of meat heads. A lot of jocks. "Oh, I can hit guys, hard." Guys that just think they are tough.
CD: Guys like Kimbo Slice...
KNOX: Yeah. Perfect example right there. Yeah he's a really tough street fighter, he fought guys in backyards. But this is a sport. There are rules, and you've got trained athletes doing this for a living.
CD: Have you ever had to apply what you know out in the world in some real situation?
KNOX: More than you think. This comes from playing in a band for so many years. You know, you play at a lot of bars, rough places where shit goes down. Guys get stupid and they want to start fights. I've been in my fair share of altercations, but I've never pushed it to the point where I'm going to wallop a dude, I simply wanted to control the situation. If I got into a situation where I had to use jiu-jitsu it was only to reinforce "hey you don't want to do this". I might have got the guy in an arm bar, or maybe I had a choke set in, like "do you see I have you controlled? Don't take this any further". I don't want to hurt somebody, I don't want some dude suing me, I don't want to go to jail because this guy started it. And usually that's the way it's gone, the cops show up, you explain the situation, they say "yeah, you did it right". I don't want to fight people. Even the guys that I train, these guys are big time fighters now. They don't ever want to fight on the streets, they don't want to fight anybody in the bars. If they are at the bar, they are usually the mellowest guys there. Because they know that if you have that kind os skill, you don't have to be macho and have all this bravado. They are the mellowest dudes in the bar and if somebody fucks with them, they are still going to be the mellowest dudes in the bar. Of course if they had to defend themselves they would, to a certain point, just to let someone know "hey, you don't want to do this".
CD: Isn't that the basis for most martial arts? Built on discipline and self-defense?
KNOX: Exactly. It isn't something that is for tough guys, guys who just want to kick some ass.
Aw c'mon now, vert's been dead for 23 years! Big lien over the channel at the X-Ark.
Visalia area wall jam.
Continued in Part Two.
-BLKPRJKT / PHOTOS MRZ |
Sunday 10th 2009f May 2009 17:36
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