Wow. Episode two of Betty was SO much better than Episode 01. Watching this made me feel so many feels. Like I just felt that nice sticky summer feeling of being busy and hanging out with your friends. I specifically thought of a time Quell was judging something for Redbull at LES and then we went and got pizza after and then I skated to a roof and a bar and it felt like the day never ended. Whatever enough about me…

I want to know everything about the characters and where this is going!!! I was genuinely disappointed when this episode ended.

This as always is not sponsored, I just really admire Skate Kitchen and I think what they’ve done and continue to do to spread visibility for SO many groups of people in skateboarding is incredible. Their show is genuinely diverse and AUTHENTIC and they really care about portraying it that way. I think these girls really deserve so much and it’s awesome to see what this series will do for skateboarding. Let’s get into it!

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We start the episode off with small cuts to check in with our characters. We start with a look into Honeybear aka Elizabeth’s??! life. strict household, states island native, religious? We don’t get much more than that but maybe foreshadowing. Cut to Kirt and Indigo living their summer truth. Skating in Union Square, eating ice cream, HANGING OUT…remember that? 

Anyway, Janay and Donald are filming some sort of youtube video about Janay doing a graffiti tour. Donald turns off the comments on their channel because he didn’t like what they were saying about Janay. Sure Donald…

Now, we’re at Fat Kid wooooo! It’s my favorite park honestly, especially for beginner skating. I don’t know why but it’s kind of mellow and it’s huge so you get a bit of practice with speed and your approach. 

Kirt and Indigo see Camille and they’re still not happy about it. Camille’s mystery bae shows up and she starts filming clips of him on her phone. The girls are having fun without her, teaching Indigo a little bit. We get some vibey moments of all the girls doing tricks around the park. 

“You know those betties don’t you” a classic name title drop from Camille’s bae aka Bambi. Camille goes to talk to bae about music and editing and they both admit to watching each other’s clips. Later Camille rolls in shit and Bambi offers to help her clean it off.

Janay starts to list her ideas about her show to Honeybear. Honeybear starts to mention that there are negative comments around Donald, Janays best friend and she realizes the comments weren’t about Janay they were about him. She finds Donald and starts to scream at him in the park about lying about the comments. Allegedly Donald didn’t like someone who liked him and she accuses him of being a predator. he starts to feel trapped and Janay tries to help him. 

This casting agent scouts Indigo in the park and the boys start to laugh at her while the other girls get a little jealous it seems that they weren’t selected. She then bumps into one of Camilles friends, Luis, and he starts screaming at her. Kirt starts a fight with him to defend Indigo. Indigo starts to get really mad and quits skateboarding.  After Kirt finds the girl who has been lingering and screams that she’s gay. they get into a small argument about the girl and she leaves Kirt.

Kirt, Honeybear and Indigo meet up randomly a lot later on the quest for Indigo to keep skating. Kirt apologizes with rave toys and sneak into the park. There’s a beautiful night skating scene that once again makes me tear up a little bit. They skate around and get super high. While laying at the bottom of the bowl, Honeybear admits to liking Ash. 

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Catch our Betty recaps every week here!
If you have any suggestions or anything we’ve missed DM us @quellskate.

Natalie Krishna Das photo by Feral Rust at HELL BOWL

Queen of Hype, Natalie Krishna Das always brings the good vibes. Natalie lives many lives and brings so many positive things to her community in skateboarding. While she first caught our eye through Las ChicAZ Slice of Hell, we grew to become obsessed with her photography.

Natalie captures the spirit of skateboarding in every photo she takes. Every photo makes you feel like we’re apart of the ride.

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First, what are your pronouns?

She, Her, It

How did you start skateboarding? How old were you? Where did you grow up?

My little brother left his skateboard at my mom’s house in Glendale, AZ.  I picked it up when I was 16.  I had just moved to Arizona from Jackson, MS.  I started by rolling off of curbs and skating around my hood.  I met my best friend Nicole Pothen at school playing soccer and we would ditch to go to the skatepark.

What made you want to pick up the skateboard? What inspired you to keep skating?

I started skating 22 years ago. I always wanted to learn how. I loved how punk rock and rebellious it was at the time. I remember traveling to skate all of the All Girl Skate Jam events. That’s what really lit the fire in me to continue skating, traveling and competing. I ended up skating all of the Southern California CASL contests along with some smaller series of contests where I met Lacey Baker, Lindsey Pastrana, Ocea Lei and many others. 

When did you start being interested in photography?

I’ve always loved shooting photos.  I had a Vivitar film camera when I was about 10 years old.  I took it everywhere with me.  My dad handed me down a super nice Nikon SLR when I turned 15.  At Arizona State University, I minored in Interdisciplinary Arts where I studied black and white photography and photoshop.  This sparked my deep down interest in photography.  My view of photography morphed from a classic style to a more artistic style of setting up the shoots.

When did you start taking skate photos?

I drove across the US with a crew of skateboarder photographers about 15 years ago (I know, I’m old)  and we took turns shooting each other for a photography blog.  The crew consisted of Mike Tindle, Mikey Duran, me, and a one more.  

Throughout the years, I’ve picked up tips from friends and legends along the way.  Rhino from Thrasher helped guide me into getting my newest camera addition of a Canon 7D Mark II.  

Jessie Frietze F by Natalie

Did you take skate photos before going on this trip? or was this an all immersive experience?

Prior to this trip, I shot skate photos, but I was more focused on shooting fashion photography. 

How would you describe Las Chicaz? What is your mission?

Las ChicAZ started as a small crew of girls in AZ.  It’s now evolved into a crew of 25 girls and 12 dudes spanning across the globe.  We have riders in Canada, Mexico, Norway, and The USA.  Our mission is to have epic road trips as team builders while skating some iconic spots and new spots.  We also throw monthly events where we team up with various non profits and a different brewery each month.  

LasChicAZ group photo at the famous backyard HELL BOWL DIY in Tucson, AZ

How do you select what non profits to work with as Las ChicAZ?

We try to team up with non profits who help women in need who are local. The last non profit we helped was TQPuebla.  We were able to supply a misplaced trans couple from Cuba with furnishings for their new apartment. The couple had just been released from ICE detention. We’ve also helped the Caring Coalition with their food bank for high school kids without lunches, HOPE for women and men of domestic abuse, and many more. 

How did Las ChicAZ form?

About 7 years ago, The Berrics hosted an online video contest.  We had a crew, but no name.  I called us “Las ChicAZ” and we entered the contest.  Our crew is always evolving.  More members join and they move closer, and some move away.  

We were invited to judge a contest in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico years ago and when they announced “Las ChicAZ” we realized that it sounded lame.  THE GIRLS… what was I thinking?! LOL  So we added “Las ChicAZ SLICE OF HELL”

It seems like from the start you were skateboarding with women and are a part of so many groups or organizations that support women.

How has surrounding yourself with women helped you grow as a skateboarder?

When I first started skating, I was one of the only girls at any skatepark from 1999 until about 2012. It was intimidating to show up to a new park to be surrounded by only guys. Don’t get me wrong, the guys were super supportive. Skating with girls is an entirely different experience though. I was always the “token girl” on my various guy skate teams. We would go skate a spot and it would be a huge gap or handrail. I was more of a vert skater, so I would just skate the red curbs off to the side.  Once I found more girls to skate with, we would skate similar things and I would actually enjoy skating different spots. 

Katie from HELL BOWL & Skate B.A.B.S. by Natalie

What do you do with Exposure and Skate Rising?

I’m the Manager of Social Media for Exposure Skate.  I interview skaters, repost everybody’s awesome videos, and create new content for the brand.  With Skate Rising, I am the Program Director for Arizona with my counterpart Stacy Lovell (mother of badass young ripper Mia Lovell.)  I also handle the social media for Skate Rising. 

At Skate Rising we teach girls ages 4-18 how to skate.  They learn empowerment through skating and compassion through service.  We have a theme for each event that is in line with the selected charity.  A guest speaker comes and the girls do a hands on activity to get involved with being charitable.

Reina by Natalie

How did you get involved in those organizations? 

I started out as a volunteer for Skate After School and Tim Ward suggested that Stacy Lovell reach out to me about volunteering for Skate Rising as an assistant event manager.  Since then, I’ve been promoted to Program Director and I was also hired onto the management team for Exposure Skate.

Skate Rising is an incredible way to support young skateboarders and work with children. How do you balance being a mother and a skateboarder?

No joke, it’s rough.  My daughter just turned 4.  Anytime I try to leave the house to go skate, she asks to come with me and gets upset when I leave.  Luckily, my husband is super supportive and he hangs out with my daughter when I go skate.  If she comes with me, I can’t focus on learning new tricks.  It’s exciting when she wants to skate with me, but it’s important that I have some adult time for some skate therapy.

Does your daughter have an interest in skateboarding?

She does. She will do rock to fakies if I hold her hand. She just turned 4 and has a love for adrenaline like her mama and I’m excited to take her on this skate journey with me as long as she wants to go. 

What advice would you give for someone who wants to start skateboarding?

It’s never too late to learn.  It doesn’t matter what age you are.  If you want to learn a new skill, it takes time and effort.  Skateboarding is 90% mental.  It definitely helps to be in good shape though.

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Interview by Adrian Koenigsberg
Follow Natalie on Instagram for more

YAAAHHHOOOO Betty is here! For those of you who live under a rock, or somehow found this page accidentally, Betty is the newest comedy / skate masterpiece from The Skate Kitchen written by Crystal Moselle + Lesley Arfin.  Betty is kicking off its first season with six episodes exclusively on HBO. HOWEVER you can watch the first episode on Instagram live now

ALSO want to give a huge shout out to Betty + HBO for sending us such a sick package. Feeling really blessed and excited to use all those goodies to share the love. This post wasn’t sponsored - but needed to give a little love and kudos.

The description of Betty states: A group of diverse young women navigate the predominantly male-oriented world of skateboarding in New York City.  I mean lmao story of my life right...but let’s get into it SEASON ONE EPISODE ONE

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We catch Nina aka Kirt (spelling change in this show versus the movie The Skate Kitchen) taking some ass shots of a seriously bruised butt. Wonder how much of that was costume makeup or real life. She facetimes our girl Dede aka Janay because they’re about to meet up for their first girl’s sesh!

It’s absolutely foreshadowing who the guy is with Janay but we shall see. PS shouts out that Janay had on a KCDC tote. But anyway - we catch our girls at LES somewhere *incredibly* extra. Enter Moonbear aka Honeybear, and immediately we clock that she’s a filmer, so our gang starts to catch some clips. 

Camille shows up with her two boys and immediately is a way different character than her movie debut. Then we get this montage of skating and general LES shenanigans. How many times should I mention that I miss being outside? It starts POURING and they all mob to a bodega. I wonder if that was real rain or not - but I’m going to go with not. I’m from Miami and I don’t remember it raining like that here.

“Phillip” orders a bacon egg and cheese and my heart dies a little. Camille realizes she forgot their backpack at the park and freaks out on her to go get it. The girls are not having how he treated her and they all get kicked out of the bodega. 

The gang realizes that the backpack is stolen. Janay proves to be the smartest thinker trying to get Camille to use find my iPhone. Phillip doesn’t have an iPhone because “he doesn’t trust the government.” I wish I couldn’t say that I haven’t met a New York skater exactly like that but…

Phillip is really upset because he lost his “Winter Bowl Key” which Kirt quickly reminds him girls can’t get in there anyways. Our first look into the divide of the skate scene. But they make a deal that when they get the backpack thief, they can get into Winterbowl.

They run into a friend Farook and meet Indigo, our baddie smoking in the van. Camille doesn’t want to hear her stoner friends excuses and just wants her backpack. Kirt, Phillip, Honeybear and Indigo pile in Farook’s van to smoke. Janay gives her stuff to Honeybear and her and Camille embark on this adventure to get the stolen backpack. Camille and Janay first see a similar backpack on a young man, and think they find gold but in reality it’s some mean 14 year old boy. 

Back in the van, Farook tries to remember his weed prices to send out Indigo to sell some *drugs*. Kirt delivers the best line of the show “not my fault if my lets skate and my lets smash vibes have some overlap.” She tries to get Indigo to skate with her, and speaks the truth about skating: it’s not about landing tricks all the time, it’s about having fun. This scene seems really chill but it is in fact the pivotal moment of the show. The difference between how men see skating and how women are developing their own communities.

Now we get to a Fuckin Problems montage to find our backpack through Chinatown. We start to see Camille and Janay develop their relationship and it seems like a fun promising future for our ladies. Meanwhile back at the van, Indigo is learning to skate from Kirt. Indigo baby mall-grabs the fuck out of this deck while flirting with this guy to sell some weed. She skates now though “it’s whatever”. My personal favorite part of the episode is that Kirt teaches the importance of how to hold your skateboard.

Janay and Camille have a terrible interaction with an old man and start to get a little more open about the overwhelming sensation of older men preying on younger women in situations they should be safe in, like the school bus. Back in Farook's bus, Honeybear realizes she found the backpack thief on her camera. The ladies meet back up to fuck this guy up. He’s sitting on a park bench and then starts cursing at them in Spanish but surprise Camille speaks Spanish and gets! her! backpack!

YAY we did it we’re all best friends wooooooo. So Farook drops our ladies off at the Winterbowl and Camille opens the door to get in. They’re greeted by some random guy who refuses to let them in. A guy vouches for Camille but she ditches the other girls at the door. All of a sudden the sky opens up and leaves our ladies out in the rain.

That’s all she wrote.

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Catch our Betty recaps every week here!
If you have any suggestions or anything we’ve missed DM us @quellskate.

Welcome to the first, of what will be many posts from our new series: Skate Pop.

We’re taking you through on this rocky journey of skateboarding through pop culture by recapping movies and TV that feature our favorite skaters. Kicking off the series, we decided to feature the most mentioned skate movie to us in recent history: The Skate Kitchen.

The Skate Kitchen Movie is so special to us because we’ve heard that it has inspired SO many women to start skating. It’s an amazing representation of our mission at Quell: visibility for women and non binary people in skateboarding. If you have not watched The Skate Kitchen it is streaming now on Hulu. Hope you enjoy the first Skate Pop.

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First, we’re introduced to our protagonist miss Rachelle aka CAMILLE about to ollie a four stair. I’m on board for this solo sesh…until we get this BRUTAL fucking credit card scene.

I am so squeamish that this literally hurts me to watch this and has re instilled a fear in me that I can’t even put into words. The timeline seems insane because you would never get released from the hospital after having major vagina surgery that quickly and then just WALK your ass home but whatever let’s roll with it no pun intended.

So enter Camille’s mom who is my favorite Orange is the New Black character–and she has the reaction of every parent who has ever seen their kid skateboard and fall: promise me no more skateboarding. Okay mom…I promise. But Camille does NOT care. I’m kind of obsessed with the fake instagram and then like google maps transit view of LES because baby our real New York journey is about to begin!

Here we go! Enter Janay (played by Dede), Kurt (played by Nina) and Ruby (played by Moonbear). “I follow you on instagram” is my favorite introduction also. But lets stack these clips ladies. I wonder what they’re actually looking at on that camera honestly. But cut to a downtown montage that is literally making me so sad to be sitting on my couch doing this review. “Can you do an ollie?” is also my favorite introduction…fuck that guy. Who else has had that experience?

I also wonder how much of this is planned or acting - like the car almost hitting Nina aka Kurt etc. Anyway, I feel like they wouldn’t just leave her hanging like that but we had our first day skating with the ladies! Camille get her clip on “The_Skate_Kitchen” insta...fuck yeah bitch as Kurt says.

Day two of hanging out with the squad. Our ladies go to this amazing rooftop tennis court scenario and smoke weed in a beautiful sunset. Kurt brings up and incredible point about the Mandela effect. I am obsessed with this. Camille has to make up a reason to leave and it is SO awkward I am even hurt emotionally.

Still sad we have to hide that skateboard...which another thing, how is her credit card injury going ??
WHAT, was it her birthday all along??? is she vegan? 
Why is she doing the skateboard out the window if we saw her put it in the bushes?
I have a lot of questions clearly.

Now we enter a vibey montage of time passing and their relationship building. Camille states a very sweet sentiment about not feeling lonely because she’s found this group and it makes me really happy. I think it’s so important to have a safe space to feel comfortable with…I mean duh I do. Also, it’s so nice to actually have friends to be able to hang out with. I miss that feeling.

Complete side note but obsessed with this bedroom with a couch in it because WHERE in New York is this. Also I love supportive dads.  It’s so nice to know that this tampon fear has made it onto main screen. I do think I talk about this with my friends but I have to say that this is not what women sit around doing all the time . So then we move into the shitting on men portion and that’s my favorite thing to do with the ladies. The two sexual spectrums are outlined by Kurt- Do you like sucking dick or eating pussy? So Camille likes boys – not sure why we needed to state that but lets see where this goes.

Camille is late to get home and her mom takes away her skateboard. Fuck.

But, a new day is here. We’re at cooper and Charlie, the nicest person in this movie, has delivered a board to us so let’s set this up for the shredding montage. Enter trap music and said montage. Also enter another corona related depressive episode.

Camille sleeps over Janay’s house, and steals her tampons. How’d that go? We’re living our best life now, back having fun at fat kid until mom literally shows up to scream at her and actually hit her in front of her friends? So bye mom we’re leaving your ass and new jersey long island and shacking up with Janay.

It’s so sweet to have this friend moment and hear Camilles story about her struggles with puberty and identity. I think it’s a really difficult grounding point in the movie and her relationship with her mother and the pressure to make these relationships work as you’re trying to know who you are growing to be. You shouldn’t feel that much pressure as a child and it’s so sweet to see someone listening and seeing Camille have that moment where someone is there for HER.

Anyway time to go fuck someone up. We’re back at LES! There’s a dreamy Clairo song playing while there’s just a full on altercation started by Kurt. Hi Jaden aka Devon, welcome to The Skate Kitchen. Fast forward to the grocery store where Camille and Devon both happen to work.

A small but important scene here, is when the girls are on the way to the party and they start talking about their past hookup experiences. Gaslighting is the worst thing possible. I hate having to hear how many shared collective horrible experiences we have with men. But this scene brings my favorite coming of age movie scene- putting lipstick on your friend to a Princess Nokia song. Fast forward through the scenes that probably make this a rated R movie.

I’ve noticed that this movie is really like just about these beautiful friend montages and a couple key plot points but just kind of feeling that emotion and without dialogue it gives you time to like bring it back to your own self. Is that too deep? I don’t know.

Anyway, Camille goes to hang out with Devon to take photos. My fear of heights is giving me insane stress in this moment but it’s clear that this kick flip photo shoot on the roof is a ~turning point~. Especially when he says: you’re the only girl i’ve ever brought up here oh FUCK that’s the worst sentence I have ever heard.

Camille goes back to her new home, aka Janay’s home and wants to skate this street spot with the girls. I feel the tension building. Janay is nervous and isn’t feeling respected which is culminates in a skate injury and a metaphorical riff in her and Camille’s relationship. Sad.

Camille tries to ask questions about boys to Indigo and we’re finding out the tea between Janay and Devon. Tension builds when Camille lies to Janay and hangs out with Devon. But at least we get another vibey montage of skating with the bros.

The next day, we hang out at Cooper. Literally what is good with this weed she is dead??? but Indigo just realized what is GOOD with Camille and Devon…uh oh. Fast forward, another day another Cooper scene. Janay comes back to the park to hang with her friends and also beat Camilles ass because suddenly learns about her “friendship” with Devon. Seems like this is not going to go very well for the future of The Skate Kitchen.

Not that this is the point of this scene but when Camille is mad as fucks her hair looks incredible. So anyway, Camille made her bed and now has to lie in it...and by her bed I mean this couch in the living room of Devon’s apartment until she literally gets in his bed instead. UH OH. I’m excited for this all to get better because now I am sad and I miss my mom.

And here we are, mom gives the best advice to just apologize. Squad scene, we are back. Let’s vibe it out a little more. I don’t know about you but I MISS MY FRIENDS.

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This recap was written by Adrian Koenigsberg.
If you have a movie or show you want us to recap let us know.

Stay tuned for more Skate Pop and follow The Skate Kitchen's journey when Betty comes out on HBO May 1st.

We fell in love with Fabiana, Breanna and Una when we briefly hung out with them during Wheels of Fortune last year. All rad skaters, their energy and dedication shines through everything they do. When we found out that Shari was filming with them for Vans, we were even more stoked, what a perfect combo. We’ve been fans of everything she’s done with Skate Witches and knew we could expect something great from this. Side note, as with all of the Skate Witches edits… music choice was on point! Read up about the making of the film and if you haven’t yet, give it a watch!

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Just under a year in the making, Credits celebrates the diverse energy and personalities of the global women’s skate community. With a talented cast led by three underground favorites — Una Farrar, Breana Geering, and Fabiana Delfino —the film highlights the unique, individual style and expression of a group of friends that skate, hang and travel together.

Credits marks an important milestone for the women’s skateboarding community, exposing a title that in jest challenges the idea that women have often only been showcased in the “credits” section of skate videos. Here, in stark contrast to the former status quo, Una, Breana and Fabiana emerge, gracing the screen with full, complete parts in their own major video. Being directed, filmed and edited by Shari makes this extra notable as some brands have put out an all non-male video, they haven’t had a woman filmer.

Fabiana Delfino

Shari White by Norma Ibarra

“Everyone had the opportunity to film their best skating over the past year, with their homies cheering them on,” film director White said of the project. “That is what skateboarding is all about! The laughter and friendship, along with the battles—I hope viewers get a sense of that feeling.”

The film includes cameo appearances from Vans team riders and friends, Beatrice Domond, Cher Strauberry, Clara Solar, Poppy Olsen (who also serves as the film’s art director), Helena Long, Adelaide Norris, Dayana Young and director Shari White herself.

“Credits is just some best friends having a good time and making a skate video,” added Geering. 

Una Farrar

Fabiana Delfino by Norma Ibarra

Credits was shot in 4:3 with a mix of HD and Super 8, with footage captured across the US and Canada, in addition to Melbourne, Australia and Barcelona, Spain between April 2019 and March 2020.

Watch Credits on Vans’ YouTube channel as well as a Q&A with the director and main skaters from the film.

Jaime Reyes is arguably one of the toughest people in skateboarding.

At the height of her skateboarding career in the mid 90’s, you could catch her breezing down Lafayette with the Supreme squad, or doing kickflips in the Rookie loft with Lauren Mollica and Lisa Whitaker.  We had the pleasure of interviewing Jaime Reyes on our podcast about her skate beginnings and career in the 90s and early 2000s. After getting to know her more and more since the podcast, we wanted to catch up with Jaime on what skateboarding means to her now and her plans for the future.  We invited Jaime to Brooklyn for a whole weekend to find out.

While we already know Jaime is a badass, we were impressed when we witnessed her push through a stomach bug (we’ll spare the details) on a humid, 95 degree Saturday. She busted out a pivot to fakie on a crusty bank and promptly re-named it the ‘puke to fakie’ - a true legend.

Jaime played a little backseat DJ, made a necessary fried chicken stop a la Harold Hunter and never missed a Yankee’s score update. She even admitted she has 23 blue Yankee’s fitted hats (the brim color changes, obviously). But what stood out to us even more, was that Jaime made sure we felt as good about skating the spots as she did, even pushing us to land our tricks before moving onto the next spot.

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Kristen Scalise: I don’t want to call it a comeback, but it feels like you’re making a comeback to skateboarding. I don’t know if that’s more because of social media. Have you been actually skating more recently?

Jaime Reyes: I’ve been skating for the last three years. I went on a seven year hiatus. 2009 I just went into a dark place after my pops passed away. When he passed away I completely stopped skating. I had been miserable for seven years. Three years ago, I was like ‘you know, I need to skate because that’s what always made me happy.’ So yes, I’ve started skating.

KS: And do you feel happier?

JR: Fuck yeah. Relearning some stuff gets frustrating but hey if I did it before I can do it again. It’s all part of skateboarding and I love you skateboarding.

KS: It doesn’t matter.

JR: It doesn’t matter because I fucking threw down some shit.

KS: Laughs you paid your dues.

JR: It’s like being in a union. I paid my dues and I fell today hard. Still paying dues. 

KS: What’s the union?

JR: The skate union. You know, like union workers.

KS: Get that insurance.

JR: No yeah, I love skating. Trying to be the best I can at it. I’m slowly getting all my stuff back. Flipping the board, jumping on ledges. I’m not going to jump down handrails and stairs anymore.

KS: What tricks are you trying to get back next? 

JR: Everything, I just want to skate. Darcy [Jaime’s Partner] said I was way happier now that I’ve been skating. I mean I built a fucking mini ramp– sweat, blood, tears and empty pockets!

KS: Does she skate?

JR: No. She’s the complete opposite of me. I am so much happier and better of a person when I get to skate. 

Adrian Koenigsberg: What about skateboarding really makes you feel that drive and that love?

JR: It’s a feeling you can’t describe.

KS: I can’t imagine trying to describe that too. You’ll know it.

Abi Teixeira: It’s just you on
that shit. 

KS: That’s something I love about skateboarding. You go and do something by yourself but with your friends.

KS: Do you think your love for skateboarding grew over the years, or was it love at
first sight?

JR: I think it was love at first sight. When I stepped on a skateboard I was like dude I love this. I ate shit, I still love you. It’s like my best friend. I call it my purse because I carry it everywhere.

AT: How long have you been
skating for?

JR: Since ‘92. Before you were born probably. I got the cover [of Thrasher] when you were in your dad’s nut sack.

AT: What year? 

JR: ‘94.

AK: That’s the worst way to phrase that. Laughs.

KS: Jaime what are you
scared of?

JR: I don’t know. Disappointing someone, or people.

KS: That’s a real fear though. Not as good as butterflies [Adrian’s fear]. I’m also afraid of that.

AK: Yeah I’m all about the crippling anxiety of disappointing people.

KS: You probably have it worse than I do. Laughs. This is an out of the blue question: Max Fish then versus now.

JR: I miss the old Max Fish, but I am grateful it’s still around!

KS: I feel like Max Fish is not only a bar but a spiritual place.

AT: What’s different about it?

JR: To me it was more of a dive bar. Now it’s a little more clubby. For the most part the peeps are the same. I love going to Max Fish when I am in town!

KS: I can’t think of any other place that is a more open arms place to skateboarders. If you’re a skater you have a home at Max Fish.

JR: When I go to Philly I go to Tattooed Moms. It’s just like that.

KS: What do you think about the skate scene in Richmond? [Where she currently lives]

JR: In Richmond I go to my friend’s house called The Lost Bowl, and it’s awesome because he has a transition park in the backyard and the front yard he has a slappy curb. Thank you Pat Lowry. I learned how to slappy on that curb, it’s awesome. There’s a planter on the front curb. He built all that stuff. Look up #TheLostBowl.

KS: Why did you like the Seaport Ledges so much?

JR: I don’t know, they were dope. There were the old wooden benches and they put the metal corner coping on the ledge. The ground was so smooth.

KS: What’s your favorite trick you got on that ledge?

JR: The switch backside 5-0 and the switch back tail line. That was probably my favorite.

KS: What do you think about skating in Brooklyn?

JR: Everything is all new to me here. Obviously these spots weren’t here when I was skating back then. It was cool.

AK: Do you feel like a lot of Manhattan spots have changed since you skated them?

JR: Hell yeah! There are like 20 Manhattan spots parks now. Back in the day it was just Riverside and the one on the West side and like Canal Street. Before they re did the LES park, it was so bad before. 

KS: Do you use wax?

JR: We talked about this. I shellac a curb.

KS: What is that?

JR: I buy these spray paint thing, and when you gloss up the curb it’s so much better.

AT: You don’t need that in New York, with the metal and shit.

JR: Yeah but did you see that spot where I did the nose slide? That has so much wax on it.

KS: People love wax in New York City.

JR: Jaime points to a three inch scar. This is why I don’t like wax.

KS: What happened?

JR: Someone waxed a
metal curb.

KS: Oh cool.

JR: Metal. Angle. Curb. I slid out and caught the corner. I had to get 20 stitches and 5 internal stitches. This was recently.

KS: I’ve never heard of internal stitches.

JR: Go look at the photo.

KS: I don’t want to look at your injuries anymore.

JR: It was so bad that the doctor thought I got bit by a dog, and I kept skating, drove home and I told my girl that I had to clean my arm up… I didn’t know. It was cold, so it must have been the fall and then blood started dripping down my arm. As soon as I took my long sleeve off, she was like you have to go to the ER now.

KS: Oh my god.

AK: Is this going to make me so nauseous?

KS: This looks a lot like the steak picture next to that post.

JR: That’s a prime rib by the way, that I cooked to a perfect medium rare, it was delicious.

KS: You earned it with those
stitches yo. 

JR: I didn’t know the whole time. The doctor was like you drove from Richmond to home, an hour, and back. Yeah, I didn’t take my long sleeve off. He was like ‘you didn’t feel that?’. He thought I was crazy.

KS: It is crazy! We skated around all weekend and you definitely skoached me.

JR: Yes, I would like to be an Olympic Assistant Skoach. Mimi Knoop, holla at ya girl.

KS: Can we start a petition? Like the Alex White Petition? It does make sense to have a park skoach and a street skoach.

JR: I would love to be a skoach.

KS: What do you like about skoaching?

JR: I just want to get people hyped.

KS: I think you’re really good at that. You really pushed me today, and I could see how you can push someone who really has skills. Laughs.

JR: I recently skoached some kids last weekend. That was fun.

AK: Do you feel like that just comes naturally because you’re interested in seeing other people skate?

JR: I am interested in everyone having fun. If they want to learn, I’ll skoach the shit out of you.

KS: Can you tell if people want it?

JR: Yeah. I hate “I can’t”. Fuck it, at least try. I think that’s probably the most important thing in the skoach. It’s not that I can’t do that, it’s I haven’t done it yet. You at least haven’t tried.

AK: I think that’s cool though, that that’s your approach to it. Especially because you don’t have to be that person.

JR: I can tell, if you want to learn, I will be your hype woman. I am going to be so hyped when you land it.

Abi T: It’s always good to have that one person.

KS: You’re hyped for yourself but you kind of feel like you did it for that person too.

AT: That shit does get me hyped. 

JR: You did a kick flip today!

AT: I tried.

JR: We all made you do a rock to fakie. 

AK: What is one of your favorite Skoaching memories?

JR: Having them land it. Everyone landing that trick. Their reaction is priceless, they’re so psyched. It doesn’t matter what the trick is.

KS: In the car, we were talking about music. Favorite song you’ve ever skated to?

JR: Gloria Estefan, Falling in Love.

KS: You said your friend Darin put the retrospective together. Who is Darin?

JR: Darin Lee is a dude I grew up skating with in Hawaii. He filmed 90% of my Hawaii stuff.

KS: What’s your favorite type of music?

JR: I like everything. Cage the Elephant. Modest Mouse. When in Rome. I loved Jay-Z’s first three albums. I used to always skate to the Pixies back in the day. Smashing Pumpkins were my favorite growing up. Let’s listen to Mayonnaise right now.

AK: How do you feel when people are making retrospectives of you? Or talking about your career in the past tense, even though you’re still here and still active.

JR: I guess it should bug me but I am just here to skate.

AK: I don’t mean to get in your head.

KS: If you’re here to skate and have fun, why should it bug you? Do you think social media has influenced skating?

JR: It glorified skateboarding. I don’t know if that’s the right word but you see more skateboarding now through social media period.

KS: Totally. Do you interact with skateboarding differently since joining social media? 

JR: I’m not sure. There’s a lot of good fuckers out there.

KS: Do you wish there was social media in the 90’s.

JR: No.

KS: I wouldn’t either

JR: I came up without it.

AK: The only reason I would wish there was social media in the 90’s is so that I could see better quality footage of the people that I really haven’t gotten to see.

JR: If there was social media in the 90’s, I think I spoke about this before, there would have been a lot more girls out there that we didn’t know about.

KS: Do you think there are more girls out there now because of social media?

JR: Oh yeah.

KS: What are some current skaters that are crushing it?

JR: Everyone’s killing it. Everyone. There’s too many to name.

AK: To go back to our social media question, do you think there’s a combined stoke that is pushing everyone?

JR: Yeah I think so.

KS: Do you think people are just as hyped to see it on social media as they are in person? Like I can see my friends land a trick in Australia.

JR: Yeah if you have a heart, you’re fucking stoked. You should always be stoked to see someone else land shit.

KS: This might just be because of my radar, but you’ve been at a lot more women focused events like Wheels of Fortune, or the SK8 Babes meet-up. Have you always attended women’s meet-ups? Is that something new?

JR: I go to wherever, whenever, whoever flys me out. Thank you to those sponsors!

KS: Are you seeing more women’s skate meet ups as
of late?

JR: Yeah in the last few years, there are more women’s events than before. It’s definitely due to social media and it is a positive thing. I don’t care if you’re brown, yellow, green, dude, chick…just skate.

AK: I feel like if you feel comfortable about the people you’re with, it’s such a good feeling.

KS: That’s what really interests me about you [Jaime] and interviews with Elissa Steamer. You are two people that have just stuck out to me as like ‘yeah I’ve just always skated’. I think there’s a personality type that is you and Steamer that is like ‘I just love it so I did it.’  I really connect with that feeling. I’m just going to show up to the park and you can just wait for me, I don’t care about how slow I’m going, I’m learning. I think that’s super sick.
    Anyway, there’s been a few movies featuring skateboarding lately, such as Mid 90’s. How do you feel about how people are portraying skateboarding?

JR: I think that Mid 90’s did a great job. They didn’t glorify skateboarding. They showed both sides, that everyone has their fucking problems. It reminded me of when I was in the 90’s growing up skateboarding.
     We all were coming from fucked up backgrounds. There were only a couple of us whose parents are together. I identified with Mid 90’s. It was the crew I grew up with.

KS: I do think the perspective they took was cool.

JR: You know, skateboarding really brings all types of people together.
     That’s a beautiful thing. 

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Photo by Erin O’Brien

We are so excited to introduce a new stretch series on Quell with our favorite Yoga instructor and skate queen, Stephanie Reid.

Steph teaches the perfect combination of poses to reach all the best stretches for skateboarding. You may have taken a class or two with Steph last summer at our takeover of the The General by Vans space or at Alo Yoga in Williamsburg. We wanted to launch the series with a little Q+A to learn more about Steph!

Watch the video after the interview and tune in next Wednesday, April 15th to a zoom class by Steph password Quell.

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Photo by Erin O’Brien

Tell us about yourself! (Where are you from, any little bio information)

I was born in PA, moved to England for a year, then to NJ (where I primarily grew up), then AZ (where I went to the University of Arizona), and finally NYC. I moved to the city to be closer to my family and pursue a career in graphic design and now I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Although, I really did love the desert- Arizona is such an underrated place.

How did you get into yoga? How did you get into skating?

I did gymnastics for 16 years and my coaches would often have us try different workouts- weight training, running, ballet, calisthenics, yoga and probably more (they got very creative when it came to conditioning). So the very first time I did yoga, I didn’t think much of it. But, when I blew out my knee and decided stop competing, yoga was recommended as part of my recovery. So, I joined a fitness center near my house and started taking classes with my mom. I remember feeling mortified when I walked into my first class and saw that I was the youngest person there by about 40 years. But, I rolled out my mat and focused on the teacher, thinking this is gonna be easy- I was a level 10 gymnast. Boy was I wrong! My arms were shaking in down dog and I left so humbled. The thing with yoga is, you could be in the best shape of your life, but if you’ve never used your muscles in the way that yoga engages them, it’s going to be difficult. 

As an athlete, I loved the physical challenge of yoga. But, I was completely unaccustomed to the practice's mentality. Yoga asks you to respect your body’s limitations, not compare yourself to anyone (including former versions of yourself) and strive for presence over perfection. I felt so liberated! I didn’t realize that my ego was as battered and bruised from gymnastics as my body. The more I practiced the better I felt. One of my favorite teachers in Arizona noticed my dedication to the practice and suggested I do a teacher training. I used to be so shy so, I dismissed the idea at first. But the more I thought about it, I began to realize what a cool opportunity it would be to share my passion and learn more about the practice that had transformed my life. 5 years of teaching and over 350 hours of training later, and I’m more in love with yoga than ever.

Skating didn’t enter into my life until a little over a year ago. My sister, Christi, used to do it in high school and my other sister, Lizzi, picked it up after she graduated from Pratt, so it was always in my peripherals. When I moved to NY after college, I had a hard time figuring out where I fit in. It’s crazy how you can be so surrounded by people and still feel lonely. Lizzi related to that struggle and invited me to a girls skate meet up at Skate Brooklyn. She assured me that skating’s how she made all of her friends post college and figured my background would help me pick it up quickly. I was so self conscious at first, but was lucky to have Quell and Grl Swirl hosting meet ups for beginners all the time. Lizzi had also been skating for around 7 or 8 years by then, so it helped to be associated with someone who was so ingrained in the community. I fell in love with the adrenaline and the people! Now I can’t imagine my life without skateboarding.

Photo by Erin O’Brien

When did you start to combine the idea of yoga for skateboarders?

When I started skating a lot, I couldn’t believe how sore it made my body. I ride goofy, so my left achilles got super tight from pushing, while my right hamstring would get sore from balancing on my board. My hips felt tight from squatting and jumping for hours on end too, so yoga became an essential way to stretch off my soreness and prevent injury. I also noticed how applicable yoga’s mentality was to skating. Yoga trains you to quiet the mind and focus on your breath and movement, thereby increasing your proprioception. In skating, this prevents you from getting paralyzed by thoughts of all the ways you can get hurt by trying a new trick and trusting in your body awareness. Fear plays such a big role in skating- it did in gymnastics as well. You can get really hurt trying these tricks and not everyone is able to push past that possibility to fully commit- and that’s often when the worst injuries happen. So, yoga really compliments skating both the physically and mentally.

I started to progress really quickly and people were noticing! At first I just attributed it to my history as a gymnast, but then I realized what a big role yoga was playing. So, I started recommending skaters try it. Especially because I would hear a lot of them complaining of soreness and saying they needed to stretch more, but didn’t know what to do. Unfortunately, a lot of skaters were dismissive of yoga- either they didn’t think they would be good at it, couldn’t afford it or were intimidated to enter into a community that had never reached out to them. So when Quell approached me about teaching some classes at The General by Vans in Williamsburg last summer, I jumped at the opportunity! I was excited to curate a yoga experience specifically for skaters so that they could see how beneficial the practice is for them. 

What is your advice for someone who is first starting to practice yoga?

Leave your expectations at the door and be patient with your practice. Failure is part of any learning process and progression takes time. Just like with skating, start off with the basics- you’re not going to try a kick flip before you even know how to stand on your board, right? The same applies to yoga. That’s why I always offer variations of poses with props to help you on your yoga journey. Accept where you are at in the present moment and use it as an opportunity to better yourself for the future.
What is your favorite yoga position and what is your favorite skate trick so far?

My favorite yoga position is handstand- it's my happy place. My favorite skate trick is a fakie 360 kick turn (also known as a dizzy Lizzi). My sister makes them look so effortless and cool- I remember seeing her do it for the first time in a skirt on the mini ramp at Blackbear bar. She was the only girl skating and when she did that trick all the guys tapped their boards for her. I’m so stoked that I recently learned how to do it myself!

How are you staying sane during social distancing?

Lot’s of yoga and Netflix. I’m so grateful for my roommates and video calls with friends! Staying in touch with loved ones during this time of isolation is super important.

Anything else you want to add/share?

I am so grateful for how welcoming the skate community has become because I know it wasn’t always like that- especially for girls. So I want to shout out my sister, Lizzi, the girls from Late Skate, Quell, Grl Swirl and all you individual trailblazers (Yaz, Kava and Dee, just to name a few) for paving the way for girls like me! You created this incredible community of positivity and support in a city that so often chews people up and spits them back out. I feel so lucky to be a part of it and contribute what I have to offer- yoga, backflips, and of course skating. 

Where and when do you teach yoga– local to Brooklyn? (If schedule is staying the same post COVID 19?)

I teach Yoga for Skaters classes twice a month at the Alo store in Williamsburg. The dates vary month to month, so follow me on Instagram (@stephreid333) to stay tuned for upcoming classes! 

Zorah Olivia is probably responsible for your favorite skate photos.

She’s a tour de force in the skate industry, covering everything from: the X Games to the upcoming Olympics and goofy portraits of our skate icons. Zorah’s crystal clear style stops each moment so perfectly. This photo series from the 2019 Dew Tour offers a snapshot of what Zorah captures best. We sat down to talk the contest, Zorah’s life, and everything skate photography.

Photos by Zorah Olivia. A version of this interview appears in Issue 004 of Quell Skateboarding. Buy a copy online here.

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Can you give us a brief history of how you started skating and shooting?

I started skating when I was 10 years old. I remember watching my cousins play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and I was hooked. I’ve honestly always been shooting photos. Both of my parents are photographers, so I grew up in an artistic household.  Naturally at first as a kid, you want to do the exact opposite of what your parents do, so skateboarding was my main focus for years. It wasn’t until I turned 16 that I really started taking photography seriously. 

How do you think going to Woodward for skating and for photography has influenced your approach to skateboarding and capturing skateboarding?

Going to Woodward as a kid absolutely shaped who I am as an individual, skateboarder and a photographer. Woodward was the first time that I was exposed to other female skaters. I felt free and able to fully be myself. When they introduced the photography program to camp in 2009 my entire world changed. For the first time, I was given access to top professional skateboarders, the best photography equipment, and real life photo scenarios. To this day, I’m still incredibly grateful for that time in my life.

Often skate photography is just about the ‘spot’ as it is about the subject or the trick - can you talk a bit about how you approach skate spots and angles?

The majority of the time, skaters and filmers introduce me to spots, so when I go out with them I’m seeing everything for the first time. You can make a creative image out of any spot, it’s all about using your eye to pull the best qualities out of any location.  The key is to pay attention to the details, colors, textures, and human elements. 

What’s your ideal setting for taking skate photos?

A spontaneous phone call from a friend, meeting up for iced coffee first, and exploring the city for unusual spots. It’s all about being spontaneous for me and my crew. 

Do you approach street, park and contest photos differently?

Street definitely comes naturally for me, park and contest shooting is always a necessary learning experience. I just observe first and pre-visualize how I want to shoot the skaters desired trick. Contest photography is more so about getting as much content as you can in a set amount of time. 

How did you get involved in shooting contest photography?

Contest photography was actually my first true introduction to the skate industry! In 2016, I emailed Kim Woozy from Mafia.TV and asked about internships. She emailed me back and really liked my portfolio. We ended up talking on the phone for over an hour. On that same first phone call, Kim invited me to shoot the X-Games in Austin, Texas! She flew me out to Seattle, WA first to introduce me to the female skate community. That was my first time at Wheels of Fortune, so officially WOF was the first time I shot a skate contest. 

Specifically, what were some of the exciting parts and some of the challenges of shooting this year’s Dew Tour? 

My only challenge with Dew Tour was gaining access to the course to shoot with the girls. But I did end up meeting a lot of amazing people who helped organize Dew Tour that want me to officially shoot for them next year!  The most exciting part about Dew was seeing all of my friends in one place. That’s what we all love about contests, no matter how much pressure we all feel, we’re just thankful to be with each other. It’s like a big family reunion.

How did you approach photographing practice versus the contest?

During practice, I always try to get as much action content as possible because on finals day they absolutely won’t let you anywhere near the course. Finals day I focus on the individual skaters, their reactions with not only themselves but with everyone else. I just want those viewing my photos to feel how they felt that day. 

If we came back from the future to tell 14 year old Zorah that when you get older you’ll be shooting some of the biggest pro skaters in the world, how would you react?

I probably wouldn’t believe you! But that would have saved me years of worrying about my future.

We heard, from you, that you’ll be shooting at the Olympics, would you like to share a little about how you got the opportunity and how you’re preparing for it? 

Yes! I recently signed with FujiFilm. I’m incredibly grateful for their support. I’m currently working on the early stages of a photo series leading up to the Olympics. More details coming soon! 

What’s your advice for people who want to get into skate photography?

Practice, be vulnerable and fully put your heart into your work.

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The “baddest babes in the skate scene” are on fire. Las ChicAZ take us on a visual adventure to Baja that will have you wishing to join their crew.

A version of this interview appears in Issue 004 of Quell Skateboarding.
Buy a copy online here. Photos by Natalie Krishna Das

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“Who’s got the lid to the tequila bottle?! ” yells Courtney Ramos across the 12 passenger van that is bouncing across every bump on the dirt road to Cuatro Casas. 

“Pee break!” As Cristal Taren pulls off the highway at full speed, everybody laughs so hard until tears are pouring like dew rolling down an ice cold can of Helton beer (who sponsors this crew on their adventures). They had made it to Mexico!  

Rena Accetta takes the first barefoot hill bomb on the side of the road. The stoked sets in!  That anxious feeling of skating a new spot fills the hearts of the whole crew as they jump back in the van to get to Cuatro Casas!

After an excruciating 14 hours of traveling, all 13 members pulled up to the sign of the hostel. Cuatro Casas is a Mecca of a skate and surf trip deep in Baja. It’s frequented by Tony Alva and is famous for its pool coping from the Dog Bowl from Lords of Dogtown. 

As the Las ChicAZ ripped out of the van, some were drunk, some were tired, some were ready to shred!  The sound of pool coping grinds sparked the tone of the next three days. Las ChicAZ had arrived. 

In between surfing, riding dirt bikes, yoga, and bonfires with karaoke, the girls found time to be in a couple commercials that were being filmed by a few companies who were also staying at the hostel.  Natalie Krishna Das (crew founder) grinds the deep end and knocks over two bottles of Gnarwhal Coffee as the film crew gets the shot in slow motion. 

They had ten ladies present and three dudes with the crew. Everybody had an epic sesh. 

By Natalie Marie Salsbury

Please note: This story contains sensitive topics around addiction and prescription drugs. If that is triggering, please do not continue.

Let’s go back to the spring of 2018. A year from now I will start hormones, change my name and pronouns, and with a decent job begin cycling through another thrift store/discount section wardrobe trying to find clothes to fit my evolving understanding of my gender. But until then I spend most of my time here, at my computer. Too nervous to go outside, I spend most of my free time watching skate videos and videos about gender. At night to help me fall asleep I imagine carving around the bowl in my hometown, which I am about a hundred miles away from with no car. 

Between 2016 and 2018 I had skated maybe a handful of times. I loved the freedom of it: pushing as hard as I could up and down the streets, not thinking about what other people might be thinking about me. In my day-to-day life, I felt like I could feel people staring at me as soon as I walked out the door. There is no hiding when you’re 6’2” and in a dress. I didn’t realize I was doing it at first, but to avoid being around strangers I began to only really leave the house to go to work, the grocery store, or therapy. Skating gave me a reason to go back outside though at the time I didn’t realize this is what I needed most.

I began to seek out other feelings of freedom. Alcohol and its freedom gave me strength against everything I was and everything I was not. And for a while it asked so little in return. When I went to start hormones I lied to the people at Planned Parenthood about how much and how often I drank, scared they wouldn’t let me begin. 

As you may know, Hormone Replacement Therapy, or HRT, for trans femme people is commonly two-part: Spironolactone and estradiol. Spironolactone is a testosterone blocker and if mixed with too much alcohol can cause blood clots and estradiol, basically synthetic estrogen, absorption into the bloodstream can be inhibited by smoking regularly, which I did whenever I was drinking and increasingly when I wasn’t.

I wish these reasons alone made me stop. The much more messy one is I began to hate losing all my money, my weekends, and more than a few weekdays to drinking and being hungover, more than I feared not having any feeling of escape from the life I was living. My  family has a history of alcoholism and always in the back of my mind was that the day may come when I couldn’t stop unless something really bad happened. 

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So without her usual weekend escapades, what is a bored femme to do? I began skating more and more until I became the person I am now who goes to bed early Friday and Saturday night to be the first one at the skatepark the next morning. I’m not sure if I feel like a “skater” but I have fallen in love with skating again.

 I did not pick up a skateboard last year on a whim. I skated from about age sixteen to twenty three (I am twenty six now). During that time, I knew I was a straight cis guy, though I wouldn’t know the word cis until must later. At its peak I had a solid group of other straight cis guys who I skated with almost everyday. More on this later. 

There is an urge in people first coming out as trans to “reinvent” themselves, or rather to emerge as a totally different, hopefully better, person. Skating put a twist on all of this. I could not pretend that I was starting from scratch with skating. When I would go out to push around the neighborhood, I was skating the same board from when I stopped years ago, I could pop up and down curbs with confidence, and if I wanted to watch skate videos I knew where to look, at least I thought. Trouble was, I didn’t want to watch straight guys skate anymore and didn’t know where to find anyone else.

Last year when I started looking for other skaters someone I found early on was Leo Baker. I’m not too ashamed to admit that for a while I emulated Leo’s style of primarily black clothing when I went out skating. Of course, dressing monochromatically is not uncommon in the skate community. Seeing them do it, however, gave me an example of a more androgynous presentation when I was first skating again.  

I read somewhere that to be a cis het white able bodied man is to be invisible in the dominant culture. To be anything else is to be watched, and this watching or even the perceived feeling of being watched impeded one’s autonomy. So the trouble for me comes in when I try to figure out whether I continue to wear more simple outfits to skate in, black pants/hoodie with only slight variations, because I really like this or I because I really like not getting the looks I get when I walk down the street in more femme clothing.

Since starting to skate again I have found many more skaters and the organizations and companies who support them. These came to me through articles, interviews, conversations, and videos in Quell Skate, Unity Skateboards, Skate like a Girl, Skateism, Pushing Boarders, Girls Skate Network and a few others. 

Each name invariably lead to another and then another. To help me remember them all I would try to follow as many as possible on instagram. These were not just any skaters either. I was looking for skaters that were queer, womxn, trans, and every combination and extension of these identities. I was looking for people like me. As you can imagine, this saturated my feed with skateboarding from all around the world and gave me loads to watch. More than that though it became a source of comfort. 

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One of my favorite things to do since a big chunk of Richmond is one big hill, in about 2 miles it drops over 150 feet, is skate all the way down and hit a bunch spots along the way. After some time skating around at the bottom, an area literally called Shockoe Bottom, I would find the nearest bus stop to take me back up the hill. 

It is a well-documented law of the universe that city buses are either pulling away just before you run up or they won’t be there for at least 20 minutes. What I would do, still do, with this time is scroll through instagram and since I had followed all these awesome skateboarding accounts I could see right there in front of me, thousands of miles away, skaters like me. It made me feel in some small way that I was apart of it too, that I was not sitting by myself at some random bus stop but was in a huge community filled with super rad people. 

That sense of connection with the larger womxn’s skate community is something I don’t think was reflected in men’s skating back when I was a teenager. We had a lot of the same social media platforms that exist today, but the skating my friends and I watched was what we would have called “good skating,” i.e. skating at a level that none of us could ever dream to achieve. We all happily signed on to a culture that gave us heroes and legends to watch, but gave us no real way to interact with that culture aside from buying boards and shoes. 

This difference in community and what is considered “good skating” reminds me of something Nora Vasconcello once said in an interview. She said that the only ranking she could ever put on a skater was how much they made her want to go skate. What this means then for me is if I see someone online who is just having fun on a board or pushing themselves to try something new and it got me pumped to go skate then that’s good skating. 

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Earlier this year, in the beginning of summer, I was sitting at the bus stop and saw someone post a clip of them skating every day for 30 days. I thought to myself, why don’t I try that? I was at that point skating only once or twice a week. For the next few weeks though every day when I got home from work instead of opening my laptop or sinking into the couch, I change clothes and had right back out to skate. I began progressing quicker and when I got home I would be thinking about all the tricks I wanted to try when I went back out to the next day. 

The next month after my personal 30-day challenge, and all the months after that, there was hardly a day that goes by that I don’t skate down to Shockoe Bottom, or up to a school/church parking lot, or through all the side-streets and alleys that make up Richmond. 

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While we are on the subject, let’s talk about Richmond. If you think back to your days in high school history, you’ll recall that this fair city was once the capital of the confederacy. Many of our streets, public schools, and even a highway are still named after confederate generals and the confederate president. If you think of this region’s more recent history you may remember that two years ago in Charlottesville (just a hop and a skip out of Richmond) a white-supremacist ran his car into a group of counter-protesters, fatally wounding a woman. As I began writing this piece, an incident in the news struck an unsettling similarity. At the 7-11 down the street from my home, a man tried running down with his car a couple he perceived as queer and thankfully missed, but ended up seriously injuring two other people. 

Despite all of this, Richmond is widely considered in this state to be a haven for queer and trans folx. This is largely because of the people who flock to the university in town with a strong arts program. Something something queer people are always trying to express ourselves something something. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have known the meaning of “chosen family,” but now I couldn’t imagine how my life would have turned out had I not have found a few close friends here to support me when I needed it most. 

I thought of picking up skating again as “taking back my city.” I see now that is a very colonialist way to look at it. If this city belongs, and even this is an improper word, to anyone it would be the indigenous people my wasp-y ancestors took it from and then, particularly here in the American South, enslaved a group of people to build up to their liking. No, what I see now is that picking up a skateboard was more about reclaiming some of my own autonomy. Walking down the street seems less scary when I’ve been down it a hundred times on a skateboard. If I need something I have to suck up the courage and walk into a shop to get it, regardless of how people may feel about me or how I think they may feel about me. And sometimes people surprise me. 

I was visiting my home town in another part of the state and decided to pop in to the local skate shop. It had changed so much since I had last been there. I recognized the owner behind the counter right away, but he gave me a look that said he knew me though couldn’t quite place from where (four years, about a foot more hair, and a wildly different wardrobe will have that effect). I hesitated when he asked for my name. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to “out” myself as trans, or just use the old name he knew me by then quietly sneak back out the door. I took a chance and told him my name was Natalie now and to my relief he was super supportive! Then we just talked about life in Richmond for me and all that he had been doing there in town with the shop. In other words, small talk. 

For me though, after so long of being too nervous to have a real conversation with male skaters, I was bubbling over with excitement while talking to him. I left my hometown because of college; however, I promised myself I would never move back because I did not think it was a place that was friendly to people like me. That brief chat with the shop owner gave me hope for the queer and trans people who still call that town home. 

I mentioned earlier that one of the main reasons I began digging through the internet was to find people like me. I never stopped looking. I know you are out there. I think you are like me, scrolling through instagram at a bus stop in one of the thousands of cities that aren’t Seattle, New York City, or San Francisco. I wanted to write something for you, so that you may feel less alone. 

Skating is rad as fuck, but this is about something more: you need to go outside. This cis-normative society wants you to stay inside, wants you to feel like you always have to hide. Just because no one is currently pointing a gun at your head does not mean we are free. I know I am only speaking for those of us in the US, those of us in “progressive” cities, those of us who are white (the list goes on); outside of this small minority of us where weapons can be just metaphors. I do think skating can help us; it can be a shield, it can be an escape, it can be fun.

If you’re interested in writing for Quell, email submit@quellskate.com

by Kayley Berezney

Please note: This story contains sensitive topics around addiction and prescription drugs. If that is triggering, please do not continue.

I learned how to skate in High School– if you don’t count taking my older brother’s board, unused in the garage, and used it to sled down the driveway in the summer, dragging my heels into the pavement right before I hit the road. 

I started skating to school after a dramatic incident while borrowing my step-dad's car. Unfortunately, the perfect circumstances to not be able to hear or see the cop trying to pull me over. Long story short the cop called back up and ended up ringing my parents doorbell and I immediately lost car privileges. 

There was no way I was going to take the bus as a senior so I stole my younger brother’s board that went unused in the garage and started skating to school. 

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From there, a friend taught me a few things but I missed the age when everyone was learning tricks and I stayed a street skater for years. I wanted to learn tricks but never felt comfortable going to skate parks that were filled with dudes. I was already one of the few females that hung out at the music venues and felt like I caught enough toxic masculinity in that world. I just pictured either being made fun of or someone trying to reenact some sort of Ghost like scene where my hips would be grabbed and steered. 

I went to undergrad in Albany, NY to get my BFA. There is a really cool skate culture there and I would walk by the park slowly and watch. I have a great story about my board being stolen and sold in a basketball court apparently Even better, I got it back! One day a random customer that walked into the BBQ joint I worked at came and put his board against the wall and I immediately recognized my long lost hand painted deck, gifted to me by my friend who taught me a few things before we parted ways for college. 

The dishwasher and owner of the place came out front to figure out why I was fighting a customer. The dishwasher just walked up to him and grabbed the board for me and handed me my board. My boss talked semantics. It was awesome! 

However, I was harassed by these dudes every time they saw me walking and not using my board. I didn't have an in to the community and just stuck to myself. Occasionally I could get a friend to bicycle alongside me cruising. For the most part it was always just me and my board. 

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Shortly after graduating I moved to Brooklyn to pursue a career in the arts. Within a year of being here I was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer at age 23. It was shocking but I had known there was something wrong with my body for about 2 years and doctors just weren't taking me seriously because of my age and gender and complications with gaslighting. 

**~~~Queue any more eye roles you may have left*~*~

The diagnosis was immediately followed by a plan to action and intensive treatment that would change my body indefinitely. I was not the athlete I always identified as anymore. Though I was making leaps of faith for my art, going to grad school across the country and coming back here to keep going, I was not really happy with my relationship to my body. 

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Last winter, my boss had a board in the lost-n-found that was sitting there for a while and I finally convinced him to let me take it home. I started playing with the board, watching videos on youtube, going back to cruising on the streets, trying a few tricks on my own. I don’t have any friends that skate though I tried reaching my dog. I would skate to McCarren Park at night and loop around ‘til no one was in the skate park and then I would go in. I couldn't believe how smooth the cement was. It was scary at first because I was used to the gravely, glass sprinkled, potholed roads. I started pushing and was in awe. It felt amazing to be rolling in a space that was created specifically for skateboarding. 

The spatial relationships felt magical and I started playing around. It was amazing but it didn't feel safe. If I fell and got hurt I was alone at this park in the dark. 

So I wasn’t feeling safe with no one in the park and wasn’t feeling safe in the park. 

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I think I posted something about this on instagram; I’m normally spewing some feminist critique or health care critique or posting about my dog and bad hair days. 

A friend sent me a link to a Quell Skate meet up and I had a great time talking to other people who felt similarly and hadn’t entered the parks but have been skating for a long time. 

My family and friends became concerned though. I mean, already cycling in the city makes my family nervous but now I was skating around like it was nothing on a regular basis. 

It is true that my bone density is messed up and my immune system is barely functioning. On top of that my treatment includes zometa which is a bone strengthening drug but can actually make your bones harder and more easily breakable and if there was to be a break it would most definitely take longer to heal. The cancer is metastatic and has mostly spread from my breasts to my bones through the bloodstream. My treatment makes my bones disintegrate, something all of our bones do with age but mine process a bit faster. 

So.. all of this plus skating might not sound smart but I know it is right for me. 

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2 years ago I become tolerant to the oxycodone that was allowing me to be on treatment and hold a job and do all the things. I became tolerant and then was put on a fentanyl patch. After my first prescription there was an issue getting the next prescription filled, a classic issue with any narcotic. Pharmacies can’t tell you if they have narcotics on site because someone could 

come and steal the drugs. So, if you need the drug and have a prescription it can be really difficult to get it in a timely fashion; just another gaping hole in our system. 

When I couldn’t get the next prescription of fentanyl right away I went through mild withdrawal symptoms. It sucked so badly that I never wanted to go through that again or worse. I made my doctors wean me off the narcotics. So I was on my own with the pain..... Epsom salt baths, tiger balm, weed and ~~~ Skating!~~~~~ 

There are studies that state that vibrations heal pain. Like groaning with a stomach ache... try it next time. 

I felt so free in my body. 

I also started thinking about natural dopamine and how much that was helping my pain and my mood and my health and my cancer. 

I was moving around the city better and faster. 

I was able to do more, see more, 

engage in a new culture, 

was getting high-fived by other skaters and 

connecting with other bad ass bitches. 

I was watching the sunset on the regular. This movement and freedom in my life was amazing and actually lead to me advocating to my team of doctors more about making sure I was able to be on treatment and enjoy a better quality of life. 

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In the meantime I was also starting an online platform for people with chronic illness and disabilities. Something that I needed to quit my secure job to keep pursuing. I wanted there to be a better support and community for women like me who didn’t necessarily relate to pink ribbon culture and also struggling to find a community of younger people facing their mortality the fragility and oddity of their body day-to-day. 

Starting a platform and business is terrifying. I was really inspired by Riot Grrrl Culture growing up and I wanted my platform to have similar radicalism. Victory Dolphin GRRRLS became the name and I took advantage of the free classes for aspiring entrepreneurs the city offers. 

Overcoming fear and focus on the freedom, power and natural adrenaline was something that was coming up repeatedly in my life and directly relates to skating and the community that Quell skates nurtures. It’s what I live for. I was so grateful for that meet up and learning that I was not alone in these experiences as a females and non gender conforming individuals skaters was everything to me. 

Exposure this year was one of the biggest and best yet. The contest drew women of all ages and from all around the world to hang out, skate, and maybe even win some money and prizes. We had such an amazing time chatting with everyone we met, so many inspiring women!

We caught up with some folks and asked them a few questions about the contest.

Alex White

What does exposure mean to you?

Exposure is a long running contest. Exposure in its beginning was because there were no other events– as to give girls literally exposure, get them out there, get them publicity and have a contest for them. It’s evolving now and Exposure means probably quality and bringing in more people. We’re exposing that this actually exists out there and there’s a lot of girl skaters or non-binary skaters that also rip and want a community.

What brings you here?

I come here every year to judge but also i like to come. This is a great contest. There used to be only two women’s contests so this was 1 of 2 not serious contest that you can come and have fun.

What’s your favorite part of all of this?

My favorite part of Exposure is just seeing how much it grows every year and just seeing new talent and new skaters. I also like seeing the events like 30 & over.

Spencer B.

What does exposure mean to you?

Exposure is just a nice way to see all the upcoming girls in skating. I been doing exposure since I was about eight, since when it first came on to just the progression of all the girls now and all the new little girls who are just killing it.

What brings you out here?

I’m just here because I like this contest. It feels like a community and not competitive and I really like that energy. I get to see all my friends that skate

Who was your favorite skater of today

Probably Ruby because she did a 540 on the vert ramp.

Nora Vasconcellos

What does exposure mean to you?

Exposure is probably the premiere girls event that we have going, and the most important part about it I think is just having the younger generation here. There are a lot of options for girls who are just learning and getting into their first contest.

What brings you here today?

I am just getting to watch my friends, that brings me back every time.

Who was your favorite skater today?

Nicole Hause, because of her big air on the vert got to watch her shred. She’s coming back from a knee injury so it’s cool to see my friends healthy and skating

Arianna Carmona

What does Exposure mean to you?

Exposure is my favorite contest of the year. I like that it’s all girls and we’re just supporting each other the whole time and it’s just a really fun event.

Why do you come what brings you here?

I been doing the contest for the past few years, since the beginning. I’m really happy that it’s here at Huntington this year because i really like this park and it’s so much fun.

Do you think that it’s important that there are events like exposure that cater primarily to women?

I think it really empowers a lot of younger girls who have never done a contest before to enter. This a greater starter contest because it’s not as serious park series or anything else it’s just a really fun time.

It’s surreal that we’ve transformed a plank of wood with wheels into so much more than just a means for transportation. We can pop it up, flip it around, control it (or at least try to), like it’s an extension of our bodies. Aside from the constant injuries (usually shin bruises), skateboarding can harvest some of the most fulfilling feelings in your life. Adventure Skateground was conceived as a site to question pre-existing structures, practice illogical thinking, skill sharing, self-expression and creativity.

The site harnesses the excitement that skateboarding brings to inspire cultural change. The Skateground began as a sculpture garden of both skate-able and non-skate-able objects in a vacant theatre from the former Expo 67 Canadian pavilion. The non-skate-able sculptures functioned as a disguise for the forbidden skateboarding going on in the vacant building. Thus, the project works with skateboarding as a political intervention and an artistic gesture.

Since the vacant theatre, Adventure Skateground has evolved into new iterations, with locations now at Batiment 7 in Montreal, Quebec and on Fogo Island in Newfoundland. Adventure Skateground was begun by non-male skaters who dreamt of having a big fun place to play music, fuck around and learn to skate without feeling like they were getting in the way of the dominant skaters. Because honestly, learning to skate in your 20’s is really intimidating and it's hard to get better at skating if you don’t feel comfortable in a space. We overcame this by building our own skateparks from repurposed materials to fit our needs and abilities.

We held weekly beginner nights, queer skate nights, and free skate events in an effort to cultivate the diverse perspectives that feed into what skate culture means on a global scale. Below is a collection of small stories that tell of the ways in which this space has impacted its core members. Together, they demonstrate how creating a supportive skateboarding community can foster growth in many different directions, both on and off the board.

Charlotte Dempsey:

I’d always wanted to be a skater; I had asked previous boyfriends to teach me to skate, borrowed my mom’s mid-life crisis skateboard on occasion, but never felt confident or comfortable to be a learner. I couldn’t believe my luck when on my first day at a kitchen job, my new coworkers invited me to skate with them. So, I started skating in December 2018, at the first iteration of Adventure Skateground in an unused Expo 67 pavilion. Skating takes place in such public spaces that it is terrifying to take baby steps as an adult while young prodigies skate circles around me.

The way that Adventure Skateground has been a community that not only makes spaces for beginners but helps them find their footing on a board has allowed me to take the risks I couldn’t on my own. As a non-binary person, skating has also felt like the missing piece of a puzzle in my pursuit of gender affirmation; something that this space allowed me and that male dominated parks haven't. Skateground has helped me learn to take up space not only in skating, but in other male dominated spaces in my life as well. Adventure Skateground reminds me of the way that the Girls Rock Camp movement across the globe has directly influenced the involvement of girls and queer youth in music scenes.

If countless young femme/queer bands are being formed and taken seriously because of those spaces, the effect parks like Skateground could have on the skate world could be the dismantling of white cis patriarchal structures that have kept skating a pleasure for the privileged, and encourage the growth of diverse and kind skate communities.

Ross LeBlanc:

Growing up, aside from a handful of non-male skaters like some of my favourites Elissa Steamer and Vanessa Torres, skate culture cherished (and still does) magazine publications, contests, and video parts filmed by, edited by and featuring male skaters. For people like me, a white skater boy with years of practice, getting into skateboarding was natural, and almost expected of me. I could dress like who I saw in skate videos (white skater dudes), show up to the skatepark, and inherently feel part of the skate community. Where I am in Canada, skaters like me usually make up the majority of skateparks now, where skating has become a lasting part of our identity. Despite how skateboarding has impacted my life in a positive way, I’ve always felt strange for receiving the benefits of something that is so accessible to me, but so inaccessible to so many others. Yes, skateparks are public and technically available to anyone, but it’s us - the skaters -the culture within the park that make it so hostile and uninviting.

The Skateground project has been so educational to me about being aware of stigma surrounding skateboarding that I’m perpetuating as a male skater, and the exclusion that skate culture creates for non-male skaters. It’s reaffirmed my belief that diversity is fundamental in the foundation of any community, and given me knowledge of ways in which I can be more aware of the space I’m taking up, and interacting with skating in an inclusive way. I feel inspired to continue spreading this energy to not only within skateboarding, but into the world and communities around me.

Jane Lakes:

One of the best (and sometimes hardest) part about skateboarding is that it forces you to take up space. There’s nothing about skateboarding that is small or quiet. The act itself forces you to assert your body and board in ways that are bold, confident, and loud. For non-male people, this goes against much of how we’ve been taught to exist in society. By being on a board, the act itself becomes a practice in (re)claiming space. It teaches you that you don’t have to be perfect to take up the space you deserve; it is a practice of being big and not being sorry. In this way, skateboarding becomes a means of unlearning and relearning the ways in which we occupy our bodies and navigate space. And of course you’re always forced to stay humble, because gravity has a painful way of reminding you that you can always do better.

As a collaborative project and community space, Adventure Skateground was founded on reoccupying spaces in positive, radical ways, and encouraging people to do the same. The project functions on a culture that prioritizes space for skaters who can’t show up to a standard skatepark and feel comfortable. More than that, it has become an experiment in how skateboarding has the ability to transform spaces for community empowerment instead of selective exclusion. Adventure Skateground has taught me so much over the course of this year, but more than anything it’s showed me that in being conscious of how you take up space you also have the ability to transform it; in this act we can bring femmes to (skate to) the front.

Isobel Walker:

A friend brought me to the first iteration of the Skateground during a time in my life that I did not feel comfortable at home. It became for me an escape from a bleak Montreal winter where I could focus on a specific (often frightening) task that had never felt available to me. It also allowed me to become friends with people I probably wouldn’t have met outside a space designed for those who were incidentally all looking for the same thing. I learned how to situate myself on a rolling piece of wood, and very slowly found the courage that's required from actually trying to get better.

I don’t think that would have probably ever happened had there not been a group of people, and a decent sized theatre space, that were willing and encouraging me to put my anxiety aside and think of skateboarding in a new light. This new light included people of all levels, across the gender spectrum, that derived their pleasure of skateboarding from collective progression and inclusive mindsets. I began meeting more and more people who shared a similar history of skateboarding to mine: they would not step foot into male-dominated skateparks that felt like the patriarchy talent show. It didn’t always reach its goal 100%, but Adventure worked in making evident a need for more spaces, in all communities, that open their doors and welcome everyone inside. I spent my summer building a skatepark that became an emblem for openness and collaboration. Ultimately, it reaffirmed my belief that empowering non-men to fight for change makes literally anything better, and is my driving force as I roll around this earth.

Mikaela Kautzy:

Adventure Skateground is more than just an inclusive DIY skatepark, it is also an art installation. It is an artist-run space that not only uses art and design to facilitate a welcoming skateboarding environment but employs skateboarding as an artistic medium itself. The name Adventure Skateground alludes to adventure playgrounds, a specific type of playground defined by an ethos of unrestricted play and DIY building. Adventure playgrounds are liberated from adult enforced structures and empower kids by allowing them to create and build with “risky” materials. Instead of giving children a pre-designed environment to interact with, kids are given the tools like hammers and nails to build their own playground.

Through figuring out how to operate potentially dangerous materials, and be in potentially dangerous situations, children become more self-aware, creative and empowered. Both literally and metaphorically, Adventure Skateground aims to give its users the tools to build their own playgrounds too. Skateboarding, and DIY skateboarding in particular, helps you build the confidence and self-awareness to navigate intimidating situations. Playing with constant failure, painful slams, and eventually progress translates into social situations.

It’s made me nimbler when moving through a precarious situation, braver when taking on challenging roles in my professional development, but even just less scared when trying to get home safely at night. Now that I’m comfortable riding a skateboard, if there is a creepy man following me I’m like “UHHH FUCK OFF M8 YOU CAN’T CATCH ME!!!” Amongst so many things, skateboarding has been a tool for my mental health, self-love and self-defence.

Amanda De Angelis:

When I was around the age of eight or nine, I became curious about skateboarding. My older brother had one at the time and I would secretly take it and just practice pushing. When he found out, he got very mad at me and told me I wasn’t allowed to use it anymore. So that was that. He decided that there was no space for me. When I met everyone last year at the first Skateground, they were all so welcoming. It didn’t matter that I was just a beginner, because that’s not what it was about. I was encouraged to be open and to try new things, which can be a scary thing sometimes.

Throughout the year working on this project, I was finally given that space to participate, something not a lot of non-binary/trans people can say about the skate community. We worked together to build the park from the ground up to create a place for people to come and learn together. To give space to the people that are too scared to go to the local skatepark for fear of being judged. Adventure Skateground was built on the premise of empowering those that needed the extra push to make room for themselves. I definitely did. I feel grateful to have been a part of this project and to have had a place to fall on my butt again and again.

Although skate culture is just now starting to shed more light on non-male skaters in the industry, the exclusionary nature of skate culture and stigma surrounding womxn skaters remains. There still exists a widespread belief of unwritten requirements that serve as criteria to be accepted as a skater, and there are still many male skaters who choose to bolster those archaic norms and patriarchal views within the skate community. This attitude perpetuates the pattern of male fragility and need to claim ownership, and it’s all of our responsibility to actively work on abolishing these belief systems for the bettering of skate culture.

Through Adventure Skateground, we wanted to explore what skateboarding could be when making a conscious effort to accommodate and encourage different skaters of all levels. We strived to provide a supportive environment where beginners could feel more comfortable, everyone was in your skate crew, and more experienced skaters were required to be aware of the space they took up. It’s our attempt at reflecting these values within skateboarding, and is a microcosm example of how womxn can transform skate communities from feeling inaccessible into places of growth, support, and of course, gnarly shredding.

By: Amanda de Angelis, Charlotte Dempsey, Mikaela Kautzky, Jane Lakes, Ross Le Blanc, Isobel Walker

All images belong to Adventure Skateground.

For more information on Adventure, visit their instagram.

We had the opportunity to chat with Sasha Rainbow about her short documentary Kamali ahead of the NYC screening at The General by Vans on Wednesday October 30th.

Seven-year-old Kamali is the only girl skateboarder in a small fishing village in India where, by chance, a skate ramp happened to be built right outside her house. Kamali is youngest of three generations of women living together in her home.

Suganthi, Kamali’s timorous mother, was locked away as a child until the day she was married. Having recently found the courage to leave her abusive husband, Suganthi decides to take a pilgrimage in a quest for self-discovery. As mother and daughter are separated for the first time, both must find their freedom as they dare to step outside into a man’s world.

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When did you first start skateboarding? What drew you to it?

It was the longest day of the shoot for the music video I was shooting in India with the new girl skate movement happening there. All the girls hadn't arrived till lunch time so we'd lost half a day (so shot some top shots with the guys on their boards disguised in Saree's) We missioned through the afternoon until the sun went down, exhausted, then prepped for our night shoot.

I had planned for us to have this epic flaming sign that burned "ALPHA FEMALE" (the name of the song) above the skatepark, so when the guy organising it arrived with chicken wire, rope and a can of petrol, I made a split second decision, to either freak out, or to skate. I hadn't been on a board since I was 13, but on borrowing a board, found myself doing a pendulum up and down the ramp. People asked me if I had done it before. I hadn't. When we were ready to shoot, the flame sign was pretty pathetic and fizzled out quickly but we shot it slow mo so it was passible.

After that night I felt so good that as soon as I got back to London I bought myself a second hand board.

How do you think skateboarding, specifically as a woman, has influenced your approach to filmmaking?

I think skateboarding has made me more gutsy all around. I was at an age (30) where I was the least in touch with my body than I'd ever been.

Skateboarding linked my body and mind again and made me feel less fear of falling/failing - because it was inevitable. It also made me feel bolder, because of the way the outside world responds to a woman on a skateboard. From pity to pride, the messages I've got have all helped me really not give a fuck what anyone else thinks; I'm doing me.

What was your first reaction when you met Kamali on that trip to India for Wild Beast’s ‘Alpha Female’ video?

Boredom shifted to elation. It's rare to meet someone who has this 'X factor'. Who knows what the hell that even means, but when you witness it, you know it exists. She existed in that moment in total purity.

When did you decide that Kamali needed a film of her own?

Kamali and her mum stayed with us in our accommodation after leaving their village for the big city for the first time. They took my room and I shared with my producer and we all got to know each other well over a few days. Kamali was so much fun to hang with, but It wasn't until we interviewed her mother Suganthi, that we knew there was a story that we had to tell.

What is it like to work with Kamali and her family?

I wouldn't have called it work on our part, but on theirs! They told me later they had thought we were coming to do a cute little content piece on Kamali skating, and had no idea we'd be with them 24/7, some days from the moment they woke up, till when they went to bed. It was hard on their routine, but they were open and generous with us and we became part of the daily fabric of their existence, eating with them, picking Kamali and her brother up from school, weekend trips to the village and so forth. I pushed Suganthi and her family to talk about things they hadn't confronted together, so kudos goes their bravery for sharing their world with us.

What do you hope that people will take away from the film?

I hope any woman in an abusive relationship is inspired by Suganthi to walk away from it. I hope little girls see Kamali and become interested in skating. I hope adults bringing their boys and girls up with gender ideology see Kamali as a role model for what can happen when girls are allowed to follow their passions.

We know that Kamali’s story has already touched many people, inspiring people in India and beyond to break gender barriers - how do you think that skateboarding specifically can help more people like Kamali break barriers in their culture?

In places like India, Afghanistan and Cambodia where organisations such as Skateistan are introducing skateboarding, it hasn't been claimed as a male only sport yet. Where girls might not be allowed to engage in other activities, this one is unclassified. Every time someone in India (or anywhere) sees a girl fall over and pick herself up again, unscathed, something in their consciousness shifts. It comes down to breaking these stereotypes; that girls will have less 'value' if they hurt themselves (like a broken piece of chine, an object), and that anyone could do something just for 'fun.' In Kamali's case, girls in her village are now being allowed to try skateboarding because their parent's have seen the positive effects on Kamali, who is now starting to teach them.

Beyond just gender, how have you seen skateboarding used as a tool for social impact through your work with Kamali and Skateistan?

The actual skate space brings people together; misfits from all ages, genders and social classes; skateboarding is an individual activity with a huge emphasis on community. But I don't know if I can add anything to what you've probably heard before. I'd just say grab a board and try it for yourself sometime. As Channy from Holystoked Collective in India said..."when you feel the wind in your hair, and you're flying, there's nothing like it. And when you fall and injure yourself, you know you're alive."

Watch the trailer below and join us on Wednesday in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to watch the film!

The newly launched GrlSwirl NYC Chapter leaders, Nico Klimek and Kristen Miller sat down with us to talk about their collaborations on Yoga, Surf and Skate retreats for women. These picturesque retreats exist for more than just creating FOMO on Instagram, but truly create opportunities for women to lift each other up, overcome fears and generally have a really rad time.

How did you come up with the idea for the retreat?

Nico: Right after I graduated from my yoga teacher training I knew that I wanted to do something a bit larger than just teaching at a studio. I wanted to be able to connect yoga to other sports that I love. Surf and skate can be really intimidating for women if they didn’t grow up in that world or have friends that support them on their board sport journey. 

What was the goal?

N: The Yoga Surf Skate Getaway began as a way to bring women into the world of board sports in a supportive environment. I wanted to flip the mental switch that holds so many women back from learning to surf or skate. 

Kristen: My goals going in to teaching any girl to skate is to teach them my mantra: “Take up space.” We really focused on energizing each girl to feel support from their local community, fellow grls, and assured them that they were just as deserving as anyone else being in a public space as the next person - regardless of their skill level. Everyone has to learn somewhere/somehow. Most of all: HAVE FUN!

When was the first one?

N: The first getaway was in the fall of 2018 and the second one just finished up this past May.

K: I got to attend Nico’s retreat last September as a guest - before I started instructing - and it was so fun we knew we had to do another. In-between the YSS retreats, I was asked by my friend Emily Shapiro - who has been living in Costa Rica teaching yoga for 10 years - if I’d be interested in teaching girls how to skate at one of her Costa Rica Yoga & Surf retreats in January of this year and I of course said yes. Then getting to be a larger part of YSS Round 2 as a photographer and teacher was such a dream.

Take us through each day of the retreat… (or a sample day)

K: The first year we had a small group, so we would start our day either surfing or skating in the street before the cars started occupying the road which was such a magical feeling. Then, we would head to the beach to surf or hang out more, then back to the house for yoga, followed by group family dinners where everyone pitched in and helped cook together. The first year we didn’t take everyone to the skateparks, which was totally fine and people still loved swirling around in the street.

What were some obstacles in getting it to happen? 

N: I wouldn’t say there are obstacles. There are of course more challenging aspects in the planning and prep, but the Yoga Surf Skate Getaway is a passion project of mine so I enter each journey with a positive mindset. At the end of the day, all we really need is good weather and an awesome group of girls (which we had!).

K: I think this has everything to do with Nico’s incredible can-do positive attitude, but, we didn’t have any obstacles. I think we learned a lot from the first one and the only issue was we had to turn girls away because our slots filled SO quickly! Not a bad problem to have. 

What was the easy part?

N: It’s easy to play ‘hype-girl’. I get so excited when I see the getaway come together and the girls getting on boards for the first time or trying something out of their comfort zone. I enjoy playing hostess and making sure everyone is feeling comfortable and having a great time. 

K: Creating the space for everyone to feel safe, comfortable, welcomed, and at home.

How many people attended? 

N: This year there were 15 total women.

K: 15 Girls!! We had one girl who flew all the way from Hawaii (!!!) who found us through surf-skate company/sponsor Hamboards, a couple of local girls from New Jersey, New York, and some girls found us through the GrlSwirl community <3

What were the main interests/skill level/backgrounds of the folks who attended?

N: The majority of the girls that attended came for the skate aspect of Yoga Surf Skate. The majority of the girls had pushed around on a board before but had never been to a skate park - they had been intimidated. The OCNJ Skatepark is so incredibly welcoming and all of the girls had an empowering first experience at a skatepark. 

K: Going into it a lot of girls really wanted to learn how to be comfortable at a skatepark. I think most of the girls have parks in their neighborhoods, but never felt comfortable, or looked at it like, “what the hell can I even do here?” So we focused on showing everyone what they can do, and the results were immediate! Girls who had never been on a board before learned to kick-push and even went up and back down a ramp for the very first time! 

What was their reaction?

N: The girls were stoked and surprised. I think for many of them they were stoked to see how naturally skateboarding came and how they could progress with having other women by their side to encourage, coach and support them. I think that our group was also pleasantly surprised by the camaraderie, ease and playful manner of the park as well as the skaters there. 

K: Honestly we had such beautiful, honest, and unique reactions from every girl on this year’s trip. 

Two girls shared similar but different stories on the first day:

One of the girls admitted to us that she was SO excited for the retreat that she woke up at 6am, and drove to Strathmere and waited in her car for 3 or 4 hours for the check in time on the invite to come to the house because she didn’t want to come off as un-cool or too eager for showing up too early. We of course laughed together afterwards because she could have easily come early, but I adore that nervous energy and excitement like before the first day of school. That feeling never gets old, and we all acted like kids at summer camp.

A second girl told us after getting more comfortable that she was absolutely TERRIFIED to come, that she almost turned around more than once while traveling to the retreat because of all the mental blockages we put up for ourselves: What if I don’t know anyone? Do I know anyone? What if I don’t make friends? Will everyone be nice? Will I get hurt?

She confidently shared this story with us after our first night of bonding and ended it with “this is exactly the trip and experience my soul needed, and I want you girls to know how thankful I am to be in a room surrounded by all of you.” This same girl went running wild into the ocean at night under the full moon, and was the first to jump up and sing karaoke.

…..GOOSEBUMPS. 

What are some of the biggest highlights from the retreat?

N: For me, I was so incredibly stoked to see one of our women who was scared of the ocean in the water catching waves. She told us the day before how much the ocean frightened her, but there she was in the water with the surf lesson getting rides on her surfboard. I think that just goes to show how something that was formerly intimidating can actually be such a wonderful time when you are surrounded by a support system.

K: SO MANY.

1. The night everyone arrived, we had our amazing friend/sponsor Dunebird come and play a live set in the backyard. Everyone was eating and drinking, singing to Spice Girls covers, pure pure joy. I went upstairs to grab my camera from my room and from the deck I could see the full moon rising on the ocean as the sun was setting behind us on the Bay. I scrambled downstairs to rally everyone to run to the beach. We grabbed sparklers on our way out the door, left our shoes behind, and made a run for it. The feeling of a group of women swirling around under the rising full moon and the setting of the burning sun, with its colors reflecting back onto us gently, was so blissfully astounding. We just stood there for a while in silence after the sparklers had died down, and took it all in.

2. We had the wonderful Katie Podralski as our Yoga Instructor/Wellness Coach this year; and she brought with her a couple of amazing bonding experience for us all. The biggest highlight from this was the night we all sat down and free-wrote in our Evergreen Summer cards (sponsor) with a prompt from Janne Robinson, founder of This Is For The Women - a clothing line featuring her poetry. 

Lines from the prompt:

“This is for the women who don’t give a fuck. The women who are first to get naked, howl at the moon and jump into the sea...This is for the women who seek relentless joy; the ones who know how to laugh with their whole souls...The women who know their worth, plant their feet and roar in their brilliance.”

This got women writing and sharing about what it meant to take up space, how we care for ourselves and others, and the girls all shared what they wrote, and cried and hugged in solidarity. The biggest takeaway was that WE ARE NOT ALONE. 

3.  Taking the girls to the Ocean City Skatepark was one of the best parts of the trip. The girls had no idea how to be at a skatepark and some had never been to one before! A lot of them were convinced that they didn’t belong there because of people who were “better” than them ripping behind us. I took all the different board types available from each girl - a standard popsicle shaped trick deck, a cruiser, a longboard, a Carver surf-skate, and a Hamboard surf-skate; and explained what makes them similar/different and completely changed their perspectives on what is the “right” board for riding in the park relative to what they were trying to do there. They learned that you can make a popsicle deck into a cruiser board if you change the wheels and loosen your trucks or change your bearings or bushings. This is something I wish someone taught me when I was first getting started. And a lot of the girls who showed up on longboards preferred the feeling of a trick deck while at the park and it was revolutionary to them!

What did you learn from it?

N: Women come to something like the Yoga Surf SKate Getaway to conquer their fears. When you create an environment that is open and raw, women want to open up and share their fears, knowing that we will be there to help them push past those fears.

K: Girl power is real. When you get women together to accomplish something, magical fucking things happen. I really feel like we change people’s lives in such a positive way during these experiences together, and I love feeling connected to other women and local communities and showing girls they’re not alone - that there’s a whole world of other women looking for and craving the same kind of connection.

Did you always intend on doing two?

N: After the first Getaway went so well I knew I wanted to host another one. 

How did the 2nd differ from the first?

N: The second Getaway was made up completely of girls that I didn’t know (except for Kristen and one other). I was meeting all these women for the first time at the Getaway and could not have been more grateful for the women that the Getaway brought together.

K: The second retreat was so magical because we more than doubled our numbers of attendees AND got almost 20 different amazing brand sponsors from mostly women-owned independent companies who were so amazing to work with. 

Take us through each day of the 2nd retreat… (or a sample day)

N: Throughout the 3 days the girls had two surf lessons with OCNJ Surf School, to trips to the OCNJ Skate Park, Hamboard skate sessions, a morning yoga class on the beach, a mindful eating session, evening yoga, two nights of live music, a bonfire, bracelet making with Jacto Jewelry and so much more in between.

K: The first day everyone arrived, we had a champagne toast which led to a meet and greet circle with little goodie bags waiting for everyone with a few of our brand sponsors’ gifts to kick it off. Then we continued the good vibes with live music by Dunebird and sunset hangs. Second day we woke up and made a family style breakfast and had an amazing surf lesson with Willie from Ocean City Surf School, then went to the skatepark that Willie himself managed in Ocean City! We had our skate lesson which turned into an epic free-for-all, where all of us just absolutely took over the park, regardless of skill level! After, we went back for some yin yoga taught by Katie Podralski, and more music by one of our attendees, Diane Jean of @clevergirlband from @womenthatrock.  We had such an intimate two days after that which followed a similar structure; we had a writing prompt from Katie that really opened girls up to share their stories and laugh. We took Hamboards out into the street and Nico and I got towed by our friends’ Jeep and girls were carving for the first time; Willie came back and saved the day when we needed firewood for our bonfire; we had yoga and a silent meditation walk the last morning we were all together, and spent the rest of the afternoon at the skatepark where we taught how to carve the bowl, and had lunch on the Ocean City Boardwalk (in the form of giant Slices of Jersey boardwalk pizza and custard) and eventually everyone went home.

How have you approached life/skating/surfing/yoga/whatever differently since these experiences?

N: For me, I realized how powerful it is to have friends with me. A solo skate is fun, but a skate with a friend will push me harder and also bring me support and encouragement that makes me feel secure - everyone’s different and for me, I feed off other people’s energies. 

K: I feel so confident now. Of course there are days when the legs don’t work and you forget how to move your shoulders, but I always say my power comes from empowering others and this for sure makes my cup full. I LOVE seeing womxn come together to accomplish similar yet different goals. You don’t have to be trying to same trick or move or kick-push as one-another, but we all go through the same things in skateboarding, from when you’re learning to when you’re pro, so why not support each other and help people you see that need it to create that space for them? 

What do you see for the future? Will there be more retreats? In other places?

N: YES! I would love to host a retreat abroad - working on trying to figure out something special.

K: Yes!! Retreats are like the organic strawberry jelly on the best PBJ there is in life. They’re a bit extra, super fun, spontaneous and definitely necesary once you’ve had that first bite. Also, we’ll be doing lots of meet-ups once we open the NYC chapter of GrlSwirl which we’re SUPER stoked to announce!!

How can people find out about future retreats?

N: Instagram and email!!!! @neeks.peeks // @yogasurfskate nico.c.klimek@gmail.com

K: As always, through instagram @kristen_noelle_ @grlswirlnewyork and of course through @quellskate and our other friends in the skate scene that generously support us!!

VIEW GALLERY BELOW

All photos by:

Sam Leviton - @supsamsup 

Kristen Miller - @kristen_noelle_

Alexa Liccardi - @alexaliccardi_

London Harmon - @peter_panblue

After going big in her home country of Brazil, São Paolo, Yndiara Asp earns back-to-back wins by taking on Montréal's newest addition to the skate scene - more than 38,000 square feet of VPS-certified park terrain.

As a rider who feeds on the crowd's energy, Yndi was in her element with packed stands eager to see how she was going to make her mark on Canada's first ever VPS legacy course. And what a mark she made! We're lucky that the "VANS" logo is as tough as Yndiara Asp is or it wouldn't still be standing after the fastplant she laid on it to close out a solid run.

Yndi's speed combined with big transfers like her FS air over the hip, and her diverse trick selection pleased everyone from the stands to the judges earning her another well-deserved first place finish. In a close second, Jordyn Barratt out of Haleiwa, HI dialed in a powerful run with a clean BS Blunt 180 into the bowl. Not a moment wasted and Jordyn set the crowd off with a smooth FS 5-0 Revert.

Lizzie Armanto's ingenuity shone through with her run including an ollie to boardslide transfer on the Thrasher Spine. Lizzie, riding for Finland, hit every wall showcasing her distinctive style and earning herself a podium finish. Thank you to Vans Park Series and Olympic Park for donating this flawless legacy course - free and open for anyone to use. The opening of this Vans Skatepark has the potential to perpetually open doors for the Montreal skate community to evolve.

More photos of the event below

Front Row (l to r): Wettstein, Zeuner, Baker, Sablone, Soto, Duran, Barratt, Hause

Second Row (l to r): Joslin, Lopez, Huston, Eaton, Wright, Sorgente, Schaar, Rennie

Sixteen Skateboarders Named to First-Ever USA Skateboarding National Olympic Team. Men’s and Women’s Skateboard Park and Street events will make their Olympic debut at the Tokyo 2020 Games. The 16 skaters named to the national team qualified based on performance in international level events during the year before their selection.

“We couldn’t be more excited to finally take the wraps off the first-ever USA Skateboarding National Team,” said Josh Friedberg, CEO of USA Skateboarding. “We’re honored to have partners like Toyota and Nike that understand the intrinsic value of the sport we love and appreciate all they’ve done to get USA Skateboarding up and running. It’s a historic moment in the history of skateboarding, and we’re looking forward to doing all we can to support these amazing skateboarders on their Road to Tokyo.”

These Olympic hopefuls will have the opportunity to qualify for the Olympics based on their three best results in World Skate sanctioned events during the 2019 qualifying season. The 2020 World Championships will also be a direct qualifier for the games for the top 3 podium spots at each event.

“Toyota is proud to be involved with this historic moment as a proud sponsor of USA Skateboarding and the first-ever National Team announcement,” said Dedra DeLilli, group manager, Olympic and Paralympic Marketing, Toyota Motor North America. “This event marks the official start of a great journey for these incredible skateboarders. We are dedicated to helping the inaugural USA Skateboarding National Team, and look forward to the road ahead with them.”

The skaters named to the 2019 USA Skateboarding National Team include:

Women’s Park: Brighton Zeuner (Encinitas, CA), Bryce Wettstein (Encinitas, CA), Jordyn Barratt (Haleiwa, HI), Nicole Hause (Stillwater, MN)

Women’s Street: Leo Baker (Covina, CA), Mariah Duran (Albuquerque, NM), Jenn Soto (Jersey City, NJ), Alexis Sablone (Old Saybrook, CT)

Men’s Street: Nyjah Huston (Laguna Beach, CA), Chris Joslin (Hawaiian Gardens, CA), Jagger Eaton (Mesa, AZ), Louie Lopez (Hawthorne, CA) 

Men’s Park: Alex Sorgente (Lake Worth, FL), Tom Schaar (Malibu, CA), Tristan Rennie (Rialto, CA), Zion Wright (Jupiter, FL)

For more information on events, qualifying and athletes log on to www.usaskateboarding.net or follow on social media to stay in the loop for all announcements.

GROUNDBREAKING SKATE EXCHANGE SHOWCASES GLOBAL CULTURE AND CAMARADERIE OF WOMEN’S SKATEBOARDING.

The first event of its kind, the Skate Exchange in Tokyo, Japan is an iconic and perspective shifting moment for women’s skateboarding worldwide. Over the course of five days, skaters from across the globe congregated in Tokyo, Japan to take part in the Skate Exchange. The experience organized by the Women’s Skateboarding Alliance in partnership with B-Global Agency and powered by JTB set out to unite skaters across the globe for a cultural exchange but also to show the world the true essence of skateboarding. Skaters came from all over; Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, the U.S and Japan, to together experience the city and this unique event - from exploring the streets of Harajuku and Tsukiji Fish Market to skating the Komazawa skatepark and Shibuya crossing.

During the main public event, at Murasaki skatepark on Saturday (December 1), over 1000 skaters and spectators were in attendance, including Olympic ice skaters, Maia and Alex Shibutani, and five of the biggest Japanese TV stations. It was said to be the biggest skate event of the year at the park. The atmosphere was buzzing, with skaters as young as two rolling along to be inspired and get involved.

Before the best trick contest kicked off, 33 children and youth from local schools and charities took part in a clinic supported by Levis, with pros such as Jenn Soto, Mariah Duran and Lacey Baker getting hands on to help. Spectators enjoyed the laid-back contest which included local up and coming skaters throwing down tricks alongside seasoned pros. Japanese skater Nanaka Fujisawa took the top spot but all the skaters wowed the audience and enjoyed a relaxed, fun competition, with Alexis Sablone putting down the final crowd-pleasing trick with a kickflip down the gap. Many local skaters said it was the best week of their life and something which would change women’s skateboarding in Japan and the world forever.

The Skate Exchange has done Tokyo, but it’s only just the beginning as it looks to expand to new locations in the future bringing together more female skateboarders with the spirit of fun and friendship at the forefront of what the Skate Exchange and what skateboarding is all about.