This week we connected with Andrew Reynolds for our “Offerings” interview series. We found out more about his thoughtful selection, his new shoe, and what’s coming up next for him. Invite a recommended skate video, album, and film into your life, celebrate one of skateboarding’s biblical backbones, and entertain your next footwear choice below…
Words and interview by Jacob Sawyer. Andrew Reynolds out on the road. PH: Jake Darwen
With the hype building around Andrew Reynolds’ new shoe, we were keen to do justice to the hard work he’s poured into its development. We are beyond excited that this idea evolved into something more, and proud to invite you to read the latest instalment in our “Offerings” interview series. “The Boss” is one of the most influential skateboarders of a generation, someone who has been continuously, relentlessly inspiring for decades. His dedication to his craft is unparalleled and has set a high bar for any who have followed. His unique style and its nuances, from an instantly recognisable throw down through to undisputedly owning the frontside flip is an ever-present part of our shared language that he hasn’t stopped adding to.
Many skateboarders who came up during the 90s have more than earned legendary status for their contributions but Andrew continues to make them at every level, including creating a shoe to improve skateboarding for those of us out there trying to keep our own levels up. He simply wants to keep skating for as long as possible as we all do, and his love and obsession is tangible any time you hear him speak about it. Knowing that he is conscious of having spoken about his career at different junctures, and fearing he has already said it all, we were honoured he entertained this interview format. It gave us the chance to talk about some other things that have inspired him through the years, and in doing so, we still found space to revisit some key moments of his own.
Andrew’s video choice speaks to the skate rat in him. Rather than opting for a nostalgic classic, he went with a Johnny Wilson production from 2020 that shines a light on the heavy crew of individuals he was exploring the New York streets with. This remains an inspiring watch and still finds itself on the top of the pile when “The Boss” has some downtime. His album selection is a long-neglected Justin Regan recommendation that has become a favourite and comes accompanied by some good stories about its creator. When it came to a film choice Tim Burton’s directorial debut won out, a surreal, mind-expanding movie from the 80s following Pee Wee Herman on a quest to recover his precious bike. Not one for reading, Andrew’s book choice was replaced by Thrasher Magazine, the publication he picks up every month. This made way for some interesting insights about his personal relationship with the mag, and some Jake Phelps [RIP] reminiscence for good measure.
We closed out the interview by learning more about his new signature shoe, a technology-packed, game-changing new addition to the New Balance Numeric line that will be supporting him, and many others, as the next chapter in his skateboarding career unfolds. We hope you enjoy these windows into Andrew’s world as much as we did and look forward to seeing what he is cooking up next…
Johnny Wilson – John’s Vid (2020)
Was it difficult to pick a skate video?
I saw the question and I have a lot of favourite skate videos from when I grew up. It seemed like the normal thing to do would be to pick one of those, something from my childhood. I wanted to pick a newer video instead. This video is one that has a lot of the things that I love about skate videos. You know that they’re all friends, that they skate together, and that they really tried to make the best parts they could. Not for a board sponsor or a shoe sponsor or anything, just for their crew. Also the way they skate New York, they just killed the city, and Johnny [Wilson] is super cool. I love Nik [Stain], Max [Palmer], Cyrus [Bennett], and Andrew Wilson, it’s just a good crew. I feel like it’s a video that will hold up, you could watch it twenty years from now and it’s still going to be good. That’s why I picked this video, it was the first video that I was really excited about in a long time. Good music too, Nik [Stain] having three songs is so sick. It’s one of my favourite videos in a long time.
What does Johnny Wilson do as far as putting a video together that you enjoy but differs from your vision or instinct?
He has a whole different taste in music than I have. The Wu Tang stuff for Nik I think would probably make sense to me. But the rest of the music, I have never heard any of this songs or would have chosen them so that was interesting. Also Nik, Max, and Cyrus are such unique, special skaters that he gets to film that it is its own thing. You always hear from people on the outside asking “who’s skating in New York, who is out there doing it?” The answer would always be Johnny’s crew, they are out there doing this, and now it has grown to more people. There was a little bit of hi-jinx mixed in here and there but it was pretty straightforward, raw skating. There was nothing trendy about it, just good, raw skating in a city which always looks so sick.
“I feel like it’s a video that will hold up, you could watch it twenty years from now and it’s still going to be good”
Did any specific tricks in there stand out for you?
Cyrus [Bennett]’s back tail-backside flip down Blubba was insane, none of that should have worked. I like Max’s kickflip back noseblunt up a Euro to a quarter pipe and I like that he used a park clip too. Then just Nik [Stain]’s whole thing, pushing super fast through the city, long lines. He’s got that thing where he can do a very simple line, very simple tricks, and you just want to look at it. If he does a nose manual going twenty miles an hour it’s going to be better than somebody doing some crazy technical manual going all slow, he just looks good doing what he’s doing.
I love it when the way someone skates gives you a tour of a spot. You’ve seen loads of people skate Blubba but Nik Stain gives you a tour of the whole surrounding area.
Yeah, he went up the whole block, that was sick. People who skate with him have said that even for a single trick he’s going to start 100 feet away right down the street, it’s so cool.
Going back to the music, the song that opens Cyrus’ part was in that Under The Skin film and it’s so eerie that it made me feel uncomfortable.
I never knew where that music was from but it made me feel the same way. Another thing I liked is that Johnny [Wilson] kept using that one guy with the board throughout, the artist guy, that was really cool. Another thing I really liked was the titles, how they’re just photocopied on paper, it made them look raw. Everything about this video is solid.
What is your ritual when it comes to watching videos nowadays?
I like to make some coffee in the morning, then I go and sit on my couch and watch YouTube on my TV. I prefer to watch videos on the TV. I’m looking for random videos or if a person has a new part I’m going to check it and if it’s something really good I will watch it a few times. I try to watch everything that comes out. Every now and again I’ll try to watch a movie at night or a TV Series but I look at it like this, I want to brainwash myself with skateboarding all day long, every day, for as long as I can. You never know what’s going to stick out. I could see a Grant Taylor clip and it’s going to get me hyped to go and do something the way he would do it. I’ve got a lot of clips from watching Nik [Stain] and Grant [Taylor] that don’t look anything like them, they just end up looking like me, haha. Whether it’s spots or ideas, something always comes from it. I’m watching everything on the big screen TV in my living room. Sometimes I’ll get three tricks into something and turn it off, that’s a lot of it.
“I want to brainwash myself with skateboarding all day long, every day, for as long as I can”
Last night I was with Sully [Cormier] who rides for Baker and we watched the Eric Koston part with Eric B And Rakim [H-Street Next Generation], and then we watched Brian Lotti’s part from Now ’N’ Later. Brian Lotti was doing such cool bench tricks back then, front board lap out, popping over the other side to fakie, all those manuals. It was way ahead, he did a back nosegrind pop out in the middle of a kerb back then like one [Brian] Wenning would do.
Is John’s Vid still one you’ll watch to get stoked to go skating?
I’ve probably watched that video about fifty times. If I’m bored it’s still one of the videos I’ll put on.
The Boatman’s Call – Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds (1997)
What made you pick this album, how did it enter your rotation?
With your favourite stuff it’s really difficult to narrow things down and say something is your ultimate favourite, that’s always changing. You watch or listen to different stuff a different times, and are inspired by different things at different times. I have Justin Regan to thank for this one. He was a big part of my life, he was the team manager for Emerica and Altamont, he helped me to get sober, and is an all around amazing person. He used to listen to a lot of Nick Cave and he was really into music. He would go into the store and come out with a stack, he’d always buy a stack of about fifteen CDs and was always listening to new stuff. I’ve never been that into music, not that way anyway, I just like what I like. So I first heard Nick Cave through him and whatever album he was listening to didn’t really appeal to me. It was more along the lines of the early The Birthday Party stuff, a little bit hard to listen to. That stuff was violent and loud, now I like it but back then I didn’t get it.
After that I never gave Nick Cave a chance, I wasn’t interested in learning about that music or even paying any attention to it. Then I heard a couple of songs off of this album, one of them would have been “Into My Arms”. It completely woke me up to the idea that something I thought I didn’t like and had written off was the opposite. What? I had to wait my whole life to listen to this? It’s happened with a couple of artists, Harry Nilsson is another one. It makes you realise that if you haven’t know about something you really like your entire life, what else is out there I don’t know about? This album changed my whole outlook on Nick Cave. He makes beautiful music and all the songs on that album are so nice and pretty. Now he’s one of my favourites. That’s what really made me pick it, that it went from being something I wasn’t interested in listening to at all, to it quickly becoming one of my favourites to the point of listening to all the different albums and learning more. It was surprising that what Nick Cave was to me completely changed.
What drew you to him?
He’s a really special artist because there’s no that’s Nick Cave in the 70s sound or Nick Cave in the 80s sound. He’s truly just himself all the time, which is hard to do. I love that “West Country Girl” song and the song “Black Hair”. He is so good with words and this album just has a sound that I really like. What is a weird thing is that I have always tried to find songs by him to use in skate videos but his music just doesn’t work for skate videos, for me. Which is odd because I love it so much. At certain points I’ve been determined to skate to a Nick Cave song no matter how long it takes looking for one but it hasn’t worked.
“it went from being something I wasn’t interested in listening to at all, to it quickly becoming one of my favourites”
For some reason I could picture you skating to that “There Is a Kingdom” song on this album.
That is a good one, maybe it just hasn’t happened yet. Editing to songs is weird, sometimes I’ll try things, not necessarily for me but for anybody I’m editing, that are not necessarily my favourite songs. Sometimes a song that’s not one of my favourites just works really well for editing. I have got to keep looking for that Nick Cave song. Dustin [Dollin] skated to him in a Volcom video [Let’s Live], he skated to “Mercy Seat” which is probably one of his heaviest songs. Do you know that one?
It’s the one Johnny Cash covered?
Yeah, exactly. If you listen to Nick Cave’s version, my thing with that song, and it’s something I talk to Jim Greco about too because he likes how that song works for editing. The level that song gets to in the end, for it to work, you would have to die in your video part. That’s the only option, there’s no other way, you’d have to die on film. It’s just too heavy for a part.
It’s cool you made a board to honour him, what was his reaction to that?
It’s funny because that was mostly just through the photographer [Polly Borland] who took the photo and had a bunch of amazing photos of him. She just showed us maybe twenty-five cool old photos and we were figuring out which one to use for the board. He’s super famous so that was a matter of doing it through his people really. I don’t know how much he knew about Baker or skateboarding but the proposal probably came to him, he checked us out and agreed to it. But then later on, one of his teenage sons was skating and getting pretty good. Nick Cave ended up coming by Baker Boys, he hung out and we all met him but that was way after the board came out. Mark “Fos” Foster who does Heroin skateboards ended up becoming friends with him and it was chill, he even came by more than once. I’ve got a good photo of Kader [Sylla] with him, I have a photo with him, it was really cool. I have no idea what he thought about the board though.
What would be your favourite musical pairing on a video you edited?
I have edited a lot of parts. Antwuan [Dixon] in Baker 3 edited to a Biggie song that was just off a mixtape, that went really perfectly. Something about that beat, and him, it was really good. There’s a random one actually in Baker has a Deathwish, there’s a Leonard Cohen song in there called “Who by Fire” that Spanky [Kevin Long] skates to. It wasn’t even Spanky’s best footage just bits that were left over but it was a fun one to make because the song was unique and really cool to edit to. In Baker Has a Deathwish 2 editing Elissa [Steamer] to “American Music” by the Violent Femmes was like a dream, I feel like for me, after it was done with all of her personality in there. I think seventy percent of the part is her not skating so it was really fun to edit that and when it was done and I showed other people the response was that it was a classic part. Some I look back on and they’re not my favourite but some I look back on and think I did alright.
Nick Cave and Andrew Reynolds at Baker Boys Distribution. PH: Mark “Fos” Foster
Your Baker 2G part and the two songs it’s edited to is one of the best ever in my opinion.
I picked the first song for that part and then Jay Strickland picked the Donovan song. Usually I was really into picking my songs but with that one I heard it and saw a couple of tricks edited to it and instantly liked how it looked. During editing I try not to get too stuck on what’s my vision. That way I can be completely open if somebody on the team has a suggestion. I’m always asking people on the team to send me songs because I only know so much. So it’s fun to get a song from somebody on the team, if they really like something you can just make it work.
It’s interesting how songs go on to have this extra existence and legacy from a video part amongst skateboarders. “Watermelon Man” is a great example of that.
I know, for us. In the skatepark we still put on old songs. There’s an H-Street playlist with music from all the old videos and we put that on all the time, it’s so good.
Have you seen Nick Cave play live?
I have only seen him play one time in LA. I’m not big on going to concerts but I went to see him out here and he puts on a great show. He’s up there on stage like he’s a god or something, touching people in the crowd and really playing up to his whole rockstar thing. It’s almost like he knows he is being funny in a way. I have only been to one show though and I’ve watched a lot of old live performances on YouTube. The one I went to was amazing.
Do you still listen to this album in its entirety?
I don’t really listen to any album from start to finish these days if I’m being honest with you. I will throw on different songs here and there. Most of the time though I’m trying to listen to stuff I haven’t heard these days because I’m always looking for stuff to edit to which is a fun way to hear new music.
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure – Tim Burton (1985)
What’s the story with this movie?
I wanted to pick a gangster movie but Pee Wee’s Big Adventure when I first saw it, which was probably when I was about ten or something, was the funniest, weirdest thing I had ever seen, I loved it. I didn’t know this as a kid but looking back at it now, it was the special effects, and all of the handmade stuff that made an impact, everything was handmade. There are mistakes in there too that don’t even make sense. You see when he’s chaining up his bike, he’s pulling a really long chain out of the compartment attached to his bike and you can see the chain at the bottom being fed through. It’s great when he gets stuck in the dark too and he puts his headlight glasses on and they light up and there are just taxidermy animals all around him, haha. It’s just a really great movie.
Did you hone in on the kid skating past at the shopping centre?
No, I didn’t really pay any attention to that, I was probably more tripped out by the clown’s face changing in his dream from normal to evil at one point. Also the character Large Marge was obviously the sickest thing I had ever seen in my life. I was pausing that scene frame by frame on my VCR to try to figure it out like “what happened right here?” Anyone who loves this movie will tell you that Large Marge was just the coolest thing, this weird claymation. Now you can see how they made every face of the face. It’s such a great story.
“the character Large Marge was obviously the sickest thing I had ever seen in my life. I was pausing that scene frame by frame on my VCR to try to figure it out”
A few frames from Large Marge’s claymation transformation in Tim Burton’s directorial debut
Did you see this at the cinema?
I would have had a VHS tape and I think I first watched it at a friend’s house. I just loved it, whatever it was I enjoyed, I liked the sense of humour. When he makes his breakfast in the morning I loved all of the machines that were in his kitchen, making the toast, and he has a huge butter knife. I also love it in Mario’s magic store when the shopkeeper shows him the shrunken head, and then asks “regular size?”, then he shows him the really humungous head. All of that stuff is just so great. There was a spin off TV Show too called Pee-Wee’s Playhouse that was good too. I was just talking to Spanky about another scene in here too, it’s really funny when the guy picks him up as a hitchhiker and he dresses up like his wife to fool the cop. Then even after the cops are gone he just stays in character for a while, hahaha. It’s really funny. The actor Paul Reubens got a bad rap later but he carried on appearing in stuff, he was in that movie Blow. Pee-Wee doesn’t bother me, I’m a fan.
The film made BMX’s look amazing too.
Yeah, I bet BMX kids were hyped on that. It’s so funny that the girl in the bike shop really likes him but he is just so not into it at all, it’s really funny. I used one little clip from it in a video one time. It’s where Pee-Wee is behind the desk at the hotel in the movie and he says “Paging Mr Herman”, I used that and showed Bryan afterwards, I loved that one. I was going to pick Goodfellas or Casino but I figure everyone knows them already.
THRASHER Magazine (1981 – Present Day)
So instead of picking a book you picked the Bible…
I’ll be honest and I’m just putting it out there, I don’t read books. It’s a funny thing, when I met my girlfriend, who I’ve been with for about thirteen years now, I don’t think she had met someone like me before. The people she had met and known, who were within her circle, were more interested in reading, and what books people were reading was a common point of conversation. She always tells me this, that she asked me about books and reading early on and I said “Oh no, I don’t like to read”, haha. She couldn’t believe it. I love that so much, that I came out and said I don’t like to read books because I don’t, I never have. I don’t have time for it, I don’t want to read a book, I don’t care about reading a book. But Thrasher I will read. I think about Jake [Phelps], they call it the Bible, if I’m going to read a book that’s going to be it.
Can you explain what Thrasher means to you?
They have always tried to show the true side of skateboarding. I think at some point, when Transworld was around, people probably looked at Thrasher like it represented hardcore skating or something. I don’t even look at it like that, I think that Thrasher is skating you know? Thrasher IS skateboarding. You look at all of the issues, all of the captions, the funny little art things in there, the Trash section, it’s just fun, and funny, it’s always been really cool. They’ve still got that side of things going on too, they hired Neckface to add some of those funny articles in there, they’re still doing the same stuff, staying true to what they are.
What was on the cover of the first issue you ever saw?
That is hard to remember exactly. This is funny because it’s not a skate photo but I really remember the Pushead cover [pictured above] standing out. I remember thinking that was cool and really liking it. I would get one every now and then when I was starting out and there was a lot of vert skating in there, and guys with pads, but I loved it.
Andrew’s first appearance in Thrasher [December 1992]. Backside ollie in San Diego. PH: Bryce Kanights
What was your first appearance in the mag?
I had a little photo that was a quarter of a page, I was backside 180ing a gap in San Diego. Then I also had an ad for a knee pad company called Dr. Bone Savers, both of those ran when I was about fourteen. In the knee pad advert I was backside lipsliding a rail in a park contest. It was an outdoor contest in Texas. There’s a famous clip of Kareem [Campbell] backside 180ing over the rail and down at the same park. So there’s a photo of me back-lipping a rail in knee pads, elbow pads, helmet which was the Dr. Bone Savers ad. After those I started popping up a little more and more.
Of your personal covers which one is most special to you?
I think probably the backside flip over Wallenberg, that’s the best one. If you put them all on the ground then I think that one just looks the best. It’s a cool photo and there’s no other text on the cover. That guy wasn’t even there to shoot the photo actually. He was on the roof and he shot a sequence which they took one still from. I went there and shot the photo with Lance Dawes, he shot the sequence which ran as the contents page. It was Dan Zaslavsky who we always call Dan Z who shot the cover. I showed up with the filmers and Lance Dawes and we shot it but then I saw the cover! It was a trip because I had no idea he was there or that anyone was even on the roof.
“It was a trip because I had no idea he was there or that anyone was even on the roof”
Surprise angle of Andrew’s backside flip made the cover of the May 2007 issue. PH: Dan Zaslavsky
Has there been a caption over the years that has stayed with you?
The only one that really comes to mind is one for Jim Greco’s childhood friend who was called Shark [Todd Lucier]. There was a photo where he’s grinding this marble out ledge and it’s back when Jake [Phelps] used to write the captions, it was “Like a screaming freight train coming down the tracks, ‘Shark’ puts the hammer down on a 50-50.” That quote is where that terminology comes from, hammers comes from that quote. Jake was a very quotable guy.
Do you have a good Jake Phelps moment we haven’t head that you can share with us?
This is a random one and I think I’ve already told someone this before. But we were all skating behind this grocery store in a small town. There were probably about fifteen to twenty skaters back there and it was on a Skate Rock tour or something like that. This lady walked up and was very confused about what was even happening back there, we were all skating and she’d probably never seen anything like that in her life. She asked “what are you guys doing back here?” and Jake replied instantly “selling acid!” That’s just Jake to me, it was the first thing out of his mouth, haha.
“He really, truly wanted to see people do their best, that’s the thing I saw from knowing him later in life. All he wanted was for people to just go for it”
He was funny like that but there were a lot of different sides to him. There were times where he would sit there and talk to you normally, just talk about things and not be on some tough guy shit. Then other times he’d be crazy, he’d come up and punch you in your chest and say “whassup motherfucker!” He had a lot of different personalities, but to me he was really good for skating. He really, truly wanted to see people do their best, that’s the thing I saw from knowing him later in life. All he wanted was for people to just go for it, that’s why people would get mad with him when they were just sitting around. He would go up and call people out right to their face but what he really wanted was to see them get up and do some shit. He didn’t care what the quality of it was either, that’s the thing. I saw it happen with Shane Heyl when we were on a trip. Shane was going Mach 10 and crooked grinding ledges, doing everything that he can that he knows how to do. I remember Jake [Phelps] being so fired up off it, that’s what he loved. It wasn’t about somebody being the best, he just wanted people to get up off their ass and go and skate hard. He really cared.
Has there been an article over the years that has resonated more than others?
There’s too many. I just checked out the new issue and I really liked Ben Kadow’s article in there, it’s one of this “5 Greats” articles. It’s a quick thing that’s easy to look at for a skater who’s just skimming through the magazine and I read the whole thing. He’s got a switch frontside flip over a trash can in there which was one of my favourite photos in the magazine.
The Boss road testing his New Balance 933 out in Miami
Congratulations on releasing your new shoe. It seems like a perfect moment in time, this era of your skating, the relationship with New Balance and the technology they have to hand. Stars aligning….
Thank you. I’m completely stoked and I can’t believe how much they did for me, and the shoe, and the marketing, it was insane and it’s still going. I wouldn’t have done the same thing even in my early thirties. I have spent so much time, and gained so much experience and knowledge about what works and what I need to skate. So if they were going to let me do it I was really down, and ready to go for it.
What has it made feel better than ever? any specifics you’re enjoying now even more because of it? Has it improved the hits?
When I first got the shoes, I knew we had put a lot of time into the thickness of the foam, this certain insole, and the way it would fit. Once I had skated in it for two weeks I was looking for something to talk about with Jeff [Mikut] the designer. It wasn’t so much a matter of something performing better, or that I was skating better, I just realised that I had nothing to complain about. That is amazing for a shoe because there is always something. For me, even with my favourite models there is always something I wished was a little different. That’s just the way my mind works. Maybe one day I’ll want to do something with different colours but as for the way it fits, and feels, and skates I have zero complaints. That was the goal.
How is the runner toe working out?
The flick of the runner toe is even better than I imagined. It lines up right with where I kickflip which wasn’t a specific part of the plan. I wanted to include the runner toe to make it look more like one of the classic New Balance shoes. It didn’t initially serve a purpose like other features, I just wanted to make it look, from a distance, more like a 992 or a 991. It turns out that it has a really cool function to it when you’re kickflipping. There are also options to make the sole all one colour so it doesn’t look as dramatic. It’s not for everybody, I’ve heard people say they don’t like the runner toe but you can’t please everybody. That’s the point I try to push with it, this shoe is not for everybody. If you like thin vulcanised shoes, you’re not going to like it. But, if you’re looking for the feeling of a shoe that’s built like they were during an earlier time in skating, but that’s not overly puffy, then you’re really going to like it.
You spoke in an interview about wanting the shoe to do more of the work.
Mike Carroll was actually in my DMs talking about that recently, and there has been a conversation among people who like how an 808 feels. There’s a guy called Sewa Kroetkov and I was skating with him one day at JKwon. I never though much about it but he pointed out that for him, stiffer shoes give you more pop. The shoe is doing some of the work. I had not though about it quite like that but I do know that when I wear a shoe that’s too thin my feet are tired from bending so much. There’s too much work for your foot. Mike Carroll messaged me and he was saying that he really likes these thicker cupsoles because they do some of the work. It made me realise this is a thing that some people know about. That’s what I mean by it, you’re not having to bend your toes and every muscle in your foot every time you pop an ollie or a kickflip. The shoe is stiffer which for me is a familiar feeling, something I’ve always wanted. When shoes over time started becoming thinner and thinner I just knew I couldn’t skate shoes like that. I just didn’t like it, thicker shoes are where it’s at.
“I have spent so much time and gained so much experience and knowledge about what works and what I need to skate”
In the perfecting stages of the design process what was the smallest tweak you implemented that made the biggest difference?
There was a time when the rubber on the outsole was more of a straighter line, the whole outsole was straighter. When you look at the shoe now on the foam part from the back to the front, it kind of slopes down. The runner shoes in the New Balance line slope all the way down to nothing. So it was really straight at one point, but luckily I was looking at the runners and thinking we need to get more of that shape incorporated. Me and Jeff [Mikut] just sat there at the computer and tweaked things, we took a millimetre or two from the front and added a millimetre or two to the back and made it swoop down. I’m so glad we did it because looking at the earlier samples, they just look like this big chunky block that was not right. That change was a really big one. Then with all of the little windows, and the mesh there were little changes but the outsole change made the biggest difference, and that’s something I haven’t said anywhere.
The Andrew Reynolds NM933 in a limited colourway for the New Balance “Grey Days” celebration
Did any happy accidents change the course of what you were doing?
The runner toe being so good for kickflips is something that worked out really well but there weren’t really any accidents. It was very thought out and we had enough time to see samples and make changes. There’s a colourway that’s coming actually. Sometimes when they make samples they just grab whatever material is around to put them together, you’ll get crazy samples showing up sometimes with all of these different colour panels that don’t make any sense. One of the new colourways coming which involves a load of different colours came from that part of the process, an accident that we ended up using.
Now that it’s done can you rest? Or now that you’ve been in that design mode do you have to redirect that energy? What do you have on the cards for the rest of this year that you’re excited about?
I don’t think I know how to just chill and rest. When something is done I’m quickly planning what I’m going to do, some kind of project. There are lots of new colours of my shoe coming. That’s my main focus for the rest of the year is everything New Balance, promoting the shoe. I’m just trying to stay healthy and strong, and doing physical therapy stuff so I can get clips for as long as I can.
Can we expect to see you in London any time soon?
I don’t know, maybe? It’s not exactly where I have on my list as far as a filming trip but you never know. London is a tough place to skate, it’s sick though, I had had a lot of fun there. Next time I go I want the weather to be really good.
Thanks so much for your time. Any last words?
Thanks for having me in the mix. Thanks to New Balance for doing this for me, and to all of the skaters out there in the world.
We want to thank Andrew for the time he spent answering our questions and for everything he has done, and continues to do for skateboarding. This includes improving it by developing an amazing new shoe designed to alleviate some of the work. Shop with us for Andrew’s new shoe the NM933 and more from New Balance. You can also check all of the latest arrivals from Baker Skateboards.
Thanks to Neil Macdonald [ Science Vs. Life ] for the mag scans. Thanks also to Jake Darwen for the portrait and Mark “Fos” Foster for the Nick Cave photograph. Last but not least a big thank you to Dave Mackey, Seb Palmer, and Tyrone Romero at New Balance for the assistance throughout.
Previous “Offerings” Interviews: Gino Iannucci , Elijah Berle , Silas Baxter-Neal , Matt Pritchard , Matlok Bennett-Jones , Spencer Hamilton , Aaron Herrington , Rowan Zorilla , Beatrice Domond , Chris Jones , Kevin ‘Spanky’ Long , Helena Long , Tom Karangelov , Bobby Puleo , Ray Barbee , Zach Riley , Ryan Lay , Casper Brooker