In 2020 I talked to Mark from Heroin Skateboards – since then he has launched a radical wheel company and continues to put together an unstoppable team.
How did you come up with the egg graphics? It’s a eggcelent idea! Did you get it while eating breakfast?
Shimizu said he wanted a 90’s style football/egg shaped board. It was about 2015 I think. I was 50/50 between drawing a cartoon football or a cartoonegg, not a big sports guy, so the egg won.
What, in your opinion, was the best time in skateboarding – is it yet to come?
I personally liked the late 80’s because it was all new to me. I was a kid and It was a refreshing break from Football (soccer) that I grew up seeing allaround me. Seeing Dressen do a demo in my home town, ten miles north of Manchester was really something else. Those days were so innocent, me and my friends would all head to Manchester City Centre and skate around for the whole day, no CCTV cameras, nosecurity guards, no skate stoppers, we skated some of the best spots ever. 90’s was rough, but I never quit when a lot of other folks did.
I’m not one of these grumpy old guys who laments that skating isn’t the same as when we first started though, I love where its all at now, the DIY scene is incredible, and there’s parks being funded and built all over the world.
How did you put your team together? Is it just skating ability? Personality? Is there one area more important than the others?
Its very organic and not a conscious thing where I’m ever like “we have to get that guy on”. People kind of gravitate to the brand I think and some of emend up being a part of it if the planets align. Over the past few years it really started becoming important to me that people were having fun and makingskating look fun. Everyone can skate good nowadays, lots of people have good style, but if you’re stressing out about it all, its going to come across. Ifyou’re unbearable to be around when you’re out filming, it makes me wonder what the point of it all is to be honest. When I sat down and started editing Dead Daves part from Earth Goblin, it really gave me faith in skateboarding again, the song, the trick selection, thewhole thing just made skateboarding look fun. I’m really proud of that part, and I don’t know if it was what skateboarding needed exactly, but it wasdefinitely what I needed.
What is your favorite Heroin graphic? Do you put your input into every graphic or do you let the riders just roll with it?
I do it all. Riders often don’t have too much say in it, sometimes if they do, it ends up not working out that great. Most of them trust me to make themlook good and they know that I know what I’m doing as far as graphics. I’m sure I’ve had a couple of duds here and there, but I try my best. Favorite graphic is tough, I love em all, I was really stoked that we got to do some Texas Chainsaw Massacre official boards, and a lot of the time if Ineed to get boards made up for me to ride then I’ll get those graphics. I like all my riders, so it’s hard to choose a specific board but right now my favoriteis the Craig Chainsaw board I think. Happy with how that came out. I’d get that on a Razoregg 9.125 shape.
Was there one incident that made this a career? Or did it kind of just happen overtime?
I worked in the skate industry after I left college. I studied Design. The jobs were all awful at the time, Mac operators for super corporate designagencies, I had no interest in that. I was skating a lot and having fun living in London. I got a job at Slam City Skates in the warehouse, unloading wagonsof boxes and packing orders at first. Eventually got promoted and became sales manager and got to know the industry a bit. Then it was time for me toleave and do my own thing. Art director Job at Altamont in 2005 was really my first Creative job. When that ended in 2015 I just drifted into freelancing really and it’s been prettygood doing that for a while now. Heroin doesn’t really pay me much of a wage, I just get to pay some of my favorite skaters from it a bit.
Did you start screening your own boards when you started? Do you ever feel like you miss doing everything yourself – mail-order, distribution, etc.?
I spray painted boards in my back yard. I made stencils and then did four stencils and then sent em to a printer for the black pass. Those were rad. I always had a distributor (Power in the UK) and so i never had to do much of the mail order and invoicing and all that stuff. I just get to do the funn stufflike graphics and team and making videos.
Thank you for the interview! Any last thoughts or pieces of advice?
Put your phone down. Go skateboarding.
