The Tanning Interview with Stevie Williams

When Stevie Williams asserts that he is the “Jay-Z of skateboarding,” he doesn’t mean it as a hyperbole. After obtaining his first sponsorship at 11, a 15-year-old Williams left his humble Philadelphia roots to pursue a pro career in the popular skate hub of San Francisco. He lived homeless in The Bay for almost four years, sharpening his skills and making connections, and eventually his grind paid off. As skateboarding grew in popularity through the late ‘90s and early aughts, Williams bubbled along with it, building relationships with sponsors, touring the world, and founding his own brand, DGK (Dirty Ghetto Kids), which he eventually licensed to Reebok. Now with the popularity of skateboarding at an all-time high, and an inner city skate movement continuing to blossom due to hip-hop co-signs from artists like Pharrell Williams, Lupe Fiasco, Lil Wayne, and new kids on the asphalt, Odd Future, Stevie Williams’ fame is sizzling, and his DGK brand is more prominent in the marketplace than ever.

In this extensive interview, Williams brings us back to how he used to get made fun of by other black kids in his Philadelphia neighborhood for skateboarding, his early bouts with racism as a professional skateboarder (though he maintains there is no internal racial tension in the skate community), and how he got invited to hang out with Michael Jackson at Neverland Ranch. He also explains how he learned the hard way to embrace Pharrell’s efforts to help skateboarding grow in the inner city, why he’s inspired by Lil Wayne’s dedication to the sport (they skate together all the time), and how listening to Jay-Z’s music helped him in the business world.

Interview by Daniel Isenberg

I read that you were inspired to skate by the Christian Slater movie, Gleaming The Cube. Where did you first see that?
On HBO, back in the day. This is when cable first came out, and there were only a few channels. I used to wait and wish that movie would come on.

What was it about skateboarding that really piqued your interest? Had you ever seen anybody in your neighborhood doing it before?
No, I really had only seen people skate like that before in movies. But around that time, everyone on my block had a skateboard. Like me and five or six other kids had a skateboard. And we would just ride up and down the block in the hood. We wished we could do some tricks, but it wasn’t about tricks then. But what really got me psyched in that movie was them riding all together, and him jumping in the air and going under the truck, and stealing the car with the skate key. It was pretty dope. That movie was exciting.

What was your first board?
The first skateboard that I ever had was an Eric Nash. It was a long time ago. My cousin bought it from the toy store, and that was the type of board that everyone in the hood had. It wasn’t anything too serious. But the first skateboard I had when I started professionally skating was a Sluggo [made by] Real Skateboards. [Sluggo is] actually one of my good friends now.

How did you get it?
I bought it used off of one of my friends for like eight bucks. He had ripped it apart so bad, but I needed a skateboard so bad because I wanted to skate with everybody, so he sold it to me.

Tell me about LOVE Park in Philadelphia, and what it was like there when you started skating.
When I first got to LOVE Park, it was dope. There were tons of skaters there, and everybody knew how to do tricks. That’s when I was like, “I want to be a skateboarder, badly.”

How did you know about it?
I moved to another neighborhood, and the neighborhood that I moved to had some skaters around there. And my cousin skated. So they pretty much taught me how to skate, and took me down to LOVE Park. They were already watching skateboard videos, and they had the magazines and stuff like that. So I kind of just fell in line.

What was the scene down there like, in terms of the age of the skaters and the racial mix?
I was the youngest kid [out of all the skaters] from that neighborhood. And there were multiple different races down there from different parts of Philly, and some from the suburbs, New Jersey, and parts of Delaware. All different races. The one thing that everyone had in common was skateboarding.

Was there ever any racial tension?
There isn’t really racial tension in our sport. If there ever was anyone on some racial shit, we would all turn our back on them. That’s not what our sport is about. Not to say that there haven’t been any racial incidents, but for the most part, it’s not like that.

So it wasn’t like hip-hop back in the day, where a white kid would get a hard time for trying to rap?
Nah, because a black kid wouldn’t get a hard time [from white kids] for skating because he’s black. A black kid would get a hard time for skating because he’s black from other black people.

But you said people in your neighborhood were already skating. Were there others that would make fun of you for it?
Yeah, the whole neighborhood, pretty much, until we got down to LOVE Park.

What would they say?
They would basically call you “white boy,” laugh at you, make fun of you, and try to embarrass you in front of girls and stuff like that. You know, kids stuff.

And you guys would just shrug it off and have this place to escape to?
Yeah, we’d shrug it off on the way, and then we’d be downtown in no time, skating with everybody, so it wasn’t really that important.

Did the cops bust balls a lot there?
Yeah, the cops would come every day. But that was just for skating on city property.

Did they treat black kids and white kids differently who were skating there?
No. Everybody was treated the same. They would chase you, and everybody would be running from the cops. White kids, black kids, kids from the hood, kids from the suburbs. Racism was not in our industry.

What was so dope about LOVE Park?
It was a great place to skate, and a great place to hang out if you didn’t skate.

Were there rails all over the place and stuff like that?
There were some rails, some wedges, and a lot of flat ground. But it was more about the action, being in the middle of downtown, people walking through, people skating. It was a good atmosphere. It was a real park, but the skaters took it over.

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