photo: gabe morford

Skateboarders are freaks, no doubt about it. Those of us who are lucky enough to have gone on tours or seen ridiculous feats go down in person know, the tricks are insane, but there’s always backstory to every trick and to every skater – and the backstory is always more impressive.

Take Justin Brock for example. Sure, he is an amazing skateboarder, but did you know when he was working to get on REAL he was living off of nothing but shitty weed, peanut butter sandwiches, and Mountain Dew? Did you know he once drank Mountain Dew until he was hospitalized? Did you know he once lived in such filth that he had fungus growing on his hands and legs?

In 2015 when literally dozens of new forgettable skate clips drop every week, these are the amazing stories between the tricks that our flawlessly edited skate parts don’t tell. The stupidity, the filth, the blemishes. I don’t know if these stories will make you appreciate Justin Brock’s frontside wall rides any more than you already did, but they’re fun to read anyway, so here you go…

photo: gabe morford

Your wife is a Suicide Girl right?
She doesn’t do it anymore, she used to, it’s like soft core.

So it’s not full blown Pornhub banging?
No. She kinda just did it on the side. She is an accountant, so she just did the Suicide Girl stuff for shits and giggles I guess. She helps me out with my taxes and shit so it’s perfect.

You have two sons together? Lucky you don’t have to worry about a chick…
Yeah… Boys are easy enough. Don’t gotta pay for any weddings. Don’t gotta worry about them getting knocked up.

Whats the worst place you ever jerked off?
Worst place… probably my car or something.

You had to just pull over and get it done?
I think I did it while I was driving. Long drive, I was fucking bored. Gotta do it at night so nobody can see inside.

What about the end? Just let it go wherever it goes like a fountain?
Yeah! [laughs] You’re jerking off in your car, I guess it really doesn’t matter at that point.

photo: gabe morford

Growing up you were addicted to Mountain Dew?
Yeah… I think it’s kinda like a thing from the South. You were raised on Mountain Dew. I just drank the shit out of it when I was kid. I stopped drinking it when I was 15 or 16 because my kidneys shut down and I had a kidney infection and had to go to the hospital. They told me it had a lot to do with my soda consumption. I could drink a 12 pack in a day easy. It got to the point where I’d drink one or start to drink one, and my back would cramp up super bad and I’d have to lie on the ground and chug water until the pain went away.

Just too much high fructose corn syrup and sugar?
Yeah… stupid kid shit. I was dehydrating myself by drinking it all day. I should have just been drinking water. Now I’ll only drink a Mountain Dew like once a year. I don’t really like it as much as I used to.

This has nothing to do with skating right? You were never sponsored by Mountain Dew when you were younger right?
No, I was not.

photo: gabe morford

You were born and raised in North Carolina?
I was born in Kentucky, but my parents split up when I was 6 months old, so my mom moved to North Carolina and I moved with her. I’ve always been in touch with my dad. He’s tight. People think we are brothers because he’s so young. They had me when they were 16 years old.

Do you think people from the South are racist?
I mean… not everybody, but there’s definitely some racist people for sure. Ignorant people. Probably some of the older people, their parents are probably crazy racist. I think the younger people are better about it.

Did you finish High School?
I quit school in 10th or 11th grade because I just kept missing so many days. I would go to Raleigh and stay for the weekends, and then usually a couple more days. They told me I was either going to have to come to summer school, or re-do 10th grade. Then I was just like, ok well, I just quit. Then 2 weeks later I moved to Raleigh with my buddy Mike right after I turned 16.

If you moved out at 16, how were you supporting yourself?
I was living off of child support checks that my dad sent my mom every month. Whatever my dad sent she would just give it to me and then I’d just live off of that. It was like $75 to $150 a month. I made it work for sure… I could live pretty cheap back then. The only thing I did was smoke weed, skate, eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and drink Mountain Dew. I lived off of those checks from ages 16 to 18, and when I was back in town I’d pressure wash houses with my stepdad for cash.

Was that the most broke you’ve ever been?
Oh yeah, for sure. We would smoke all the time, so we’d buy an ounce of fuckin’ schwag and try to make that last. You could tell we were broke, we definitely were not smoking good weed. We lived in the back of my buddy’s mom’s garage. We didn’t have hot water and our stove didn’t work. We were living pretty trife, but we were skating all the time so we didn’t really care. We lived there for like 6 months.

The place I lived at was just gross. At one point I got all this fungus on me that caused all the skin from my hands and feet to fall off. It itched super bad. I think I just got it from being dirty, skating all the time, taking cold showers. Every time you’d use our washing machine water would leak into the bathroom and soak into this dirty carpet that was in there. It was just an all around a bad place.

What was your plan if you never started getting a check for riding a skateboard?
I didn’t really have one. I was just using those child support checks and pressure washing houses. Then I would just leave town and go skate until my money ran out, and then come back and work again.

Did you really get the Spitfire logo carved into your body when you were younger?
Yeah, it’s called scarification. I got the logo cut into me with a scalpel. I used to go to this tattoo shop all the time in South Carolina that one of my buddies worked at. One of the dudes there was the piercer and cut people, and one day he talked me into doing it. He’d ask me every time I would go in. One day I just gave in… I was 18. It only took like 15 minutes, but that shit hurt. The dude does all types of shit like that. He like hangs people from their back skin too.

Does it hurt a lot worse than a tattoo?
It’s like doing a full tattoo in 15 minutes. And 15 minutes is a short time. There’s people who go in and get cut for like 2 hours. It was just really intense pain for a little while. In the beginning it doesn’t hurt as bad while the scalpel is still sharp, and then once you start going in to shock a little bit it starts to hurt. But once he stops cutting you the pain basically goes away. I was sober when I did it but got drunk afterwards.

photo: gabe morford

Any good tour stories from filming the new REAL video, Through and Through?
The trips for Through and Through were insane. Between the whole squad with Ishod and Kyle… Ishod shot 27 tricks on the trip. 27 magazine worthy tricks in under 2 weeks. Every single spot getting something fucked up. Thats probably the highlight for most of us that are in the video. That’s the craziest trip I’ve ever been on in terms of the calibre of tricks that went down.

I heard on another trip you got jumped by a gang of scooter kids?
Oh, yeah, 3 years ago. It was on a King Of The Road trip, and it happened on the last night when we had to turn in all the footage at the Cha Cha lounge in LA. We ended up drinking all night then went back to our hotel and continued drinking in the parking lot. As we are drinking, these 2 kids walk up to us, and one of them asked me for a cigarette. I said no. Then out of nowhere another kid ran and sucker punched me in the face, and the next thing you know there’s kids with scooters and penny boards coming out of the woods behind the hotel parking lot, like 15 of them. It was a full gang of kids.

One kid would come in, hit you, and run away. And then another one would come from somewhere else and hit you. It was me, P-Stone, Frank Gerwer, Jake Donnelly, and a couple of others. I was hammered, they whooped up on me pretty good. They were just looking for it.

It was everybody versus everybody. Frank Gerwer was running in pulling people off of me. P-Stone had one kid in a headlock and smashed him into a Lexus in the parking lot. Jon Sciano got hit in the head with a scooter and split his eyebrow open and had to get like 7 or 8 stitches. One of us got knocked out, but we took one of their dudes down too. Jake Donnelly kicked some dude in the head and knocked him out.

When the cops showed up the kid was just layed out in the parking lot. The cop goes, “What happened to that kid?” And P-Stone just says, “I guess you’re gonna have to ask him when he wakes up.” The cops said that this gang of kids had been doing it across the neighborhood, we weren’t the first people that had got it before.

photo: gabe morford

This is kind of a stock question, but fuck it. Since it seems like it’s going to happen, how do you feel about skateboarding in the Olympics?
I mean, I’m not gonna be in that shit, so I don’t really care. I’m gonna watch it, but it’s just gonna be like watching Street League. I don’t think it’s gonna “hurt” skateboarding. The people that really care about skateboarding, it’s not gonna change their outlook on it. It’s just taking skateboarding and showing it off to other people. If anything it’s gonna bring more money into skateboarding and help people do cool shit. It’s gonna open skateboarding up to a whole ‘nuther group of people. Maybe some skaters don’t want them, but it doesn’t matter. It’s like people bitching about VX going to HD. It’s just the way shits going, what are you gonna do? Sign a petition and get them to stop? It’s gonna happen.

Interview: James Lee
Photography: Gabe Morford
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