photo: morgnar

If you’ve kept up with Thrasher’s King of the Road contest over the last three years, you’ve come to know Clint Walker pretty well—you might even think he’s a bit of a dick. We’ve seen him break opponent’s windshields and curse people out, but that’s how reality TVish segments sometimes go. With KOTR 2015 now airing on Viceland, we wanted to see if this “dick behavior” was just expert camera work and editing or the real deal.

What do you think is a bigger influence on your skating: growing up in a state that has tornados, or being adopted?
I’d say growing up in a state that has tornados. I don’t ever think about the whole being adopted thing. When I was adopted I was like four weeks old, so I don’t remember much. It’s not like I was hanging out with all the kids and then somebody picked me up. I don’t think I had a name yet. I was probably just a number or something whenever they picked me up.

Tornados are fucking scary dude. We used to live out in the country and tornados would go across the field in front of the house. I remember being on the porch when I was little, like eight, and just watching tornados go across the field. At the time I thought that was normal. But there’s a big difference between a small tornado and the bigger ones that hit Oklahoma City, because some of those are no joke. They’re mile wide shit and you don’t want to be anywhere near that.

”Apparently she thought I was good with girls, but I’m just an idiot and girls like idiots.”

I hear you have a girlfriend but you’re allowed to fool around with chicks on the side?
Oh my god. This is hectic. Alright, so I had a girlfriend. We literally just broke up two days ago. I met her in Atlanta while we were on the Fully Torqued trip, and we became friends for eight months where we weren’t hooking up or anything. Once we started hooking up, she started telling me she was into girls and shit and I was like, “Well hell yeah, I am too.” So then she wanted to hang out with girls because she never had before, so I was her in to that. Apparently she thought I was good with girls or something. I don’t think I am, but I’m just an idiot and girls like idiots. So she was okay with me doing my thing on the side. It worked out for a long time, but we just broke up. But it wasn’t because of that. It’s ‘cause I’m fucking broke. It’s ‘cause I need that fucking shoe sponsor, that’s why.

photo: clint walker

You were in a Goodworth ad posing with a Playboy bunny. Did you try to hook up with her?
I did recently, actually. This is hectic, I don’t even know if I should be saying this… So we didn’t hook up at first, she ended up being super cool and we were just friends for a while. And then just recently I went out with her and some friends, and we ended up hooking up.

We were at this bar and met up with some of her friends that were writers or some shit, and they were talking about their new scripts or something, and I was like, “I can’t hang with this right now. I can’t get into your conversation.” So I just went off and smoked some weed. Every time I smoke I get real high, because I don’t smoke all day. I always smoke at night, usually only if we’re out at the bar partying or something, and every time I just get super baked.

So I came back in and I was sitting by the bar, and she came up and then all of a sudden she was asking me questions about my girlfriend, because all the girls knew I had a girlfriend. We went over to a table, and all of a sudden she was like, “We should go make out in the bathroom,” and I was like, “What the fuck?” I was so high, and I kind of wouldn’t have any other time. I’m not really that hectic in public with chicks, I’m not trying to make out with chicks all the time. So she’s like, “Let’s go to the bathroom,” and I’m looking around all baked and I’m like, “Fuck, there’s a lot of people here.” She’s like, “It’ll be fine,” and I was like, “Alright.”

So I ended up banging her in the bathroom at this bar, and one of her friends came in, and was trying to hook up with us in the bathroom. I was like, “You are crazy, you gotta go. You gotta get out of here.”

I’ve never done that before. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad. I love ya’ll. It was one time. It was fun. I don’t regret it.

photo: trevor vaughn

Do you like to smoke weed before having sex?
Yeah, I don’t know. So my ex-girlfriend worked for this guy who made these paint kits, where you’re supposed to put paint on your body and then bang on this blank canvas and make a painting. They acrylic it and make it hard and shit, and I guess people hang these paintings in their houses. I think it’s some rich people shit, but whatever.

We went there and she was like, “I think we should do one of these.” At that time I’d only been high probably three or four times, and I was like, this is probably something I should be high for. Because when I get high I don’t get quieter. I start getting braver and I say shit that I know I shouldn’t say or I do shit I know I shouldn’t do. So we got high, and it was insane. It blew my mind. I’d never realized it could be that cool.

For so long after that I would keep joints in my car so when I hung out with girls I would just be like, “Hey, you wanna smoke?” And they would always be down to smoke with me even if they didn’t really smoke, because most of them knew I didn’t really smoke either, so it was like let’s just both get super high. It turned into a thing. It’s awesome. The Birdhouse guys say they don’t get all horned up when they get high, but I don’t know what they’re talking about. I think that shit is tight. I’m still down every time.

photo: trevor vaughn

When you’re on road trips, a lot of guys pee in bottles. How does the whole piss bottle situation work? Do people keep their own bottles and reuse them?
When we traveled around for the year in the RV, there would always be bottles somewhere in there. We would pee in bottles and put them in the bathroom, and we’d be like, “I’m gonna throw that out when we stop.” The next thing you know, in two weeks we got fucking twenty piss bottles in the bathroom and they’re all brown, the most dehydrated piss of all time. But then nobody wants to throw them away because by that time you don’t even know whose piss it is in the bottle. You’re like, “Fuck, two of those might be mine.” I know I definitely stored a lot of piss bottles and forgot to throw them out.

Once, the RV was parked at my parents house, and I went to clean it all out, and I opened up the bathroom and there were seriously twelve piss bottles that had been there for a year. There was gross ass piss sediment, whatever the fuck that is, separated from the piss, in the bottom. It’s gross. So, yeah, it doesn’t work out that well.

In the Birdhouse van on trips, sometimes you got a big jug and you might have to share it. It’s a little weird, you’re thinking, “Hey, man, that dude was just resting his dick in the same place.” But at the same time you gotta do it. [Adam] Mills, [Birdhouse filmer], actually just recently got over his van piss phobia. For a long time he couldn’t piss in the van and it was bad. He would be trying for so long and he just couldn’t do it. But now he’s over it, so he’s part of the piss crew. On an Ambig trip once, he had his dick in a bottle for 40 minutes. He would just try over and over again, and everybody’s all pissed at him. Now I think we got the piss situation under control in the van.

When Tony [Hawk] is on tour with you guys, does he go out and party with everyone, or does he do his own thing?
He kind of does both. A lot of times he just hangs back at the hotel and keeps it mellow, but there will usually be a couple nights on a trip where he’ll come out. Tony is a sick ass dude, he is still a real ass skateboarder 100%. Even though he’s killing it and he’s got money, and hotels are hooking him up with the biggest rooms, he’s still 100% dirtbag skateboarder.

I went on the Gumball trip with him and he would be like, “Hey, I’m going to sleep, but here’s a key to my room. You guys can drink the mini bar, just don’t bother me.” He’s the man. But he’s married, and a lot of times Catherine [his wife] will come on trips with us too. When they both come out, then it’s fun, because Tony can let loose a little bit.

Birdhouse used to seem like a board company for little kids, but now it seems different. Are you and the other riders changing the company’s image?
Definitely. Birdhouse was my first board. But one of the things I told Tony when he asked me to get on was, I’m down to ride for you guys, but I want to try to change a lot in the company. I want to have a big say in what we’re doing, and they were down. I was like, “I’m not really hyped on what you guys have going on right now. Some of the dudes are cool, but I think it’s in a really weird direction and shit.” I was real with them, I try to be real with everybody and just be open and honest, whether it bums some people out. I think it’s better to be honest than fucking try to play some shit you’re not. They were down, so I started riding for them and then we got Clive [Dixon], one of my homies who fucking rips. Tony wants us to be hyped on it too, so we have a lot of say in what’s going on in the company, so it’s pretty cool.

photo: trevor vaughn

Did you get a lot of heat for breaking the Element team’s windshield on KOTR 2014?
There were a lot of kids who hit me up and were like, “Dude that was the sickest part of the King of the Road.” Then there’s kids that are like, “Fuck you dude, you’re an asshole.” A lot of people from South American countries, apparently those people love people that fuck shit up because those people are always so hyped on the hectic shit.

To get points, one of the things was to hit somebody else with a cake. [Element] had a full cake in their van, and T-Bone took the full cake and started running at the van as we were reversing. And as he was running towards us I was like, “This is gonna break our windshield.” He jumped and slammed it, and you could just see the lines split over, and Jerome was like, “Goddamnit.” And it wasn’t even like I was so pissed. It was just like, should we do something about this or not? So I was like, “Hey guys, should I fucking break out their windshield with a rock?” And everybody’s like, “Fuck yeah!” Except Jaws. You can hear him, he’s like, “Dude, I don’t know.” I was like, majority rules we’re doing it. That’s when in the episode you see me like, “They just broke our windshield, so now I’m about to break theirs,” and then I get out and smash it.

Evan was defending their van. Of all people, Evan Smith came out hot, dude. We were backing out, and so he’s running next to the van trying to do shit, and you can tell he doesn’t know what to do. The only thing that’s right there is the antenna, so he just bends the antenna. Then I was like, “Dude what the fuck, you broke our window too.” As soon as I said that, he was like, “Oh shit.” You could tell they had no idea they had broke ours too.

I still think it’s funny. I love all those dudes. I’m pretty sure they still love me too. It’s just King of the Road shit. They went and got theirs fixed, we got ours fixed, it was all good. We’re still boys. As far as I know. They’re my boys, hopefully I’m their boy too. Right, guys?

How did you come up with the butt chug challenge on last year’s KOTR?
Oh man, that was a complete joke. That was not supposed to be a prank at all. We were driving in the van, saying jokes and making up challenges. I said, “So who’s gonna do the butt chug?” Then I think it was Mike Davis sitting behind me, he heard me say that and he was like, “Dude, that would fucking suck.” And as soon as he said that, I was like, holy shit. Jaws will actually do a butt chug.

Jaws sits at the back of the van and hangs out by himself. He doesn’t even read the challenge book ever, you pretty much have to tell him every challenge. So I said it louder, “Hey, who’s gonna do the butt chug?” And then immediately, Jaws was like “Fuck, I guess I’ll do it.” Then Jerome [Case, Birdhouse team manager,] snaps and he’s like, ”Alright, you want to do it now?”

He was like, “Fuck it, just give me that thing. I’ll do it here.” We’re all like, “Fuck, are you sure you don’t wanna wait?” He’s like, “Nah. We’re here, I’m just gonna do it.” So he laid down in the middle of this skate park, got butt naked, and proceeded to shove this inch wide funnel into his ass. It was nasty. Mills saw things that no man should see, looking into that funnel. It was wild.

They used the clip in one of the Viceland trailers, and they blurred it out. I was thinking, I wonder what you could see right there? Some fucking intestines or his colon, man. Mills said it was pink. Confirmed. The pink hole. It was disgusting.

I was happy for Jaws because I was thinking like, he never has to do that again. But then this year the butt chug was an actual challenge in the book. So every team did the butt chug. It’s already been confirmed, one person from every team also butt chugged a beer. And Jaws did it again, of course. I mean, nobody else is gonna do it. But yeah, one person from each team butt chugged a beer as well. So that’ll be pretty funny to watch.

And a hint for Chocolate: he’s a rapper.

Who has a better chance of dying on a skateboard: you or Jaws?
Probably me. Not because I do gnarlier things. He does way gnarlier things, but I swear, everything he does, he knows exactly whether he could do it or not. Jaws, if he goes somewhere, he’s like, “Yeah I can do this if it’s not too tall.” I think his limit’s like sixteen feet. He’s got a limit, so if you go anything over that, he’s like, “Nah I ain’t got it.” Anything he says he’s gonna do, he does it. I don’t think I’m as much in control.

If one of us was gonna die I think it would be me. And I’d rather die than Jaws. Jaws is a good person, he needs to be alive for a long time. Jaws deserves everything good in this world.

photo: trevor vaughn

What was it like skating in Dubai in We Are Blood?
It was probably one of the craziest experiences I’ll ever have, just because we were able to skate some of the shit that nobody is able to skate. We went as guests of the royal family, and anything we saw that we wanted to skate, the next day they would have full permits for us to skate everything. Whatever we wanted, it was pretty wild.

The royal family had a leopard that would train with their daughter. Their daughter ran cross country, so she would run around their big ass house and the leopard would run with her. It was insane. It was a leopard or a cheetah. No, it was a cheetah.

Then in between, the days when we weren’t skating these crazy ass spots, we were skydiving or indoor snowboarding, we went dune buggying in the fucking desert and shit, all on the sand dunes. We went on helicopter rides, we did the wind tunnel thing where it’s like skydiving but you’re inside. We did some of the craziest shit there. It wasn’t like any skate trip I’ve ever been on or I’ll probably ever be on again.

We Are Blood is the most expensive skate video ever made. With that in mind, how did getting paid work?
We didn’t really make any money off of it. At least I didn’t. I’m sure some of the dudes did. I’m sure P-Rod came up. But we got to do some really cool shit. For me, taking those trips is just like somebody giving me a shit ton of money. That’s what I want to do anyway, I just want to do cool trips with my homies. I’m hyped he gave me the opportunity, I would do it again in a heartbeat. But as far as compensation goes, we just got good times. But that’s alright. As skateboarders, we get to do a lot of shit that most people spend all their money to do. I just got back from Brazil, and when I was there I thinking this is fucking crazy that people are literally paying for everything here while I’m floating down the fucking Amazon river. This is fucking wild.

Intro: James Lee
Interview: Nic Dobija-Nootens
Photos courtesy of Trevor Vaughn and Morgnar.
Special Thanks: Adam Mills
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