photo by: ben karpinski

If skateboarders are like cats with nine lives, Ethan Loy just entered his second. We don’t say that because he escaped a heavy slam unscathed, but because he left Element Skateboards after a long 12 years.

Consisting of hot takes, industry behind the scenes and a candid talk about his brother, this isn’t one to skip over.

How has the reaction been to your new video parts?
The reaction has been really fucking good, a lot better than previous parts. Maybe that has to do with riding for a new and upcoming brand. That makes it more exciting for people, rather than seeing my footage alongside that bland old Element tree. Some people won’t watch after seeing that [laughs].

How long did you skate for Element? Over 10 years, right?
Something like that. I got on when I was 16. But last year the majority of the US team didn’t get a contract renewal. Brandon Westgate was the only rider left.

How did getting let go from the brand affect you career?
I was getting paid pretty decently compared to what the other homies were getting from board sponsors, so I was kinda bummed. I had to rework my spending and my finances and just understand how to make money to live without leaning on the skateboard industry.

photo by: ryan lee

What are you doing to make money now?
Fuck man, I work a lot just to make ends meet. I do this weed gig where I cut plants, set up grow rooms, clean the shop and trim the final product. I also do Amazon Flex, which is basically Uber Eats for delivering packages. I’ll pick up packages in my own car at the station and then I’ll deliver them to houses around LA. It has been a lifesaver with finding spots and helping me keep a fresh outlook on skating.

“Life needs to be supported and skating does not support life.”

Did you ever want to leave Element before you actually did?
I really did want to leave, but that paycheck had me stuck. It strongholded me a bit because I was reliant on the money and I didn’t really quite know how I was going to navigate without it. Now I’ve got a handle over it, but yeah, I wish I would have done it sooner. I wish I had the upper hand.

Although, it was kind of a blessing in disguise because it forced me to figure shit out on my own and understand that skating’s not everything. Life needs to be supported and skating does not support life. I’m not getting paid as a pro skateboarder now, and I’m more stoked on skateboarding than I ever have been. That goes to show money isn’t everything in skating.

Was being on Element the reason you grew your hair and beard out? Hippie style?
[Laughs] With Element we’d be filming for three years, and I never wanted it to look like a clip was three years old. I wanted it to look seamless, so I kept the same fits, and the same haircut. And when we were filming for Peace, Jon Miner would say, “Dude, keep your hair long. You look badass.” I respected his opinion, because obviously he’s the GOAT, he’s been at it for 20 plus years. He knows exactly how shit’s supposed to look before it’s even edited together.

“I’m not going to put on a pair of Balenciaga’s and try to go skate a 20-rail.”

You ever consider a rebrand or a gimmick to help your career?
No, because I don’t give a shit about my dressing style. I just dress how a normal person would dress. I’m not going to put on a pair of Balenciaga’s and try to go skate a 20-rail. What is that shit? Who are we now? Some people are trying too hard to be a part of this industry.

If Cariuma offered you $5000 a month to ride for them, would you?
Nah, that would be “career suicide”. For that amount of money, my life would drastically change but I could never fall victim to the curse that follows that company.

photo by: ben karpinski

You’re 28 now. Do you feel old?
I’ve definitely started to. I mean I’ve had 3 ACL injuries, wrist reconstruction, two collarbone breaks, and a dropped shoulder, all within the past 15 years.

You’re basically a member of the Jackass squad without doing any of that stuff.
[Laughs] Exactly. It’s from not knowing how to fall and just fucking splatting on the ground. I didn’t understand the tuck and roll until probably five years ago. It’s so sad to say it but I’ve been more like a crash test dummy than anything else all these years.

Chad Tim Tim and Levi Brown used to heckle me on trips, calling me a wounded deer. A bambi of sorts [laughs]. I was never mad because it made complete sense. I always had a cast on or some sort of surgery that I was going through.

Why do you think slam montages aren’t in skate videos anymore?
It’s cringy and hard to watch. For me, you want to see people land shit. You’re not trying to watch them slam and potentially hurt their career. Don’t get me wrong, on a drunken night you can find me laughing at a fail compilation, but I’d prefer to not see skateboarding there. It hits too close to home.

I heard you went to a Christian school. How was that?
I went to a Christian school my whole life. My parents assumed that I was going to have a better education. I grew up in Santa Ana, California, which is a bit on the lower class side. My parents didn’t want me to get involved in gang shit or drugs early on, you know? So I wasn’t enrolled in the public school system. Skating gave me that public school system fuel anyway [laughs].

What age did you end up losing your virginity?
[Laughs] 17. So pretty reasonable, but I guess for most people that kind of is a late bloomer. In Christian school, dude, the sex ed was skimmed over. It was no week long course or a whole semester, it was just two days. They just really didn’t want to touch on it at all.

photo: alex papke

Now that you’re not skating for a paycheck, has it changed the level you’re pushing yourself to skate at?
I think skating less often drives me more when the moment comes. I could work two weeks straight, but then I have that week off where I’m all in and I’m skating the spots I really wanted to skate. Also, working all week forces me to be like, “I’m fucking going for it, I don’t care.”

I want to get things that I’m proud of, that way when I go back to work I don’t feel like I didn’t do anything. My accomplishments in skating aren’t for the bread, they’re for myself, and I’ve always set a pretty high standard for myself.

“Just because you model does not mean you deserve to be on the shoe company, the clothing company or the energy drink company.”

Why hasn’t Nyjah or someone just gotten you on that Monster money?
I have no idea. [laughs] I have so many friends in the industry, but I’m going to skate for myself. I’m not going to act like a pop star like the rest of these fucking kids out here who think they deserve everything. That shit’s despicable to me. That’s not skateboarding.

Just because you model does not mean you deserve to be on the shoe company, the clothing company or the energy drink company. I don’t give a shit. Your skating needs to be the proof. And that’s how I grew up idolizing skating. The skating did the talking, not the way the guy dresses or whatever else. It’s just sad now, man.

It almost feels like some people skate just to get a modeling career.
Exactly! And I mean, sure, I’m going to do a modeling gig, but I’m not going to base my whole career on that. I’m not going to name any names, but I’ve heard some of these dudes who are originally skateboarders who are now models say, “I could give a shit about a board.” Dude, then don’t skate professionally anymore. Give it to the person who deserves it.

If you’re getting paid tens of thousands of dollars for modeling, why the fuck do you even need skateboarding? There’s dudes who deserve that check more than you. Especially when you’re taking it for granted.

You must have been to a couple of Nyjah’s house parties over the years, right?
I’ll maybe pull up to a Nyjah party once or twice a year with my roommates and we will just go have some laughs, essentially. I’ve been to some crazy ones where there’s 200 to 300 people in his house. All the doors have to be closed so the neighbors can’t hear the commotion, and even with that shit’s still cracking from outside.

He’s got security guards too. He’s basically a Hollywood celebrity so it becomes one of those things. One guard is at the door, two are at his side. They know all his belongings and make sure nothing gets stolen.

“Every injury would make me stray further from the way we skated growing up. I couldn’t be Zero anymore.”

I know you’ve been sort of been known as “David Loy’s Brother” for a while. Do you feel like you’ve broken out of that?
Breaking out of that shell has been hard. I used to get flow from the same brands David was getting, but every injury would make me stray further from the way we skated growing up. I couldn’t skate like a Zero skater anymore, and I had to rework my brain. It has never left, that top-rope, Zero and Foundation style, but I enjoy the creative skateboarding these days. I wanted to create my own little avenue in the way I skate, so I changed my perspective.

Who would win in a fight?
David every time. It’s always that little brother syndrome. You think you have him, but you don’t [Laughs].

We have an older brother, Bryce, too. He would defend me whenever David would heckle me or wrestle.

photo by: alex papke

I’ve never heard much about your oldest brother, what’s he like?
Bryce was a jack of all trades with the way he interacted with the world. He always had this kind of fuck it all mentality. He hated authority and he treated life with two little fingers up.

But he got in a rock jumping accident. He jumped off a 60 foot cliff into two feet of water.

He shattered his feet and five parts of his vertebrae. He also tore his spinal cord and pretty much was paralyzed. He was in the ICU for three months. It was gnarly.

He tried to live with pain for five years, and he’d go through ups and downs trying to create different ways of pain management. He would go see shamans, do opium, the whole nine.

In the end, pills ate away at him.

“If you take enough of those fucking pills they start eating away at your body, and they start eating away at your brain.”

How did his passing affect you and your brother?
I was the one who took Bryce to get his last refill of pills, and it took me a long time to reconcile that it wasn’t my fault. It was hard for my entire family.

If you take enough of those fucking pills they start eating away at your body, and they start eating away at your brain. He started making stuff up that wasn’t true and pretty much pinned the whole family against each other.

My grandma ended up taking him in because nobody else could anymore. It got so hard that even she couldn’t handle it. He passed away at her house the day after my dad’s birthday. He tried to end his life on my dad’s birthday, but he missed it by like two hours.

He had a lot of resentment for your dad?
He thought my Dad was abusive, which literally never happened. I think it was from how altered his mindset was from the pills. We got the belt growing up, but so did the rest of my generation. All these young kids now, they don’t understand. It’s just the way the world worked, but yeah, my brother was just really spiteful and tried to come after my Dad.

Now, every time it’s my Dad’s birthday, it’s a rough day.

What’s crazy is my grandmother, the one who housed my brother during his troubles up until his passing, ended up passing away seven years later on the same fucking day. That’s just the way the world works with my family. The timing is impeccable.

How old were you? Did you get some help while this was happening?
I was 15, 16 at the time. All of this really whipped me into an adult at an early age. It took a while for me to have a sense of humor again. It fucked me up.

I ended up going to therapy. My whole family went together for years on end. The therapist who took us on as a family runs a recovery group that me and my brother work with for teens who are misguided. We’ve been teaching these kids how to skate, which is pretty awesome. And that’s all through the therapist who dealt with my family’s problems.

Man, you really never know what people are going through. If you didn’t tell me any of this, I would of never had any inkling.
It’s never been my MO. Other people want to force this shit down people’s throats. If they want to hear me out I will gladly talk about it, but I’m not going to be the mental health guy. I’ll never be all, “I know this, I know that,” because nobody knows. It’s never going to be easy and no one’s a fucking expert and that’s what pisses me off. The only solution is to cut down these pills and address the opioid epidemic. That’s the solution. We need to find proper alternatives for these people.

“Shit can be sour but it can also be sweet. I’m tough and I can handle anything that gets thrown at me.”

I’m at a loss for words. I mean, thank you for sharing. I’m sorry you had to go through this your whole life. That’s so heavy for a teenager.
It’s fine. I got crazy love from him, and I’ll never take that for granted. That still lives with me every day. There are still songs I hear that we would listen to that I can’t control myself. I’ll just start fucking balling crying. I always get those moments. It’s really tough. It’s hard to try and be the tough guy in that situation, and honestly it’s healthy to let it out.

photo by: alex papke

Definitely.
I just don’t want to force my sorrows onto other people. That’s one thing I learned from Bryce. He never did that to anybody other than his close family. But it was the pills talking. He got hijacked. He got hijacked by the fucking pharmacies. The pharmaceutical companies hijacked my brother.

Dude, you need some white magic in your life or something, some protective magic. I feel like you got cursed or something.
I’ve heard that before with my family, but I try not to think about it like that. I try to remember that shit can be sour but it can also be sweet. I’m tough and I can handle anything that gets thrown at me. Skating is bullshit compared to what I’ve been through [laughs].

Interview by: Ian Michna
Photos by: Ryan Lee, Ben Karpinski and Alex Papke
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