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| SKIP MARCOTTE » | |||
There’s not much this guy can’t do | |||
Marcotte lives in Portland with his wife Becky, and continues to make an impact each day. He places high in downhill races, organizes skateboard competitions, designs innovating skateboard decks, makes art, can ride any board you give him amazingly and has a charming personality. Movies, photo shoots, travels all over...there is not much this talented man can't do. Born in Hanover, N. H., he has made the east, west and in between his home. Take away everything and Skip remains one of the most genuine people you will ever meet.When did you get into boards sports? I got a plastic skateboard when I was 7 or 8, like a toy, messed around with that. Then at 9 or 10 I got a skimboard from one of our neighbors. He skimboarded in the golf courses and the swales between the sidewalk and the street in the neighborhood in Naples [Florida]. Just homemade; made in the garage plywood boards. Started surfing around ninth grade. Would you say experiences in life shape you? Definitely: Good, bad and indifferent. Would you be a totally different person if it weren’t for skimming, skating, surfing, etc.? Absolutely. There are certain things, especially with skateboarding. There are a lot of life lessons that you don’t know it when you are doing it, perseverance, patience, determination, tolerance for pain [laughs]. Just learning things that are worthwhile are going to cost you physically and mentally. How was the surfing scene in Florida when you were growing up?It was just something most people did…people weren’t super into it. Couple of the guys were getting boards from different shops but no one took it too seriously. What are some of your favorite spots to surf in Florida? Little down from the boardwalk in Melbourne Beach. How did you get hooked up with the people from Spectrum, they made skimboards too, right? A guy I went to high school with. Spectrum worked with Harry [Wilson] and SandBlaster for a while, around the late 1980s. But then they started doing foam core, it was wet layup before the vacuum pac. They played around with stringer boards and stuff like that. It was nice because SandBlaster had that relationship and I had that relationship with the guys from Spectrum, we were able to try a couple different things, you know being able to be in the factory working with Bruce and Greg, they were into it. When did your Skimboarding career get started and how did you come to Dewey? The first pro board I got was a balsa and fiberglass Western Flyer made by a guy in Sarasota, Juan Rodriguez, and he was friends with Jeff Crawford who had a shop on the boardwalk at the time, so I went to a few contest on the East Coast and West Coast of Florida. It was a good time. Harry was doing a big Demo for the Sundeck Classic [surf festival] at the Holiday Inn in Melbourne one year. I was skimming the demo with Doug Cargee and Bryan Williams, they skimmed for Sand Blaster at the time and afterwards I got a hand-me-down skimboard, my first foam board, from Harry that day. I think it was Doug’s hand-me-down. I was stoked on! I worked at restaurants at the time. The fact that summer is the off-season in Florida, and Francis [Walsh] had a lot of great things to say about Dewey, sounded like a lot of fun. I spent many summers in Dewey skimming. What is one of your most memorable skim session in Delaware? Probably would have to be a Thursday or Friday night before the contest in Dewey on New Orleans Street. [It was] one of those evenings when everybody is just rolling into town. Everybody is jazzed to be there. The waves are good; it’s a quiet evening. As far as wave quality…South Side or North Shores. Best skim contest results? The 93’ East Coast Championships…winning the masters and getting second behind Brice [Roughton] in the superheat. Your thoughts on skimboarding progression in general? Keep it how it is or main stream? To make it simple, things that people were making occasionally [tricks]…they are pulling regularly in contest runs. Incredible; way better wave riding. The eternal question [laughs]: there was a time back in the early ‘90s,when I thought, if bodyboarding can get this big why can’t skimboarding. It is so much more interesting. But as the years went by, accessibility is the key issue. Can anyone do it? Skimboarding is one of those things that if you don’t pick it up as a kid and feel comfortable on it, it’s really hard to learn it, especially as an adult. Jason Wilson and Joey Vavala are perfect examples of people who learned at a young age. The price of admission as far as pain is a little too high for any reasonable adult [laughs]. There are way better ways to have fun. It would be fantastic for some of these guys to be able to make a living and have an organized tour that has livable prize money. Visually it is an incredible sport, right there on the beach, is a lot more intimate to watch. Its quick and there is carnage. Worst wipeout? Hitting a crack at night on a sidewalk is always really bad, but the few times bones have been broken would have to rate up there. Dislocated and fractured my ankle skimming in Dewey first thing in the morning…dry hair! And then, almost two years ago, I broke my tibfib on a 16-inch bike, hill bombing in Portland. Races every Sunday, its fun but sucks for work on Monday. You live in Portland, Oregon. What is it like bombing hills and having access to some of the best skate parks in the world on the daily? The hardest part is finding time to do it all, and energy. Portland is one of those places that no matter what you want to do that day, you can call somebody up and find someone that is down to bomb hills, if its raining, there are a couple indoor places to skate. A friend of mine does the trifecta every now and then…surf in the morning, skate in the afternoon and then snowboard Mt. Hood. What is the Cathlamet Corral race? It’s a race in a small town on the Columbia, (Cathlamet) about an hour north of Portland, between Seattle and Portland and we were approached to organize some races there. We had about 80 people this year for the downhill, 16 people for the tight slalom, and we did a mystery slalom, which was a different take on slalom, up hill start, ramps onto the sidewalk and off of the side walk, we weren’t expecting too much of a response but we had 30 some people for that. We raised $5,000 for the skate park and next year should be bigger. Primarily it’s regional skaters but we do have a lot of people coming from B.C. and Colorado. First year we did it, we had it coincide with the Downhill World Championships at Maryhill, that race draws people from four or five different continents. You travel a lot for skate competitions, one of your stops was in Europe, where you placed fifth in the world. The skate scene there is incredible. I’m an idiot for not going 20 years ago,. We spent two weeks for two races; one just outside of Prague and one in Amsterdam. There are a lot of teenage kids that train and are super serious. Gotta watch out for them. It was fun; most of the guys ahead of me were the kids that trained all summer so I was stoked to take fifth behind them. Is the downhill skate community still growing? I think so. The growth that I’ve seen while involved in just a few years, little bit in Vail. I did a couple of races there and rode the Vail Pass all the time but since I moved to Portland I’ve seen the scene get crazy. It’s gotten a lot bigger. There are a lot of people in the skate community hating on downhillers? One of the things that drew me to slalom was that it was looked down on so much. It’s people doing something different and it’s not getting the recognition that it deserves, it may not be a popular opinion that the downhillers deserve the recognition but it just seems skateboarding has gotten pretty stale. Most of the kids in Portland can do all the free style tricks and flat land curve tricks and some of them understand the history of skateboarding and where it all fits in, but it is just not acknowledged by the majority of skaters. Comes back to turning, loosen your trucks up. Are you a skater above all? I think it all comes back to that, it probably wasn’t the first love but yeah definitely. I think I identify with it a little more. Where does snowboarding fall in the list? It is another one of those things I wished I had done earlier. Snowboarding brings all the different parts of different board sports together in an incredible environment. I lived in Vail for 10 seasons, seven of them 100-days-plus and a couple of them were way less. Favorite run in Vail? Favorite crew? Minturn Mile. Changes every day. Get your pow turns on top and boarder cross race to the bar. Favorite crew would have to be The One Track Mind guys. What was it like to rep for some of the biggest snowboard companies in the industry? It was a great experience. Something that I worked towards for a long time and it was quite overwhelming. Being on the road was the hard part, worked with incredible people. How cool is your wife Becky? Extremely. We have snowboarding in common, but she encourages me in every way and in everything I do, she is my No. 1 fan. What can you say about a wife that willingly opens her house to 15 skaters. She is awesome. She is the best. We will be celebrating our 10-year anniversary soon. Going back to Portland, the art scene is really big over there. How is your art doing? It’s coming along. It’s a learning process. It has been fun to be in a community that’s open. I do woodwork, acrylics on canvas, rattle can, brush stuff, stains. I don’t buy any material besides paint sometimes. Everything I paint on its either found or given. Have a show in November, but have some stuff up in North East Portland right now. Thanks, Skip, for the interview. You are the best. I’m lucky to have you as my one of my closest friends. Love ya! |
Friday, October 1, 2010
SKIP MARCOTTE
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