Well, Ryan's doing with his business right now is incredible, I mean, the kid literally
took a dream and turned it into a reality.
Ryan's company for Elizabeth and what it shows for that is just, it shows that, you
know, an everyday person can just come out if they believe in something, they can make
it happen.
We just take old beat up thrash skateboards that nobody wants, you know what I mean?
It's crazy that you can just take trash and literally turn it into someone's treasure.
Most of us went to school together, as far as me and Danny, that's our story.
Being a skater wasn't like it is now.
I mean, I couldn't skate down a street block when I was a kid without someone trying to
make fun of us or trying to give us a hard time.
Danny Rollerblades, and I skateboard, but you know, when you're the only two people
in Elizabeth who do either one of those, you know, we hung out all the time, you know,
going skating.
Any time we needed something drawn as a kid, it was always Danny, you know, shoes I met
like maybe six years ago, five, six years ago, and we've been really good friends since
we met.
He's insane, like the ideas that come out of his head, you will never think of yourself.
Everybody wants to do what their big brother's doing.
So, you know, that's why I got into drawing with my older brother, too.
Yeah, he used to like sketch, and he's like, how you draw this, how you draw, draw, and
I kept drawing, you know.
Laura, I first met her, a great person, especially, you know, anybody really does express themselves
to like painting, I connect with 100%, you know.
It all started at Stelfish when we had, you know, Orion was like managing the skate shop.
One day he just came to me like, oh, I was bored one day, I just cut a skateboard, see
if I can make a new one out of it.
This is it.
This is the board that started it all for me.
Actually, you know, it was like, you know, why don't we do like a lot of skateboards,
you know, hang them up in the shop, you know, just paint away, you know, let somebody like
just buy like a broken down deck, but it's like painting like fucking monster, you know,
shit.
We thought it was a great idea, like I fetched him the idea of putting shapes to it, like
instead of just an old school traditional skateboard, so I was like, what if we just
had fun with it, you know.
We make the decks out of our house.
It really starts with trying to think of what board we're going to do, and that really comes
from anything.
We'll sit around and just watch a TV.
I got an idea for a board, how about we do, you know, a spray can.
No, I'll design the shape, how I want it to look.
He creates the shapes and we bomb in our art onto them.
At first he was cutting in the bathroom, and then he would just do a sweep up, and he just
got tired of sweeping up, so he decided, you know, I'll make a workshop in my room, I had
a garbage bag, you know, so he did that.
I mean, in painting, I can paint anywhere.
I can paint in the living room, my room, you know, wherever I feel like painting, I can
just go out and paint.
We had no idea where to go, like what to, where to actually set up, then we got word
of going to Union Square.
They just went out with everything they needed, not knowing that you needed a permit.
All the local vendors, they were really liking our stuff.
We actually sold two boards, and then the park ranger came up to us and asked us for
a permit, and we're like sitting there like, oh, what?
You know, we didn't need, no, you needed a permit, so we ended up actually getting kicked
out, you know, so now we have our permit, we have to wait like 20 days, so like in those
20 days we banged out a lot more boards, we did an art show, and now we have like our
permit.
We have to deal now so we can spend all day there and bother all the locals and can't
get kicked out, so it's a pretty sweet, good deal going on.
If it weren't for the shop, it weren't for the fact that we used to get old broken boards,
you know, it's just so many, so many different like life experiences that lead to like what
we're doing now, like for skateboarding to finally show me an outlet where it could
get back to me.
It's just like, you know, mind blowing, man, like I love it, you know.
It feels so fresh but I'm overjoyed.
You
