Will Harmon
DCMT: Just looking back at the lengthy list of videos you’ve cropped up in you must have started getting coverage really early
WILL: I’ve lived in so many places. I grew up in North Carolina and I started skating there, so I met all these North Carolina guys like Kenny Hughes and Chet and Pete Thompson was like the photographer. Me and Kenny were the guinea pigs he took loads of photos of, so I started to get photos in Slap probably way before I deserved it you know? Not that I ever deserve it.
Ahh, don’t be like that
But you know, before most people probably would have, just because he was a fledgling photographer and I was just the dude always skating.
What was it like growing up in North Carolina? The way I imagine it is that there’s not too much to skate.
Yeah, it’s just a town in a Southern state of America. Kinda everyone knew each other all around the state. They’d have little contests and everyone would see each other, and there was this park down in Fayetteville where we’d all meet up. It was really cool, it was a good scene back then. But the older I got, and by the time I graduated High School, it was really bad, the only time I’d have fun skating is when we went out of town. We’d go up to DC, we’d go skate Pluhowski with all those guys, and I couldn’t believe how incredible it was up there. Suddenly North Carolina was shit. By the time I was eighteen or nineteen I knew what I had to do, I needed more, I needed a city to live in.
And that was Boston?
Yes. I went up there for the summer when I was eighteen and I couldn’t believe what an incredible time I had. I couldn’t believe life could be that good. I went up there actually just to skate for the summer, but then after that there was no way I could go back. I thought, I’ll take it through the winter and see how it is...and I was like, I can’t go back to my old life now, its too good here. So I stayed there for seven years.
So what did you do to survive while you were there?
Whatever, I worked at a skate shop, barely, like two days a week. Back when I was a kid and fast food was like gourmet or something I didn’t spend a lot of money. I didn’t drink...well maybe the occasional 40 on the stoop, but you didn’t spend a lot of money at that age. You didn’t go out to restaurants and stuff. I remember I went out there with seven hundred dollars and it lasted me the whole summer. Can you imagine three hundred and fifty quid lasting you a whole summer?
You’d be lucky for it to last you a week here in London
Yeah, but back then you wouldn’t really go through money. We skated everywhere we wanted to go.
When did you first start getting hooked up with free stuff?
I kind of started right at the end, right before I left North Carolina, from Channel One, Marty Jiminez’s company, ‘The Jinx’ you know. So I was getting stuff through them and always the skate shops. If it wasn’t for skate shops I’d have nothing, everyone’s been so cool to me. I used to skate for Criminal back then, that was actually in Massachusetts and they helped me out...err...Converse. Damn, I must be the only guy who’s ridden for all three [big shoe companies Puma, Converse and Adidas]. I don’t think there’s anyone else who’d rode for all three.
You just need Nike for the full set now.
Yes (laughing). I’m ok.
So who were you skating with in Boston?
Panama Dan used to be this big Boston guy and there were all these other Panamanians, friends of his that I used to skate with. Some of my friends moved there as well, my friend Matt Willigan from DC, he was there the first summer, me him and Kenny went up to Boston like in 1995. Man...this is dating me so bad! From when I moved there till when I left in 2003 I skated with so many different people. I started skating with the younger generation, as the older you get, lots of the people your age don’t skate anymore, so you’d always just skate with different people. I’ve always been quite a skate rat and have had to skate, so I’d have to skate with younger people. I’m trying to think, I used to skate with Vinny Ponte, I had some fun times with him, and little Eli, like Eli Reed.
Even though you lived in Boston so long I guess for most people they associate you with San Francisco, maybe because of the FTC video and some of the magazine coverage you’ve had.
Well I lived there from 2003, but when I moved to Boston I’d go to out to SF almost every winter, for three weeks or month or so. I don’t know, I’d have photos out there and I skated with Cairo and Elias when they had that big 411 thing [Issue 39] that Ewan filmed, and Shier was there as well. I enjoyed it so much I eventually moved out there.
You’re certainly well traveled
Yes, but then I’ve lost my identity in a sense. People ask me where I’m from and it’s so difficult. I was born in London, but I’m not British. Even though I hold a British passport, I don’t really consider myself British, but then do I say North Carolina, a place I haven’t lived in eleven years. Or do I say Boston, or SF, where I lived for three years, I’ve lost my identity...it’s kinda weird.
And now you’re in London. You were actually over here last year for a couple of months, did that convince you it was worth moving here properly?
I’d always thought about living here, because I had the opportunity through dual citizenship, but I always had a girlfriend or something going on in America where I couldn’t fully do it. Then a few years ago me and my long-term girlfriend broke up and so I came over here for a couple of weeks, I was mostly in Barcelona, but I was like, ‘man I had a had a really good time in London I have to go back there’. So, last summer I was back here for two months and got that apartment with Josh Stewart and everyone. The weather was great last summer, it was an amazing summer and it sealed the deal. But I didn’t want to move here and just live and do what I was doing, I wanted to like further myself so I decided go to school.
Skate-wise what are the most obvious differences between here and there? And has living in London changed the way you skate at all?
To be honest I really like British skateboarders and the British style of skateboarding. It’s more my kind of skateboarding. In California, I don’t know, everyone’s trying to jump down some huge stairs and handrails and it seems like, at least in London, it’s not really like that and that’s what I like about it. It reminds of the East Coast, where stuff isn’t perfect so you really have to adapt to skate.
I think when people visit and stay for an extended period they get it, but if you’re over here for just a week or two on a tour it’s like, ‘why have we come to this spot it’s jacked, the run-up is f—ked’ blah, blah, blah
Coming from SF where it was the skate Mecca, that’s turned into everything is knobbed and everything’s a bust. Here yes...it might be rough, and you gotta go all the way across town to skate one spot. I don’t know, it’s not even like that (laughing). I enjoy it. Skateboarding challenges me here, whereas in SF I had to strive to skate, but didn’t have the right stuff to skate and I ended up just going to the skate park every day. I’m a street skater you know? Like if I was asked to shoot an interview over the summer in SF, man it’d take me like two years or something. It’d be so hard! I’ve shot more photos here since I moved in the past six months than I did in SF probably the whole three years I lived there.
Do you think that might have something to do with you being a big fish in a small pond over here? Do you know what I mean? In SF it’d be easy for anyone to get lost in the crowd.
Yeah, yeah, I don’t know. Maybe, but especially in London you’re used to seeing Americans all the time, rinsing the spots. Maybe the fact that I live here will give me some weight, I’m not just some fair-weather friend you know, I’m sticking it out for the winter. I genuinely get excited to skate, like when I was a kid again, here and I kinda lost that feeling in SF.
I think a lot of people who move to a new city tend to feel that and especially when they have a whole new crew of people to skate with
You still feel like you have these tricks in you, things you want to accomplish in skateboarding and if you can’t do it’s really aggravating.
The older you get, you have so many tricks figured out in your head it’s just seems to be getting your fatigued body to do them that’s the hard part
I was thinking about this the other day. I’d just skated the other day for the first time in two weeks, which ten years ago if I hadn’t been skating in that long I would be absolute rubbish on a board. I couldn’t do a thing. The longer you skate I feel it’s not as hard now, your body knows it and you’re not that rusty coming back. It wasn’t like that when I was a kid, I remember when I was thirteen going to summer camp and they wouldn’t let me bring a skateboard for three weeks. When I came back and tried to skate again it was like awful, trying to remember how. I think you learn the most tricks when you’re like sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, I think it’s the basis of what you’re going to be like.
I think you’re right
Don’t get me wrong I’ve learnt loads of tricks since then, but a whole lot of it comes down to those three years. When you’re fourteen, it’s so different these days, skateboarding is so different, but when I started I mean a nose slide wasn’t even invented, ridiculous! It’s all so much more laid out now and that’s why kids are getting so much better quicker. When I started skating there were rails on your board, and a tailbone, I’m probably one of the last few from that old generation, ha-ha.
Well there are a few of us left
Having said that, going through all those changes really helped develop skateboarders’ style over the years. That’s why I think so many kids today it’s so hard for them to develop their style as everyone’s skating the same way now. Style is not the clothes you wear, it’s how you look on a skateboard, the way you push. Skateboarding’s changes molded skaters into a certain way of skating and I don’t think it’ll be like that anymore.
Have past injuries begun to take their toll now that you’ve past 30?
Well, yes and no. I never knew this until a couple of years ago when I finally went to the doctor and got an x-ray, but I guess I fractured my ankle somewhere around 2000/2001. I have like two events where I think it might have happened, but anyways, I’d fractured my ankle, never got it looked at and it healed back, but bone grew over the fracture. So...my left ankle just looks like a permanently fat sprained ankle. It’s not that bad, but now I have this bone spur and if I jump down something for a long time it rubs together and I can’t skate for a couple of weeks. That’s prevented from me jumping down a lot of big stuff. But that’s fine I don’t skate like that way anyway (laughing).
Oh I hurt my knee, so I had knee-surgery. Not the gnarly ACL one, but arthroscopic surgery where they shave a little part off. That when I was really young and it was my first big injury and that made me a little more cautious I would say. Erm...I also used to have really bad problems with my heels, but I think that was from skating in Vans so much when I was a kid. It’s not that I wanted to stop skating big stuff, but its just I couldn’t stand being hurt so much. I opted to skate other things just so I could skate more. I’d prefer to be skating to not skating.
It’ll a little like what you said about learning tricks, on the most part if you’re not jumping down big stuff by seventeen, eighteen then you probably won’t be after that
Yeah, there are a few exceptions though. Look at Andrew Reynolds’ stuff it’s incredible, he’s taller than me and he has the knees of like a sixteen year old. I just don’t understand it, it’s amazing. But yeah, I just love skateboarding and don’t want to be hurt.
I have to ask you if it bothers you, or has it bothered you in the past being tagged in articles and what not as ‘the guy who could’ve been pro’ etc?
You know what? I’ve always just been a skateboarder and that’s what I enjoy doing. It’s not like your decision to go pro, it’s someone else’s and if someone else doesn’t think I can be a pro skateboarder then that’s what you have to do. It’s cool that some people stuck up for me and were like, ‘oh he should’ve gone pro, why didn’t he?’ I don’t have an answer why I didn’t. I made a lot of bad decisions with sponsors and I’m not good at bigging up myself like some people are, calling up the companies, I don’t like doing that. Yes, if I could do it all over again I’d get an agent, I’m not very good at self-promoting and I guess that hurt me I suppose. Whatever, I love skateboarding, I don’t get paid for it, but I’m just going to do it regardless.
It’s not the be all and end all, and I’m sure you don’t cry yourself to sleep about it every night, but from the outside looking in, the really shitty thing must be that people still poke fun just because of that.
Yeah, like I said it’s not my decision. It’d be great to be pro don’t get me wrong, but it’s a board company not a shoe company that turns you pro. Still in this day and age, even though people have better video parts for their shoe company and they get paid more, it’s the board company that turns you pro. At key moments when I was skating all right or whatever...I didn’t have a board sponsor. And at one time while I was riding for Channel One they actually asked me to go pro, me and my friend Jake Jones, but we thought we weren’t ready. We were like eighteen, man...I don’t know the skate industry, no one knows who I am, I didn’t want to turn pro...I didn’t think I was ready. We were like why don’t we wait a year and let it build-up and stuff and then a year goes by and Channel One is gone. Years later I get on Supernaut and then that company just fell apart, mismanagement all around. Yes, I’m just not good at calling someone else and telling them all the tricks I did and what photos I had in which magazines, I’m just not good at that. I’m just a normal guy you know? I don’t wear tight jeans, I’m not like a hip-hop guy, I’m normal and I guess that’s just not marketable.
It just seems lame and pretty pointless you still being referred to as ‘Man-Am’ or whatever in articles
Yeah...there are a couple of magazine editors I’m pretty bummed about right now, but what can you do? They always just add into the story too, ‘oh and Man-am’, why don’t you just print my name? Are you going to get confused with some other Will Harmon? Just say Will Harmon...jeez. I need to get an honorary board from someone just to erase that title. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never wanted to ride for some complete shit company just to get a board. I’d like to think I had a little more integrity than that...
It’d be a hollow victory then
Exactly. Well I’m pro, but for somebody you’ve never heard of. Forget about it. I’d rather be some am that just skated. And there’s loads of good ams who are exactly the same...like Robbie McKinley, Rob Pluhowski loads of good people who in my eyes should’ve got paid for skateboarding. But they rode for...(laughing)...they rode for much better companies that I ever had!
Will would like to thank; everyone at Slam City Skates, Mathieu and Matt at Revival for the Chocolate boards, Ches and Bryce for the Adidas, Rodney at Billabong, Gareth Skewis, Paul Shier, Sam Ashley, all his friends in the U.S. and U.K, and everyone else that has helped him since moving to England. Cheers!
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