|
The Long Lost Jef Hartsel Interview
September 3, 1998
| Remember like 6 months ago, when on our frontpage (which itself we had up for like 5 months straight without any changes) said something about an upcoming Jef Hartsel interview? After 6 months with no interview, I'm sure everybody thought that the 50-50 well had run dry. When the loads of hate mail started pouring in, we finally decided to unearth the long lost Hartsel interview microcassette, located deep in the ancient Shaolin vaults. In putting together this page, I ran into a couple of problems... |
  |
Hartsel's ad for Alva circa 1986
|
 |
[left]
Hartsel skating the Neil Blender wall. Transworld cover December 1988 ($3.00) |
| First, the interview was a little outdated. We did this interview when Jef's clothing company Shaolin was still based out of Honolulu (it has since moved to LA and has become a full-blown skateboard company). The second problem was that this interview was so incoherent, I couldn't figure out what the fuck they were talking about, at times it was like some sort of Chinese riddle or something. So, instead of chucking the whole interview all together, I took some of the highlights of the interview and arranged them together so even a moron like me could understand it. In the end, I ended up confusing myself again (what do Tom Groholski, the Philippines, dreadlocks, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, Shaolin teachings, pipe jams, Venice, and Spike Jonze have in common anyway?). All is relative in the world of the the one-handed clapper, Jef Hartsel. |
| Roots |
| "..I'm originally from Japan. I was born and raised in Japan until I was about 6 1/2. And then my mother remarried an American guy, who happened to be in the military, which brought me straight to the East Coast. So around 7, my first experience in America was in South Carolina... |
Entertaining the masses @ the Kapahulu Skatepark
(see: T&C Contest, 1997) |
Smith grind at the Kapahulu Skatepark mini (early 1998) |
| At the time I couldn't even speak English, but the first word I could figure out was like "chink". But it was dope because we lived near this large wooded area, and I was able to spend all my time in the woods....from South Carolina we moved to the Philippines. Then when I was 11, in like 1975, in the Philippines, that's when I saw my first skateboard. On my twelveth birthday, I remember it because it was a bicentenial year, I got my first skateboard. From there, the following year, I pretty much lost interest in conventional sports, sports that all the kids grew up doing, baseball, football, soccer, whatever....When I moved from the Philippines to Jersey, that was when I really got into it, because there were always a lot of people around who skated. In Jersey, it was a trip, just the people who I grew up skating with. I grew up skating with guys like Tom Groholski...I skated with Jim Murphy all the time, he was one of my good friends. I went to the same Junior High School as Mike Vallely. We even lived in the same apartment complex. We didn't know each other back then, though. I definitely got my roots in Jersey. We used to take the train and the bus into New York City. That was when the New York City kids were skateboarding on like streetsigns, with the trucks and wheels that they had back then. They were definitely skaters of a different time. " |
| Alva, Contests, and Strippers(??) |
| "In 1983, while I was living in Hawaii...I got picked up by Alva, not by Tony Alva, but by Mondo, who was the art director and the epitome of what the whole Alva scene was about, but he was from Jersey too, he was an East Coast boy...We met in Hawaii from this girl, who was a skater and she was a stripper. |
Team Alva in Chicago 1988
|
| I used to spin pizzas in Waikiki, and she walked in all wasted and shit, and she was wearing an Alva shirt, and I said, 'What's up with that?' you know what I mean? Back then it was like if you saw somebody wearing a skate t-shirt or even a pair of Vans or something it meant something, you know? These days it doesn't mean shit. But, at the time she was seeing this guy Mondo, who would come out here, he fully surfed and skated. So I took him skating. And that's when Grant Fukuda had his renovated 9 foot ramp....I was already skating a lot of contests, mostly vert contests. |
 |
Picture and results from Palm Desert Ramp Battle II, Palmdale, CA 1986
|
| So, anyway, jumping ahead, after I was sponsored by Alva they wanted me to skate all the contests, you know, the CASL series or like the Palm Desert Ramp Battles, back when vert contests had titles, you know? And I started doing good, so it took me up another notch into this whole sponsored skater thing." |
| Pole Jams |
| 50-50: First we want to know about the pipe jam. The wallie off the bent pole. Was that a Hartsel original?
Hartsel: Ummm, no. The originator of jamming into and up and off of anything is definitely Chris Cook.
50-50: So it's a Cooksie thing not a Hartsel thing.
Hartsel: It was a Cooksie thing, but that pole just became the main pole for that shit.
50-50: First time I saw it, I thought you were ollieing over it.
Hartsel: Yeah, that's what a lot of people thought.
|
 |
| Rubbish Heap |
| "In 'Rubbish Heap,' me and my friends actually made that track using a sample of Shabba Ranks. As far as the music, I'm still a member of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Whatever I did at the time, I wanted all my friends and other people's hands to be in it. That whole video, that was when skateboarding was really changing. Jesse Martinez and my part in that video, we didn't get to participate that much in it. |
Rubish Heap, video 1989
|
| Jesse and I we filmed our shit in one day. When you watch our part, you don't see our wardrobe change, you know what I'm saying? I got to give props to Spike Jonze for setting a standard in skateboarding videos, which set a standard for all other videos out there. I've known him for a long time time before that project back when he was a still photographer, and action photographer. It was cool filming with him, that was the fun part of the video." |
| Shaolin |
| "Shaolin is about doing the things we always wanted to do without compromise. It's everything. It started out with the clothes, but the thing me and Slick had to come to terms with, was Shaolin was there before us, and Shaolin will be there after us. Shaolin is bigger than us. That's why us doing it, we're really blessed. All of us work at the Shaolin temple, we work with the Sifu, the master there, that actually trained and grew up and had the lineage of Shaolin in mainland China and now New York City. Not everyone knows what it's about, but there's mystique behind the word nowadays. We are moving our Shaolin operation to the LA soon, me and my partner Slick. |
Hartsel gives a clap for his pro-models and his Japanese toy collection |
| We are (also) starting a skateboard company called Shaolin Wood. And we're going to keep the Shaolin clothes label worldwide and introduce a girl's label and run with that." |
| Dreadlocks |
| "(About everyone cutting off the dreads (Jim Murphy, Kale Sandridge, etc.))...I don't think its about a look, I think its about self. We don't need the extra attention these days, especially when there are so many perpetrators out there. The most important thing though, is there's people who have dreads, and people who can't cut them, then there's people that cut them and then they change. I feel like I'm the same person really. The dreads were just an outward symbol of what I was doing, my separation, my devotion, whatever I was into. It also helped me stay on my disciplined role. The dreads may be gone, but I think spirituality is making a comeback." |
 |
| The Roof & Skating Waikiki |
| "I skated that roof in Waikiki only once. There's actually this little holding lounge room, you can get out through the window. I think it could be skated more these days, the reason why it was such a big deal back then, was because you'd actually risk your life by skating up there. The Samoan security guards would beat your ass for doing something like that. Back then they were a lot meaner. That was actually half the fun. |
The rooftop in Waikiki allegedly skated by Hartsel and friends. |
| Cops would show up last, they didn't care, they would laugh at you.... (skating in Waikiki) didn't used to be illegal. Back when we skated Waikiki the drinking age was 18, so there were always young people down there, there was a whole different vibe down there. I have a funny story about how it became illegal. Back when they were petitioning to make skating illegal in Waikiki, there was this TV crew, that wanted me to show them some some skateboarding, by saying they were doing a story on helping to build a skatepark. So I skated around Waikiki, and did shit off benches or whatever for them. Then, later I come to find out that they used this video of me on the evening news, petitioning how skateboarding should be outlawed in Waikiki. It was crazy. I don't know if that kind of stuff could happen today. |
|
