“These guys are idiots so I was just running with it”

When I was little I used to read skate magazines and bug out at the crazy stories spun by pros in their interviews because they seemed to live such wild, reckless lives. Case in point: the Andy Roy interview in BB, which I could scan if somebody hasn’t already done it, Shiloh, etc. Jim Gagne of all people had a really entertaining interview in a mid-90s Thrasher I have somewhere. And Ryan Kenreich, I think, had a pretty hilarious interview in the waning years of BB where he broke down his lengthy arrest record.

Anyway, in the May issue of Slap there’s a tag team interview with David Gravette and Devin Appelo that was pretty funny. You have to marvel at the logic at work in this story, really:

David Gravette: It started out as five of us walking through the streets with ski masks. One of us was carrying a crow bar, the other one had a thing of rope, and the other dude had a flashlight.

Devin Appelo: Didn’t we have a saw?

DG: No. Anyone who saw us out the window was gonna call the cops, but these guys are idiots so I was just running with it. So we walked to the house–it’s this big Indian museum with a bunch of Indian artifacts. Taylor’s plan was to jump on the roof and take a smoke ventilation piece out and rappel in. We found out when we got there that the shingles were too icy to climb up, but Devin used his crow bar to pop the door open. We walked in and hung out for a bit. I had to convince Taylor not to take a bear pelt. He was running around with the bear pelt over him pretending to be a bear and ran into a pole. Then Taylor and Devin wanted to light a fire in there.

DA: Dude, how cool would it be to light a fire in there?

DG: I was like, no, we gotta go.” So we left and Devin was like, “Let’s get on this train, it’ll take us back to where we wanna go.” So we get on this train in the middle of winter in Portland and it’s so cold. We’re holding on and it started picking up speed for a second and I was like, “Dude, we’re not gonna be able to jump off if it keeps going!” It kept going for a bit and it got pretty scary, but then it slowed down and we hopped off. We weren’t really close to anywhere near where we wanted to be, but it was alright.

Slap: Spell “alligator.”

DG: Fuck you. What if I get it wrong? I can’t even try right now; it’s too dangerous.

DA: Dude, I could never spell that word.

DG: I can write it. A-L-I… Does it got two L’s?

DA: No, I don’t think so.

DG: It’s just A-L-I-G-A-T-O-R, right?

Slap:There’s two L’s, but I’ll give you an “A” for effort, idiot.

DG: Dude, this is gonna make me look like a dumb ass.

Despite (because of?) his general idiocy Gravette has been skating like a man possessed this last year. He landed the new TWS cover with one of his kinker rail attacks and the photo above from the Slap interview is pretty bananas. Plus he has the TWS video part coming up. Get your money up Navarette.