How did the act of collecting become a talking point for the book?
I’m one of those sad people in life that is genetically bound to nostalgia and the sentimental act of collecting things. I began avidly collecting boards circa 2000—I’d collected some before that, but never in quite so manic a fashion—which sounds harmless at first until you learn that some of those boards can cost anywhere from 50 to 10,000 bucks. Worse yet, I have that OCD problem where once I get into something it’s all or nothing. And in this case “all” meant the creation of not one but two books. Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated with the collector psychosis, so this isn’t so much a “skateboards are super neat collectibles!” talking point as it is a half-ass thesis on the literal madness that collecting can be at times in direct relation to skateboards. But in the end it really was just an excuse so I could drive around California for another two years and root out all sorts of boards that are still in existence and have rarely or never been seen before. Interview continues with
