"I've been wanting to get a legit interview on the site for awhile now. Since John Drake has moved back into the area, I've been able to contact him more easier. For skateboarding in Huntington 20 years ago, was different than it is today. IGUANA SKATESHOP was holding it down and FALCON PIPE was still available.
Chris Lusher and John Drake have known eachother for awhile, so I figured it would only be best to let them catch up on the good ole days, and in the process get a little history of John from where he's been to where he is now."
- Blair Burns
Lusher : How old were you when you started skating and what was the initial push that made you want to start in the first place?
John Drake : Well that is so long ago it is hard to remember. I think I was in 7th or 8th grade so maybe 13 years old? I used to be into BMX and would always read this magazine BMX Plus and they used to have a editorial series in the magazine called Who's Radder? In one of these series it was skateboarding v. bmx and skating just looked so much cooler and "Radder" to me. So from that point I just did everything I could to get a skateboard to ride. I would borrow a friends skateboard and just go missing with it for days until he tracked me down and could get it back from me. After that it was just begging my dad to buy me a cheap one because money was short and he wasn't about to buy me the one I actually wanted. Eventually he saw how into it I was and bought me a decent one and from there it was on.
Skateboarding was that escape from the dreariness that is Ohio and the more people hated on me for doing it the more I wanted to do it. I had always been an individual since I was a little kid, and having my own unique thing to do was attractive to me. I never wanted to be a clone of everyone else and I think skateboarding offered a great avenue out of the monotony Ohio has to offer.
Lusher : Do you remember in those early days any pros that you started looking up to or anyone you perhaps wanted to emulate?
John Drake : Neil Blender, Mark Gonzales, & Natas Kaupas was who I looked up to when I first started skating. Then it was Matt Hensley and a bunch of others, Ray Barbee, Rudy Johnson, Guy Mariano, Jason Lee. Early on I guess I tried to emulate Gonz and Natas but as you get older, you may look to certain guys for tricks to learn but you don't "copy" them, you try to develop your own thing.
Lusher : Your parents seemed so supportive of what you were doing. I remember your shop in Ohio and thinking it was the best thing that could have happened to that area. How long into skating were you at that time and what role did your parents play in launching the shop?
John Drake : Yeah they were for sure. Well, they had a retail business there and an extra side building, which was tiny, but my dad was cool enough to ask me if I wanted to put some skateboards in there. I was so young and I didn't know what I was doing, but that was really cool of them to always be so supportive. I think that lasted only several months because I never wanted to be in there, I just always wanted to be out skating which is natural for a young kid. I had only been skating for probably over a year or something when that happened. My parents looked after it and sold some stuff for me and I think they were bummed that I didn't really care and was out skating, but they also understood. Thanks mom and dad for everything!
Lusher : It was apparent early on that you were probably the best in the area. Did skating come as easy to you as it seemed to?
John Drake : I was always very athletic and active as a kid. I was into playing pretty much every sport but baseball and it all felt natural and came easy to me. When I was really young I used to just be hellbent on jumping off of the highest things I could find. Skateboarding also felt natural but it was hard work. I skated all day every day to get to the level I wanted to get at. I did realize that amongst my friends that I was able to learn things quicker but there is always something someone can do that you can't, or a trick that comes easier to someone else than it does to you. Certain things you just have to work on harder until you find the right foot placement or whatever it may be. Skateboarding always felt better than other sports because it was all on you whether you learned something or not, there was always a new trick to learn or something new to skate. It gives you a sense of accomplishment when you learn something, but also it allows you to bring your own unique style into each trick.
Spanks & Drake
Lusher : Looking at you from the outside, though we spent alot of time together, there seems to be a pretty definitive timeline with you as far as skating is concerned. Were did Iguana fit into that and how do view that period? Would you call those your formative years? You had really become something of legend during that time to people in a pretty large geographic area.
John Drake : One day I was skating in Huntington and I just happened to skate by Iguana when Ron was in there painting and getting it ready. He wasn't even open yet but I guess after that when it opened I just started going over there all the time and hanging out. I was pretty stoked there was a skateshop that was close to some skatespots and I could hang out at and skate all around town.
I would say it was part of my formative years along with what happened before Iguana opened. It was a great time with great friends and I enjoyed it. You can't go back and re-do your youth again so I'm glad I lived mine the way I wanted and did what I wanted. Ron was a great dude especially to someone like me who didn't grow up with money to spend on skate stuff. He supported me before I had any sponsors, and was cool enough to drive me around to different contests and demos all over Ohio. Big up to Ron for that. I got to meet alot of people in skateboarding because of that right there.
When I was young I was a cocky asshole probably. Whenever I went to other towns or cities I felt I had something to prove with my skating, that no matter where I was from I wanted to skate better than everyone else in Ohio and the whole mid-west or mid-atlantic whatever you want to call it. I don't know about being any kind of legend, but I do know that I could hold it down skateboarding wise. When I entered my first pro contest I got 2nd place and from that point on I felt like I belonged and I could lose that chip on my shoulder. As I grew up I became alot more humble and nice to other people, and it wasn't about proving myself anymore because I did that already.
Lusher : For that time and to alot of the little skate kids I felt you were achieving at least local legend status and not James Dean icon type shit but more like due to what skating used to be as opposed to what it is now you were at least this hero to the up and comers even though you always only ate plain hamburgers from Hardees. What about your first sponsorships and how did they come about? Were you doing the 'sponsor me' VHS tape thing?
John Drake : How much have you had to drink tonight Lusher? Yeah I did the VHS sponsor me tape thing, I think most kids did back then especially if you didn't live in California. I had so many different sponsors as a kid. Some of them actually did come from VHS sponsor me tapes.
I was sponsored by this clothing company owned by Kevin Staab and Joe Johnson called Electric Ocean, Kryptonics Wheels, XXX Skateboards which used to be Brand-X in the 80's, Etnies shoes, and Gouge Clothing, I think all of those came from sponsor me tapes. I forgot how I got on G&S trucks, but when I got on Venture trucks Greg Carroll saw me at a demo in Dayton and he saw that I was riding the G&S trucks, walked up to me during the demo and asked me why in the hell was I riding those wack things, gave me his card and told me I was on Venture now. I got on Assault skateboards because I was at a demo skating with Matt Hensley and Matt's friend Ned was there traveling with him and he asked me to skate for his company, I was unsure but he made Matt convince me to skate for him so I said ok. I was about to skate for Life Skateboards but then Sheffey quit so Dyrdek just asked me to skate for Alien and I was stoked on them so I said ok. I had other sponsors during all of this and after, but I always stuck with Alien and Venture. I skated for Etnies for a long time too until I felt they were getting wack. At that point I had been skating for Droors for a long time and they were starting DC shoes so I just decided to skate for them instead.
Once I found sponsors I liked I tried to stick with them until they became wack basically. But, when I was a kid I didn't care really, all I cared about was getting free product so I didn't have to pay for anything.
Lusher : Sober to the bone. Alien was such an awesome company and still is. They had such an original and new approach that was exciting though I'm not sure the boner brigade lovers really got it which made it even better. You and Dyrdek were pretty tight in those early days. What was it like hanging with that crew? There has also been a request for a Bo Turner anecdote.
John Drake : Well back then Alien was different, originally it was not as money and business driven but more art, creative, and skateboard driven. When Neil Blender left the company I was really bummed because he was a great inspiration and a friend. Things always change, sometimes not for the better. After me and Rob moved to California and blew Alien up, the business side of the company grew bigger and bigger, and it just wasn't the same as the early days. Alien is still different from most of the companies which is a good thing, and I still love the skateboarding aspect of the company, and some of the people involved, but it's definately different and now Burton snowboards owns it. It happens to anything once it gets big, whether that be an artist, a band, or any cool company. Money changes everything.
All the Alien dudes are great friends, it was like a gang back in the day, a brotherhood. I have love for all of those dudes, Dyrdek, Conklin, Turner, Morgan, Kirk, Kalis, and Gall. We did some crazy stuff, partied like maniacs, it was good times for sure. Early on Dyrdek and I skated our ass off and did everything we could to blow Alien up. We tried to get as much coverage as possible, do all the contests, make all the connections, whatever we could to make Alien the shit. It's crazy everyone knows him from the TV show now, I trip on that but whatever, he's pretty much the same dude you see on TV. He has always been very business driven, and I'm just not that way. Although the term is cliche, I've always tried to keep it underground and not mainstream because the underground is what i've always liked since I was a kid. You may not make any money that way, but as the saying goes "I'd rather be broke and have a whole lotta respect." Big ups to Rob for doing his thing though.
I don't know what kind of Bo Turner story I can give you, I have so many. I don't even know where to begin. Let's just say that most of the stories have never and will never be told, but not only with Bo, the whole debauchery and craziness of the things the whole Alien team did. Honestly just to repeat them makes the stories sound fake, like it's made up. I'll leave it all to the people's imagination.
Lusher : What happened with you after Workshop?
John Drake : I ended up moving to Charlotte, NC and going to college for graphic design. Studied some photography too. Got my little degree and started working in the design field, have been doing that since 2002. I did an internship at The Mint Museums in Charlotte and they hired me after my internship was up, went on from there to get alot of different clients. It's something I enjoy doing and it's always a good feeling to see something you designed in print or being produced. I also had a skateshop in Charlotte for 3 years but I won't really go into what happened, let's just say I bounced and left it to my business partners.
Drake & Spanky
Lusher : Have you always been into photography? What was the catalyst for the photos you've been doing?
John Drake : I have always been into photographs. It is always interesting to look at that one frozen moment in time, and also the way the camera can capture something that you will never see with your own eye, or something that will never happen again. When I was skating and shooting with alot of the different magazine's photographers I was kind of interested in what they were doing but it wasn't until college that I bought my first 35mm SLR all manual camera and really started studying it and figuring out how things worked. Before that it was just a snapshot camera and I didn't really care about the photos I took. I took some photo classes in college and really started to love it. I do miss film and having a darkroom to really work on my black and white prints to get them to the point where i'm proud of my work, but digital is just so much easier and if you don't have a darkroom around it's the only way to go.
The catalyst for getting back into photography is just right now I have more time on my hands and I love shooting photos. I'm trying to save up some money to buy a legit digital SLR and get more into it. Also you (Lusher) have motivated me some to get back on the photo horse and get out and shoot. It's always good to have a friend that shares your interests, and I have known you since you were a little dude pretty much. When you go back that far with someone it's not like much even has to be said. There's just so much history there and the photo thing is just a plus......nuff respect to Lush.
Lusher : It all seems to be full circle in the most unintentional ways. Here we are after all this time. I'm interviewing you half a life later for someone half our age. I want to thank you for the honesty and the golden oldies.
John Drake : No problem, big ups to Blair for keeping skating alive in the tri-steezy. Shouts to all my homies wherever you may be. Thanks to anyone who ever helped a brotha out, especially the parents. Peace.
Thanks to John Drake and Chris Lusher for their time and dedication.
John Portraits & Interview by Chris Lusher
Skate photos courtesy of John Drake
Chris Lusher and John Drake have known eachother for awhile, so I figured it would only be best to let them catch up on the good ole days, and in the process get a little history of John from where he's been to where he is now."
- Blair Burns
Lusher : How old were you when you started skating and what was the initial push that made you want to start in the first place?
John Drake : Well that is so long ago it is hard to remember. I think I was in 7th or 8th grade so maybe 13 years old? I used to be into BMX and would always read this magazine BMX Plus and they used to have a editorial series in the magazine called Who's Radder? In one of these series it was skateboarding v. bmx and skating just looked so much cooler and "Radder" to me. So from that point I just did everything I could to get a skateboard to ride. I would borrow a friends skateboard and just go missing with it for days until he tracked me down and could get it back from me. After that it was just begging my dad to buy me a cheap one because money was short and he wasn't about to buy me the one I actually wanted. Eventually he saw how into it I was and bought me a decent one and from there it was on.
Skateboarding was that escape from the dreariness that is Ohio and the more people hated on me for doing it the more I wanted to do it. I had always been an individual since I was a little kid, and having my own unique thing to do was attractive to me. I never wanted to be a clone of everyone else and I think skateboarding offered a great avenue out of the monotony Ohio has to offer.
Lusher : Do you remember in those early days any pros that you started looking up to or anyone you perhaps wanted to emulate?
John Drake : Neil Blender, Mark Gonzales, & Natas Kaupas was who I looked up to when I first started skating. Then it was Matt Hensley and a bunch of others, Ray Barbee, Rudy Johnson, Guy Mariano, Jason Lee. Early on I guess I tried to emulate Gonz and Natas but as you get older, you may look to certain guys for tricks to learn but you don't "copy" them, you try to develop your own thing.
Lusher : Your parents seemed so supportive of what you were doing. I remember your shop in Ohio and thinking it was the best thing that could have happened to that area. How long into skating were you at that time and what role did your parents play in launching the shop?
John Drake : Yeah they were for sure. Well, they had a retail business there and an extra side building, which was tiny, but my dad was cool enough to ask me if I wanted to put some skateboards in there. I was so young and I didn't know what I was doing, but that was really cool of them to always be so supportive. I think that lasted only several months because I never wanted to be in there, I just always wanted to be out skating which is natural for a young kid. I had only been skating for probably over a year or something when that happened. My parents looked after it and sold some stuff for me and I think they were bummed that I didn't really care and was out skating, but they also understood. Thanks mom and dad for everything!
Lusher : It was apparent early on that you were probably the best in the area. Did skating come as easy to you as it seemed to?
John Drake : I was always very athletic and active as a kid. I was into playing pretty much every sport but baseball and it all felt natural and came easy to me. When I was really young I used to just be hellbent on jumping off of the highest things I could find. Skateboarding also felt natural but it was hard work. I skated all day every day to get to the level I wanted to get at. I did realize that amongst my friends that I was able to learn things quicker but there is always something someone can do that you can't, or a trick that comes easier to someone else than it does to you. Certain things you just have to work on harder until you find the right foot placement or whatever it may be. Skateboarding always felt better than other sports because it was all on you whether you learned something or not, there was always a new trick to learn or something new to skate. It gives you a sense of accomplishment when you learn something, but also it allows you to bring your own unique style into each trick.
Spanks & DrakeLusher : Looking at you from the outside, though we spent alot of time together, there seems to be a pretty definitive timeline with you as far as skating is concerned. Were did Iguana fit into that and how do view that period? Would you call those your formative years? You had really become something of legend during that time to people in a pretty large geographic area.
John Drake : One day I was skating in Huntington and I just happened to skate by Iguana when Ron was in there painting and getting it ready. He wasn't even open yet but I guess after that when it opened I just started going over there all the time and hanging out. I was pretty stoked there was a skateshop that was close to some skatespots and I could hang out at and skate all around town.
I would say it was part of my formative years along with what happened before Iguana opened. It was a great time with great friends and I enjoyed it. You can't go back and re-do your youth again so I'm glad I lived mine the way I wanted and did what I wanted. Ron was a great dude especially to someone like me who didn't grow up with money to spend on skate stuff. He supported me before I had any sponsors, and was cool enough to drive me around to different contests and demos all over Ohio. Big up to Ron for that. I got to meet alot of people in skateboarding because of that right there.
When I was young I was a cocky asshole probably. Whenever I went to other towns or cities I felt I had something to prove with my skating, that no matter where I was from I wanted to skate better than everyone else in Ohio and the whole mid-west or mid-atlantic whatever you want to call it. I don't know about being any kind of legend, but I do know that I could hold it down skateboarding wise. When I entered my first pro contest I got 2nd place and from that point on I felt like I belonged and I could lose that chip on my shoulder. As I grew up I became alot more humble and nice to other people, and it wasn't about proving myself anymore because I did that already.
Lusher : For that time and to alot of the little skate kids I felt you were achieving at least local legend status and not James Dean icon type shit but more like due to what skating used to be as opposed to what it is now you were at least this hero to the up and comers even though you always only ate plain hamburgers from Hardees. What about your first sponsorships and how did they come about? Were you doing the 'sponsor me' VHS tape thing?
John Drake : How much have you had to drink tonight Lusher? Yeah I did the VHS sponsor me tape thing, I think most kids did back then especially if you didn't live in California. I had so many different sponsors as a kid. Some of them actually did come from VHS sponsor me tapes.
I was sponsored by this clothing company owned by Kevin Staab and Joe Johnson called Electric Ocean, Kryptonics Wheels, XXX Skateboards which used to be Brand-X in the 80's, Etnies shoes, and Gouge Clothing, I think all of those came from sponsor me tapes. I forgot how I got on G&S trucks, but when I got on Venture trucks Greg Carroll saw me at a demo in Dayton and he saw that I was riding the G&S trucks, walked up to me during the demo and asked me why in the hell was I riding those wack things, gave me his card and told me I was on Venture now. I got on Assault skateboards because I was at a demo skating with Matt Hensley and Matt's friend Ned was there traveling with him and he asked me to skate for his company, I was unsure but he made Matt convince me to skate for him so I said ok. I was about to skate for Life Skateboards but then Sheffey quit so Dyrdek just asked me to skate for Alien and I was stoked on them so I said ok. I had other sponsors during all of this and after, but I always stuck with Alien and Venture. I skated for Etnies for a long time too until I felt they were getting wack. At that point I had been skating for Droors for a long time and they were starting DC shoes so I just decided to skate for them instead.
Once I found sponsors I liked I tried to stick with them until they became wack basically. But, when I was a kid I didn't care really, all I cared about was getting free product so I didn't have to pay for anything.
Lusher : Sober to the bone. Alien was such an awesome company and still is. They had such an original and new approach that was exciting though I'm not sure the boner brigade lovers really got it which made it even better. You and Dyrdek were pretty tight in those early days. What was it like hanging with that crew? There has also been a request for a Bo Turner anecdote.John Drake : Well back then Alien was different, originally it was not as money and business driven but more art, creative, and skateboard driven. When Neil Blender left the company I was really bummed because he was a great inspiration and a friend. Things always change, sometimes not for the better. After me and Rob moved to California and blew Alien up, the business side of the company grew bigger and bigger, and it just wasn't the same as the early days. Alien is still different from most of the companies which is a good thing, and I still love the skateboarding aspect of the company, and some of the people involved, but it's definately different and now Burton snowboards owns it. It happens to anything once it gets big, whether that be an artist, a band, or any cool company. Money changes everything.
All the Alien dudes are great friends, it was like a gang back in the day, a brotherhood. I have love for all of those dudes, Dyrdek, Conklin, Turner, Morgan, Kirk, Kalis, and Gall. We did some crazy stuff, partied like maniacs, it was good times for sure. Early on Dyrdek and I skated our ass off and did everything we could to blow Alien up. We tried to get as much coverage as possible, do all the contests, make all the connections, whatever we could to make Alien the shit. It's crazy everyone knows him from the TV show now, I trip on that but whatever, he's pretty much the same dude you see on TV. He has always been very business driven, and I'm just not that way. Although the term is cliche, I've always tried to keep it underground and not mainstream because the underground is what i've always liked since I was a kid. You may not make any money that way, but as the saying goes "I'd rather be broke and have a whole lotta respect." Big ups to Rob for doing his thing though.
I don't know what kind of Bo Turner story I can give you, I have so many. I don't even know where to begin. Let's just say that most of the stories have never and will never be told, but not only with Bo, the whole debauchery and craziness of the things the whole Alien team did. Honestly just to repeat them makes the stories sound fake, like it's made up. I'll leave it all to the people's imagination.
Lusher : What happened with you after Workshop?
John Drake : I ended up moving to Charlotte, NC and going to college for graphic design. Studied some photography too. Got my little degree and started working in the design field, have been doing that since 2002. I did an internship at The Mint Museums in Charlotte and they hired me after my internship was up, went on from there to get alot of different clients. It's something I enjoy doing and it's always a good feeling to see something you designed in print or being produced. I also had a skateshop in Charlotte for 3 years but I won't really go into what happened, let's just say I bounced and left it to my business partners.
Drake & SpankyLusher : Have you always been into photography? What was the catalyst for the photos you've been doing?
John Drake : I have always been into photographs. It is always interesting to look at that one frozen moment in time, and also the way the camera can capture something that you will never see with your own eye, or something that will never happen again. When I was skating and shooting with alot of the different magazine's photographers I was kind of interested in what they were doing but it wasn't until college that I bought my first 35mm SLR all manual camera and really started studying it and figuring out how things worked. Before that it was just a snapshot camera and I didn't really care about the photos I took. I took some photo classes in college and really started to love it. I do miss film and having a darkroom to really work on my black and white prints to get them to the point where i'm proud of my work, but digital is just so much easier and if you don't have a darkroom around it's the only way to go.
The catalyst for getting back into photography is just right now I have more time on my hands and I love shooting photos. I'm trying to save up some money to buy a legit digital SLR and get more into it. Also you (Lusher) have motivated me some to get back on the photo horse and get out and shoot. It's always good to have a friend that shares your interests, and I have known you since you were a little dude pretty much. When you go back that far with someone it's not like much even has to be said. There's just so much history there and the photo thing is just a plus......nuff respect to Lush.
Lusher : It all seems to be full circle in the most unintentional ways. Here we are after all this time. I'm interviewing you half a life later for someone half our age. I want to thank you for the honesty and the golden oldies.
John Drake : No problem, big ups to Blair for keeping skating alive in the tri-steezy. Shouts to all my homies wherever you may be. Thanks to anyone who ever helped a brotha out, especially the parents. Peace.
Thanks to John Drake and Chris Lusher for their time and dedication.
John Portraits & Interview by Chris Lusher
Skate photos courtesy of John Drake
