Erick Garcia Interview

So this time around I decided that I needed to interview a blader because so far I have only done interviews on bikers, and dama players. I’ve been living in SF for about 8 years and everyone knows the biggest most well known crew in this area is JSF aka the Juiced Sucka Fools!! The crew is legendary from its epic sections in VG to just the amazing bladers that make up the crew. They are still going strong to this day and this interview is about the president of that crew. Erick Garcia. So sit back and get to know the man, the myth, the definite LEGEND that is ESG.

1.   Where are you from? how did you get into blading?

I reside in Alameda, California, right next to Oakland. I started skating back in late 1993 when I saw one of my friend’s rollerblading after he got some skates for Christmas. I tried his skates and I was hooked! I can go into the details of how I started aggressive skating, but it’s not that important…let’s just say the day I first put on skates, was the start of my life completely changing.

2.   For anyone that has been living under a rock all these years, what exactly is JSF? and what does it mean to you?

It’s pretty simple Matt…JSF is a Northern California skate crew that has been around since 1999. We started the crew name because Videogroove was making a video most of you all know as “Battle My Crew” or “VG 12” and Dave Paine gave Jared Magers and us bay area guys an opportunity to make a section for the video. On top of that, we were put in the “Masters Division” because Dave Paine already knew that Nor Cal holds it down super hard so there was no reason for our crew to be put under the “New School Division”. So the friends and I thought of a crew name that would be in the video and we came up with JSF, otherwise known as Juiced Sucka Foos. Don’t get me wrong, we had a crew waaaaay before Battle My Crew came out but we really never had a name for our crew, so Battle My Crew was a perfect opportunity to create a name. JSF means more to me than anyone really thinks or knows. Since we started the crew, I have always held it down and represented my crew to the fullest. Over the years, I have noticed that “skate crews” started to diminish, but I think that was the cause of more and more new kids getting into skating and not really knowing about the “crew” scene. Plus a lot of the guys/crews that were originally in VG 12 stopped skating or they just made up the crew just for the video. Not JSF though. We kept representing throughout the years and in my opinion, we are the only skate crew out there today that really pushes itself as a skate crew for others to know. I do get a lot of kids asking today what JSF is and that is my immediate confirmation that these kids also do not know their history of skating. So the best way to educate them is to show them that JSF comes together and skates all the time. We have each others back in good times and in bad times and we know how to handle ourselves to the best of our abilities when put in any kind of situation. JSF is family to me and I will admit, for a couple of years, maybe around 2008-2009, I seemed to have forgot that JSF is strictly family with homies from across the world. What I mean is that I started letting anyone that was “cool” in JSF when this was the wrong outlook on my end. What I came to realize is that JSF is really a crew of some solid homies that know how to hold it down in life! Not just with skating! And all the rest of my friends are what I like to call “affiliates” of the JSF crew. So basically, your ass is not getting into JSF unless you do some real crazy shit!! Haha and what that crazy shit may that be? Well, it all depends on who you are and at that point, I and some of the other main JSF heads will decide on what needs to be done for that person to officially be a member of JSF. The last person that officially became a JSF member was Andy Johnson from Sacramento, California. He hung out with us for so many years and proved to us (without even having to make an attempt to prove anything) that he knew how to hold his own in life so we put him to one last test and made him skate this double kinked rail where he had to tru mizou it first try to get into the crew. Needless to say he did it first try and has been reppin JSF like a mad man! Its guys like Johnson that really understands the meaning of a skate crew and how to represent it in the right way. Other than that, JSF will always hold it down for the Northern California skate scene, so I’ll say it again to anyone out there in the world reading this….YOU WANNA BATTLE? YOU MUST BE CRAZY!!!

3.   What is your current assessment on blading and where it is now and where you think it will be in the future?

Blading is currently in a state of skating whatever the hell it is you and ONLY YOU like to skate. This is a general statement by the way. Most guys that have skated since the 90’s that are still skating today are very selective on what spots they want to skate. There are numerous reasons for this, but one that sticks out as a similar reason for most guys is that the street skating scene is much more different than it used to be. What I mean by that is that back in the day, we used to skate anything and everything. On top of that, we would do it with all of our friends and attack spot to spot. EVERYONE skated the spot! I can only speak for the area that I come from and skate around all the time and with today’s street skating scene, mostly everyone is not down for the spots a few people would like to go skate. Usually a few guys will only skate the spot, while the rest of the guys just sit back and watch or wait until we go to another spot. Sometimes I have seen guys not skate ALL DAY, just because the spots that we went to were not spots they liked to skate. Like I said above, we are more selective these days with what we skate. In the future, I think blading will be more selective and skate crews will be more divided because I really don’t see street skating coming back the way it used to be back in the 90’s and early 2000’s. To compare it to our good skateboarding friends…you will be skating in your home town one day and will see a group of other Rollerbladers skating “your town” and you will say to yourself, “who the hell are these guys? I have never seen these dudes before. They must be from out of town”. But really, these kids will be from the same town as you and you will have no idea they were around until you run into them. The future holds a growth in how many people are actually skating, which will result in groups dividing up and more crews being developed. Rollerbaders have been known to be a tight knit group, but I see this changing in the future.

4.   Top 5 skates you have ever owned and why.

Oh this ones easy…K2’s, K2’s, K2’s, K2’s and K2’s haha what can I say…I have never skated any other skates besides K2’s since 1996. I liked my Roces Moscows before my K2’s, but not as much as I love my K2’s! Since I first started skating the Fattys back in 1996, this was the boot style I fell in love with. Back then, other guys used to call them “cheater skates” because you could hold royals and backslides like nothing, but that was the beauty of the skates! I learned how to royal and backslide pretty much anything and to this day I still royal everything in sight! K2’s feel so damn comfortable on my feet, they’re light as hell and they allow me to skate without worrying about slipping out on my souls because they have the perfect soul space…not like other skates today where the souls are HUGE and when you try to carve really hard, you just slip on the souls and eat shit! No thank you, I’ll pass on that! Hah! But as I answer this question, I also realize that I have no tolerance in learning how to skate another brands skate. I can put another brands skate on for 5-10 minutes, but then immediately come to the conclusion that I do not have the patience to re-learn a lot of my tricks over again because I am not used to the boot. So in a nutshell, I could be considered a little bitch, but try saying that to my face and we’ll see what’s up! Haha kidding!!!

5.    I’m sure you have tons of blading stories. What’s some of the crazier things you have seen blading.

2000 NISS in Huntington Beach, CA. This was the first year the big kicker ramp was introduced. Kell McKenzie and I competed in this contest. 1^st place won you $2000 and Kell did not know this. We had both already jumped the big kicker once and the second attempt, we both were standing at the top of the 40 ft. roll in, I was about to go first and then Kell asked me, “hey, whats 1^st place win?”. I told him, “$2000”…Kell immediately cut in front of me and dropped in…he tried throwing a 1440 over the gap and ate SHIT! Haha sometimes money will make you go crazy and Kell proved it that day. This story is more funny than crazy, but if you were there and standing at the top of the roll in where I was…you would have also thought what I saw was crazy. Just seeing this 5 ft. 7 inch kid hucj himself to near death is just plain nuts! I have also seen bums get knocked out at Hubbas Hideout by BJ Bernhart, I have seen the craziest things skating in San Francisco that’s for sure. There was one time when Victor Arias and Brian Krans got arrested at Bittercold in 2010. I saw one of my friends compound fracture his wrist and his bones were sticking out of his skin. So many damn stories to tell. I should write a novel!

6.   Top 5 bladers of all time and top 5 dudes that you think are the future of this the blade game.

Brandon Smith (duh), Victor Arias, Jon Julio, Johnny Hedges (RIP), Jared Magers. Can you tell I’m a little bias? Haha top 5 dudes that are the future are Sean Salazar, Danny Malm, Brenden Tidds, Mike Peluso and that little guy Wake Schepman from the east coast. That kid KILLS IT!

7.   What are you thoughts on how the internet has changed skating? and how you don’t have to move to SD to make it “big” in blading anymore.

The internet has changed skating in a way that content is more available to everyone around the world. You can go and film yourself for a day and then put up an edit the same day for everyone in the world to see. Before the internet, you filmed and then when the video was made, you hoped people bought the video and saw you skating in it. Kids today have way more access to knowing what’s going on in rollerblading, rather than having to wait for a video or magazine to release to find this information out. Moving to southern California is a thing of the past and the skaters putting out edits online from where they reside shows that there are spots to skate that are in fact better that the spots southern California has to offer. Southern California is not the Mecca for rollerblading anymore.

8.    What’s with all the cess slides?

Yeah! what’s with all of them!? Haha Matt, I don’t know what to tall ya, except that I FUCKEN LOVE TO DO CESS SLIDES!!! I don’t care about ruining my skates and I really don’t care for grinding that much anymore. Cess slide is a trick that I have been trying to progress over the years. When I first saw B Love Hardin do a cess over a lauch box in VG 5, I was hooked! Believe it or not, B Love actually gave me props on my cess slides at Super Hick in 2001 and since then, I have tried to make the cess slide as cool as I possibly can make it. Cess out of grinds on quarter pipes, cess over launch boxes, cess city blocks, cess your moms car, cess the world! Haha I just love doing cess slides, plain and simple. I really appreciate the love I get for doing them too. It’s not that much of an eye pleasing trick, but real skaters know how hard it is to do them on certain things and I’m still trying to perfect the cess slide.

9.   Who have you rode for over the years? Any favorite?

K2, Dyna wheels, Runners Project and Synergy Bearings. My favorite was Dyna wheels. The few years the company was around were the best years of my skating so far. I felt like a pro skater.

10.  Lots of bladers get out of the game once real life gets in the way. How long have you been skating and What or who inspires you to keep going?

Been skating since late 1993. Friends inspire me to still skate. Also seeing older guys like Julio and some other OG’s really keep the fire lit. I still wake up every Saturday morning and ask myself, “what am I going to skate today?” haha that hasn’t stopped since I first started skating! I’ll probably keep skating until the limbs start to fall off.

11.The top pros in this sport aren’t balling out of control and on episodes of cribs. If this were to happen do you think it would be good for blading or bad? And why.

This would be good for skating. More kids would want to start skating and this would continue the growth of our sport. Can I be one of the guys that will be balling out of control!? Haha if not, I bet I’ll be good friends with someone that will be balling!

12. Shout outs?

Most importantly the JSF CREW, you know who the fuck you are! My parents for keeping up with my love for what most would call “a kids thing to do”, all my friends over the years that I have had the opportunity to skate with. All of their skating is a direct reflection of what I do on my skates, and last but not least the fallen soldiers that are no longer with us to skate on this planet.