Lowery: "The Fish Have Been Electrocuted" - Interview

Thrasher Magazine, Nov, 2001 by Michael Burnett

No. And I can see where he's coming from, kinda. "Oh great, here comes another asshole kid thinking he"s gonna be a professional skateboarder and that I'm gonna support him through it." But I thought I was gonna get kind of a cushy deal, helping Mike with promotions. I'd skate and film a lot and step it up. George didn't really see it that way, He thought I should take another route. He thought a better idea would be for me to work in the woodshop from six in the morning to four in the afternoon, laminating skateboards.

How was that?

Oh, it was great. I rode a bike a couple of miles every morning in the dark to Powell and laminated skateboards all day. I was too tired after work to skate and ended up only skating on the weekends. I was just 100 percent pissed off the whole time.

What did Mike say?

It wasn't up to Mike, it was up to George. I don't really know how long I worked for Powell, but I was able to get some footage and shoot photos on the weekends. I shot photos for the team 'zine and what not.

And then you were pro?

I guess, two years later. Me and Jon Comer turned pro for Powell at the exact same time. We were just standing there. I was actually grabbing my balls 'cause we already knew we were quitting. Days later, me and Mike and Charlie quit to start Transit.

When you think of Rocky Norton's Transit tattoo, what thoughts go through your head?

I think it's the greatest. Transit was great. It was me and Mike and Charlie and Tom--four people who loved what they were doing and wanted to have something that was theirs. At Powell there was no hope of ever having any of your input make a difference.

What did you do wrong? Or was it all somebody else's fault?

It was. If we did anything wrong, it was getting too big too fast. In its short life, Transit sold a lot of skateboards. By the time the financial backer pulled out because of the way the other guy in Jersey was running the business, we were unable to scale things back.

At this point, had you ever been able to support yourself solely from skating?

No. Except for the nine months that Transit was in business. Then I was doing fine.

What are your fondest memories of your Powell days?

The last mini-ramp tour. The tour where I turned pro at the end of it. That was such a fun tour. I learned how to skate the mini-ramp by then. It was cool, the kids were psyched.

How was your Powell trip to China?

The distributor told us to eat all our meals at the hotel restaurant because they could serve us Western-style food. But the Western-style food turned out to be not so Western. It was some weird hamburger that wasn't hardly cooked and some kind of strange spaghetti concoction. So we were over that place and pretty much over meat in China in general. So we went to this seafood restaurant and they sit us at this table right next to this huge wall of like 16 aquariums. In each aquarium they have a different kind of fish that they serve. They've got frogs and all these fish, but the state of these aquariums is horrendous. There are fish belly up in these aquariums. There are dead fish floating around. In the frog aquarium, there--of course--is no water and the frogs' legs have been broken to keep them from jumping out. There are mortally wounded frogs taking their last breaths in these aquariums right by where we're sitting. This one guy comes over with a basket and goes to grab a live fish, couldn't catch it, s o he looks around and then grabs a dead one. You've got to imagine the back of this wall of aquariums. You've got 16 aquariums so you've got 16 wires coming off the filters and pumps of these aquariums all going to one heavily burdened outlet. So a guy comes over to grab a shark. He's fighting with it and almost has it in the basket and then it thrashes away and leaps back in the aquarium. It makes a big splash and this wave of water lands right on the jumble of wires. It makes a big explosion. All the lights in the building go out. There are flames and the waiters are all running around freaking out. All the fish have been electrocuted. We dive away from the flames. Chairs are flying. Drinks are knocked over. We're on the ground and everyone else in the restaurant is just fine, sitting there eating. The lights are out and the fish are frying. The waiter comes and moves us to a table in the far corner of the restaurant. They got all the electrocuted fish out of the tanks and put them into buckets to save for later.