Ryan Bobier

Thrasher Magazine, August, 2008 by Michael Burnett, Jamie Thomas

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Michael Burnett: So were you born into this? You grew up in pro skateboarding's backyard, pretty much. Do you ever remember a time without skateboards?

Yeah. Definitely. I can remember getting a skateboard. Besides the first toy skateboard, the first real board I got was when I was around nine. It was a Christmas present, 1993.

Jamie Thomas: What'd you get?

I got a blank; some Trackers--not a cool story.

MB: Did you know about kickflips and ollies from the get go?

No. I was like a lot of people. My friend's older brother was starting to skate. I don't know what they knew about, but we got our info second-hand from them. We'd just cruise around hills and stuff by our house, curbs. I saw a kid waxing a curb up the street so we got into that.

MB: How soon after that did you run into the ESP, the Encinitas Skate Posse?

I never knew about them. They were just up the block but somehow our paths never crossed. I was a little kid. It started on the block and then we'd go around our neighborhood where kids had waxed up curbs. There was an elementary school we'd skate, and then we slowly ventured out into Encinitas, maybe skate a grocery store or whatever. Eventually we made it to San Dieguito.

JT: When did you find out about sponsorship and all that?

The first time was when I went to K5 skateshop and rented a skate video, SecondHand Smoke. My dad dubbed it for me. That was the first time I realized there were so many tricks and that skate videos were happening. I don't think I'd even seen a magazine yet.

MB: Did you watch Second Hand Smoke and realize it was filmed in your area?

No. Initially I was just amazed by Rodney Mullen. "Whoa! Rodney Mullen does some crazy shift He's spinnin' around!" It seemed like magic. That's when I realized that the company was Plan B and that's what a sponsor was.

JT: Did you think then that you wanted to become a pro skater?

No. It wasn't until a year or so later, and then Welcome to Hell came out and I realized what was going on. In the beginning I was just trying to fide the board down the hill without falling off. Push properly and ollie. Once I could skate a little bit and saw those videos I sort of got an idea of how things worked. I still didn't think, "I'm gonna get sponsored and be a pro skater," but I grasped the concept a little bit better.

MB: Did you have any misconceptions about skating when you were a kid?

No. I don't think so. But watching Rodney Mullen in the beginning--it was like something at the circus. You almost couldn't make sense of it. "How the fuck does that work?"

JT: You were 11 when you sent a video to Zero, but I didn't get to see it. Then shortly after I remember I met you one day at San Dieguito and you were boardsliding the 10. After that it seemed like a blink and we'd see you every weekend at San Dieguito for six months or so. It was the day that you did the boardslide shove-it that we gave you a board in the parking lot. A year later you were on Zero. How did it feel to be sponsored at 12?

That was crazy. I remember that night. At that point Welcome to Hell had come out, and that and the first Zero video were what I was really into. We decided, "Alright! Let's make a video!" to try and see what I got. So that night was unreal.

JT: When I was 12 I was trying to do 180 ollies. The idea of getting sponsored was unimaginable. You were filming for the Misled video when you were 12. Did it seem normal or was it kind of surreal?

Yeah. For the first couple of years, every time I'd get in the car with you guys I'd be a little shocked.

MB: Jamie, what attracted you to Ryan? There must have been other little kids ripping at that time.

JT: I'd skated with lots of kids, and usually when you skate with kids there's a generation gap. We were in our early or mid-20s at the time, and typically with kids there's this generation gap where you can't really get down with them. You can't talk to them. I remember that Bobier would make jokes about toys that he was playing with a couple years before, like Ninja Turtles and stuff, and we thought it was amazing. Ryan had a really good ability to adapt to adult conversation and relate to you. We didn't really think of him as some dumb little kid. At the time most little kids skated like little kids, and he looked more comfortable on his board. Also, he was where we were from and we saw him all the time and it kind of made sense. I didn't really think he was the best, but I thought he'd get better and Zero had all these different things going at the time, team-wise, and I thought having him would be cool and different. He also reminded us what it was like to be a kid again. Bobier probably doesn't know this, but at first Mumford refused to go skate with him. He's like, "Dude. He's 12. I'm not going skating with him!" So one time I show up to get Mumford and Bobier's already in the car. Matt gets in and he doesn't say anything. We skated all day in LA and the next day Matt was all, "That kid's pretty cool." At first he was pissed that he had to skate with a 12-year-old.