Robert Brink - Writer

New Jack: Silas Baxter-Neal

June 6, 2007 | Skip To The Comments (1)

Boy did this one stir up some shit on the Slap message boards! Whoooooowheee! A 25-page thread! But seriously, for all you skateboard conspiracy theorists, haters, ponderers, thinkers, provocateurs, philosophers, lovers, protectors, cred police, whatever... Joe Castrucci isn't sending Silas flair packages, okay? I interviewed the dude and I know. Just ease up a bit. Go skating or something. Y'all know Habitat is legit. It was half a joke from Tim O'Connor in my pre-interview anyway, just to bust Silas' balls. And you'll see plenty more completely false rumors I presented to Silas when I post the unedited interview soon. In the meantime, enjoi this.

New Jack: Silas Baxter-Neal
Rob Brink
The Skateboard Mag June 2007

Silas Baxter-Neal might be one of the more unique individuals in skateboarding today. Not because he's trying to be—but because he's just being himself. And in a subculture that prides itself on originality; most skateboarders either unnaturally force it, or end up following the herd. Its no wonder the rest of society generalizes and thinks we all wear tight black jeans, take drugs and listen to H.I.M.

I've never heard of a skateboarder who plays croquet, wants to open a bed and breakfast or was raised the way Silas was. He's down-to-earth and humble. You may have only seen bits and pieces of Silas here and there until now. He's had a few interviews and parts in smaller videos. As cliché as it sounds, with Silas, the best is yet to come. He's just moved from Oregon to Sunnyvale and is skating hard finalizing his parts in the new Habitat and éS videos. Until then, to put it simply, you are reading this because Silas is himself. Silas is unique and Silas is a great skateboarder.

At 23 do you ever feel like you're kinda' old to be am?

Yes, a man am. I think that 23 is the official age for man am.

Is age ever a factor for you?

Yeah, a little bit. I went on this Australia trip last year with a bunch of ams and it was kind of weird being the eldest. But I'm glad it's the way it is. If I turned pro already I would have a different understanding of how it is. You don't appreciate it as much. I need to put out a solid video part and go from there.

Since you're on that borderline of going pro are you nervous?

A little bit. I'm not sure if I'm really at that level yet. You know, where you believe in yourself? I look at what other pros have done in their career and then I look at myself and it's completely different. I sometimes think I haven't been around or I haven't done enough or people don't care, you know what I mean?

Who is an ideal pro to you?

Well, a lot of the Girl guys have just been killing it for so long. Brian Anderson and Cairo just continually put out a lot of good footage and have always been top of the game. Raymond Molinar is pretty amazing. He may not have the coverage that most people have, but if you ever see that guy skate in person, he's super talented. Stefan Janoski and Danny Garcia are pretty amazing too. Just their ability and their casualness and the way they approach their skating is pretty cool.

Have you noticed a difference in your progression since you got on Habitat and started skating with those guys?

Yeah for sure. Just skating the spots that they skate. Growing up in Oregon and Colorado…there's no ledges anywhere. Going out with Danny and Raymond, we skate a lot of ledges so it's changed the way I skate a little bit. I think skating with other people, in general, just makes you better.

Who gets you psyched on skating right now?

Alex Olsen has getting me pretty psyched lately.

How is filming for Habitat and éS different compared to the smaller videos like Seasons and Death of a Salesman you were in a few years back?

I guess just the pressure being on me. Coming from Seasons was fun because filming with Trevor [Prescott] was just going out and skating with him. It wasn't a whole lot of pressure about how good the part had to be because there weren't any expectations. But going to Habitat and éS, they put out pretty good videos, so there's a pretty high standard of what's expected and being able to fit it into a timeline is kind of scary sometimes.

Were you good friends with Trevor Prescott?

We're from the same town, but when I was younger he was the dude we all looked up to. When I moved to SF I skated with him a bunch and we became pretty good friends after that.

Does it change the way you live your life when someone close to you dies?

It definitely puts life in perspective…about what you're doing. Especially when people are young when they pass away. It's kind of gnarly. I try not to dwell on the death factor of it. Trevor did so much in his lifetime and to help out skateboarding. He had such a good life. He lived a full life and made an impact while he was alive. So I like to look at that and be happy about what he did as opposed to being mad about the fact that he's gone. I miss him, he's a great guy. I don't like to get bummed out about it. It doesn't help me and that's not the way he would have wanted it.

It's already the worst thing that can happen; you might as well turn it in to something positive.

Yeah exactly.

I heard that you used to have a graffiti wall in your backyard. Do you still do graffiti?

When I was younger I got into graffiti and was getting myself in trouble. My mom was like, "Here's the wall, you can paint here. It'll keep you out of trouble." Now I draw and shit like that, but I don't go out and paint or anything.

That's pretty cool. Not something the average mom would do.

My mom's not that average, she's pretty rad.

A lot of your interviews I've read focus on your "alternative" upbringing. Hippie parents, living on a bus for a little while, you didn't have a social security number, the floor of your house was made of mud, blah blah blah. I don't want to get into all that again but how do you think that's kind of shaped you as a person?

Yeah, thank you. I think when I was young it affected me a lot more. Having a different upbringing made it harder for me to fit in. Everyone else grew up doing similar things. They would talk about movies and TV shows when they were a kid and I'm like "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about." And playing certain games or doing certain shit. I didn't have any way to relate, so I didn't. I was like an outsider. But now I don't really think about it that much. I think it's changed my view of what I want and can do in the future. There are a lot of people who live their lives like they are in a TV show or something. I think that's kind of weird.

Your wife is from Japan. Have you had a Yellow fever thing your whole life?

Hold on a second, she's sitting right here next to me.

"Go away! Go away!" [Silas yells to his wife, laughing.]

She's the first Asian I really dated or had interest in. She's a cool person though. That was never the reason I had interest in her.

So how do you feel about skating as a job? A lot of people say you are a workhorse and MVP on most trips.

Well, I've had a lot of jobs and it's nothing like a job. My desire to skate comes more from me just being a skater. When I go on trips I just go skate the spots and skate with other people. So, I'd say it's more of a case of me being a skater than me doing a job.

I heard you were in Japan and Guru Khalsa pissed into a bottle and you drank it.

Fuck Guru! Fuck, that was horrible.

Did he do that on purpose or what?

No. He didn't do it on purpose and I didn't drink it on purpose that's for sure. We were on a long drive to Tokyo. It was a six hour ride so we weren't trying to stop because it was late at night and we just wanted to get to the hotel. So I guess Guru just pissed in a bottle. It was horrible! I threw up.

How long into drinking did it take you to realize that it was piss?

When it hit my lips I realized. I didn't really drink much of it. I just got a little on my lips and knew what it was and started puking.

You used to get beat on by Danny Renaud on Habitat tours?

It was always hit or miss with that guy. He was great sometimes and other times he was a dick. It's just his personality. I think at the end when he rode for Habitat he just stopped liking me for whatever reason. I don't know what the deal was. It was shitty, but whatever.

I heard Joe Castrucci used to send you outfits so you didn't dress like a retard.

Joe would send me medium tee shirts sometimes instead of large tee shirts and he gave me an old pair of his pants on Christmas. He and Brandon are both so fucking picky about that shit. It's annoying but they didn't do that Jamie Thomas shit where they pick out my bandana and pants and band tee shirts and tell me I had to wear them. Most of the shirts that Joe would send me ended up at Buffalo Exchange anyways.

Did you used to wear big gear or something?

Not big gear, but I still wear large tee shirts. I never really spent a lot of money buying clothes or anything like that so I just kind of got what I got in a box of clothing. I wasn't all that into fashion. I didn't really care that much. I don't put that much effort into it.

I've heard stories of some pros who take an hour getting dressed on a tour bus before a demo.

Yeah, I'm definitely not like that. I'm the guy who turns my shirt inside out 'cause it's dirty from the day before.

So you're interested in opening a bed and breakfast one day?

I've always liked cooking a lot and that's what I did before skating. I like serving people and I like the idea of being able to work with small clientèle as opposed to dealing with like 100 or 200 peoplea night. Just to deal with like, 16 people over a weekend, I think that's pretty cool. And having a piece of land in a desirable place and creating a place for myself you know what I mean? When people come to my town I love showing them around and taking them to restaurants or cool skate spots and stuff like that. And I think to turn that into a job would be rad.

Scuba told me that you have a real problem with bad service at restaurants.

Yeah, I get frustrated sometimes. I worked in kitchens for five or six years before skateboarding, so I know the amount of effort it takes to have good service. To have good courtesy as a waiter is not hard. To have good food service and timely food service isn't really that hard to do. It just comes from people being lazy and bad management.

Do you really play croquet?

Yeah, this summer we played it a lot. Me and my roommate just bought a $2 croquet set and set it up in our yard. It's kind of hilly and there's a large median between the streets. So we put up these croquet courses and they just wrap around the entire house. You have to go up these hills and burns and its was pretty much like free-for-all croquet. We just hang out and drink some beers and play croquet in the yard. It's fun.

I hear you aren't a fan of LA.

A lot of it's the people that are there. Not really the skateboarders, but the people in general. They are so caught up in their own lives and so unaware of the fact that they don't really matter that much. I mean, none of us really do. But you go out to eat and people are so full of themselves and think they're so important. You go to a restaurant that's kind of nice and if you don't look the right way you get treated like shit. And going skating can be such a hassle. There's not a whole lot of creative spots that I see down there. It's not as bad as I make it out to be sometimes, but when I'm down there I just get frustrated. It doesn't feel good to be there. I'm usually just over it and want to go home.

What's something about you that you think people might not know?

That I'm not a hippie.

Scuba said you're a hippie, but you hate being called one and you hate hippies as well. So it's funny that you just said that.

Actually I'm not a hippie, not in the stereotypical sense. I don't even know what a hippie is anymore. Like my parents…in their time they were hippies but I don't even think people know what a hippie is any more. Like, what makes a hippie? Someone who is dirty and smokes pot? That's like half the population. Shop at Whole Foods? That's more like a yuppie.

Yuppies are clean hippies now.

Exactly. The real hippies grew up and got real jobs. And did all the things they vowed never to do. Get a job, vote, have a family—all that stuff.

So, what would you say your favorite thing about skateboarding is?

I guess when I was growing up it was such a way to have freedom. You go out with your friends and you skate all around town and it's such a great feeling. To this day skateboarding is taking me places and I'm still running around acting like a kid? Cruising around with my friends, making friends…I guess it's just a freedom thing.

Is there anything about skateboarding or the industry that kind of bothers you?

It's hard to put it in words but just the whole like cliquey-ness about it. I was reading about something in a skateboard mag recently about Atiba, and he was saying how skateboarding is some kind of club. And it really is. Once you're in it you get taken care of in a lot of ways.

When you go out to skateparks there are kids killing it and they probably will never be sponsored. For the most part, people don't give a fuck about you unless you've been in magazines or something and it's just kind of lame. Just the whole fashion end of skateboarding. It's just fucking male modeling in the end. But as much negativity as there is about that stuff, if you look at it from a business point of view it makes sense. It just sucks that it has to be like that.

You have to be like certain level of "cool" nowadays to make it in skateboarding. If not, you don't sell boards and nobody wants to pay you.

Just like any other industry with all the marketability. I guess the music industry is one of the closest things that you can compare it to. How often are there really good, talented musicians? If you don't meet the right people, have the right connections, look or sound your not gonna go anywhere.

Do you ever wonder if you're marketable? Or what people see in you to make them wanna turn you pro?

Yes, I think about that a lot actually. Earlier when I found out we were gonna do this interview, I was like "Damn what the fuck am I gonna talk about? What's so interesting about me?" I don't feel there are a lot of interesting things about me you know? It's just I am who I am and yeah, I had a couple of interviews before but what else am I gonna talk about? I feel like I've divulged everything about myself.

As far as the marketing thing. I don't feel that I have a special look or anything. I'm not doing anything different or more amazing than anyone else, but I guess some people like it so…I am where I am.

Well to your credit, it seems like you're a guy just being yourself and skateboarding. I guess it's your skateboarding that's doing the talking. Not your jeans or your jewelry.

I don't know how to be anybody else. I don't know how to play those roles. It might be easier to be that dude, I might have to do less work but….

So what do you feel like you've contributed to skateboarding so far or what do you hope to contribute?

I feel like I've gotten a lot more from skateboarding than I've given to it. It's been pretty generous to me. I feel more lucky than I feel skilled. It's not like I've invented any new tricks or anything. I'm not really sure what I've brought to skateboarding. That's kind of a weak answer but…

Not really because maybe you're bringing to skateboarding the fact that "here's a dude that's being himself." Or maybe your contribution is yet to come.

Maybe there's a Baxter-Neal grind coming up or something. Who knows?