paisley skates and the artistes of big brother

Theologians and religious scholars will tirelessly war against the theory of evolution, but every once in a while it's scientifically proven that bodies do collide and will give birth to something new. Actually, this happens every day. It's called sex. Men take their private parts, rub them on a woman's private parts, there's an explosion—BANG!—and that's where babies come from. It's not a miracle by any stretch, but the mere fact that Big Brother skateboard magazine came to be and managed to exist for 12 years is almost as mind-blowing as a box of magnets. What few people understand about the magazine, however, is that the staff was entirely comprised of classically trained artists, and that's why I've chosen to interview myself about this extra special, extra arty release from Paisley Skates. This is, after all, the Age of Enlightenment*. —Sean Cliver

Sean: First things first, what is Paisley Skates?

Sean: Great question. Real journalism 101, Norman Mailer. Regardless, I'm glad you asked, because it's a snappy little skateboard company I co-founded with Paul Urich. Our first set of boards came out last November and we've somehow managed to release a few more since then, thanks in part, or possibly in whole, to a small collective of friends and like-minded thinkers, like Nick Halkias and Mike Pipito, who have generously donated their time, talents, and esoteric interests to accelerate the cause.

What, you have like some kinda Che Guevara thing going on?

Sure, Che, why not. Aside from just keeping things in a progressively counterculture movement, our cause has to do with putting the paint back into graphics. By this, I mean we are going the extra mile and a three-quarters to have the graphics silk-screened by hand—just like they were in the '70s, '80s, and most of the '90s up until the more cost effective heat transfer process steamrolled into town. Some skaters care, many don't. Those that do are mostly the older generations that grew up with paint on the bottom of their boards and know that it slides on curbs and coping better than flaky-ass sheets and leaves a beautiful colored mess behind. I guess it all depends what you want out of a skateboard in the end… Like I always got off on the whole graphics and screen-printing aspect. Others could give a cold turd in the dead of night and just want a shape of 7-ply wood to roll, pop, and flip around on. To me it's always been a bit more than that, though, all occupational biases aside, because of—oh boy, here it comes!—its importance to skateboarding's visual mythology.

From left to right: This is not even close to an accurate representation of the method in which Chris Pontius's board was hand-screenprinted, but you still get the basic idea, all variations aside (and there are a lot of them thanks to a greater amount of confusion).

Visual mythology? Are you high?

No, quite the contrary, as I'm not a smoker of weed. In fact, I may have even been the only person other than Jeff Tremaine who wasn't high at the first Big Brother "Bong Olympics" in 1995. Anyway, I think we once stole that "visual mythology" phrase from Slap Magazine to use as a cover blurb on Big Brother Issue 38, so maybe they were high?

Who knows, but I like your thoughtstyle.

You should, because that was another Slap-inspired blurb for the cover of Issue 35. But let's get back to the point of this interview: these Paisley boards that I have coming out featuring art by Dave Carnie, Jeff Tremaine, Chris Pontius, and myself.

You've changed. You used to be all about silly interviews with dumb questions and now you're just straight-up, no-nonsense promotion.

Whatever, dude. Grow up. Like, did you even know that Pontius was an artist? Because he is.

Of course I did. How could I forget that letter from him that was printed in Issue 11 of Big Brother back in 1994?

Exactly, yeah, the "BMXican." Well, that was actually part of a larger body of work Pontius did throughout the ’90s, and that's where the piece came from that was used for his board graphic. I've always loved this drawing and was super stoked that he wanted to use it as a graphic.

Is it true that you actually managed to get him to sign all of the boards?

Yes! That was a pretty fun day. I picked Pontius up at his house in the hills of Hollywood and drove him down to the screen shop in the cuts of Carson where the boards were printed. As usual, the freeways were jammed, so it gave us ample time to shoot the breeze about San Luis Obispo/Central California skate history, what it's like doing the jackass comedy standup tour with all the guys, and many other things best not mentioned in this offhand, public manner.

What about Carnie's board, how'd you decide on using that feline image for a graphic?

Well, to backtrack a bit, one of the things we wanted to bring back when we started Paisley were slick bottoms. Slicks were real popular in the early- to mid-’90s and they really blew open the door for doing full color continuous tone graphics, like paintings, photos, and collages. So when we were finally able to make slicks a production reality at PS Stix, I knew right away that I wanted to use a photo by Carnie and a painting by Tremaine. This, of course, smacked of Big Brother, so we decided to do a series inspired as such with Carnie's studio print of Gary, because he was such a huge part of the magazine. Carnie even wrote up a special piece to be included with each board, "A Short List of Gary Factoids," which really rounds out his creative wheelhouse on this O.A.F.-shaped, Whale Cock-ish model.

O.A.F.?

Old as fuck. Although I think Dave refers to is as a "Fat Old Guy" shape, which would in fact be F.O.G., and actually makes just as much sense as O.A.F. in the end.

Oh. And Tremaine's?

Most people know of Tremaine as a director and producer, but before all that—even before his work as a layout jockey and art director on BMX, snow, and skate magazines—he was a painter. He even graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in fine art. But on the afternoon of Tremaine’s interview with Steve Rocco and Mike Ternasky for a position as Big Brother’s art/editorial director in the summer of 1992, he brought along a portfolio of his art. Once the interview was wrapped up, Rocco and Ternasky picked through all of his paintings and began dividing them up for slick bottom use between Blind, 101, and Plan B. Tremaine made more money in that one hour than most high end Beverly Hills escorts do in an entire evening! Anyway, later on in the ’90s he did some new paintings for Foundation, Prime, and Birdhouse, but then got tied up with this little cultural behemoth known as jackass in the aughts and hasn't been able to hit the easel as often as he once did. The “Devil & Babirusa” is in fact one of the few paintings he’s done since then and it’s the only board to feature his artwork since 1998.

And Tremaine signed all of his decks, too?

Yes. It took a few days, what with his busy schedule wrapping up the second season of Swerved on the WWE Network, but he managed to get through them all one stack at a time.

And what pray tell do you want to say about your contribution to the series?

Just that it was inspired from my daily dog walkings in Hollywood and all the stupid on streets that I see. Swear to god, every time I see some son of a tool riding around on one of these it makes me want to fly into a blind rage. Although, I think it angers me even more when I hear or see them referred to as "hoverboards," because clearly they don't hover. They have two wheels. Two stupid wheels that touch the stupid ground. That's not anywhere close to the dictionary definition of hovering. Did none of these idiots see Back to the Future? Fuck!

All right... lighten up, Francis.

See? That's how badly these things affect me. When I was trying to work through these irrationalities with Carnie, he told me that he refers to these two-wheeled dumbmobiles as "Dandy Horses." This actually helped to calm me a bit, not to mention the fact it provided me with a new purpose in life: to promote the Dandy Horse label. In all seriousness, though, I'm normally not the inspirational quote kind of guy, but this one by cartoonist Robert Crumb really sums it up well: "I'm just a negative person, a deeply negative person. I see the worst aspects in everything."

Okay, let's wrap this up before you really come off like a total horse's ass. Where's the best place to find these boards and associated products?

Paisleyskates.com. Tap the link and browse the online store, where you'll find all the usual suspects, including decks, tees, and stickers—two nifty examples of which are shown at right. I lobbied hard for a bar of soap, but nobody else found that funny**.

* Actually, it's not. It's the Age of Information, so consider yourself better informed.

** This is a total falsehood. I didn't think of doing a bar of soap until just now.