Jordan Trahan’s unique approach to street skating and precise, tight style stands out amongst a sea of other skaters struggling to shred the same obstacles.

His creative eye for dope spots, sick tricks, fluid lines and his influence from every-era of skateboarding is present in every part and clip that he’s released.

Over the years we’ve had a few exchanges about tricks he’s nailed but recently we realised we had to know more about his creative perspectives of skateboarding.

So we hit him and in the course of our conversation we hit him up to join The No Comply Network and we were hyped to discover he was down.

We had a long chat about how he discovered skateboarding in Louisiana, getting early inspiration from One Step Beyond by Josh Stewart, localising Ruckus Skate Shop, his early parts and edits, breaking into the industry, moving to New York, getting on 5Boro, filming with Peter Sidlauskas, his thoughts on skating for Bronze, shooting photos with Arto Saari, the story of how he got on New Balance, becoming homies with Tom Knox, skating the UK, tight transitions, getting on Chocolate, Kenny Anderson, Rick Howard, Bunny Hop, inspiration from Ray Barbee, Bloby Greg, Mackey and Charlie Birch, linking up with Josh Stewart to make his Static VI part, creatively assisting the production of the latest New Balance x Chocolate 480 shoe and getting hands on for the advert with Kyle Camarillo featuring Tony Ferguson and his favourite skaters, videos, styles, artists, photographers, musicians and a lot more.

Read his interview below to discover it all for yourself.

 

 

Jordan, Backside Smith, Shot by Blair Alley

 

 

Where did you grow up Jordan?

I grew up about two hours away from where I am now, in the country, in the middle of nowhere. So it’s called Meaux, Louisiana, that’s M-E-A-U-X. It’s a small village surrounded by sugar cane fields and rice fields.

 

 

Right. So how did you find skateboarding in Meaux?

I mean skateboarding was just you know. You meet a kid, you start a new school and yeah, you start riding a skateboard around and you buy a little $9 Walmart skateboard.

I remember it didn’t roll very much but you started throwing it on the floor to try to get the wheels to roll better, because it had plastic wheels.

But yeah, I just had a driveway that I learned a lot of tricks in. I had friends that I grew up skating who had fathers who were welders who would make us flat bars and we built little boxes and things.

 

 

Sick

Sometimes you know we tried to put some wood up against the side of the house and skate that.

 

 

 

 

At what point did you realise there was a skate industry, videos and stuff like that?

I got my first skate magazines from this shitty mall store that my sister was working out and she saw some skate mags and she brought a couple of those for me.

So you know you start seeing that and you know piecing it together with whatever videos that your friends might have. But it was so awesome, we didn’t have any skate shop or you know other places that would have any sort of material to digest.

So you know, those first three skate mags that she bought me held me for six months and I’m there just trying to figure out the pages. But then, eventually I bought my first skate videos at a Best Buy, which is a big outlet store for electronics and things.

You know all of those like Yeah Right, The DC video and Adio One Step Beyond? But a lot of these videos have different music because the DVD rights didn’t carry over from the VHS. So that was a big thing I had to realise in my life that I had a bootleg copy of these videos, so I just had to take it on those videos that I had.

 

 

 

 

One Step Beyond was released in 2001. But what year was this? 2003? 2004?

2004, probably. I remember having a bunch of extra features and I remember listening to Josh Stewart talk about the video in great detail and it was just crazy, as 15 years later I was here working with him for Static on the video.

It was a very trippy experience having them come to New Orleans to film me and just having them sign my Adio stickers from back in the day yeah.

I think that was the feeling that I had of being in a video and letting more people know that it’s happening here as well.

 

 

Absolutely, I think that’s good, the fact that you’ve had that, not many people can say – they’ve had that 360 experience of watching a skate video series and years later they come to film you for a part! What you said about those mags got me thinking, do you remember which mags they were or what covers they had?

Well, I don’t quite remember what was on the Thrasher cover, but I remember the Transworld was the accidental East Coast Issue and Stevie Williams‘ Switch Crook on this curved ledge was on the cover.

I think the third one was The Skateboard Mag. I can’t remember what the cover may have been.

 

 

Your experience reminds of skaters from the 80s who did not have access to videos so they just had to make up what was going on at the time from their own imagination. How did you learn to do No Complys without seeing them on video?

I remember specifically in a Skateboarder, I was reading one of those trick tips, Ray Barbee, breaking down No Complys that he called Step Hops.

I was just a young kid probably not tall enough yet to do the trick properly, so I couldn’t figure it out why it wasn’t working.

But then years later you end up figuring things out because you’re playing around with your skateboard – more than you’re really out there training or competing or whatever – you’re kind of just honing your skills on this thing throughout the years.

 

 

Jordan Trahan, Backside 5-0, Shot by Pep Kim

 

 

It’s better to learn how to roll around and Powerslide and stuff at first rather than doing tricks and you can tell from your skating you’ve done that.What spot did you skate the most in Louisiana at the time?

Yeah, so, Lafayette, Louisiana, it’s 20 miles north of me where I grew up, and you know there’s the hospital there. There’s a hospital there, the university, there’s an actual skate shop and there were a few different indoor skate parks. One was pretty absurd and one was very nice and you could drop your kids off, a daycare type of thing. But, that was only accessible to me when I had a car and I was 15 years old and I just started driving.

So once I was of age, you know, I just started driving, I just started meeting people who skated, people who were already well on their way of mastering this thing.

 

 

Anybody I’d know?

Perhaps not no but Ruckus Skate Shop has been there for 24 years. I realised now that when I was kid, they were only a few years old at the time.

But you know, we made a bunch of these videos that are still on YouTube that I cringe when I watch because, even at the time they came out, I was kind of using random radio music, like The Eagles and random shit like that to make these edits.

But other people seem to like them and people have come up to me in other places in the world and told me they remember these videos from 15 years ago.

 

 

There’s nothing more raw than a skate scene video, are all the parts still online?

I think the video that we made, the filmer never put the full video online with our individual parts. He just remixed them into montages. So it was a lot of that same footage online.

So you know it’s too bad I put uploading the DVD off in order to get these parts, because I haven’t seen them online in a while anyway.

 

 

I’m interested to see it, who made the video?

So it was a friend of mine, Christian. He was on his way to doing things in skating and had an injury or two and kind of fell back from the ambition. But he was amazing and you know what, my friend, who was so nice to me – he was nice enough to give each and every person in our place the chance to get some boards and wheels and shoes or something, to try to get some sort of shop wear.

So that kind of got us in the mix on filming and making the video parts and keeping up with people who are going to use the product, because it’s really on you to do anything for them.

 

 

Jordan, Fence Jam, Shot by Fred Simonson

 

 

That’s sick, who was that person who first recognised your skating and started hooking you up?

Yeah, I mean at the skate shop, Ronnie, who is the owner, he helped me out quite a bit and then you know, Charlie Thomas, he was an old pro back in the day. You know, he was on H-Street?

 

 

Jordan, Backside Ollie, Shot by Alex Papke

 

 

Mm-hmm.

My other buddy, Alex. He was displaced from Katrina and moved to New Orleans, back in 2006. So I met him the following year in my hometown in Meaux. So it was rad, he was a 30 year old skater, who was my friend who I would skate with at 15. So he was driving me around, taking me under his wing and taking me on my first skate trips to New Orleans, to Texas and the Pacific.

So he helped to teach me how to branch out and speak to neighbouring skaters and you know, communicating it on this greater level. So he taught me how to really travel.

 

 

Oh, that’s great man. At what stage was there a turning point where you were like, I want to skate for a career, or is it more like sponsors were coming to you?

I think I went with the skate shop to one of those trade shows in California for my first visit there. I believe during my senior year of high school, and you know, I got to talk to some of these guys. That took me up to that point. To meet them, shoot the shit and be like hey, if I come out here, is there anything happening? You know, you have to just learn how to put yourself in that position rather than being, hey, this is cool. It was a learning experience for me, learning how to hang out.

 

 

And after you met a lot of people at that trade show, what happened after that?

I guess I went back home and I wasn’t going to go to college. I was just going to save up some money and try to go back to California and drive my car out there. I had some scholarships and I tried out college for a few weeks, like six weeks or so.

I ended up going on this trip for DC Shoes, the King of Chicago event. That was my first trip to Chicago and made a bunch of my lifelong friends now just at that moment.

So then when I got back from this week-long trip I just kind of dropped out of college. I just decided to save up some money and I drove a little car out to California. So I had to take 8 months out there and just you know, try to just be in the mix but I wasn’t really feeling it.

 

 

Jordan, Nose Manual, Shot by Fred Simonson

 

 

What was it about being in California at the time that you didn’t enjoy?

The fact that it didn’t rain for six months straight.

I mean the entire time I was in the LA area you know, I didn’t think I was going to go over there for maybe a month. But when I was in San Diego and San Jose, overall I just didn’t find it…You know like how I was gonna work, pay rent and you know, do all that.

Then at that time I went and visited a friend of mine in New York. I took the train to New Orleans all the way to New York City for my first week there. It took 29 hours on a train ride.

I remember getting there and spending two weeks and really enjoying myself. I touched base with the 5Boro guys because I was showing them around here, in Louisiana, only six months prior to that.

 

 

Jordan, Tre Flip, Shot by Blair Alley

 

 

So you know, just every time you meet somebody you get their number and when you’re in their neck of the woods, you hit them up. That’s what I did when I got to New York City. I bro’ed down with those guys and that was kind of the story of why I stayed in New York and did the 5Boro thing.

 

 

 

 

When you’re in New York you can throw your board down and skate in traffic and just do it, it’s different to Cali in that way.

You can kind of adapt your ambitions to it, just day to day. So yeah, I mean New York City was the best place. I could go far. I could push, ride my bike or take the train everywhere.

 

 

Jordan, Gap to Lip, Shot by Zander Takemoto

 

 

How did you meet Peter Sidlauskas who does Bronze?

I met Peter Sidlauskas through skating with Rob Gonyon. He was on 5Boro as well and Peter was behind the camera. Like you know, we’re in the video franchise. He’s just a guy who got me into the mix with Peter and we were filming for the future 5Boro video at the time and at a certain point I realised that eventually the footage wasn’t going to get used.

 

 

Jordan, Ollie, New York: Shot by J Hon Photo 

 

 

Peter was like hey, man, do you want to ride for this hardware company that we were doing? And I’m like, no, I’m okay. But then the first Bronze video comes out and I’m not in it.

But then you know, I see him six months later at a bar and he’s come on, dude, let’s use your footage, you on Bronze, that would be cool! I just said, alright, cool, yeah!

So he put out my footage where the guy shoots himself in the head and it’s all crazy

 

 

What did you think about the Bronze editing?

I didn’t really know how to take that, because that video dropped in that same month, in 2014, that I was spending time out in Echo Park staying in an apartment with Tom Knox filming for New Balance at the time. We were watching it and I was like does ‘Peter hate me!?”

But Knox was also watching it and he was nah dude, it’s a great edit, this is sick! I remember I was just having good feelings about it because we were just sitting in LA by ourselves and tripping out watching it.

I remember it was that same month that the last ever PWBC news episode came out. I think it was probably the last one that ever came out. It was a good month for me and Knox we were watching all these good things come out but it was a strange time.

 

 

What was that first Bronze edit you were in called?

Enron.

 

 

 

 

Alright sick. So, you’re in New York, on 5Boro, were you on New Balance then?

Yeah, I think they launched January 2013

I was getting New Balance skate shoes before the launch through Arto Saari. I had met Arto in New York City and we shot a bunch of photographs. At that time he was kind of transitioning out of pro skating and trying to shoot a lot of photos. We met through a mutual friend and we were skating around town shooting all these pics.

 

 

Jordan Trahan, Wallride Nollie, Shot by Arto Saari

 

 

He took them back to Los Angeles, to Long Beach, and at the time John Rattray was our team manager. Rattray gave me a call before he transferred to éS. He put Jimmy McDonald on and they bought on Bobby Worrest and Stevie Perez, it was that second wave of éS.

So you know, all the 5Boro guys had nothing but good things to say about that transfer.

 

 

 I remember when New Balance first came out and it had a really defined aesthetic. Everything was very specific. I was really interested to see the team grow. Why did you and Tom stay in that apartment in Echo Park together at the time?

Because at the time, you know, both Tom and I needed to be in LA for a bit to get footage for a project that was going to be an edit. You know we were filming for that and we were the only two guys who didn’t live in California, so that was just a way to get us in one place. He and I were already cool with each other after we had met on our first trip to New York. Tom stayed with me for about a week or two on that one. They knew we could live together if we had to, so weeks went on.

 

 

 

 

I mean, we did this edit for a shoe, for the 440, when the shoe first dropped. It’s the only time I went to London, it was for four days and it rained for two of them, but for two of the good days we just pushed around the city and, filmed a bunch of little clips for the two colorways of the shoe.

I remember just how fun that was and how good a time we had. Yes, we had to skate and get after it, but with the time that we had, when you look at it, it looked like we had a week or so. I don’t know. It was just amazing, getting experiences to be with him.

That was probably the last time that we skated together too. It has been a few years since he’s had a few kids.

 

 

Yeah he’s got four kids now. Do you have a favourite Tom Knox trick?

I remember him battling this Back Smith 360 Out on a picnic table. But the picnic table was a type of fibreglass and his kingpin kept of kind of grinding it and it was getting shredded up when he was grinding into it. So it was insane how many times he did the trick and managed to pull it off.

 

 

You did that sick BS 360 No Comply One foot over that grate at Flushing Meadows. Can you walk me through how that one went down and how you learnt that trick?

Well, if you do Backside 360 No Comply you place your foot on the ground but the pressure is the same.

I remember on a trip to Paris I was hanging out with Vincent Touzery and a bunch of the Bloby kids and you know Bloby Greg? Greg Cuadrado? He was doing a lot of those.

I had such a good time in Paris, pushing around. It’s all just you know, playing on our skateboards,I see skateboarders somewhere in my life and we just you know, kick our boards around until something makes sense and we learn things off each other and that one, I got from Greg.

 

 

He is one of the first people I’ve seen to do that too. But the one you did, you were going pretty fast man!

The ground was a little slippery. So I remember I put my hood on and I had this sweater that I could put on my neck. It was like a neck brace and there was a few times where I bumped my head on the ground, but I had all of this padding around me.

 

 

How did you end up doing a line in the same spot on the Gonz in your VX400 section? Is that why you did the line there?

No. After I did my line there, then I checked out Gonz’s original line and put it together a year later and realised its the same spot. But I was really just looking for a downhill line that’s going to have the pole jam, like if it’s naturally sitting on a hill, so it’s a slanted pole jam due to the angle of the hill, I think just when I found out about it! So yeah, that’s how that happened. I was out filming with Russell Houghton that day.

 

 

What was it like working with Russell Houghten on those early New Balance videos? Because it seemed kind of gnarly man, with the drones flying overhead to capture your lines that he used to film you?

I think at that point he was slowly getting out of wanting to be out skating all the time. You know he was living with his wife and they were trying to have their family and I think maybe Russell would probably over having us stay in his guest bedroom and us just waiting around to skate and he was just transitioning out of wanting to go out and film us skate all the time.

 

 

 

 

How did the drones work out on tour?

Sometimes we’d go on tours, like the UK tour. We went from Manchester to Leeds, Liverpool. Sheffield and then we drove to Scotland but setting up a drone in these old towns and then having the team push it through the, they made an aesthetic video but sometimes it wasn’t helpful on the trip! It was just like how can you even fly this in this town?

 

 

For sure. So, where was your favourite place to visit and skate in the UK and why?

I remember we had a good time in Liverpool. I remember we met a young Charlie Birch when he was probably about 14 or 15. We skated with Dave Mackey. We dropped off all the camera bags and we went to a Liverpool match, and that was fucking sick. Taking a train, and a bus. Meeting Mackey for the first time. We had a good time in Manchester too for sure.

 

 

 

 

We also went to Sheffield and Leeds. I remember the feel of all of the skate shops in all of the cities like Slugger in Sheffield and Welcome in Leeds. I still remember the feeling of every one of those skate shops because they were all individual and singular.

 

 

Yeah for sure and Seb Palmer who runs New Balance, he’s from Sheffield right?

Yeah, where Sumo used to be. I still need to procure a Sumo shirt! If you know anybody who’s got any?

 

 

 

 

That would be a hard find these days man but maybe someone reading this will know who can help you out…Anyway what was your favourite spot to skate in London?

It’s been a few years now. That was probably 2018. That’s a good question. I don’t know. I just liked rolling on the sidewalk. That sidewalks that kind of whistle at ya. It feels really nice. I think the sidewalks are my thing out there. Compared to the infrastructure here, London is a cake walk!

 

 

That’s interesting, because I do think that sometimes it is a bit of a shock for people to go to London Bridge 10 and they’re like what? Sometimes half the battle is just getting to the spot in England. But just to go back to the start of our conversation, you were talking about after watching Josh Stewart’s videos and then having him come to your local spots to film you for Static. After rewatching those ledge lines where you did those two banging No Complys to slides, what was that spot called and why was it is now destroyed?

Yeah Gray Ledges is no more. They were awful ledges but we were keeping them going, you know gluing them back together every so often. At one point they were knobbed with these steel cages but during covid, my buddies, liberated them but in doing so, in order to learn how to take them off, they had to break one of the corners, you know, if you look at the footage, that’s the one corner just completely missing.

You know, there’s going to be a Hard Rock Casino hotel or something in its place. It’s funny, there’s a parallel in the video part. There’s this tall yellow flat bar that I hop up a curb and then do a Frontside Tailslide on, but then the camera pans down from this collapsed building, which was the remnants of the first attempt they had at building the Hard Rock Casino, that they built improperly. Tragically, a crane collapsed on top of all these floors and crushed dozens of people…

 

 

Fuck!

All the people who were trying to save it, their attempts were not enough, so they deported a bunch of the workers involved in making the building. It was a big mess, you know. Yeah, it makes you think that there’s nothing that’s going to do it. They’re going to have to tear down one of our spots to create even more destruction.

 

 

What was the toughest thing about getting those lines?

The ledges aren’t lined up very well. So you have to swerve extra around it, instead of just being lined up with going from low ledge to the higher ledge, I did in the first line there in my part.

 

 

What was it like filming with Josh for the video? Did you feel a lot of pressure with him or the same with your friends?

I think it felt the same, because I saved things that I filmed with some of my friends for the video and then Josh was coming to town and he would say let’s see that on 16MM or let’s just shoot it on film. I’m just hearing the money roll and I’m just bailing tricks or it’s just not working out. I think all the stuff that we shot on 16 I’ll think about forever.

 

 

Why?

Just because it’s one of those childhood dreams being shot on something that, you watched as a kid and just like that’s the time that you have time to do it. I don’t know, it brings back another level of memory and a little bit of the strength that you just did.

It really encapsulates the moment and makes you feel I have done this and I will never do that again.

 

 

You’ve got sick Tre Flips and Varial Flips. That’s rare to see someone do both with steez but why did you decide to Varial Flip over that bump to bar instead of Tre Flip?

Sometimes, if you try one thing and it doesn’t work, you have to relax with what you’re trying. You know, sometimes the trick you see me do is not the one I intended and it’s like cool, this is working.

I think Trevor Thompson was in town with Josh and we skated this other spot up the street, we shot a photo up the street, along the lakefront in the woods and I had this idea and I was warmed up for it. So it only took six or seven tries.

But then you know, I go back to try for a photograph and it took me two hours. It’s wild and then the photo never comes out and it’s just like, oh wow, is that worth doing again? I could have just had that one moment where it was so easy because the energy and the intention was there.

 

 

Yeah

But yeah sometimes having Josh around helps you think quicker or you roll away from the trick and be like wait, is this all? Is this worthy of the video?

 

 

 

 

How did you find out you were going to be in Static?

I was here in New Orleans for a year and Pat Steiner hit me up and he was mentioning about the beginning of Dial Tone Wheels, that we’re still doing and he was I’m starting this thing and I want you to be a part of it and just for your information there is a chance that Josh is making another Static and I was like, okay, well have Josh hit me up, I’m down, if he’s doing another Static, I want to be in the video.

So we had this quick conversation and, sure enough, we started the idea, but Josh had already been filming for 2-3 years with other guys.

 

 

 

 

What was the first Static video you ever saw?

Well, I remember walking into the skate shop once once on a Saturday and Static II was on. You know to walk in on something like that and you’re, in there to check out shoes that are still available, and like I mentioned to you the amount of time it took to get from my hometown to the bigger town to see these videos, it was a big deal but I didn’t really explore it the way I should have, because I was a little too young.

But when Static 3 came out, we were waiting for a bunch of buddies of ours to go on this trip to Houston, Texas for the weekend. It was about a three and a half hour drive. Our buddy showed up late, almost midnight. We were waiting in the skate shop for him and he was like, we’re watching this and then we’re driving to Houston.

He put on Static 3, and all my buddies were like, are you kidding? Like let’s start driving. He was like I need a beer, I need a smoke real quick, I just worked a full shift all this night. So he made us sit down and watch Static 3 and it was incredible. I’ll always remember that time watching that video.

 

 

By Static 3 the series was in full force. What were you doing when Static IV and V came out?

When four and five were released? I mean even before that I was beginning to work, when I first moved to New York City. I got a job at this Cafe that all these skaters worked at. I found out that it was Josh Stewart who got the job first and then he slowly got more and more skaters jobs like Bobby Puleo, Jack Sabback and Tony Cox.

This was before my time there, but we found out and then at the time I was working with Kevin Tierney and Dustin Eggling and all these other characters who were going to be in the Static IV and Static V.

I just was hearing about it every day like, oh man, we got to get this thing for Static. So I was not just having the feeling of missing out but totally missing out! Like damn, that’s shit. Like this is awesome but I’d like to get in it too.

So I did manage to go out and film with him and thinking about Josh being hyped to use a clip that he filmed with me…I was like, I’m hyped to have a clip in the video too.

 

 

Do you have a favourite trick you filmed with Josh for Static?

I mean, sometimes it’s a little nerve-wracking because we’re shooting things on a camera that’s just getting older and older and, my last trick in the video he shot it 16mm, with one hand and shot it VX with his other hand, so he’s doing two things at once.

But this camera that he’s shooting with the Bolex, it had all these light leaks in it and the footage was ruined. So, it was one of those things like oh wow, we have the last trick, we have it shot – two VX angles with 16 and my one friend showed up and shot a second angle, but he only showed up like five or ten minutes before I landed it.

It was one of these hairy but you know, serendipitous moments, but it was probably 100-112 fahrenheit outside so I don’t know what that is in celsius, it’s fucking, it’s just brutal

 

 

Yeah, it’s 44 degrees basically, I think

It was the day he flew in for the last filming trip, but I just wanted to get this out and get this trick out of my mind and I rinsed myself energetically for two days, but it was, you know, worth it.

 

 

That’s insane, that’s nuts that you would skate in that level of heat. Fuck.

Yeah, yeah, there’s a few tricks in that part that are all shot in that heat. It is what it is, when you’re finishing up a project you’ll do what you got to do but the whole process of the video wasn’t like that.

Yeah, but that those are the moments that stick with your brain, yeah yeah, a little bit of heat stroke will stick with your brain.

 

 

For sure. But just to go back to what you said earlier, what kind of stood out to me was you learned No Complys through Ray Barbee, I think that’s dope! I think that’s amazing that a skater who came up in the 80s is still having an impact on somebody who’s killing it as a current pro

He’s just the coolest dude you could ever hang out with Ray Barbee. You just want to be a cooler person, you want to be just as chill as him. Yeah, so, that’s the bigger takeaway.

 

 

Jordan Trahan, Backside No Comply, Shot by Kyle Camarillo

 

 

He’s a really relaxed guy. He puts you at ease, for sure. But I was gonna ask, do you have a favourite trick of Ray’s or a specific No Comply that he’s done?

I guess, whenever I was a kid, my friends, my older friends who were like that that were trying to instil this knowledge in me, oh, just because you were born in the 90s doesn’t mean you can skip the 80s videos, you have to watch the 80s videos

So Ray Barbee’s Ban This part, it’s all shot on film and he’s doing all these runs and it’s a lot of that and he does the one Frontside, No Comply down the four stair and he reverts it all the way around, or maybe he reverts it back. That shit kind of blew my mind and he was just a kid dicking around for his video part he filmed in a day or two.

 

 

 

 

I feel that sort of video part you can feel you know he wasn’t stressing, you know he was just flowing.

 

 

Jordan, Tre Flip, Shot by Anthony Acosta, for 5Boro

 

 

You can definitely get the vibe of his skating that he’s never forced a single trick and that if something wasn’t working he just moved on to the next one.

But then looking at your skating as there’s a lot that stands out. Your Tre Flip over the picnic table, for example. But I started to properly watch your parts and I was like dude, you got a fucking sick Wallride Nollie. How did you learn that trick and what’s your favourite you’ve done?

I think when I was a kid, if I was sitting here watching videos, I would probably pay way more attention to a goofy-footed skater because you’re trying to figure out things. But watching the early Real Skateboards videos that were very East Coast-based, not just the later issues – say Non Fiction. You’ve got Quim Cardona and Keith Hufnagel both doing you know awesome Wallride tricks and Wallride Nollies out to Fakie and to regular.

I feel like those kind of powerful goofy footed dudes had a big impact on me.

 

 

Yeah, man, Quim man, his Wallride Nollies, I think are up there with the most stylish ones I’ve ever seen. Like the way he does him like, it really makes me want to do the trick. It’s funny that you say that about stance and stuff. Like looking at a skater oh, he’s goofy like me, because I can watch somebody who’s goofy or regular and can still enjoy it.

As a kid when I was trying to absorb it and figure out like foot placements and things, and you’re like, alright, that’s how he does it.

 

 

I get it. But now you’ve opened that door, who’s your favourite goofy footed skater?

Oh shit, I mean Gonz is insane yeah but thinking of someone else in the moment, like it’s so hard to really say…

Also, I was a big fan of Kenny Anderson as a kid and now getting to skate with him, it’s rad. It’s like seeing somebody who you would watch their stance as a kid and you get to experience that in the flesh. You know he came to visit with the Chocolate Team a couple of weeks ago and you know he and I went to a little music show. Just he and I, like the rest of the team, wanted to stay back and get tattoos and uh, I don’t know, that sort of thing.

Like I remember watching the Adio One Step Beyond, video we talked about that earlier, I was watching that religiously over and over again.

Ed Selego had the first part he was goofy footed, but then you know, Kenny wasn’t just like jumping down massive shit, he was doing smooth shit, connecting lines and making it look enjoyable and to this day, when you watch Kenny skate, it’s super enjoyable to watch and you know you could see that he’s expressing himself in a way that’s just smooth and comfortable and not forced in any way.

 

 

I mean from that manny, like Shuv Nose Manny that he does. I was already like what the fuck is going on

Yeah, like what is physics

 

 

 

 

He’s still so light-footed. In that Adio video, Josh brought a cinematic approach angle to it that was so sick. Kenny’s Kickflip Nose Manual journey to Las Vegas is something I always used to love to watch. Was there a skit or a section in that video that has stuck with you to now?

I mean totally that one, the Kickflip Nose Wheelie one.

That was a trippy one as a kid, because you’re just learning Kickflips and he’s like finessing them on flat ground straight to a Nosewheelie, that blew my mind.

I sat there for quite a while just trying to figure out how to Kickflip, and land on the front of my board, like how wicked was that?

 

 

Yeah, man. The way he turns out the drive and everything. You’re like oh shit, he’s doing it!

Like with fresh eyes as a kid watching that is, he’s bending time and space.

 

 

Yeah, it’s amazing, I can only imagine, what it’s like to skate with somebody who makes it look that good and does so many technical tricks.

Kenny’s 46…or 47 years old now. So like it’s pretty inspiring that you know guys like him have had these careers and you know Kenny might do some other things, for some work here and there and but I like seeing how his motivation for skating has transformed from just his tricks and his video parts. He’s taking his sustainable materials vibe a bit further with the Clearweather brand that he’s working with, making all these shoes that are either hemp, vegan leathers or vegan suedes.

It was really cool to catch up with him a couple weeks ago and listen to his passion, you know, for other things, because skating can just sap your energy and take more than it gives, sometimes.

It’s interesting to see how people like that, who have had such a long career, keep it fresh and, you know, it doesn’t get stale for the guys who feel like they’re contributing and not just taking away from the space that we have you know,

 

 

For sure. So you somehow did a Wallride Nollie back into a Wallride. I would never have thought that was even possible.

I did it and then I found a couple different spots that were similar but you know, maybe had round poles and they were too far apart right to try to gap one or the other, I think another one is still possible.

So you may end up seeing the trick again in another video part, but I’d have to go back to the same spot where I initially came up with the trick. Sometimes it doesn’t work out the first time, so you gotta go and fiddle with it some more and adjust your trucks.

Since then I’ve found almost five identical spots to the one I already did it at, so I don’t want to just redo it at a very similar spot.

 

 

Maybe throw in a Heelflip next time…

Yeah, if I was Mark Baines perhaps because that’s like his way – Nollie Frontside 180 Heel.

 

 

It’s weird some people boost out of them, but you ride up completely Nollie it’s a completely different thing when you do it. You’re very comfortable riding up walls on your nose and getting significant amounts of pop out, it’s really sick to see.

You can do them, them in an Ollie position, so you’re not just riding with your foot on the nose. You can get all four on the wall first and then Nollie out.

 

 

I don’t know about that, but I’ll see next time I’m out I’ll give one a go.

But speaking about that too, another thread that I noticed running through a lot of your parts and some of the photos I’ve seen of you recently as well – is that you skate a lot of steep tight street transition, you’re able to get a lot of pop whilst being sort of in that weightless Wallride position. But I wouldn’t say that you are a transition skater. How did you pick up all these tight transition skills?

I guess when you’re in New York, there’s jersey barriers everywhere, and you know I got really hyped on jersey barriers when I was out there, Wallriding, eventually learning how to Backside Ollie on them.

And you know, when you find a street transition, no matter how terrible it is, whether it’s made of brick or if it’s too steep, it’s still smoother than a jagged jersey barrier. There’s still something to work with there and you just do a small Ollie first and you juice it up a little bit more and more and you build. But, you know, not every one that you see was the one that we did first, you know, you have to battle for it and sometimes you got to slam on your tailbone a bit.

But I don’t find built to skate obstacles, that fulfilling. So skating a park or a mini ramp, that’s super slick, doesn’t give me the jollies that it does to other people.

 

 

Jordan Trahan, Frontside Ollie, Shot by Jake Darwen

 

 

The fact that you learned to skate transition on jersey barriers tells me a lot about your skating.

I mean, there were certainly skate parks throughout, you know my youth and other places, but I never really had an affinity for skating transition by any means.

 

 

We haven’t talked about you skating for Chocolate. So you’ve been skating for them for about six or seven years now?

Four years? I quit 5Boro with a piece of footage called Apartment 5b and I told Nardelli, four months prior, that you know, with this nice little video project I was going to move on and try to ride for Chocolate, but the week or two after the footage comes out, covid happens and lockdown happens.

 

 

 

 

So you know, basically I’m sitting in New Orleans after just quitting and I have some boards to skate, but no promise of anything. You know, I still had to go out during covid, you know, five, maybe a dozen times to LA, maybe it was a little less than that, but it’s still a couple of year process of making that Chocolate video, the Bunny Hop video.

 

 

 

 

Coming from our generation Girl and Chocolate was the epitome of street skating, they were like celebrities. I thought you were on for so long because your skating fits Chocolate really well, you do incredibly smooth, technical, stylish street skating. But who, who was it that you connected with in the Crailtap camp?As in, who was the person who was trying to get you involved?

Stevie Perez, you know around the time Knox and I were staying out in California, as we were talking about earlier, I had already known Stevie. Stevie would come and hang out with us at the house and he was there the day, I did the Tre Flip over the picnic table and he’s my good homie, he’s my brother and at the time he was asking me to ride for Chocolate.

I told him you know, I can’t do it, we’re already pretty deep in this 5Boro stuff and he understood and it was, you know, it was all good.

We kind of put that on ice for a bit and then, around summer 2019, you know, he started hitting me up again and, I just felt I was a little more in the way that I could do that.

You know, I was ready to move on, perhaps, and I was taking, a small paycheck from paycheck from a New York based company while living in Louisiana. It felt like I was taking more than I was giving and it just didn’t feel right.

So that was another big reason I kind of wanted to leave. So we began the process of you know hanging out. I went out to LA a few times to start meeting all the Chocolate guys and begin the whole process of an organic relationship.

 

 

Jordan, Ollie, Shot by Tim Black 

 

 

Did you find that intimidating, or were you just kind of, fuck it, I’m ready to do this?

I mean, you think about who Chocolate is nowadays. It’s Stevie, Vincent Alvarez, James Capps, and then there were the Ams as well.

At the time they had Carl Aikens and they had Erik Herrera, but the older guys, some of them who I thought were in the mix, had already moved on and you know, that was that’s like the main guys, like Chico Brenes.

But Vincent and Stevie. That’s like my two main brothers. Kenny’s a bit older, so I didn’t expect him to be around a whole lot, but as we started going on trips of it, he was on every one. So that was super fucking cool.

So, you know, they asked those guys like the pillars of the brand, like, how do you feel about this guy? Is he cool? Like you guys skating together, I was out in LA for you know, weeks at a time, multiple times, and some days we’re out at Vinnie’s DIYs and we’re pouring concrete or you know, just looking around fixing up spots, and you know they make LA cool for me, you know Vincent and Stevie, and Capps is back out in Boise now.

So when everybody wants to get out of LA, they’ll go and camp with him and do some other shit and then out of LA. They’ll go and camp with him and do some other shit and then, yeah, I feel the crew is just super fucking cool right now.

You know, if I have to be in LA for some skate stuff, at least it’s with with the coolest dudes to be chilling with!

 

 

Yeah, so recently you worked on the New Balance x Chocolate 480 collab and you were saying everybody came to see you?

Yeah, they came out for the shoe release over at Humidity Skate Shop.

 

 

 

 

That’s cool, Tell me a bit behind the shoe release over at humidity skate shop. I’ve seen the ad with Tony Ferguson reprising his role as a cop as well just tell me a bit about that

Well, so I shot, shot all the skate footage first. We had a meeting for the shoe a year prior and you know Rick Howard had told me about the project and how they had a meeting for it. But I wasn’t really involved with that first meeting and I kind of you know Rick, you know, like we said earlier, seems like a celebrity but he’s super fucking cool and I wake up first thing in the morning, earlier than everybody on skate trips, and he’s second, and you know we have coffee and we talk every day and it’s super fucking sick

So Rick sent me some mock-ups and I was like, dude, honestly, if you want me to be hyped on this or, if you want this to be really good, I have 10 years of experience with these New Balance materials and ideas maybe I should have been in the meeting and just express that to him.

So, I was in on the next one and I got to come up with the colorways and all of the archival stuff that you see on the shoe.

Like a lot of that came out of my brain.

So yeah, it was like cool to come up with the skit with Tony and they told me he was down to be in it. But I came up with the shot by shot direction, like how I thought it would play out and, you know, came up with a little one-liner. So it felt good to feel involved in a project, because you know they don’t ask me for much, the New Balance guys.

 

 

 

 

So you basically just directed, starred and scripted your own New Balance and Chocolate collaboration commercial?

Yeah and I’d say 75 percent of the skate footage was done on a rolled ankle with an ankle brace because, you know, the project was a little harder to shoot than I imagined.

 

 

Jordan Trahan, Wallride Nollie, Shot by Jake Darwen

 

 

You kind of Spike Jonze’d it

Actually putting my fingers up and making the little video box and explaining to Kyle Camarillo like this is first angle, this is second angle, you know shot for shot, kind of explaining it, because for 10 minutes he didn’t really understand how it was going to work logistically.

 

 

Yeah

I was like Kyle, just clear your mind, walk with me here, and you know, kind of directed his camera work and it was fun. So I went from having no involvement in the project to doing it all.

 

 

That line “I can’t believe it’s been 30 years of this shit” was sick. Like you understood this whole thing from the ground up

The skate clip came about, where we got the little line where I Ollie over the hydrant, up the curb and then over the bar and the way I rolled out into the street, I was like hey, we could get Tony to be in the cop car right here and just slam on the brakes and I basically wrote it all right there in that second.

I texted it to Kyle and two days later they said like hey, we talked to Tony, he’s down, he’s gonna fly in for two days. We’ll shoot it on Monday. We just renegaded it like no permits or whatever. They had to get the fake cop car obviously.

 

 

 

 

You mentioned about the archival Girl and Chocolate bits on the 480 NB shoe. But for the record, what is on that insole? And why did you choose those flags for the shoe and the other Crailtap homages specifically?

So the flags were an archival piece of Chocolate history. It’s all the flags that are behind the main portraits from the first seven pros, the ones that hover behind, Chico Brenes, Gino Iannucci and Paulo Diaz‘s heads.

Jeff Mikut who used to work for Lakai, he works for New Balance now. He’s been our shoe designer for about eight years now. He knew about all of this artwork and he’s like, oh, what about the flags here? And, yeah, we just incorporated them into the shoe.

I didn’t really want to have, my name all over this shoe because it’s more of a celebration for the 30 years of Chocolate. Not me, so much, so that’s what the flags were about.

Then the drip art that’s from Mouse. You know, everybody who rides for Chocolate in the Mouse video has these Chocolate syrup drip drippings that Geoff McFetridge did.

He did that archival art and I just thought, you know, that’d be another great way to slap it on the bottom of the shoe. So you know, you see it on every panel of the shoe.

 

 

 

 

It’s a really fantastic idea to put that drip art onto a shoe. But with that in mind, I guess, what was your favourite Girl or Chocolate video from the past? Which one did you watch the most back in the day?

Well, I probably watched Chocolate Tour the most I mean – aside from Yeah Right because that was the only video I had for a couple years. So that’s a lot of viewings.

 

 

 

 

But when I started working on the project and trying to figure out where to film for this, little edit for the 30 years, for the 480 shoe, I was back at Vincent’s house after this, trip up to Atlas in San Jose – it’s a little skate shop where they did an event there.

So when I returned, they’re like, hey, we have the shoes, you should start, you should come get them tomorrow and then, like you know, maybe try to start shooting for it. So I started watching all of their videos from the beginning, you know Paco, Goldfish, Mouse, but it’s like those, older videos, there’s only so much that my brain soaked up from those, whereas, Chocolate Tour and beyond were the ones that I really gravitated to.

 

 

Do you have a favourite section in Mouse?

Mouse? I mean probably Keenan and Gino. It’s a pretty good combination.

 

 

 

 

Any other upcoming new projects with New Balance that you want to mention?

Well with Chocolate, we’re working on another Girl video, so I’m trying to have my own. You know the Chocolate guys have parts in the middle of the video, kind of just sprinkled throughout yeah I’m trying to have a full section in that and I’m kind of filming on my own.

I have the camera with the big bubble fish eye, the HPX 170. So we’ve just been filming out here and I think there’s a Bronze x New Balance collab down the way. So, fuck, we’re gonna take another stab at that dude,

 

 

Are there any other creative things that you’re into aside from just skating?

I have a yoga practice I do every morning and, you know, two or three days a week I teach on this little body of water out by my house that keeps the juices flowing.

 

 

You have a class of people?

Yeah maybe 2-6 people might show up,

 

 

That’s sick

Yeah, and I have an art space I share with my buddy because you know this city is a big art city and you know there was an affordable little space that we split. You know another place to sit there and you know, draw or paint or make some some sort of jewellery or I don’t know, just make some woodworking things. I like to fiddle around with a bunch of different things.

 

 

Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I have not mentioned?

I should mention, this Poets Brand thing I’ve been working on with Gino. It’s his brand, but you know it used to be a skate shop out in Long Island.

Yeah, for about six months now he and I have been talking back and forth every week or so and I went out a few months ago to meet him in New York and, you know, just discuss some future of helping him build his brand and taking it to, a little different level.So I think pretty soon we’ll have some sort of release like you know, me writing for Poets sort of advert.

 

 

Okay, sick. So that’s a clothing thing?

Yeah

 

 

How did this Poets opportunity arise?

So this buddy of ours, Bobby Boyd, is guy from Atlanta, Georgia, I believe. He’s been working with Gino after basically getting pushed out of his job Dickies, so now he’s helping build the Poets Brand. I know Bobby, you know somewhat, not super, super well, but you know he’s a good buddy and he was looking out and he’s like, oh I mentioned you to Gino, we watched your Static part, and you know he wants to talk to you.

I’m like, all right, crazy. So you know we started talking over the phone and a month or two later I went out to New York and we shot the shit, had some coffee with him.

 

 

That sounds amazing. I know this is a tough one but who’s your favourite skater?

Oh boy. At the moment? At the moment my buddy, Brian Brown. Brian Brown is awesome.

He’s the Pepper Grip TM now and, probably the last person I thought that would like be in the skate industry later on after a career, and he’s just awesome, one of my favourite skaters, just as a dude

 

 

Yeah, man, Nosegrinds for days, Brian Brown is an amazing, skateboarder, but do you have a favourite skater of all-time?

All-time maybe, Huf, Keith Hufnagel?

Yeah he was just so cool too, like people that are I don’t know, a good skater, but also just wicked awesome people.

 

 

 

 

Like the first pro skater I ever met was Brian Anderson, here in New Orleans.

 

 

 

 

I was 16 years old and I just remember how cool he was and still to this day, like he comes here every so often and you know we I’ve had this long memory and relationship with him. It’s not like we’re super close or anything, but it’s he’s just such a rad dude too.

 

 

Who’s got your favourite style on a board?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of my favourite styles of all time is maybe Nate Broussard. Yeah, a fellow Louisianian. He lived a lot of his life in Texas but he was originally born in Louisiana. But his style is just very much his own and you know he stepped away from skating, the whole pro aspect of it, but he still has a stature on a board that no one else can match or replicate. You have to have it.

 

 

Yeah, he had a part in One Step Beyond and Static videos. So I can see why he’s up there for you. Who’s your favourite skate photographer?

My buddy, Fred Simonson from Baton Rouge.

 

 

Jordan, Pole Jam Transfer, Shot by Fred Simonson

 

 

He’s about 53 years old and he comes out on his Mondays or Tuesdays off of work and he’s been shooting for a few years, getting better and better and, you know, stepping up his equipment.

So, he’s one of my favourite dudes to shoot with for sure and also Jake Darwen, you know he’s captured some of my fantasy photos that I’ve always wanted to get and he’s just that type of guy who’s capable of, you know, creating some really cool lighting and impossible photos with his aesthetic and skill.

 

 

Jordan and Jake Hayes, Kickflips, Shot by Jake Darwen 

 

 

Yeah, definitely he’s one of the best out there. Are there any artists out there that you really look up to you want to mention?

If you recall, Duane Pitre, who used to ride for the original Alien Workshop.

 

 

Yeah

Most of that, a big chunk of that video was shot in Louisiana, because Duane Pitre is from New Orleans. His music is all throughout Mindfield. It’s a lot of the droning bird shots, a lot of these ambient sounds.

I’m not going to say he’s my favourite musician by any means, but I really appreciate his music and his movement from skating to making music.

That it’s still in videos that impact our lives and I’ve ran into him a couple times here in New Orleans and it’s like that’s the type of person that, drew me to this place.

Like you could still be a person after skating and enjoy your life to such a degree that, you feel that you can create music, art, furniture or a countertop, just things that make you feel like the world is not over after you know, your knees get blown out after skating.

 

 

People like Ron Allen are skating well into their 60s and stuff these days.So it’s like who’s to say when you can stop skating?

It’s weird Kenny and I went kind of on a long tangent the other night talking about this because, you know, even just with the yoga things that I’ve been practicing for a couple of years every single day, waking up and doing this practice, it can elongate your career and at the same time you flip the coin and you become okay with the impermanence of everything and you know, your career is not all, it’s not your entire life. It doesn’t have to weigh so heavily on you, so that skating, becomes a chore or a burden.

 

 

For sure, last one. What’s your favourite skate video of all-time?

I love watching Stereo Visual Sound. That’s a fucking classic. You gotta watch that one. Video Days is is just a classic.

 

 

 

 

I don’t know, skateboarding cinema that makes it less about, how much these dudes had to break their necks to get these clips, but that left you with an overall feeling of how skateboarding was rad.

Real Non-Fiction. That’s a great video you should revisit if you haven’t seen that in a while.

The Mark Gonzales part in Non-Fiction is just ridiculous.

 

 

 

 

Any last words for people reading this?

The journey on the skateboard is never really just your own.

You know, it’s all the people that you meet and all the people that you build it with that, make it cool.

All of my skating is an accumulation of all these people that I met and people that were put in front of me.