Je me souviens, à la sortie de la vidéo “In Bloom” de TWS, je m’étais juré de ne jamais faire un seul “nollie crooked grind” de ma vie. Bon en même temps, ça tombait bien, puisque j’en étais de toute façon incapable. Bref, si je m’étais juré ceci, c’est parce qu’il devait y en avoir 25 dans la vidéo, dont 10, juste dans la part’ à Mikey Taylor. Aujourd’hui, si je devais me faire une autre promesse débile du genre, et bien je bannirais sûrement le slappy crooked ou le body-varial de mon répertoire... Des fois, je me dis que MDV avait peut-être raison finalement: si j’avais 15 ans aujourd’hui, je ne commencerais probablement pas à faire du skateboard. La “ coolitude - à - la - hipsters ” des ToeCap, pantalons trop courts, slappies, no-complies, le tout, filmé, d’une main tremblante, à l’Iphone 7, Place de la République à Paris, ou à celle de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lyon, ça ne me fait vraiment, mais alors vraiment pas rêver... S’il vous plaît les gars, arrêtez de faire des no-complies, c’est la seule chose que je sais (à peu près) faire ! Et j’ai pas envie qu’on me prenne pour un vieux con, qui essaye (en vain) de rester à la page ! Bon allez, j’arrête de dire des conneries. J’vais aller m’entraîner en cachette au nouveau trick à la mode, celui de quitter son fidèle sponsor, pour une marque de chaussures de football ! versus skatezine & Plus #119 (spring 2016) versus-skatezine.ca / jeremyversusdurand@hotmail.fr
cover: albert nyberg / bs flip / rob rouleaux
albert nyberg interview
photo: Rob Rouleaux
Hello Albert! So Mr Nyberg, how’s life treating you lately? Hi Jey! It´s going good. Been having a blast filming with Oli for the upcoming Etnies video and also filming with the Sour guys when I´m in Barcelona. Got lots of trips lined up for this year, skatetrips & vacations, so pretty stoked about that. Can´t complain! Stop me if I’m wrong, but a couple of years ago, nobody ever heard about you, and all of a sudden, you were everywhere in the skatemedia, especially at The Berrics. How did all this happend? After the “you got soul” part I guess people got interested in how I skate. Oli hit me up after the part and asked if I wanted to jump on Etnies europe and I was like hell yeah! Shortly after that the berrics got in touch with me and had me over a few times to film some tricks at the park. It´s was a cool experience. Got the first taste of the real american skate scene. How was your experience at The Berrics? I’ve heard a couple of shit stories there... Like the one from Alex Mizurov that was reported in Monster Skateboard Magazine for example... Don´t know that story actually. I´ve never had a weird experience there. Chase, the filmer at the berrics, has always been a cool mellow dude and is really fun to film with. But sometimes when you´re flying from a cold Sweden and land in a warm California you don´t want to be skating indoors
to much haha. The first time I got to the berrics Eric Koston opened the door and I got nuddle legs instantly. Wasn’t really used to seeing these legends in person so it was a real shock for me. By the way, what happened with New Soul Skateboards? You were a part-owner right? I was never actually part owner. The dist at the time provided the money for the company to get a good start. After the “You got soul” video dropped I really wanted to keep on filming and do more videos with Lomar, who also made the recent Sour Solution video. But after the newsoul video it was clear that the dist wanted to take Newsoul in a different direction and there was some disagreements between us and them. It ended up being weird so we feelt like it was time to leave. I was kind of put off by everything. I didn’t want to start something new again so soon. I kind of did my own thing for a while. Oli was always down to go on trips and Almost helped me out with boards so I didn’t need to worry about that. I was kind of hung up on trying to “make it in the states”. After a long time and some soul searching I realized that I didn’t really like being in the states for too long and I just really missed skating with my friends. Friends whom I felt comfortable with. So I decided that I´d jump on Sweet. But that was during the chaos between Sweet and everyone on the team. Everyone on Sweet jumped off and started Sour and I was
“you just become a mix of everything that caught your eye”
happy to join in on this daring new adventure. It was a fresh start with some of my best friends from back home and I couldn’t be more stoked to be a part of such a great thing. Your new @ Sour deck design is so sick! (preparing for the Olympics) Love it! Did you had a word to say about it? Haha well I think Isak and Bjorn came up with the idea. I thought it was a funny statement since I´m not really a classic “contest skater”. It was just a regular human arm at first so I said “make it a dino hand or something”. Just to make it a bit more interesting. And I also have this weird fetich for dinosaurs so I think it came out really good. I guess, it means you’ll not represent Sweden in Tokyo, or whenever this thing will take place!? By then I´ll probably be too old for that shit haha. You seems to be such an original character, clothing & skateboarding wise... Any influences? Your skating reminds me a bit of Alex Moul! Which is a compliment in my book! Haha well thank you. I guess it´s a ton a influences. Like a lot of people I´ve gone through the hiphop, rasta & punk phase. That was at a early age. At some point you just kind of settle in to the clothing and tricks that you feel most comfortable with. My brother Victor showed me a lot of old
Powell videos so that definitely left its mark on me. If you skate for a long time you´re exposed to shitloads of influences and sources of inspirations. And then you just become a mix of everything that caught your eye. I don’t know any other Team Manager, so it’s kinda hard to compare, but Oli (Bürgin) @Etnies is such a cool guy, I’m pretty sure it’s a lot of fun skating-touring with him. But how is it with the rest of the team? I mean, you also have “big names” like Ryan Sheckler, Chris Joslin, Willow... Do you feel any pressure? Yeah Oli has always been the best! Love going on trips with him. It´s always a pleasure watching those “big names” skate. At first when I got on Etnies I felt some pressure. But mostly from myself. Nowadays I´m just amazed by how good they are. Especially Chris Joslin. Have never seen someone jump down huge gaps with such consistency like him. Mindblowing stuff.
“I didn’t really like being in the states for too long and I just really missed skating with my friends”
You’re filming for the Etnies video now right?
Yepp. Etnies video is on the way! Got some stuff that I´m really happy with. I´ve mostly filmed with Oli and we´ve been at it for a few years now so I have a good stack of clips already. Really keen on seeing what everyone else has for the video.
“I have this weird fetich for dinosaurs�
Any other plans? I´m filming for Gustav Tonnesens video that he´s working on. It´s a vx1000 project and it´s going to be cool how that turns out. Everyone on Sour has got some good stuff for that. Premiere is going to be at the sour office at some point this summer if it gets done in time. Oh by the way, thanks again for the “private-demo” @ Pumpwerk, the new indoor skatepark in Basel, was sick watching you ripping what we’ve just built! My pleasure! It´s always fun to skate something new for the first time. Wanna add something? Keep it Sour! And thanks for having me Jey! Cheers!!! Thanks for your time Albert. Wish you all the best for the future. Hope to have the chance to skate with you soon! Cheers!
wallie BSNBS / photo: gogo cetiner
Reese Andreas Obergsell
Hommage to Zephyrs Craig Stecyk / photo: PAUL
You might be a legend in Basel, I don’t think many Versus readers know who you are.. Could you introduce yourself please? Well I don’t consider myself as a legend. I think I’m far from that what you would call a legend. I just do what I like and try to be helpful in the skate community. So comin’ back to your question I’m 41 years old, skatin’ since ‘88 and my dayjob is workin’ in the family business construction company. I grew up and live in Basel Switzerland. The second company I’m in, is the Import Company which handles all the Santa Monica Airlines Skateboards stuff and a few other products. Even if I was around you during more or less 6 weeks in Basel, helping out the Anti-Chef crew building Pumpwerk, the new indoor park in Basel, I’m still kind of scared of you... I mean, you’re huge! How many boards a week do you need?! Scared? Oh… that’s why you left so early? ;-) No, I mean I’m the same size as Tony Hawk I’m just not that thin as him. Comes from workin’ in construction I guess… Back in the days when I was skating on a daily basis I needed around 3-4 decks a month. Now 3-4 decks a year will do it. You also helped out building Portland right, even if you don’t really skate it?! Tell us more about that... Well since I’m workin’ in construction plus I’m lucky that it is a family business company, it made perfectly sense helping to build that park. I mean I
didn’t do that much. I’ve transported some things, lend the guys the company digger and some more little stuff. But you’re right: I don’t skate there very often. Last year I even realized that I was skating more often in Venice Skatepark than in Portland Basel.. For me the transitions & the combinations don’t fit. I would have to put a lot of work into it to find my lines & tricks there. (and probably a lot of slams too…) I just don’t like small transitions, especially if they end up vert. I’m a little spoiled: I like non-vert transitions, not too high and if possible wooden ones.. Maybe that’s an age thing too… (laughing) You have a special approach of skateboarding; I remember, you told me one day, you never skate street, or mini-ramp, 2 days in a row... Can you explain that? That’s for several reasons. I realized that if I skate 2 days in a row the same, the tricks don’t work that good anymore. I get hurt more often then, so either I take a break for a day or I’m switching from miniramp yesterday to street or downhill today. The longer you skate you learn to know your body. It’s the same thing with tricks. Your body tells you which tricks are easier to learn and which tricks are not. I mean basically you can learn most of them if you really want to, it just takes more or less work. The next thing is that I like to skate different spots. For me it’s boring to skate the same places every day. That’s the beauty of skateboarding. You can do it wherever, whenever, with whoever and whatever you want.
So, you’re the man behind Santa Monica Airlines in Europe right? How did this all started? Tell us a bit about the brand... Yes, well I took a break from skating for a few years and in 2008 / 2009 when I came back I wanted to skate SMA boards again, because when I was young I always was a fan of them. I found out that Skip Engblom (founder of SMA) cancelled the deal with NHS he had a few years earlier, so he had no more distribution in Europe. Nowadays with the internet it’s so easy. I wrote a mail to SMA and Staci (Stacianne Gabrielli) who came from Girl Skateboards did the back office back then. She went to Skip with it and told him that she liked the way of how I was writing and convinced him to work with me. A couple of weeks later the first batch of SMA decks arrived at my house. I was so stoked about that and started to show them to everybody I knew. I was so happy that I realized to late all
decks were at least 8.25” wide. Most of them were poolshapes and 9” even 10” wide. Almost nobody was interested because that was the time when everybody was skating popsicles 8” max. :-D I still have some of these boards in my collection… A few weeks later I went to Santa Monica to meet Skip and since then I basically work for SMA. SMA was founded by Skip Engblom in 1978 after the whole Zephyr thing went down. It’s one of the oldest brands out of this area besides Dogtown Skateboards (Jim Muir from the Z-boys) and Alva Skateboards (Tony Alva from the Z-boys) It got huge when Natas Kaupas joined SMA and brought up so many famous skaters. They’re still spreaded all over the industry. Julien Stranger (Antihero) Jim Thiebaud (Real) Sean Sheffey (Plan B) Mike Conroy and many more. Even today lot’s of skaters started on SMA: Lizzie Armanto, Kiko Francisco, Asher Bradshaw, Matt Boyster, Cory Juneau, Jamie Quaintens and more.
It’s just a hobby/side-job right? Would you like to do that full-time if you could? It totally is. I think I’m built for workin’ in construction. In these kinda things I’m pretty traditional. But I guess 50/50 would be nice. Working half days in construction and half days in skateboarding. In what is your job consisting in exactly? Because you’re also kind of a TM from time to time right? My job has lot’s of different functions. Mainly I sell SMA stuff to shops or directly to skaters all over Europe. Most of them make contact via the internet by mail or by facebook which I’m hosting too. Then I host the Euro family of SMA (we don’t call it a team anymore. We call it family now) or if US riders come over just like last year to the Ultrabowl, I take care of them. I do some designs for SMA (for instance the SMA HB logo) or develop new products like the towels or the coffeemugs. Usually once a year I go to LA visit our headquarters talk to Skip and Tony about business, (Tony Converse is kinda Skips partner and takes care of SMA in the US) go to the factory staining decks and hang out or skate with the guys as like Bennett (Harada), Tuma (Eric “Tuma” Britton) or Jesse Martinez.
I have the feeling kids lately don’t know shit about the skateboard history, and don’t really give a damn fuck about it neither... I mean it’s all about a Plan B or Flip logo deck, and Nike shoes... Do you think Santa Monica Airlines have a chance to survive / stand out here nowadays? I don’t really blame the kids for that. I mean they’re just get instrumentalized by the industrys marketing-bomb. I think it’s our duty as older skaters to tell them about what’s going on. I’m not talking about Plan B to take your example because Danny (Way) knows what the f..k is going in skateboarding. But I can assure you that the f..kin CEO of Nike or Red Bull has no idea about it. For them a skater is an investment to sell more shit. Pure and simple. I was the same when I was young (and you probably too) I just wanted to skate the new graphic of Eric Dressen or wear the new Etnies shoe. The difference is that the companys back then were skatecompanys. Nike and Red Bull have nothing to do with skating. Red Bull is not even a softdrink manufacturer. It’s only a f..king marketing company. I could go on and on about that shit like f..king iconix or VF.. So yes. SMA has a chance to survive. There are many small and traditional companys out there. I mean if we at SMA had a demand like Plan B we couldn’t keep up with it. Our decks are all stained by hand. Actually we should sell them as art so we would make a lot more money… (laughing) But that’s our thing: 10 skaters at the park skating the same SMA model but everyone has a unique different graphic. For us quality matters, not quantity.
BS GRIND NOSE GRAB / photo: JEY
Alright man, that’s pretty much it. Wanna add something? Well to all skaters out there (especially the ones who are still reading this interview): You guys are awesome. Stay open minded, go shred and rip, do the tricks you want – if you wanna do tricks, you don’t need to – do them how you want because there’s no rule how to do a f..king 5-0 or whatever and put your love and respect into skateboarding because it will give it back to you! Thanks to VERSUS and you J. for the opportunity to do this interview.