Winter Migration: The Yin and Yang of Aaron Suski
Dec 29 2006 / Tucson, AZPro street skater Aaron Suski has made a career of making the most of New York City and its bottomless store of gritty urban skate spots, first with 5boro Skateboards, then with Tony Hawk’s Birdhouse team, and finally with a move to Zoo York. But for all his love and loyalty for the Big Apple, Suski says he just can’t stand the cold: As sure as leaves turn color, birds fly south, and bears hibernate for the winter, Suski skips town at the first sign of shifting seasons and heads for Arizona.
Lat34 caught up with the skate nomad in Tucson, where he’s waiting out the winter and warming up for the Zoo York team’s Australian tour in January.
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Lat34: After many years of floating around between NYC and Arizona – and also traveling all over the place – I hear you recently bought a house in Tucson. What’s your connection to the place?
AS: I just bought the house in AZ a few months ago, and I’m so happy out here. It’s been my home away from home for like 15 years. Before I was really getting paid for skating, I had a completely split existence where I’d spend six months in New York, then six months here. Every year, I’d be like, “Man, I gotta get out. Winter’s coming!” and then just wing it out of there. A lot of that time I was living out of a bus on my friend’s lawn, so times have changed a little bit and it feels good. Both places are a part of me now.
Lat34: The graphic on your Zoo York deck is an urban skyline, but when you look closely you realize the skyscrapers are bent around into a Native American headdress. That seems like a good starting point to ask you about the balance between some of the contrasts in your life.
AS: My roots come from upstate New York, in the woods, in the country, you know, lots of land and fresh water. I didn’t touch a city for years! The more I got into skating and the older I got, the more I started making missions to the city, but there’s always been a part of me that needed to pull back from it too. I love skateboarding and I love being in the city, being in the mix of all of the things that skateboarding ties into as far as art, music, culture. But I still need that other balance in my life too: I still need to get out and meditate in some nature, get out into the great wide open once in a while.
Lat34: I would think coming from upstate New York you’d have more tolerance for the cold.
AS: Well, it’s not just the cold either: After six months in the city, skating in the midst of the fast pace of everything, I kind of need to change it up. I guess that’s what AZ represents to me: Balance.
Lat34: Where does all the Native American influence and imagery in your graphics come from? Do you have some ancestry there, or is it just something you’re drawn to?
AS: It’s just a respect for Native Americans, their land, their history, their art and culture. I’m not Native American and I’m not claiming it, I’m just saying I have a lot of respect for it, and I’ve been really impressed by and influenced by living close to the people on the reservations out here and learning more about it all.
Lat34: Can you give us a little Arizona scene report?
AS: There’s a lot of parks going up. There’s like 17 parks around Phoenix now, each one like 20 minutes from the next so you can sort of make the rounds, and there’s a really good scene out here. Tucson is a little mellower. We don’t have a great skatepark yet in Tucson, but a lot of people have been putting in time fighting to get a legit one built. There’s plenty of urban sprawl, which is all you really need. There’s plenty of good skateboarding to be done around here.
Lat34: I spent a lot of the summer covering events like the Dew Tour and the X Games, but there are also a lot of pro skaters like you who are outside of that whole scene and still doing pretty well for themselves. Can you tell me what skateboarding is really about from your perspective?
AS: Skateboarding has evolved so much and gone in so many directions. It’s grown to be very commercial and in the eyes of the public a lot more. It’s really gotten big, and that’s not a bad thing: it’s taken care of a lot of people, it’s helped get a lot of great skateparks built, and it’s helped make the industry stronger. If you’re a skater and you want to go after a lot of contest money, put on a good show, and try to get some big sponsors that don’t really have anything to do with skateboarding, then there’s a place for you to go chase after it. For me, skateboarding is more about skating with some friends, having a good session, having a good time, just rolling. It’s as simple as that. Anything that’s come along with it, any success I’ve had, any money I’ve made, has just come from doing what I love to do.
Lat34: Is it a conscious decision to avoid that whole other side of skateboarding?
AS: I’ll enter contests once in a while, but I haven’t been in the big ones, like the Dew Tour and all that stuff. It’s not really an act of protest or a matter of principle, I just prefer to keep it to the smaller, rootsier, skateboarder-run, skateboarder-owned, skateboarder-based side of things. Being on TV and trying to swim in the mainstream is a whole different ballgame, with more money and bigger sponsors, but when it gets to that level it goes outside of skateboarding.
Lat34: What’s the best part of being a pro skateboarder?
AS: Besides the actual skateboarding? Traveling. Traveling is the best. My adventures around the world have pretty much been my schooling, because I only went to college for a year. I don’t have a degree, I don’t have a piece of paper, but I have so many memories, so many lessons learned from being in different places, experiencing different cultures hands-on, figuring out how to get by in different places. Because of skateboarding, I’ve been to Europe a couple times, South Africa, Japan, all over. Not only do I get to skate some amazing spots and get to see the architecture in different cultures and feel it all out, but I get to meet different people and learn about stuff that is so foreign to me. Maybe other guys would say they’re just there to skate. Me? I’m like a student, taking it all in.
Lat34: Can you talk a little about the business side of everything? I know you’ve jumped around a bit between sponsors, from 5boro to Birdhouse, and now to Zoo York.
AS: For me it’s just about following a path that creates more opportunities. 5boro is where I learned a lot of the game, and that was one of the best times of my life because it was skater-owned, skater-run, a small, rootsy company, something I could really be a big part of and play a huge role in. There’s a lot of good stuff that can come from doing things that way, and 5boro did so much for me I’ll never be able to repay it. The jump from 5boro to Birdhouse meant there was more money involved and a bigger scale, and everything there was really positive and a great learning experience too, but when my team manager Seamus Deegan went back to New York and signed on with Zoo York, it just seemed like the right move for me too: Another great opportunity. I’m really stoked to be a part of where Zoo York is headed.
Lat34: What’s next? Do you have any big adventures mapped out?
AS: We’re going to Australia for a couple of weeks in January and February for a Zoo York tour, and I’m also filming a lot for the new Emerica video. I’m sure I’ll be traveling a lot in the next year, but nothing is really solid yet. Sometimes in skateboarding you don’t know until like a month or a week or even a day before something comes up.
Lat34: Is being a homeowner cramping your nomadic existence?
AS: It’s a nice house and when I’m here I do appreciate it, but I’m in and out a lot. Mostly out. I’ve been fortunate enough that things keep coming up. I’ve been here now for like a month and a half and I’ll be here through the end of the year with the exception of one contest, three days in and out. It’s the longest I’ve really been in one place in a long time! Skateboarding is definitely a nomadic lifestyle. The living is good, you just have to be ready for it: For me, I have to be able recharge every once in a while, so getting the house seemed right. It’s kind of nice to be able to relax a little before going out on a big filming mission.
Lat34: What do you like about that whole aspect of skateboarding, being out with the cameras and everything?
AS: I’m really interested in skateboarding as a creative act, and when you’re working to put together a video part it’s really a chance to put that out there and reflect all the time and work you put into it. When you start to watch a lot of videos you get a better sense of what other people are doing, so when it’s time to hang your own footage you want to really step it up to show what you’ve been working on. There’s a lot of acceptance within skateboarding and a lot of room for different styles. Everybody can do their own damn thing, and that’s part of what’s cool about it. There’s not just one way to do it, or one little piece of it that’s cool, and I think the role that the videos can play is that they show a lot of the personalities and individual styles that are out there. I just got done hanging some footage for the new Satori video, I’m working on something for Emerica, and I have a few tricks in a new Volcom video coming out, plus we’re still working on Welcome to Zoo York City.
Lat34: Speaking of individual styles, you’re one of the few skateboarders to have a signature trick named for yourself. For somebody who has never seen one done or might not know a lot about skateboarding, how would you describe the “Suski grind”?
AS: If you don’t understand skateboarding, you’re probably not gonna understand it! I’d have to start talking in my teacher voice, “It’s kind of like a wheelie action, but crooked, on the edge of a curb, and then there’s this metal part that holds the wheels together.” I wouldn’t know how to explain it or break it down but I can say this: it’s a good feeling when you lock that grind, and it’s an honor to have a trick named after me.
– Colin Bane
