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Five minutes with...
Wes Kremer
The Tokyo born Californian Skate maestro recently paid a visit to the UK as
part of DC’s “Special Delivery II” tour - including a stop with our friends at
Campus. We met up with Wes at The Pool to see how he was finding Old
Blighty and what he’d been up to.
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What do you think to the The Pool?
It’s dope. I’m a big fan of the Campus
set-up. I really like what they’ve done
with the place, recycling the pool more or less DIY-ing a whole epic
skate park. It’s super fun.
How’s your UK tour been so far?
It’s been epic. We’ve had really good
weather the whole time. We’ve had an
amazing crew. Good spots. Can’t ask
for more. Really good park s with really
stoked kids. It’s been a blast.
We’ve heard rumors that there’s
gonna be another DC video. 14
years is a long time to wait. Are
those rumors true?
Originally, that footage for Crusty
By Nature was going to be for the
DC video – but it’s tough when you
got such a big team. It’s just hard to
get a full part from everyone. Figure
out who’s got footage to make a
part ‘cause everyone’s got so many
projects that they’re working on and
stuff.
Hopefully in the future. I’d be more
than honored to help make another
video for DC.
We saw you’ve got a pretty serious
VHS collection in one of your edits,
which ones would you save if your
house was on fire?
I’d take Transworld Anthology cause
it’s one of the first real skate videos
I saw. I would take this bootleg tape
that has Yeah Right, Baker TG, 411 the
Muska Issue, and another local video
on it. I take that one. And a local video,
it’s called Eternal Soup. It’s like the
combo VHS’s that you make like the
mix tapes.
The Wes We Can campaign for your
new shoe made everyone laugh
cause it’s f***ing awesome. How did
that come about?
For the last shoe, they did a similar
promotion with a campaign theme but
it was a bit different. It was all about
saying ‘yes’ to the shoe, like, legalize
the shoe! This time around, they
wanted to do another campaign style
but tie it into the elections going on.
It was great. What’s the first thing
you’re gonna do when you’re
elected?
My first thing? Do something about
this scooter problem! (laughs) Naw, I
don’t want to hear anything happen
to the little homies just cause of some
scooter beef.
I was recently reading this story
about Evan Smith being arrested
in Hong Kong and you managed to
miss the cops by buying beers.
That was epic. Well, I mean that was
not epic how everyone got arrested,
but we made a good story out of it.
Crazy s**t happened.
We were in Hong Kong skating this
9-stair rail. The funny thing was Evan
wasn’t even skating it. It was the Bank
of China. Just a handrail, then we got
kicked out by security. We were just
getting the last shots but they were
being real jerks about it.
This dude came up and stood in the
middle of the stairs like “I’m calling the
cops.” As I was rolling away, the dude
covered his face and was like “ahh!” acting like I hit him or something! You
can clearly see the delayed reaction in
the footage. It’s ridiculous. After that,
they were getting pissed off. It was
three security guards.
We went to go hop in the van but they
blocked us in so we just left it and
headed to another spot. I called my
friend Danny, who was our tour guide,
and he picked us up.
The next spot was a two-level plaza
with most of the guys skating the lower
level and me chilling on the upper one
with the dude Danny, the manager
and this one homie called Bugs. Next
thing you know, 20 cops show up and
walked straight past us, heading down
stairs. We were just watching from the
upper level - watching from the crow’s
nest. The whole posse’s just swarmed
by cops and we’re just like “f**k, what
do we do?”
I left at that point to grab beers from
the store and when I got back, homies
were in the cop car. They all got
arrested. One of the security guards
from the other place had passed by,
off duty, seen us and called the cops.
They were looking for one more person
too.
And you’re chilling in the van?
Yeah. In the end they had to pay a
fine, but it was taken care of. Evan
and Tommy and a couple other heads
had to fly back to Hong Kong to go to
court just to settle it.
We pretty much escaped death on that
one! t