Zane Timpson – Interview

R.I.P. ZANE TIMPSON (1995-2021)

“Never forget to tell your friends you love them.”
Zane Ffforever

(The cause of death was a ruptured dissection of the ascending aorta.)

Interview by Jonathan Hay. December, 2020

I heard you moved to San Francisco about 7 years ago. Where did you live before that?

I was born in my parents’ house in Leucadia, California and lived there for the first 18 years of my life.

What brought you to San Francisco, except for the skate scene and spots? Or was that it?

I went out to NYC for a few days in highschool on a family trip & I distinctly remember being infatuated by the city feel—You could get swallowed up in all of it & never stop moving. Didn’t really want to go across the whole country to New York and I knew a few dudes from the hometown who were already staying in SF so that’s where I went. To be honest though, 60% of why I moved to SF though is this one Aaron Herrington Blood Wizard part—He was skating construction spots, cruising through traffic and it just looked so rad. I wanted in on that.

Walk us through a typical day in the life of Zane Timpson, and how is it different now in SF compared to where you lived before?

Recently went through one of those big ol’ life changes & moved my stuff out of SF. I’ve been floating between Encinitas & North Park. Since I don’t really have a set place that I’m living, my schedule is definitely a bit more fluid. But the basic rhythm is waking up early, been watching the sunrise a lot, getting some coffee going, zoning into some art shit like drawing or painting or writing, watch some skate videos (I like to call it research), stretch a bit, hit up some folks to see who’s getting out and depending on that I’ll try to go suffer out in the streets or catch a couple grinds at a park. Feels weird driving from spot to spot to spot in Southern California rather than having a 7×7 concrete playground where you can literally bomb to the next place to skate, but I don’t mind—There’s a bunch of new frontside to take down here.

Tell us about AWAYSTED.

Awaysted is a feeling. It’s being on the road for way too long, slamming all day, sleeping on dirt, waking up to do it again in the morning with a smile on your face. It’s going going going to the point that you’re almost delusional, but everything starts to make sense. Your priorities change and you don’t care about what the townies at the gas station think of you, you don’t care about what’s going on back home, you’re focused solely on the next park, the next spot, the next town. It’s the feeling that comes from being in-between, a liminal space, away until you are neither here nor there but constantly moving. The word comes from a trip to the Northwest in the Volvo though. We had been making jokes the whole time yelling to people out the car window calling them wasted or drunk & seeing how they’d respond. Pablo was the one who introduced the concept & importance of away to us so we’d been using that phrase on the trip a bunch too. Adam and I were sitting in my car in the Tigard skatepark parking lot, something clicked, I put the two ideas together, turned to him & said that I was fuckin’ awaysted. From then on, that became the phrase to describe the feeling of being away for an extended period of time. Also, it’s a board company that Adam and I run. Been pretty cool seeing people skate our art.

Do you want to talk about the passing of your friend Pablo and what type of a guy he was for those who never had the chance to meet him?

Pablo Ramirez is one of my favorite people & I am so grateful for his presence in my life. He’s a kid from Brooklyn that barely brushed his teeth, kept losing his flip phone but still somehow managed to change the world. We met at Balboa Skatepark, pretty sure he offered me a piff & introduced himself as Pablo Spliff and it was on after that. What fired me up about him when we first met was that every single time he got on a skateboard he was trying to do more that what he had ever done before. He was grinding further, ollieing higher, pushing faster—Straight up, watching him try to frontside ollie a light in a pool gets me more hyped than if someone was noseblunting it but they actually knew how to do it. Pablo’s not in a human body anymore but I try to carry him with me wherever I go. I tell him I love him a few times a day, try to write his name at all the spots I go so he can take up more physical space in the world, definitely yell his name at almost every session or at the top of hills before I bomb. It’s cool too, sometimes he’ll show up in the form of light when we’re skating. Know it sounds hoopty doopty, but there’s been some moments where it feels like Pablo’s saying what’s up—It’s really rad cause light acts as a wave and a particle, so when the light’s on you it’s actually physically touching you, an ethereal hug 🙂

What kind of terrain do you like to skate the most?

I’ve been skating so many ditches lately & that’s been fun. As far as trying to be calculated with what I expend this finite resource of a body on, I like skating natural tranny spots. But whenever I skate one type thing for too long, I definitely need to switch it up. I love a good handrail, I been finding some hubbas lately. If I’m filming, I like to skate stuff that scares me but if I’m just skating for fun I like dinky little weird spots. 

Did you start out skating street then get into transition skating or how did getting good at both develop for you… although there’s a growing number, there’s not so many skaters that kill it both in the street and tranny.

I used to be a full pad-baby vert skater. Right down the street from where I grew up is the Encinitas YMCA. Around when I started skating they put in the 2003 X-Games ramp with the clamshell, volcom extension corners & a 20 foot roll-in at the park. My dad built some of the ramps there as a volunteer so I got to skate the park for free. It was before every pro vert skater had their own TF, so they had to go to the local park if they wanted to skate vert. Watching dudes like Buster Halterman, Mike Crum and Jake Brown try tech tricks for days on end got me so stoked—So I kind of followed in their footsteps trying the no grab flip tricks. But then my knees got messed up in highschool, couldn’t knee slide anymore so I gravitated towards the street stuff. 

What’s your current board set up?

I’m a primadonna and I have two set-ups right now. One’s a 9.25” Heroin popsicle with some 54mm Bones that I’ll use for basic street spots or the park & the other is a 10” Heroin Craig Questions shape with the shovel tail and rounded nose with 58mm SPF that I’ll bring out for when I need extra speed like a crusty ditch or pool. I love the shapes that Fos has been doing—Certain boards will make tricks I been doing for my whole life feel so much sicker or easier. 

Zane Timpson. Heelflip indy to fakie Photo: Dave Swift

So you laid out / made art for the Fffurther zine as well as in the video, have you been doing art a long time, and what other mediums do you create art with? Are you working on any other art projects?

I’d like to say I started actually making art in 10th grade. I got hurt, couldn’t skate & my girlfriend at the time let me use some of her acrylics so I started painting just as something to do. She also wrote poems so that kind of gave me a doorway into that medium. Visual art is cathartic for me, I spend a lot of time working with spraypaint or chopping shit up but I feel like my most precise means of communication is with poems. I been self-publishing through Old Youth Mag little chapbooks and zines of my writing and art since 2014 but now I wanna do a real collection of poems, try and get it published by someone else. Been working on that for the past two years or so. Also, working on a longer form experimental animation film with my friend Bill Moran who is an absolutely brilliant poet & musician. 

Who were the skaters you looked up to the most when you first started skateboarding?

When I was mad young, I saw a skate video playing in the corner of a skate/surf/snow shop in Encinitas. Someone blasted a tweaked out frontside air over a bowl & I remember being like, “Damn, I wanna do that” so I asked for a skateboard that Christmas. I did some research years later and found out later that it was Cardiel’s guest trick in Tony Trujillo’s part in “In Bloom”. So yeah, John Cardiel got me into skating. All those vert dudes in Encinitas were huge influences, I really liked Rodney Mullen, and the first video I ever got was “Dying To Live” from Zero. I was pretty all over the place as far as what I thought was cool.

How did you get on heroin?

One of my good friends, Alex Papke, was shooting photos for Heroin a few years back and the team was making a trip to SF. Papke hit me up saying they needed a place to stay, so like five of the guys slept on my floor and we skated the city for a few days. Ever since I became aware of the brand I thought it was sick, the art direction, the feel, the type of make-something-out-of-nothing skating, the fact that it compared skateboarding to one of the most addictive & life-ruining substances in the world, but once I met Fos on that trip and realized that he does damn near all of the art on his own I developed a much deeper respect for the company. I had been wanting to skate for them for a while, but Fos was supporting a huge team from all over the world so he said he couldn’t really make it work. About two years ago, I quit the board company I had been riding for, hit up Fos to see if I could just get some boards with no strings attached and he was down! I got a box and at the time I was really fired up because I had just started skating again after being out for 6 months. Sent him the clips I was getting just to show that I was putting the boards to use then he called me and asked if I wanted to get on the team and film a part! 

What has been the response to your parts in Heroin’s Earth Goblin and more recently the FFFurther video?

I was stoked on the “Earth Goblin” part since I skated to my friend Pablo’s punk band, Das Wasser, had some cool tricks out in New Mexico, did that switch roll-in on the 3rd and Army bridge but it honestly wasn’t my best work. Very grateful that folks watched it & felt something from it but I think the “FFFurther” part communicates a lot better what I can do on a skateboard. We decided pretty early on to dedicate the video to Spliff, so for me there was no option other than putting my best foot forward. My friend, Bill, came up with an instrumental metal track for my part that is wildly pissed & I wanted to do it justice. For the first time ever, I was able to film the exact part that I set out to make. So far, people have been real positive & receptive to the effort I put into my skating and the rest of the video. I’m just happy it’s out into the world now.

I love the random, happenstance sessions that pop up seemingly out of nowhere. Just going to the park, not hitting anyone up & catching the juice of whoever is sending it. I don’t care how conventionally good someone is, if they’re pushing themselves and trying something they’ve never done before or is scary for them, I’m hyped. Cookie (Chris Colbourn) is inspiring to skate with though, he can do damn near anything so effortlessly—Been super awesome going up to LA & lurking around with him.

What’s the most adrenaline releasing trick or hill bomb you’ve ever done?

First time I ever Hyped, the holy route of hillbombs through the city starting at Potrero, was the first time I ever fully & whole-heartedly accepted my mortality. We had already taken a few hills, just had made it down Jersey, walked up to Dolores (the OG double-whoop between Jersey and 23rd), were waiting for the lights & someone said “No slides!!” and threw down. I had full trust in these dudes cause it seemed like they had this shit down, but when I started to fly past some of the other homies I realized they were joking when they said no sliding. I remember about halfway down the second hill I blew past Nosey thinking “Okay, wow. This is it. I’m going to die”. Just kept that back leg tight though, wobbled through the intersection at the bottom and somehow made it out. That changed my life, I was hooked on bombing after that. Shout out Mikey, Marcus Ross and Johnny B, y’all really showed me what’s good!

Is skateboarding a sport?

Nah, this shit is a violent ballet. It’s dangerous art.

Any special tips on dealing with injuries, either to recover faster or deal with them mentally?

Patience, don’t hop back in to skating too quick just because you’re fiending. A couple extra days or weeks of sitting around is much better than an injury you’ll keep for the rest of your life. Also, if you’re out for a while please find something to do other than fantasize about skating or drink beer. Read a book, learn to sew, use the time to do some stuff you can be proud of. 

Do you visualize a trick and rolling away from it in your head before you try it?

I try to visualize tricks, but honestly for the most part I have no clue what differentiates the make from the other hundred tries. I wish I knew.

If you made a 30 minute mix tape for Confusion, what would you put on it?

“Under The Sun” by Black Sabbath, “Farce” by Rudimentary Peni, “I’ve Found Someone of My Own” by Cal Smith, “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” by Waylon Jennings, “Parting of the Sensory” by Modest Mouse, “allstar” by MIKE & Earl Sweatshirt, “Chiasma” by MAVI and “Everybody” by Mac Miller.

Have you ever traveled to skate somewhere like Europe, Japan, Australia or south America?

Still haven’t done the Europe thing, but I really want to. Was going to go this summer but the whole worldwide pandemic thing bagged that. Trying to stay away from airplanes for a while. Barcelona seems amazing.

What about if you could go to any concert of a band whose front man is dead and it’s no longer possible?

Das Wasser, hands down. Those shows were the best.

Some memorable roadtrip stories?

Adam, Pablo, Nolan, Carlyn and I were taking the Volvo from SF to skate in Colorado. We had planned to camp along the way but when we were driving through Nevada it started dumping rain—There were thunderstorms on either end of us. So at around midnight we decided just to send it straight to Denver. The sun was coming up, all smacked Pablo remarks that “The sky changes color, twice a day! For free!!” and we all loved that. I’d been driving or sitting shotgun navigating, playing music, keeping the driver awake or whatever the whole drive but around 7am Adam hopped behind the wheel so that I could get in the back and try to catch some sleep. I used to smoke weed so I never really minded if homies smoked in the car but I always asked em to roll down the window. Pablo was burning one down so I asked him to roll down the window once I was in the back and he cracked it like a quarter of an inch open. I was too tired to care so I didn’t complain but before I knew it Adam was going over a hundred miles an hour. I always end up being the mom friend so I felt wack saying it but I told him to watch his speed. Low and behold five minutes down the road we got pulled over. The cop asked Nolan to roll down his window and the first thing the cop asked was “Where’s the weed?”. Adam got thrown into the cop car immediately and they went through everyone’s stuff just to find a couple little nugs and a pipe. Cops put the weed in the whip and were questioning all of us, for whatever reason Adam just thought being in the back of a cop car was a good time to start letting out all the farts he’d been saving. The cop came back to the car after Adam’s butt demolition program and said “Wow, that must be some really strong weed”. So cops think that Adam’s poop particles smell like weed. I thought that was funny.

If someone was going to take you out or dinner where would you go?

El Pueblo in Cardiff! California Burrito, no salsa fresca and a good ol’ horchata. 

What other hobbies do you get into when you aren’t skateboarding?

Art is real important to me and I end up dedicating a majority of my time off the board to random projects. Does sleep count as a hobby? I like naps.

How has the corona pandemic effected you personally? 

I definitely wash my hands more now than I ever have in my life. It’s cleared out the streets, closed businesses and schools, so it’s made skating certain spots a whole lot easier. Such a terribly unfortunate thing for so many folks but for skating it’s been pretty amazing.

Future plans or goals?

Been working on a part for Heroin, pretty much been full kush ahead on that. Trying to hop on the road semi-permanently around springtime when the country starts to warm up a bit. Just want to stay healthy & keep pushing myself forward in all aspects of my life.

Any thank yous?

Love you Chey, love you parents, love you Pabs, love you Maddy, love you friends. Thank you for everything, skateboarding.