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Joe 09.27.11
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Joe 11.05.10
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.
I want to say it was 2002 or 2003, I was already established in skating and I was riding for a company called USD. My problem was that I had my head wrapped around a lot of projects. I had one distribution company that I worked with making my wheels/hardware, another company I was working with doing a street contest called IMYTA, and there was also this video game that was coming out that was called Rolling and I put many hours in on that project. But that’s a whole different story.
“During this time period, I was also working with a bunch of music artists like Sage Francis, Sole from Anticon, and Masta Killa from the Wu-Tang. I was making a DVD surrounding all those artists and rollerblading.”
Joe 11.01.10
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.
When I first started Beautiful Decay Magazine, one thing we always did was throw release parties. At the very beginning, the release parties were vital to the business because advertising didn’t cover the cost of publishing the magazine, let alone making a profit. So my friends and I would throw warehouse parties, to raise money to put out the issues.
“He opened up the trench coat and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, and was just working the crowd with it, threatening everyone.”
The great thing about Baltimore is that space is cheap, and you can rent out an entire level of the warehouse for $400 to $500 a month. I was friends with a lot of bike couriers at the time and they loved to party. All they cared about was having enough money to pay their rent and buy cheap one dollar canned beer. I became friends with a courier who lived in a large warehouse downtown, and was willing to rent me his entire warehouse which was about 3,000 to 4,000 square feet for about $100 and all the beers he could drink for the night. Read more »
Joe 10.07.10
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.
There was this spot on other side of my town that I started hearing about when I was really young. Some of the older kids said, ‘’You got to go to the spot on the other side of town; it’s called “The Bowl.” We had our own jumps that we called “The Brook” because you had to jump over the Brook. The Brook was right down the street from my house. I lived in Clifton, New Jersey and it was a pretty big town. The Bowl was on the other side of Clifton, which was probably still close to five miles away. When you’re in the fourth or fifth grade that’s really far. We had our own local scene and we didn’t go that much further, but one day we did a little voyage over to the bowl and it was just the sickest spot ever.
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“This dude Hodges, that crazy motherfucker. I still remember him burning all his hair off. He used to do a lot of acid and he had some braids. He bugged out one night and burned off all his hair.”
Joe 08.31.10
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.
Conversation with Fred Gall’s Mom:
Freddy got his first skateboard on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. He won one of those real cheesy boards. Freddy was playing one of those big spin wheel games and he won, but it was one of those games where you could win really big prizes. They had washing machines, TVs, and things like that, but all Freddy wanted was the skateboard. So what were we supposed to do? He wanted the skateboard so we got him the skateboard even though we could have gotten all these expensive prizes. But he took that cheesy skateboard and that’s all he cared about and he did really good with it. So next Christmas, I got him his first real professional skateboard, a Lance Mountain. I can’t remember what kind of wheels or trucks we got him but that doesn’t matter. Freddy loved that Lance Mountain.
“Tracker Trucks called, all the way from California they heard about Freddy, the little guy with the big moves, and they wanted to come see him.”
After that I would take him every weekend to the contests under the Brooklyn Bridge. I remember the fourth time we went there Freddy put his skateboard down and charged the bank. At that time Freddy was just a little kid. He put the board down and rushed right toward the bank and over into the street in the middle of traffic, like a mad man. I almost had a heart attack.
Joe 07.03.10
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.
Okay, so I moved to New York City when I was eighteen having grown up and spent my real formative years in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I started my life in San Francisco, California and spent my first four years in the Los Angeles area. When I was seventeen I managed to graduate high school. I got out a year early and used the year between seventeen and eighteen to plan and fantasize and get the dream together that I could take with me to New York City. By the time I moved to New York I set up some jobs, internships, and some other opportunities. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, maybe I thought I would go to college. Within those few months all my plans and my sort of initial infrastructure I tried to lay out for myself fell through or I quit at basically.
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“I was singing that and the Bill Gates looking guy said, “and I think it’s going to be a long long time till you ever play in this venue… get the fuck out!” He was serious and that’s when the tears welled up in my eyes and I lost it.”
Joe 05.21.10
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.
For me it all started out in North New Jersey. Most people know my history with Lords of the Underground, but I guess what they don’t know is that before Lords of the Underground I was also a solo artist.
New Jersey kind of ran the hip hop scene in the 90’s. You had Lords of the Underground, Naughty by Nature, Queen Latifah, Redman, Lakim Shabazz, The Outsidaz, Rah Digga, Channel Live and the list goes on and on. Before that, before we all got noticed, I was one of the groups who ran New Jersey on the Underground tip. What people don’t know is that while I was grinding to come up and get noticed that Redman was my DJ.
