newsHIT Interview: Gavin Nolan On Zoo York

Gavin's made some waves on our site before, especially with this 5 Trick Fix in NYC. Now he's officially the new am on Zoo York so we caught up with him on Monday just before he was heading out to his video part release party.

Interview by Blair Alley

Where are you from originally?
I'm from Boston, right outside of Boston.

How's the scene in Boston these days?
It's good, there's a good amount of kids out there skating. This one spot, Eggs, that's kind of where everyone meets up at and skates. Everybody kind of skates there, if you get kicked out you go to another spot that's skating distance. It's just a good scene, everybody is real cool and it's just fucking sick, it's a cool place.

I was just watching Kevin Coakley in Stone Soup this morning.
Yeah they had a lot of good-looking spots in there.

Yeah, I'm a fan of Coakley. His Blueprint video from a few years ago, Make Friends with the Color Blue, was so good and that's when like he unveiled a bunch of his spots out there.
Yeah that's definitely when he went into the cuts and looked for a lot of stuff. I haven't seen a lot of that stuff that he was skating and I don't think a lot of people did.

Yeah he has a good eye and rad little trick combos for those spots.
Yeah Boston's very colonial, like there's a lot of cobblestone and everything looks rough and kind of different. Kind of looks like England a bit.

So you're in Brooklyn now, when did you make the move from Boston to New York?
About a year and a half ago.

Was that for skating or for Zoo York or why did you do it?
Well I have a girlfriend here and I really like skateboarding here. Kind of reminds me of Boston just a lot bigger. You can take the train into the city and skate from spot to spot and I really like the lifestyle here.

When did Zoo York come into the picture? When did you start getting flow and whom did you know over there?
I was getting flowed boards from Zoo a long time ago like years ago, and then I went to Cali for the winter. I would usually try to go to California for the winter so I could skate because the weather is pretty bad in Boston during the winter. So I would go out to Cali and Plan B started to flow me boards and I don't know, I was just living in New York and I kind of grew up skating more in the city and Zoo kind of felt more appropriate for me and from what I come from. It's kind of how I grew up and it just kind of worked out. I was already good friends with everybody over there.

So you have a part coming out tomorrow? Is that right?
I think tomorrow morning and there's going to be a premiere tonight.

Yeah I heard there's a party tonight, it's your official welcoming party.
Yeah exactly, I went out with RB [Umali] today and went to Flushing and got a last minute trick. It was a good feeling.

How did DJ Premier come into the mix? Did he make a beat just for your part?
The team manager at Zoo York, Ben [Oleynik], he got in contact with Premier's people or whatever and started talking to them. RB always use to make the old Zoo York Mixtape videos and there was always a lot of music involved with those. So Ben got us involved, we went into the studio, met them and he showed us around. He talked about all the people that had been in there and made all the music with him. He's a really cool dude, we showed him the part and he kind of just made the beat to the part. He didn't make it on the spot, he just watched the part and made the beat after. He sent us over the beat and the beat just worked out perfectly, like we didn't need to have him re-do anything. It all worked out pretty damn good, I was surprised.

Have you always been a big fan of Premier and Gang Starr?
Yeah I've always liked Gang Starr and I think that was a part of the thing too, like Guru moved from Boston to New York and I did the same thing. And Premier has made so many sick beats that a lot of people have skated to especially on the East Coast so it was definitely a pretty big honor to have him make a beat for my part.

What are some of your favorite Gang Starr or Premier tracks that were used in skate videos?
I remember [Josh] Kalis skated to Full Clip. I thought that one was pretty cool, I've always liked Josh Kalis footage.

So what else is going on in New York? It seems like it's the most productive skate scene in the whole world right. There's a new video trailer every day on the Internet.
Yeah there are just so many skaters skating around and so many different crews. Kids are just filming them and their crew and putting it up and people are really taking recognition to it. It's really cool, I like it. You get to see more of the whole of skateboarding being represented instead of just like the top few dudes. There're just so many kids out there skating and it's just sick to be apart of.

Besides the Zoo York crew, who else do you skate with out there and who else is putting out rad edits and is killing it?
Seriously the only dudes who I've been skating with is RB and Dave [Willis] pretty much. We went to Chicago and I've just been skating with the Zoo dudes pretty much.

What's Black Dave got coming out next skate and music wise?
He has a part coming out on Black Friday. We've been going skating Midtown a bunch at night and that's been really fun skating around and getting kicked out. It makes me feel like a kid growing up in Boston again when I'm skating with him. As far as music-wise I don't know, I think he has some stuff coming out. He just had a song about the Lower East Side that I thought was pretty sick.

Is that the one where he's on with Slicky Boy right? Within The LES?
Yeah that was cool. I thought it was pretty true to them. Definitely appropriate.

Check out Gavin's Welcome To Zoo York part:

More wit Gavin Nolan and Zoo York:
Gavin Nolan for Bones Bearings
Gavin Nolan for Skate Sauce