There’s rollerblading and then there’s them right like seriously and i think it’s so innovative and new that a lot of people don’t know how to like interact with it or like you know skaters like oh like rollerblading is popping off Yeah i mean when i started brain dead with my partner ed davis we were thinking about more of just like the culture we’re part of right like whether we like loved art film music you know skating whatever it was we were kind of over fashion at the time like i was in
Fashion he was more graphic designer but like you know i didn’t really connect with fashion or like the people fully in the fact of just like garments or whatever it is like skating right like that’s where i learned style or whatever um you know growing up even when i skateboarded a lot
I didn’t wear nike dunks because it was like a sneaker collecting thing i wore them to skate because daniel shimizu did last year i was asked to do curate a exhibit in the tretinale i think it’s called in italy so i basically told them what we want to do for the project
Is send this queer community of skateboarders that were in the bay area and send them to milan to show a new culture of skaters that exist in this small pocket nike sb paid for it and it was just really inspiring right like it was just like people seeing
Skateboarding in a new light over there in milan right that they probably weren’t exposed to from that i was following this guy chandler who’s this amazing skateboarder and he posted this guy robbie pitts rollerblading when i saw robbie and i saw pat ritter and these rollerbladers like alex brosk
You know seeing what brosco was doing now it’s like damn this is a real underground like it felt right so i think what happened was i told robbie pitts that i was like really into what he was doing and he’s like oh you should have john julio like he’s the coolest guy like
He’s the man swiss castle i don’t recall seeing jon for the first time in the video but i definitely remember seeing for the first time in real life pro probably the hoax videos i guess the first time i saw john julio in anything was the coop to tap video
The usd coupe to tap video you would skate to the local skate shop and and you’d buy a vhs for like 25 bucks which would have been a lot of money at the time especially for such a young kid um we got the vhs at the store called ooga booga in concord california
And then you’d watch it over and over and over and over and but you would never get tired of it you know john is john is the face of rollerblading for sure so he’s one of the people that really get people motivated to skate to film to create to anything that involves
The sport or the industry or whatever then he would be one of the ones that really helps push it or makes you push yourself or you know really makes you believe in it My name is john julio i’m 44 years old i own them skates founder of the blading cup i’ve been skating for 25 plus years i’d say i got sponsored around 95 i won a national championship in 96 and after that i got sponsored by a big skate company at the time
And to be honest i haven’t really looked back [Applause] we as as an industry how do i say like we we were run by corporate business when we started gap slimgen you know like it was just like rb sponsored x games right or whatever like and it was huge
But this idea of action sports was this like huge glob of industry you know i mean like everyone was making products for skateboarding rollerblades just like this new extreme concepts and you know everyone else who weren’t rollerbladers were probably like you know what this is kind of whack
Because they’re kind of taking our how equity into the action sports world and um it just was you know it was the downfall rollerblading we didn’t have a history we didn’t have lineage of people to we didn’t have our tony hawk but we didn’t have andrew reynolds we didn’t you know there wasn’t
Time enough to make all these legends you know so we got um ostracized from x games from just mainstream media like he never saw it like it was crazy from one one decade we’re everywhere and the next gone you know so it definitely was definitely tough to stay involved and
Make a living we had to create our own brands we had to create our own contest circus we got to create our own events and within all that like something really authentic you know was born and that kind of became our foundation the people that never left and people like yvonne
He believed to me when i was 20 21 you know when i was getting paid to travel and skate and film and so it was really one of the best opportunities i’ve ever had my whole life His views haven’t really changed ever since you know i was 13 years old i think he always had the same idea about skating and where it could go and where it should go and like what would happen if the right people were involved and they’re not necessarily here to
To just make money i mean it’s good to make money because you have to but that was never really the initial reason why people were here and it’s definitely not why people stuck around 2016 things were just really bad financially with my relationship you know with this other company i you
Know i had a kid married and you know i’m in you know going to be i’m before i’m at 40 at that time one option is to get a real job get benefits and support my family or i can go to china with a couple of connections that i had in manufacturing
And tried to pursue my own thing thankfully for my wife yola she was like yeah at least try you know like and to be honest it’s kind of crazy to think about it now i had these two colorways black and white i took pictures of these two skate samples
I put them on my website up for pre-order you know and the community bought it and i raised 150 grand you know so that’s ultimately how we we started you know and Thankful you know seeing john and what them was doing felt so innovative and real and i haven’t seen a lot of companies at any genre or any community like that you know and the one thing i love about rollerblading was like you know there’s not a lot of
Money in it right at the time especially and then seeing someone so die hard and committed to their culture is what i find as the true sense of authenticity and sincerity and i wanted to be part of that as far as like anything i could do to supplement or
Help that out i’m down um i mean honestly it’s just super easy like when john and i were like let’s do a skate i mean it was just fast like you know i think i sent him a photo of like the soles of our shoes our rower shoes
And then we started looking at like frisbees and like uh vibram frisbees and i was like dang like it’d be really cool to have a swirl boot and he’s like let’s try and then this one sample comes i’m like this is crazy and we knew immediately like this is a hitter
I mean i just like to shout out my team i think that my team like you know a lot of the ideas that you know we’ve had over covet especially seem super crazy like let’s open a movie theater or let’s you know let’s do this let’s do a rollerblade
Whatever it is like they’ve always backed my idea and supported me and our partners and i’m just super grateful for my team a lot of life can could have went different ways with um this this brand and like we would never exist we couldn’t exist to this point without the community supporting i
To be honest i i never thought like this kind of fashion world would be where we would excel and it’s a good sign i think it’s a good sign for skating it’s a good sign for us as a brand and hopefully it continues you know the
Future of brain dead is really just like tackling culture in a way of looking at things of less about how do i just sell more product but how do i actually affect culture and community braindead is here to like support the arts food music whatever it is
Even skating now hopefully and you know just make an inclusive space that people can experiment and um feel part of a community and anywhere we Go you
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