‘I was interested in figuring out how to write about skate videos in a critical way. It became a monthly project, and ran for a few years, and is basically what laid the groundwork for PLANK.’
Sam Korman
Plank
US
So…I started a magazine!’ was you your first IG post on Aug 6, 2024. How different is ‘Plank’ compared to the other skatemags still around?
PLANK has a wider purview than other skate magazines. I felt like skaters were part of a lot of cultural conversations, but their place in those conversations and creative scenes wasn’t represented by any of the skate mags currently on newsstands. So, I wanted to make something that spoke to the skaters I knew, who were also into art, music, fashion, writing, and maybe wanted something with a stronger aesthetic presence, as well. We definitely don’t look or read like any other magazine out there today.
Why did you call it ‘Plank’?
As with most things in my life, I thought it was funny. Then, 3 years later, it’s my life.
How did you pitch your first ad sale to Jerry Hsu from Sci-Fi?
Jerry and I had been on a panel at Slow Impact that Ted Barrow organized, which is how I first met him. But it was a cold call, really. I just wrote him an email, laid out what I was doing, and Jerry wrote back right away. I couldn’t believe it. I was so stoked. Knowing that he was down for PLANK really motivated me and made me feel like this thing had a shot. The crazier part of the story, though, is that my wife’s water broke the same day. She called me, and I was like, “You won’t believe it, Jerry’s taking out an ad!” And she said, “No, you won’t believe it, the baby is here!”
‘There was a whole network of garage galleries in Portland at the time, and it really felt like something was happening.’
How much of the DIY DNA in Portland has rubbed off to Sam Korman?
I was a young hipster kid who didn’t grow up on skateparks, which is to say, I found the DIY skatepark culture mostly intimidating—alluring but intimidating. But the DIY spirit of Portland is one of the main reasons why I moved there. I loved Portland bands like Dead Moon, and really admired Fred and Toody’s truly DIY life, from homesteading in Alaska, to starting Dead Moon in their 40s when their kids were grown up, to cutting their own records on their own lathe. I had also grown up on some great artistrun music venues in Buffalo like Kitchen Distribution, and was really excited to find an even bigger network of house shows and warehouse shows happening in Portland. There was a good mix of accessibility and visibility at the time. You could do something on a budget, and it would be taken seriously. That’s basically how I got my start in art. I had a gallery in my garage called Car Hole Gallery, and I started an art magazine called Your Art Sucks. There was a whole network of garage galleries in Portland at the time, and it really felt like something was happening. You could really build a scene around these domestic venues, and it felt really intimate. All of the sudden, people from our world were getting swooped up by big international exhibitions—the internet, and early days of tumblr helped with this, too. With the magazine, that came out of a really simple arrangement. I was a writer. My friend David was a designer. And our friend Gary ran a printing press. We had everything we needed to make something that looked really sick, and punched above its weight in terms of the writers and thoughtfulness we brought to it.
‘I called it “dad vision,” the really wack portrayal of skate culture by nonskaters.’
What happened with the mag?
It fizzled out eventually. The goal was only ever to make 5 issues. Each one had a theme—Art, Food, Film & TV, Architecture. I think there supposed to be a literature issue, too, but I can’t remember. Anway, I had a job working the night shift at a hotel, and I would just spend hours tracking down people’s email addresses. Hua Hsu, who just won a Pulitzer Prize, wrote about his love of Mobb Deep. Hervé This, the inventor of molecular gastronomy, contributed an essay about the narrow gap between inventing a new flavor chemical and creating something poisonous. Brad Troemel, who is pretty influential in post-internet circles, wrote about skateboarding, actually. Who else? Michael Ned Holte, a big art critic at the time, wrote a love letter to Iron Chef. David Knowles, our designer, did an amazing interview about the turbo folk art movement in the Balkans. In the end, we only ended up publishing four out of the five issues. I left Portland to do an internship at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. David moved to New York. And Gary’s printing business took off. It was a pretty natural end to the whole thing.
You also started a zine called ‘Too much Moxie Breeds Mayhem’. What is it about?
It’s more of a one-off. The zine came out of some research I was doing at the New York Public Library. The 42nd Street branch has this thing called The Picture Collection. It’s a semi-random assortment of images. When the library decides to get rid of a book or magazine, a librarian sometimes snips a few images out of them, and saves them here. It’s just hundreds of file folders filled with book and magazine pages, each of which you can borrow like you would a library book. I was curious to see if they had one about skateboarding. I was expecting to find a lost trove of amazing skate photos that had been clipped out of old Transworlds or and Slaps, but what I found were primarily commercial images—advertisements, newspaper editorials, a really strange how-to guide from the late 1980s, etc. that featured skaters. At first, I was really put off by the collection—I called it “dad vision,” the really wack portrayal of skate culture by nonskaters. But then I realized that that discomfort is actually the compelling part about the whole thing. Originally, I exhibited the photos at Slow Impact with the help of Ryan Lay, and then my friend Michael Worful and I translated them into the zine.
‘It showed me that skateboarding was much bigger than just learning new tricks. It was a whole perspective on the world—a kind of smart, twisted one.’
There is more stuff you do. ‘Waxing the Curb’ for example. The Psychoanalytic Skatepark. Tell us more please.
I used to be an art critic. That’s what I did for many years, reviewing exhibitions, profiling artists. But then, after being a broke art critic for so long, I got really burnt out. So, I decided to write about my first love— skateboarding. No one was doing skate reviews—at least, not like an art review. Kyle Beachy had written a few things along these lines. Ted Barrow’s feedback page had some of that spirit. But I was interested in figuring out how to write about skate videos in a critical way. It became a monthly project, and ran for a few years, and is basically what laid the groundwork for PLANK.
Which skate video stands out most for you personally?
This is probably a lot of people’s answer but Photosynthesis. I bought it off my friend Louie, who had decided to quit skateboarding. I bought that, PJ Ladd’s Wonderful Horrible Life, and a bootleg copy of Video Days. It was a really good haul. Photosynthesis was major, though. AVE’s opening part was absolutely shocking to me in 2002. Josh Kalis’s part blew me away. And Dill. That was probably the first piece of performance art I ever saw. And then all the found footage and super 8 that cuts through the video. It felt like a hallucination or a dream. Parts are funny. Others are kind of spooky or dark. It showed me that skateboarding was much bigger than just learning new tricks. It was a whole perspective on the world—a kind of smart, twisted one.
‘That kind of shit almost never happened in the art world.’
You wrote articles for other skatemags like Free. How do you pitch it to them? Do you send them the article or just an idea? Are they approaching you with an idea?
Will Harmon, one of the editors from Free, asked me to write something. I pitched a few ideas, but the one we settled on was an adaptation of a talk I gave at Slow Impact—Art that Skaters Would Like. Originally, I thought it would be more of a listicle, but it turned into something much bigger, and I really tried to create a new kind of glossary of terms for how we might talk about skating.
Can you give us some insights into this new glossary to change the narrative about skateboarding?
I just wanted skaters to be able to think about what they do in a different set of terms—like, yes, yes, it’s all sick (or it all sucks), but maybe we can have a more nuanced conversation. I talked about the artist Mierle Laderman-Ukeles so that I could open up a new conversation about maintenance, labor, and care work in the skate community. I pointed to Robert Smithson’s theory of the nonsite as a way to rethink New Jersey crust—and, skaters’ predilection for neglected places in general. Or there is David Johnson. He felt so relevant to skaters. His work is all about hostile architecture—he goes out, and removes all the pointy metal cages that landlords put on steps and steampipes, and anywhere people might make themselves comfortable (or set up camp). Sometimes he even removes skate stoppers. It’s cool, because he exhibits these apparatuses in the gallery like deadpan minimalist sculptures—cruddy and menacing, but no longer hurting anyone.
‘Money and institutions. Skateboarding has neither of these.’
Any proud moments across your skateboard media career?
All of them. This is the fun stuff for me. Everyone is here because they care. If I had to pick, though, I would say the proudest moment is when I discovered that pro skaters were sending my articles to their family members. One guy even told me he sent the article I wrote about his video to his parents—like, “See mom and dad, I know it might not look serious, but what I’m doing is cool and important!” Skaters might not always have the language to express those things, or a desire to draw their family in, but if I can help broker that conversation, then I’m pretty stoked. That kind of shit almost never happened in the art world.
Any funny ones?
Torey Pudwill and his wife read my article about Torey and….loved it! It took them three years to find it, but when they did, they were posting all about it. Torey is definitely not the type of skater I usually write about, but I think he is such an interesting figure, and represents something really interesting about the ways skating changed over the last 15-20 years. I’m really happy he eventually found it.
How is the art world different to skateboarding?
Money and institutions. Skateboarding has neither of these.
You take selfies at the site of presidential assassinations and assassination attempts. Any locations missing in your venture?
Fuck, I’m going to end up on a list, aren’t I? To be clear, that whole thing started as a joke, because I went to Dallas to see a friend’s exhibition, and really wanted to see the Grassy Knoll. I also thought it was funny that the assassination site of President McKinley is now in a traffic island in a cul de sac in Buffalo—just a rock with a plaque surrounded by cookiecutter ranch homes. The only major one I still want to visit is the Hilton in DC where someone took a shot at Reagan.
Last question. If you could interview one person?
My maternal grandfather, maybe. He died before we ever really got to know each other, and might’ve been kind of a dick, but he was a literature professor, and knew a lot of the writers who have had a major influence on my work. It would be cool to get some stories. Otherwise, Tony Hawk, but not for the reasons you might think..