‘The ollie was invented by a Jewish person, and that is consistent with Jewish innovations across history.’
Stoke Much
USA
Zach Moldof
What is your book ‘Skate Bud: Welcome To Skateboarding’ all about?
Welcome to Skateboarding is a field guide for people who are new to skating. It’s written to be accessible for kids who are new to skating, but also useful and interesting for lifetime skaters. At this point in the history of the world, I’m an older person. I grew up in a context that was pretty different from what young people experience today. And so, I’m still formed by that time. I appreciate the internet for what it is, but I also see it for what it’s not. Folks can buy a skateboard, learn everything about doing tricks online, and never connect with the culture that invented all those tricks, and showed us what to do with them. Welcome to Skateboarding takes everything that you can’t learn from the internet, and puts it in your pocket. It’s all the things that earlier skaters like me had to be confused about for years.
How is it different to other skate history books?
Well, first of all, it’s written according to my standards for all my writing work as a journalist, which makes it the opposite of most books about skating: it’s not written to explain skating, it’s written to make skating impossible to misunderstand. “Explaining” is just a self-serving way of saying “telling you in a way that’s convenient for me”, it actually doesn’t assure that the reader learns anything. I spent a ridiculous amount of hours writing and re-writing the explanation of frontside and backside–which is simple enough for someone whose life is made up primarily of skating, but insanely nebulous to someone without years of reference for the feelings. Secondly, it looks and feels like it was made by skaters. I have never seen a “learn skateboarding book,” that didn’t feel like it was made by publishers with no experience skating. Of course there are some great photo books out there, but all the “learn skating” books look like they were made by goofy publishers who throw the same graphic designer at every book they lay out. I made the title font using a program called Font Forge explicitly for this book. Most books are the product of huge capitalist corporations, this was me and 2 skate friends who helped with some of the writing under my editorial guidance.
‘Welcome to Skateboarding takes everything that you can’t learn from the internet, and puts it in your pocket.’
Can you tell us something about yourself?
I’m Jewish, I’m 42, I’m a born and raised Florida man, I’m a father, and I’m a husband. I work in skate because I have never been able to get a job. Like many skaters I had a pretty tragic childhood, and by the time I was 13 I was an adult trying to figure out what childhood was. I wouldn’t say I have had a hard life, but given a choice, it’s not a path I would have chosen. But that’s why I’m so motivated, that’s why I see things different, and that’s why I work to change these circumstances for other young people.
You left a comment on one of my IG post about Boston skater Abe Dubin saying that he is also a Jewish skater? I was not even aware that this is a thing. Are there any organised Jewish skate communities?
Unfortunately, no. But it is something that has become very important to me. The ollie was invented by a Jewish person, and that is consistent with Jewish innovations across history. Lots of people think Alan Gelfand invented the ollie on transition, but not flat. But that’s not true. Alan was ollieing up curbs in 1976. Alan Gelfand’s work is truly no less impactful than Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Freud’s Talk Therapy, Schoenberg’s 12 Tone Row, Ruth Bader Ginsberg changing the concept of human rights in the US Supreme Court, or any other example you might choose from the pantheon of Jewish innovators who shaped our world. But unlike other fields where Jewish people made tremendous innovations, Jewish people never found a place in skateboarding. I’m working on a book right now that details the history of Jewish skaters. Counting pros and people in the industry, it’s less than 20. Since Alan Gelfand we have had Julien Stranger, Mike York, Alex White, Cnaan Omer, Corey Glick, and Yoshi Tannenbaum. Dimitry Elyaskevich, Jacob Rosenberg, and Glen Friedman are all Jewish as well. And in times when so many people are celebrating so many different people’s contributions to skateboarding, I think it’s important to include Jewish people in the conversation.
‘People were routinely contacting me with stories of abuse and predation by prominent skaters.’
You also published a skatemag called ‘Stoke Much’. What inspired you to do it?
Stoke Much grew out of my affinity for collaging with skate magazines, and my need for a job. I saw a huge white space in American skate media. Nobody was really contextualizing the past for the people starting today, and nobody was creating a skate magazine that focused on the culture of skating rather than the standards of the industry’s measures for success. There was a small amount of rigorous journalism that investigated skating, and I knew how to produce and edit that type of writing, and design/ produce print media, and do the business development to bring it to life, so I did that.
In 2020 you released your last issue. What happened?
We didn’t get much support from the industry, and that was probably the determining factor. We lost thousands of dollars worth of product in the mail in 2020 due to the madness of the pandemic and we were not able to recover anything on those losses due to the impossibility of creating accountability with the United States Postal Service. I also became the receptacle for many sordid secret of abuse in the skate industry. People were routinely contacting me with stories of abuse and predation by prominent skaters. So basically I was taking on a ton of accountability across my finances, my mental health, and my time, and I was getting very little acknowledgement or money for it. You can’t maintain a media business if people pretend it’s not there (laughing). Maybe that sounds bitter? Someone can call it that if they would like, but the reality was it was just hard in a way that is not tolerable for someone who has to work to survive. But I also knew it was a long shot that the magazine would be sustainable. I was betting on the support of skaters and I didn’t think I would win that bet, but I knew a potential to win that bet exists. But, the work was not in vain. Doing the magazine allowed me to build an amazing network in the skateboard industry based on my morals, and my values. Even though people didn’t buy the mag, or share the content we made in it, a lot of important decision-makers in the industry–and a lot of people who I respect–took note of me, and what I was capable of.
‘I would much rather walk 1,000 miles where nobody has been than make $1,000,000 where all the money gets spent.’
On your website skatebud.com are many interesting things. For example the Dial-A-Trick where you can Phone-A-Pro for advise. What pros have you lined up for this and has this service been used much?
I have an amazing team of pros lined up for this. All people who I have worked with previously. We are still testing and refining dial-a-trick. We are looking for testers who need help with learning Ollies 180s shuvs and kickflips/heelflips.
Isn’t it cheaper to look for free advise on youtube?
Of course, but skating doesn’t work like that. There is a universal technique sure, that is Alan Gelfand and Rodney Mullen’s gift to us: we think of tricks as technique, and as skaters we absorb and digest technique through our eyes. The difference between having a trick at your command and being able to do a trick some times is the internalization of technique. In order to internalize the technique for any trick you will have to unlock it. How do you unlock the technique? You need to translate it to the unique characteristics of your physiology. No two skaters’ bodies are alike, and the way we use our bodies determines how we need to adapt the technique of a trick in order to unlock the trick. With dial-a-trick you get personalized tips based on a video of you doing the trick. The difference there is everything. With phone-a-pro people can connect with a pro they respect and admire, and get personalized advice for a video part, trick technique, pursuing sponsorship or anything else. Our technology is similar to existing technology at the surface, but once you go from looking at it to using it, everything changes. Nobody else can make skateboarding accessible like me, and I can make sense of things that other people can’t describe.
Isn’t it more meaningful to learn tricks in the skate park amongst your friends? You can hit up the most talented skater in the park and he/she will take the time to explain a trick no matter who and what you are.
It probably does feel better in person for most people. But, it takes time to get that kind of confidence–especially when the whole world of skating is new to you. Acclimating to all the norms and expectations that allow you to “fit in” at the skatepark takes time. Dial-a-trick is for those beginners who don’t have the confidence to ask a stranger in person yet. Some people will also have an easier time understanding something written versus something spoken. You’re totally right, asking for help from another skater in your area is the ideal solution, but not the only solution. As far as phone-a-pro I don’t think it would be the same–especially if you’re trying to get sponsored. If skaters are serious about getting sponsored, and they don’t live in an area where someone can plug them with a sponsor, phone-a-pro is actually pretty amazing! You have to remember most skate communities are totally isolated from the industry, and there is no direct line to go from the local scene to a sponsorship with one of the companies in Thrasher. If you lived in a community with no connection to the skate industry and you built a rapport with your favorite skater over phone-a-pro, and they were impressed with your skating and they spent time giving you feedback to improve your sponsor–me–tape over a few months or a year, that’s pretty cool. Of course I’m biased because I have invested the time and energy to build this, but I think this is a way better idea than hitting like on a post and hoping for a response on a DM. It’s about what’s possible with technology when skaters build technology. Maybe this will flop completely because I can’t figure out how to explain it in terms of the desires and motives of consumers, or maybe I will convince 1 mayor and sell 10,000 phone-a-pro sessions on one contract. Either way I think it’s more fun to take the risk and build something wild than try and get money or fit in on social media apps that don’t make sense to me at a values level. I would much rather walk 1,000 miles where nobody has been than make $1,000,000 where all the money gets spent.
Last question. If you could interview one person, who would it be and why?
One of my great, great, great grandparents. As a Jewish person descended from ghetto Jews who emigrated to the USA in the early 1900s I am untethered. My family history ends with my grandparents. Whatever my ancestors endured in those ghettos for hundreds of years was so terrible, that my great grandparents thought it was better to just start from scratch in the USA. They never spoke about the places they came from, they didn’t pass on their language, and they didn’t pass on their unique Jewish culture; they assimilated into American Jewish culture, and abandoned every aspect of their unique Jewish culture. I never met my great grandparents, but they instilled a purposeful ignorance of our history in my grandparents and parents. My great grandparents weren’t accepted by the Jews in America who looked down on them and did not let them bring their ghetto culture into American temples. So much of that rejection was baked into my grandparents and my parents that it has defined me. There is no escaping it, and although I have made big strides in dealing with it, I’m doing that blindly. Even though the ghettos that we came from were not our homeland of Israel, and even though my ancestors were forced to live without humanity or dignity, the story of who they are is probably the most important thing that I will never have.
‘Nobody else can make skateboarding accessible like me, and I can make sense of things that other people can’t describe.’
