MICHAEL CORNELIUS
BASS PLAYER FOR
J.F.A.
from Maximum Rock'n'roll #8, September 1983
MRR: What do you feel is the connection between skating and punk?
M: Skating tends to be hard and fast and punk is hard and fast. That really boils down to what the connection is. Skating is a sort of progressive-minded sport. Where punk is on the forward edge of music today. Skating isn't a sport buried in a tradition form the sixties, it's what's happening now.
MRR: Why do you think a lot of kids who are skaters are turning to punk and vice-versa?
M: First of all I think it's a matter of exposure. The two groups will get together and let each other know what's happening and turn each other on. Like some skater will come to a show, out of curiosity, and meet people there and turn them on to skating. There is also an element of trendiness of kids thinking to themselves, "Cool, yeah, I'll be a skater." But when the band was touring, I didn't find too much of that. Most of the people we met who were skating seemed to be genuinely into it. The only town we went to that did not have a skate scene was Pittsburgh. The people there were really interested in learning how, to see how they could ride well.
MRR: Do you personally see skating as a lifestyle?
M: Oh, yeah, it's definitely a lifestyle. Like if you're hanging and driving down the street, they will always be pointing out places to skate... It's a constant obsession.
MRR: Do you know anything about the phrase "Skate and destroy?"
M: "Skate and destroy" is a phrase that's like a lot of others. "Skate and die," etc. But it's been maligned. People think it means skate and break everything. But it's not that. Like if you're going down the street and it looks like a normal street but you find all sorts of things on that street that you can use to skate on. It's sort of an energy outlet. To dance with the street, and when you're done, you look back and think of all the stuff you did with one little stretch of street, you think to yourself "Boy, I destroyed that!" Like when someone comes to ramp and does everything in the world possible on it, he just "Destroys" it.
MRR: Have you ever experienced any police harrassment?
M: Now, there's another correlation between punk and skating. Let me quote Don Pendeltion "Everywhere you skate, it's illegal!" You get hassled for it on the streets, on the sidewalks, any drainage ditch, people's property, you have to climb fences into people's backyards to get to pools, it's all illegal. But that doesn't stop a skater at all. You just learn to talk your way out of a mess when you're caught.
MRR: Have you ever gotten a ticket for skating?
M: Nah, I've heard about 'em.
MRR: They're really popular in San Francisco. A lot of skaters I've spoken to have gotten them.
M: In Philadelphia they have passed a law that says you can't skate within a few hundred feet of a cash register when it's in operation. What kind of shit is that? What does that mean? That everyone on a skateboard is going to immediately skate into a store and rip off their cash register and skate away? What's the rational behind that? Like, I would really want a cop to have a tape measure when he stops me!
MRR: So there's more to it than it just being a game for little kids.
M: There is more to it than that. But it's hard to explain exactly what.
MRR: I'm sure it's also a different personal experience for everyone.
M: I got a really interesting letter from this one guy that said "I don't understand why there are so many skate punks. Why aren't there tennis punks, football punks or such and such punks?" The way that skating separates itself from all those individual sports. Every time you skate, you skate alone. whether you're with people or not, it's just you and whatever you're skating on.
MRR: And you're not competing with anybody.
M: No competition. It's more of a creative outlet than it is a physical outlet, even though it can get real physical. It's a combination of the two. It's like a dance. It's been compared to a dance before and I think that's pretty accurate. Dancing with your environment, so to speak.
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