Dan Jackson in 49:50
50. It’s an age in our culture that’s thought of as a major milestone in one’s life. An age at which one’s accomplishments are tallied, one’s priorities are assessed, and one looks back at the life they’ve lived. It’s also an age to which many skaters of the contemporary persuasion (‘street skaters’ still sounds weird, sorry) have yet to have grown.
Skateboarding having the relatively young culture that it does, it’s hard for many of us to imagine our lives at age 50 simply because we can’t relate to any 50-year-olds we’ve met. Who knows many folks over age 50 that have been involved in street skateboarding (okay, we said it)?
That is, until now. The 18-year-olds of 1990, some of whom that were fully participating in skating during the moments that defined our current culture, are at the points in their lives where they are turning 50 years old.
So what’s it like? In conjunction with the premiere of his new video part aptly titled 49:50, we talked to our friend, fellow Minnesota native, and recent recipient of a 50th year of life Dan Jackson to get his thoughts on the matter.
Village Psychic: Dan, the part is really really sick, man.
Dan Jackson: Thank you. You know how this stuff goes, all I see is the stuff that I didn't do. I took a lot of trips for this part. I’d scored a whole bunch of cheap late-COVID airfares, and then I ended up needing knee surgery and couldn't skate on a lot of them. They turned into vacations, but at this age it's going to be like that anyway. The days of going and skating 18 hours a day are long gone.
VP: Yeah, well that actually brings us to our first question: how old are you?
DJ: So I just turned 50 on July 4.
VP: Happy birthday. How many video parts have you put out in your skate career?
DJ: This is probably number ten or so. There's stuff that went missing after I got divorced, so it is hard to say for sure. Between eight and ten, I would guess.
VP: What year did you start skating?
DJ: Let's see, around the late 70s. Just butt-boarding on a banana board. The mid 80s is when I saw my first real wood board. I remember distinctly, it was drung free swim at the local high school. Some dude came into the locker room on a board with grip tape, which I had never seen before, and weaved in and out of all the benches while all the kids were changing and then just dipped out. I was like, “Holy shit, I want to do that!”, so my first real board would have been probably around ‘86. A very color coordinated Per Welinder street model.
VP: And where did you grow up?
DJ: I grew up in a super small town in Minnesota called Montgomery. At the time it was about 2000 people, it's blossomed into about 3000 people now. There were 80 people in my graduating class, which also included kids from a couple of neighboring towns. There were a couple dudes in the school who skated, and it was totally the classic small-town vibe towards skaters. As soon as I got my driver's license I started venturing away from Montgomery. We would go to Burnsville, which had a roller skating rink called Skateville. On Saturdays they would have one skateboard session with launch ramps and a couple of slider bars. The place would be packed and it was amazing to actually be around other skaters. A few years later we ventured further into the Minneapolis area to Skate Oasis.
VP: And where was Skate Oasis for anyone who doesn’t know?
DJ: It was on Lake Street and 13th, right where the original 3rd Lair was. I remember going there for the first time, opening the door and the vert ramp was right in front of me. It felt like opening the door to heaven. I didn't know who he was at the time, but Eric “Woody” Froland, who was one of the first local dudes to get sponsored, was there and the very first thing I saw was him doing a frontside ollie and then an invert on the other wall. And I was like, “Holy shit. This is real”, you know? This is the stuff I’d only seen in the shitty videos that I bought at Target. And now it’s right in my face and real, and I have access to it.
In 1991, I went to college in Mankato, which was a little upgrade in city size. On my first day of school, I saw this guy in Vans and I ran over to him and we became instant friends. Robin Schmalzbauer, still good friends with him to this day. It’s funny how that’s a thing of the past, there’s zero indication if someone is a skater now based on their shoes or whatever. I had just the couple friends who skated before college, but now my world was beginning to expand a bit. That's where I met Ryan Hansen & Todd Brown, who were from that Mankato area.
Around this time we went over to Rochester, MN to check out their skate scene. Rochester had a pretty good skate scene that nobody outside of it would have known about. I met Benji Meyer, Josh Holtan, and Chad Benson.
Oh, I actually have a fantastic Chad Benson story. So, the first time I went to Rochester, another dude and I were skating this waxed up curb we found in a parking lot in Rochester, clearly some local people had been skating it. My friend was with was trying impossible lipslides on it. A someone pulled up and just watched us from their car for a bit. Eventually the dude gets out, doesn't say a word to us, and just impossible lipslides the curb first try and leaves. It was Chad Benson.
VP: Unbelievable.
DJ: Yeah, like I said, back then, if you saw another skater you were just instant friends. But Chad didn't say a word, just got out, did it first try and left. I obviously thought it was a dick move, but at same time was more hyped to see the trick go down that easy. I eventually met him a trip or two later, and he's one of my dearest friends and have logged more skate miles with him than anyone. And he's still a dick to me.
VP: So funny, man. What year did you move to Minneapolis?
DJ: I actually didn't move to Minneapolis until after I lived in LA and moved back.
VP: Lets let's jump back then, did you move to LA after you finished school?
DJ: Well, the summer after freshmen year of college I drove out and just lived out of my car for the summer. I drove straight through, didn't sleep the whole way. Just staying awake on beef jerky and gummy worms. I got to there right in the middle of rush hour, so stoked to be driving in LA traffic and just experiencing it. I didn't know where anything was, so I drove on the 10 as far as I could and ended up in Santa Monica. The 10 basically spits you out right at the Santa Monica curbs, so I skated there and Santa Monica all day. I went to this shop called Rip City and started chatting with the dude working there. He hand drew a map of where spots were, like all the way to Lockwood. Just an absolute treasure map of sacred shit. To this day I use that map in my head when I am getting around in LA.
There was a building in Covina with apartments you could rent month-to-month. So I spent those summers breaks, 91 though 96ish, staying in LA-area. I did some time in IE-area & made friends with Richard Mulder, JP Jadeed and the Chaffey locals & lived with a few of the dudes that lived right by Chaffey HS, until Ryan Hansen and Todd Brown moved out for a year. That was a fun time, but then those two left kinda hating LA. When they left after a year, I moved down to Long Beach for about 4 years around 1997.
VP: Did you head out there with dreams of being a pro skater?
DJ: Honestly not really. The main reason was I wanted to see and skate the spots I’d been studying for so long. Just seeing and feeling sacred spots. I was stoked to get some flow stuff here and there, but I was pretty aware that I was maxing out my skill level, and that was well short of pro level.
VP: And around this time you filmed your Apocalypse part?
DJ: Yeah. If I remember right, the dude who filmed put all my stuff on one tape and then I mailed that to Benji. I hated not being involved with the edit. I'm not good enough where I can just rattle stuff off, so I have to be fairly calculated and figure out what the part will look like in my head when I'm filming. It's way too personal and I love putting the puzzle together in the editing process, so just handing all this blood and sweat off to someone else was weird to me.
I flew back for our little premiere in Minneapolis and my ender was a nollie inward heel over the Adams bump. The footage that got sent to Benji had two of them. The lame one completely missed the pop, but landed bolts, and then there was the better one that I actually hit my nose on, but landed with my feet a little weird. So I'm sitting there watching my part go by at the premiere and get to the ender and it's the lame, no-pop one and it sucked sitting there as the big finale for my part just silently skimmed over the bump, and the theater was just as silent as the trick. I probably gave Benji some shit about it, and the version of the part that exists now was his re-edit without that trick at all.
Not sure if he was the first, but man did he do it well. Switch Varial heelflip.
VP: So you lived in California for six years. You came back to Minneapolis and you guys started filming for Midopoly. We wanted to applaud your switch varial heel at Flushing from your part.
DJ: I think somebody had done it already, but thank you.
I came back to Minnesota and there are all these new kids like Neil Erickson, Mike Munzenrider, and Elijah Collard who were so good. Midopoly has a mix of my last California footage from living there and then the some MN stuff from trips home. It was a cool video with the mix of new guys in there.
VP: Were you on Roots (Minnesota board brand with two iterations) the first time around?
DJ: No, I was in LA for most of that, but I also don’t know if they had a team really. I was on Roots 2.0. They wanted me to turn pro.
From the start, I was very against it. We had gone to Iowa City for a demo and it was the shittiest weekend of my life. We were skating this giant two stair with a piece of wood up, a Euro gap to manual basically. I stuck on the sheet metal on the bump and went rib first into the stair and broke my ribs. It was the worst injury I've had, like a half hour of not being able to breathe. So that happened.
Then that night, they come and get me from the hotel room. Someone was like, “Hey, come over here for room for a minute, we’re having a team meeting.” I went over to the other room and they had my pro board. It was so awkward. I was like "thank you but I don't want any part of being pro and you know that.” They didn't understand why I wouldn't want the board, especially all the younger guys there who thought this was some dream come true. I tried to explain to them a million times. Eric Koston, Guy Mariano - those are pros. I wasn't good enough and didn't want to be the "local pro". Which is funny, because I did have some "local pro" boards when I did my board brand, Glue Factory, but those guys were actually good enough.
VP: That board never came out, right? I don’t remember ever seeing it.
DJ: No. Todd Brown, one of my absolute best friends to this day, was the Roots TM. He kicked me off shortly after this fiasco. If I wasn’t going to turn pro, they didn’t want an am that wasn’t going anywhere. Which was funny, because I wasn’t ever going anywhere…I was just a dude skating.
VP: When did you start Glue Factory?
DJ: Oh man. I'm trying to think, it either started or ended 2007 (laughs). I think it must have started in 2007. It lasted for about 7 years.
VP: The team was great.
DJ: Yeah, I was proud to have that mix. Initially it was all older dudes. But those guys weren't especially excited to film video parts or do demos, or any of the things a brand needs to do, so that is why I started putting on the younger guys. But squeezing a part out of Danny Jensen is one of the things I am proudest of that came out of doing Glue Factory, because he was a very long-term VIP in the Minneapolis scene that was super camera shy and never really had any video parts.
It is funny, we were the old guys then, and here we are now talking about guys who are too old to be doing this, but they're still doing it.
VP: Do you have a video part you're most proud of?
DJ: The default answer would be the Weekend Warriors part. But I feel like I there's too much stuff in that part that should have been cut. Which was my fault because I talked Benji into using that stuff. Situations where I busted my ass filming a trick and got too tied to it, but at end of day, shouldn't have been used. I feel like the Fobia All In part is probably my favorite. Which is funny, because that part was all the throwaway from Weekend Warriors.
VP: On the subject of Weekend Warriors, it’s great how you did the updated intro in this new part.
DJ: Thanks. It sucks because I had a way better scream that was accidentally deleted, and I feel like the scream is the crux of the intro. I love the Munzy and Josh Holtan cameos with their blossoming families.
VP: Totally. But the scream you went with works. It’s great you have a clip with your kids in there.
DJ: Yeah, those guys were troopers. Of course I struggled making my trick, so they had to do their tricks so many times. I'm also dad-hyped that my other son filmed one trick, so was special to have all three part of the project, as weird as that is in skate-world.
VP: So why do you, an unsponsored 50 year old dad of three, keep filming parts?
DJ: The simple answer is I don’t know (laughs). It's such a weird thing. With any of this filming stuff, I'm fighting "why do you think what you're doing is so important that you need to put it out for other people to look at?", I just feel like I have gas in the tank. It’s a reason to push myself a little bit and use up all the gas. If I can think of stuff I'd want to film, I'm always going to be inclined.
VP: Do you think you'll make another part after this?
DJ: I'll see what my knee says about it. My goal with this one was make it my best part, but ended up being super limited by my knee. I try to be pretty critical of what I do, and I wanted this one to be a well rounded part. Most of this was filmed by my girlfriend, so it's severely lacking in lines. It's also super light on flip tricks. And to me, if I had a strong suit, it's having a decent bag of flip tricks. All I see is the stuff that's missing, and the last couple months, my knee has been doing a lot better, so of course my mind starts thinking about all the stuff I wanted to do for this part and maybe I could do another one that gets closer to what I wanted. I love the struggle.
I still have that same feeling of like a little kid like when they’re sitting in school and you just can't wait for the three o'clock. I still feel like that at work when I'm walking around the edge of the boardroom table doing smith grinds with my fingers. Skateboarding has always stayed fun for me. The “silly old man” lyrics in the intro to my Weekend Warriors part felt literal then, but here we are 15 years later and I’m still filming parts and I’m still flopping around.
I know there’s going to be a time where I can't "try" anymore. Where all I can do is put on the slip ons and cruise around a mini ramp. But I still feel like I'm in my young 30s. Other than the knee problem, everything still feels really good. The knee has been scary to deal with because it's the first time I have dealt with long-term physical limitations. I had surgery in December, and that was meant to be a meniscus cleanup. They're saying “Oh, you'll feel like a million bucks after this!”, but once they got in there, they saw it was actually really bad arthritis. It felt like a bit of a death sentence and close to half of filming for this part was sorting that out. A lot of time it was debilitating just to push on a board. It's been a process of different shots in my knee, managing my diet better, biking a lot, just doing things to help keep inflammation down. The last couple months have been great, but it sucks knowing the arthritis is going to flare up again after shots wear off.
VP: It’s interesting because we are watching the early wave of street skateboarders enter their 5th and 6th decades of life.
DJ: Yeah. A lot of these guys I looked up to, Rick Howard, Gino, Carroll, I’m sure are burned out on filming, but, man, I would love to see parts from them. They're still there, and they do look like they still have the ability. I know people would kill for those types of dudes to put out full parts now. I'm sure it's probably daunting to be someone who had game-changing parts, and then try to come out with something that competes with today's level. But you can't and it doesn't need to, and that's the beauty of skateboarding. Those types of guys know how to simply make it look enjoyable and that's always going to be worth watching.
VP: Before we wrap this up, as someone who has been skating in Minnesota for the last 40 years, we want to ask you a few things about the scene. Who is your favorite skater from Minnesota?
DJ: This answer is always changing, but of the newer guys I am a big Tanner Van Vark fan. I just feel like he’s the most fun to watch and he is a super nice dude.
Dan Jackson front crooking his favorite ledge ever in his 1996 Poached part.
VP: What about all-time favorite Minnesota spot?
DJ: My favorite Minnesota spot would have to be the Hyatt area like in the mid 90s. The ledges and the banks. Those ledges were the best I've skated anywhere. I’ve skated a lot of iconic ledges, but those were the best. The Government Center is great, tons of options there. The Fed was cool but I always hated the downhill angle of the spot. The Fifth Street Towers was one of the best. I feel like it was capped before the spot’s full potential was unlocked.
I'm not really one of those “back in my day it was better” guys. Even though my skating is probably stuck back in the day (laughs).
VP: Ok we should wrap this up. Anything you want to add?
DJ: I really want to give credit to my girlfriend Kelley, because she actually did a lot of the filming for my part. I'm aware I’m a miserable person to film and always have been. With Kelley, this was all an excuse to take some trips together, get what I could skate-wise and have excuse to challenge myself a little. Just light and fun.
VP: That’s really great.
DJ: Ok, I’ve got to go pick the twins up there at skate camp now.