Interview by Peter Wenker

Whether it’s negotiating shoe contracts over tea at Liberty’s or working out seemingly impossible lines through the nooks and crannies of London, Tom Knox is steadily finding his footing in skateboarding with a little help from this equally unique cast of friends like Jacob Harris, Casper Brooker, Mike Arnold, and Sebastian Palmer. From his breakout part in Isle’s Vase, to skating the globe with the Atlantic Drift Crew, and more recently cavorting around San Francisco and Paris with Krooked and Dickies teammates, it’s no wonder he’s described (by Sebastian Palmer) as someone who can cross political lines (in the skate industry) and move easily between seemingly distant crews. According to Palmer, it also doesn’t hurt that Tom can “turn on the BlueSteel for photographs” and “is always striving to progress and be innovative” in his exploration of new skate terrain. Here at Village Psychic, we’re just happy to have caught this little lightning in a bottle of an interview during this perfect storm of a year for Tom Knox. Cheers Tom!

What was your introduction to the New Balance skate program ?

I remember seeing the video that came out with their first roll out of shoes called A Place in the Sun, and they already had some skaters I really liked on the team. It just so happened that when the program launched I had a part out in a video called Eleventh Hour, by my mate Jacob Harris. Sebastian Palmer was in town at that time, and he mentioned that there may be a spot on the team for me, if I was into it. I was on Emerica at the time and was looking to jump ship because the program was a bit lacking in support for its European riders – not many trips, things like that.

That was still during the era of teams getting away with delineating anyone who wasn’t living in the United States as the “Euro-team”.

It was the tail end of that generation of thinking in skateboarding—as European skateboarding as something less-than—and just before Europe became more of a powerhouse in skateboarding. At or about the same time Sebastian approached me for New Balance, I was also approached by Adidas about getting on their team. In terms of finances, it was very similar, but the difference was that Adidas wanted me on the “European team” as well; whereas, Seb was telling me “You’d be a full team member. None of that sectioning you off as a Euro-team member.” So, I decided then and there to run with New Balance. Even though it was admittedly a bit of a gamble, it just felt more special to be both on a program from the beginning and to be fully-on, instead of some weird Euro-category.

Did you and Seb know each other previously?

We had met only a couple of times before he approached me about New Balance. He previously worked at Nike SB, but we never really hung out or anything before I got on New Balance. Since then he really has done everything in his capabilities to help me out, which has been so great. I think there is a bit of English pride in there since we can always connect and talk about people back home in London and Sheffield, and all those things. It’s always felt like more of a friendship than a boss-employee relationship with Seb, which is important to me.

An early sample of Tom’s shoe, the New Balance Numeric 600.

It seems that your skate career has grown out of you working with your friends and other like-minded people, like Jacob Harris and Nick Jensen and the rest of the Isle and Atlantic Drift teams. Is that something you’ve intentionally sought out—a more friend-based work/skate environment? Or is it just luck that you’ve been able to come-up with your group of friends?

It’s definitely just luck—just super lucky. It’s just worked out that my friends and I share a similar passion and then also just so happen to have been in the right places at the right times. I’m fortunate that it’s become a bit of a theme in my life to be able to work with my friends.

There’s always something special about a group of friends that all skate together, but skate differently from each other, and yet all film together and get genuinely hyped for each other. It can be quite jarring when people get put on a team just for being the best. It’s always most obvious on trips when a team isn’t “natural” because inevitably someone will be like, “Who the fuck is this guy?” Again, I’ve been super lucky to always just get on with people who have been on the same teams as me. For example, for both New Balance and Atlantic Drift, most of us know each other’s families and have met each other’s wives, kids, significant others. We all know and like each other beyond skateboarding, which is really important. When you get to be colleagues rather than friends, that’s when people can tell it’s not authentic. It’s not something you can force.

Are you ever able to take a step outside yourself and enjoy the fact you are currently part of one of the best crews in skateboarding—Atlantic Drift?

I’m not certain I’ve been in that headspace at any point quite yet, only because we’re just all such close friends who just so happen to be traveling and skateboarding together. It’s hard to think of us as a recognizable or significant crew in skateboarding. Although, we are occasionally pulled aside by people in the streets. Just today, it was raining here in Budapest and we all went to a bathhouse, and in the bath house some guy looked at me and goes, “Whoa, you’re Tom Knox.” And I said, “Yeah…” And he responds “Oh shit! Are you here with the whole Atlantic Drift crew?!” So, every once in a while there are those moments where you get a glimpse of how you and your friends are perceived. It’s really something when you come from London, where you’re used to existing under the skate radar, the idea that you might “make it” never enters your head. You have to just do it because you love it, not because you expect anything out of it. That’s really stuck with a lot of us [in the Atlantic Drift crew], or even the guys from the East Coast of America. When you look at some of those bigger crews from California (like Girl or Baker and Warner Ave), I think they experienced something different during those “superstar” days of skateboarding. I feel like experiencing that kind of fame can make you believe it yourself a little bit more. Whereas, when you’ve come up in the shadows of skateboarding, there really aren’t many egos to go around.

It can be odd when you are home trying to explain to a layperson what it is you do for a living, and they give you a blank stare, and then the next day you’re halfway across the world skating some cutty spot and get recognized. But I can remember being a kid in London, spotting pro skaters, and then wondering why they’re not that talkative. It can be a bit weird to be approached like that.

Tom from his new commercial for the 600.

Do you take some pride in the fact you’ve been able to make a mark in skateboarding while living and skating primarily in Europe?

I find it to be really sweet when someone comes up to me to tell me they like a part or some line that I did. It’s really nice. I do really appreciate it when people come up to me with that sort of knowledge about a video I was in, or a trip I was on. Again, I think it’s because I’m not from that generation of superstar skateboarders, so it’s easier to appreciate it when someone is a fan of your skateboarding.

I don’t know how a kid today must feel, but I do remember when I was a kid and I’d go to South Bank and see someone like [Danny] Brady or [Nick] Jensen skating. I’d be freaking out, like “I can’t believe I’m seeing them skate in the flesh.” Now, everyone’s on Instagram and they everyone skating all the fucking time. Maybe that kills the excitement a bit when you’re seeing your favorite pros skating all the time, instead of back when you’d watch the same video for ten years and then finally get to see someone skate in person. Or, maybe it’s even crazier now that you can watch your favorite skater all the time on Instagram, and then when you meet them you feel like you know them already. I can remember feeling like that as a kid sometimes—meeting a skater and feeling like you know them because you’ve watched their video parts so much.

Being a professional skateboarder in 2023 usually involves a level of fan interaction that’s beyond vibing some kid out in the parking lot at a demo. Also, there’s only so much space on the board wall these days, so could it be that pros are just glad to be noticed among the sea of skateboarders out there now?

Exactly. At least with the majority of skateboarders I’ve gone on trips with, especially the Scandinavians, there’s no room for fucking egos. Everyone’s just trying to skate and hype each other up. That’s what I see, at least from the skaters in my generation. There’s another side to it too when you’ve grown up in the spotlight. I remember being on Emerica, and being in the UK for an autograph signing, and I think Reynolds was next to me when some guy came up with a poster or a Reynolds shoe from decades before, and Reynolds goes “Oh, tight.” I remember thinking that was a pretty mellow reaction for some guy who has been a fan for years. But then it hit me that this dude [Reynolds] has probably been getting this for like twenty-years straight now. You can’t be over the moon for everyone that comes up to you. Whereas, for me, not having been recognized for very long, if at all, it can be quite nice (Laughs).

Speaking of shoes, do you remember any of the early New Balance shoes that you were skating when you first got on?

When I first got on, I was coming from Emerica and skating thin vulcanized shoes, so I was first drawn to the thinner New Balance shoes, like the Brighton, which they now call the 272. So naturally, I was like “Oh, I’ll just skate these.” They were good. But then Seb hit me up and suggested that I try the Logan, which at the time was not a shoe I would normally skate. He persisted, “I’m sending you some, just try them on, they’re really fucking good.” When they showed up at my door, I thought “No fucking way am I going to skate these.” (Laughs). Then I went on my first New Balance trip to New York where I saw Jordan Trahan wearing them and pushing down the street—and I thought, “Fuck. They look so good on him. I want to look like that.” When I got home back home I ended up trying them on and getting absolutely hooked on them for a while. They lasted so long. You could jump down stairs in them. They were the best shoes I skated at that time.

Tom in the New Balance Numeric office with Lead Designer Jeff Mikut.

That’s relatable, you’ve probably had that same effect on people wearing the 440s. Can you talk about your relationship to that particular shoe and how it became synonymous with your skateboarding?

Like I was saying, when I got on New Balance, I was still skating thin shoes, and then either Jeff [Mikut] or Seb mentioned a new cupsole was coming out. But wait…I should explain: when I first got on New Balance, I literally had no idea what the difference between a vulcanized shoe and a cupsole was. I remember on my first trip Seb explained the different factory processes for each type. I would just get boxes and because I wasn’t that picky, I would just skate a random PJ Ladd shoe here and there. When the 440 came out, there was a campaign with me and Trahan skating in them, and I remember straight out of the box the shoes were good to go, so I started skating in them regularly.

Sometime after I was offered the chance to design a colorway and those ended up doing quite well, so I got the chance to do more colorways. During those times wanting to try another shoe here and there, but each time I’d get curious there’d be another 440 colorway coming out so I’d just skate those again. Which works for me, because I generally like skating the same things over and over and over again. I’m the same way with board shapes, and wheels and trucks. I’m not picky. I’ll skate anything, but once I do, then I’ll skate it over and over and over again. And that’s what happened with the 440. It worked out, so I was just like, “I’m sticking with this now.” Then the colorways just kept on coming—to where even to this day, when a new 440 colorway comes out, I’ll get tagged by people and shops with captions like, “The new Tom Knox just came out,” and it will be just some random 440 colorway.

It’s great to have a consistent and reliable shoe, but did your eye start to wander with other shoes when they’d pass by?

For sure. When the Tiagos came out, I was like “Wow! They look so good!” (Laughs). And before the 440, I loved the 868, and I skated the 868 for like a year straight. Some people might not remember that shoe. It was a bit crazy looking for the time it was released.

When it started coming out less often and I started skating the 440s, I remember it was a hard transition to start skating a thinner shoe. That’s why I knew that if I ever started skating the Tiagos I would never be able to go back to the 440s again. So I just stayed away from it. I still like to think about what it would be like to skate in the Tiagos. (Laughs). There’s just so many different New Balance shoes coming out now and they all look so amazing. And even more recently, I got a pair of the Frankie Villani shoes and they feel incredible on the foot, but I’m not going to skate in them, because now I’m used to the cupsoles and can’t go back to vulcs. Everyone’s different, and I know there are some skaters on the team that can jump from the 868s to the 440s to the Frankies without any issue. But once I’m used to a shoe, I’ll go crazy if I try to go to something else…for at least a week or two.

The years of Tom in the 868 are behind him, we are in the 600 era.

The 868 also appeared that during a stint where we saw you wearing some great technical outerwear while you were skating. Were some of those great tech jacket choices based on fashion or function during those gray London winters?

Definitely function over fashion. I’m always just looking for whatever will last the longest, and for whatever can keep me out skating for longer. I remember after my Atlantic Drift part came out, all kinds of people were hitting me up about all the jackets I wore. (Laughs). Everyone thought it was a “style thing”, but it was just fucking cold.

As a Minnesota native, I’ve done my share of cold-weather skating. For those of our readers who don’t enjoy all four seasons, can you give some tips on winter skating attire?

I layer. That’s what got me started wearing puffer jackets—because you can fit a long sleeve under them comfortably. That way you can either skate in the puffer and sweat it out, or you can skate for a bit, get warmed up, and then go down to the long sleeve for the rest of the session. As long as you don’t stop skating. Normally I’ll go tee shirt, then long sleeve, or a jumper, and then a jacket, and a fucking hat. Then slowly, bit by bit, as the session goes on, I’ll take off a piece at a time, but you usually stop at the long sleeve during the winter.

It’s all about easing your way in so that you can skate as long as possible without feeling like complete shit and stiff. If you’re skating in the winter, then you have to come out in the right gear, or else you’re not skating.

It’s funny when I go on a trip with skaters from L.A. and they’re like, “I can’t wait to go on this trip and get to wear my jacket” or “I can’t wait to go somewhere where I can where a hoody”. Whereas I’m excited to go there and skate in a tee shirt, because I rarely do it. Even after winter, I’ll find myself skating in long sleeves, I’m not used to seeing my fucking bare arms. So, I guess I get where the L.A. skaters are coming from, because what I also love about hoodies and puffer jackets is the protection you get. My elbows and lower back are all scarred, it’s so nice having that extra padding sometimes.

When do you remember first hearing whispers about the possibility of you getting a proper pro-shoe on New Balance?

It was never a goal of mine to get a pro shoe. It just got to a point where I was doing a bunch of colorways of a shoe I really love to skate in [the 440], and I wanted to skate in something a bit different. So I started talking with Seb and Jeff about the possibility of a shoe that was still a cupsole but a little more streamlined and ‘sporty’. I started sending Jeff and Seb references to explore, like these old football [soccer] shoes I used to wear where I first started skating. From the ages of about 6 to 14 I was on football team and I’d have games every Sunday. So when I first started skating, I’d just wear my football shoes. I always loved the way they felt, so I told Jeff I wanted something that felt like a football shoe. I mean, the 440 is incredible—it feels like a classic skate shoe, but I wanted something that felt more like a football boot. So that’s where the conversation of my pro shoe started.

Do you remember what any of those initial soccer shoes were?

The ones I would’ve been wearing as a kid were Mitre or Umbro, just any cheap boots that my parents would’ve been able to afford for me. They all gripped quite nicely on the board because they were made for astroturf and slick fake grass. I would skate a pair for a while because I wasn’t flipping my board as much as a kid. I just wanted to skate some classic looking astro turf boots.

The original New Balance 600, sourced from eBay.

Once the process started getting a bit more serious, did you ever get to wander through the New Balance archives?

No. But I would love to do that! I just had it in my mind that I wanted a sporty skate shoe that used a little more New Balance technology than a basic skate shoe. My only must-have was that it feel like a football boot. Then Seb found a New Balance shoe on eBay called the 600. There was no info on where this shoe came from, so he bought it and had it shipped to the office. It looked perfect for skateboarding straight out of the box. Once it arrived, Seb hit me up and told me he might have found something that was perfect for what I was looking for. He and Jeff could not find any history on the shoe at all, except that the design of the sole treading dates it somewhere between the late-eighties or early-nineties. I was born in ’91, so it seemed perfect. And since then, Seb has gone to the New Balance office in Boston, and even talked to a New Balance historian, and even the historian can’t find any records on the original shoe. All they could confirm is that it was a real New Balance shoe. That pair Seb bought online was even in the white-green colorway that will be the first colorway of my shoe released—with the original “Indoor” on the side and a non-marking sole. They sent me a pic of that shoe and straight away I loved it. It was exactly what I wanted.

Once the design was chosen, how long did it take before you were wear-testing samples?

Even though the original looked great, Jeff had to make design and material changes to the sole and upper to make it more skateable. I think we were in a meeting for my last 440 colorway when Seb mentioned that New Balance was ready to start on my shoe. It wasn’t like a big announcement or anything, we just transitioned from a 440 meeting into a 600 meeting, and I remember thinking “I guess this is happening.”

Were there other tweaks or changes from the original 600?

Once Jeff created a new upper, he then put it on the 288 sole just so I could test out the upper. I tested out three pairs of those by going out to parks in the morning and trying to blow through them as fast as I could. I was just trying to abuse them as much as possible. After that, we started designing the sole. I mean, Jeff is a genius! He already had so many ideas and he would just send me design after design to the point where all I really had to do is say yes or no. Jeff is so skate-heavy in his designs that he just knows what I am going to want and need, even before I can even tell him what I want and need. In terms of a push and pull or whatnot during the design process—it was so smooth. It helps so much that Jeff is a skater too, so he is often figuring out the shoe with me, while skating it at the same time.

What type of tricks or skating were you doing when you would try to blow the shoes out as fast as possible?

For the upper, I was just doing flick tricks all day. I’d skate for four hours and try to do as many flip tricks as I can—into grinds, into slides, into manuals, on flat—whatever I could do to try and blow the upper out. Just to flick the fuck out of the shoe. It was hilarious sometimes because I would skate for four hours straight, literally doing as many flip tricks as I could, and then Jeff would skate a pair of shoes for just two hours and they would be completely blown out. I don’t know how he can fast forward time, but he would destroy shoes in no time compared to me. It was so good for the design though, because what took me four days to blow out, he could blow out in four hours. Ha. One time he sent me a picture of one of the last versions of the samples that he had blown out, and I was all, “I’m going to go out and blow mine out like that”, and I literally could not get the shoes to blow out.

How did the decision to use mesh come about?

The original 600 had exposed mesh and we really liked the look of it, but we knew you couldn’t just use straight up mesh or kids would immediately have a hole down to their socks. So Jeff came up with the idea to use the Fantom Fit material. It’s thin enough to have the mesh-like feel, but it’s not going to rip. It was already used in the Tiago shoe, so it was obviously field tested and approved by one of the best. It was also important to me to try to use as much New Balance technology as possible. I mean, they have tennis pros, footballers, and runners who are rough on their respective shoes, so I was hyped to use as much of the technology as New Balance can offer in a skate shoe.

Do you recall any of the specific notes or changes you wanted to make after skating a sample?

There were a couple teething pains in the design process. When I got the first upper, I was getting some heel slip to where I would go to pop and my foot would move inside the shoe. When I spoke to Jeff about it, he goes “Yep, I felt the same thing. I’ll get it worked out so it will fit snug to your first on the next round.” Sure enough, on the next pair it was perfect. No heel slip. From that, it was just trying to nail down the new sole. I remember the first couple of versions were too slippery for me, and then Jeff played with the tread and rubber compound and then got it perfect once again. Going back to what we were talking about with clothing—designing a shoe that you could skate all day in was a big deal for me. I really wanted it to have some protection for your feet. I wanted to be able to jump down some shit!Now that I have the shoe, I’m like a kid again and jumping down stairs. (Laughs). I mean it can be hard to be on a trip and see something perfect to jump down but you can’t because you have some thin shoes and you don’t want to bruise your heels early on.

How does wear testing a future release shoe work while you’re on a trip? Can you only skate them after-hours for fear of them getting spotted on social media or in footage?

Luckily enough I was getting the majority of the samples while I was home in London, so I would just go skate them early in the morning at skate parks around London. I’d drop the kids off at school and then skate parks while no one was there. It worked well because then I could jot down notes and whatnot without anyone looking over my shoulder. It was a really interesting experience. I had never wear tested something before and naturally every skateboarder has their own preference on shoes, board shape, or whatever. No matter what, as a skateboarder, you always have your own unique preference of how you want your gear to perform. So it really helped making physical notes of what I liked or didn’t like. It was nice to get the time to skate the shoes, get comfortable in them, and then be able to critique them—rather than just talk shit about them right out of the box or something.

Your shoe most definitely has a more aggressive design to it—meaning, it is designed with performance in mind rather than designed to fit everyone’s foot (like a breadbox)—are you a bit nervous to have a shoe that isn’t “safe” in its design?

I am pretty particular in how my shoes fit. I can’t stand it when a shoe is too narrow. So, I think we are safe with this one being able to comfortably fit even the most particular skater. It’s definitely one of the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn. I mean, if I am going to potentially have to skate this shoe for X amount of years, I have to like what I’m going to be wearing.

The right gear on a trip can help an obscene amount. It’s just so nice not to worry about your shoes/feet on a trip. You can either skate a ledge or jump down something and you don’t have to stress about ruining the trip. If you hurt your feet early on during a trip, or you start getting sore feet in the mornings, after a week of that your feet are going to be dust. In a way, your shoes can dictate what you are going to skate. So it’s nice to be able to skate some gnarlier stuff again, and if I want to go skate a line I can do that too. So really, the 600 is the best of both worlds for me. I can’t wait for them to be out so I can skate them all the time. I brought my last batch of 440s on a Dickies trip—knowing I was going to make the switch to the 600 after that trip, so that was my goodbye trip to the 440. After that, it’s just been all 600s. After all the back and forth and the design tweaks, it’s just been so nice to put them on and skate them knowing they’re perfect.

The original 600 and Tom’s version, side by side.

Have you been able to get any feedback from anyone else on the team yet?

I’m not quite sure about the team yet, but Jeff has an older neighbor who doesn’t skate, but does consumer tests for walking around the streets in shoes, and apparently he gave the 600 one of his best reviews for comfort so far. (Laughs). Apart from that, I know Reynolds skated them for a bit and liked them. We’ll see how it goes when they roll out. I’m proud to say that after a day of skating and filming in them, Jacob [Harris] told me the shoe is fantastic. He burns through shoes so fast when he’s filming and dragging his foot around. It was so sweet hearing that from him. He’s the type that if he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t spare my feelings. It was good to hear because his opinion matters to me, being my best mate and all. He’ll be honest with me.

How wild has it been for you to see Jacob’s film career continue to grow in skateboarding?

Aww man, it’s so lovely. I’ve known that guy since we were 14 years old and we’ve been filming together ever since. Like I said with the Atlantic Drift crew, there’s no egos and everyone’s friends. We skate together because we love to and not because we have to. Every once in a awhile he’ll tell me that it’s so nice to see how far I’ve come, but he doesn’t see it for himself, so I’ll turn to him and say the same thing back to him. The amount of people that know and love his work now is fantastic, and so well deserved. I’m so happy for him. He deserves every bit of shine.

Speaking of friends, it seems a lot of you are leaving the nest and venturing off on your own. You’re on Krooked, Casper is on Baker… is it getting harder to get your schedules synced for trips together? Or is Atlantic Drift still the glue that’s keeping you together (professionally speaking)?

Atlantic Drift is definitely the glue. Whenever there’s a talk of a new Atlantic Drift trip, everyone is trying to get on it. It's great to have that. When I’m at home I don’t really see everyone all that often. There'll be weeks where I see Casper a lot, or Kyron a lot, or Jacob a lot, but not everyone is always able to hang around as a crew. So, it’s lovely to have the Atlantic Drift trips to look forward to and to be able to skate and get quality time together. Each trip it’s as if nothing has changed. Ironically enough, since Atlantic Drift really took off it has gotten harder to see each other. Now Mike [Arnold] is on Adidas and Casper [Brooker] is properly on Nike and Baker, and filming for their videos. Everyone has their own shit going on now, but through it all Atlantic Drift is still that base for everyone to hang out.

You’re each making your own friends.

When you put it like that, it’s really sweet. It’s been so nice to see everyone get their own shine outside of the Atlantic Drift collective. Everyone deserves it. It’s sorta similar to birds leaving the nest. It can be surreal to see Mike [Arnold] skating with the Gonz or to see Casper [Brooker] skating with the Reynolds and the Baker crew.

It just makes coming back together for Atlantic Drift trips all the better. Everyone just wants to skate together every day. Every time we start a trip Jacob will go, “I wonder if we’ve got another one in us?” and then after a few days he’s always like, “Oh, we are going to be just fine.”

Were you nervous to leave the nest and skate for Krooked? Now you’re under the same DLX roof as Gerwer, Busenitz, and the Gonz. That could be a bit daunting.

As a kid, I would have felt very overwhelmed skating around any of those skaters. But as an adult, especially with kids, I can keep my composure on a trip around just about anyone. I feel quite grateful they’ve let me into their house. I had been talking with Krooked for a while and it was nice to have the time and space to figure out if it was going to be the best thing for me. The decision was clear when I got to go on a trip to SF and I got to see Frank and Elissa how they skate together the same way me and my friends in London skate together. It was just another family of skaters skating together. No one thinks they’re some big thing, they’re just friends out skating together every day. Sometimes skateboarding puts people on a pedestal, when they’re not on a pedestal at all, but are still just kids trying to go out and skate flat.

In the Village Psychic interview with Andrew Reynolds, it was humbling to hear he was nervous while waiting for the New Balance team to give him the thumbs up to join the crew, and he named dropped you as someone whose vote he was waiting on, is it wild that you were involved in making a decision as to whether Reynolds was going to be your teammate?

That was a no brainer. But that’s what I love about what we’re doing. It’s tight enough that if the team wasn’t down, then even Reynolds wouldn’t get on. New Balance really respects the team in that way, and Seb really respects the team that has been with the program since the beginning. I think it’s really important to bring new people on, but it feels rarer and rarer to still care about the team’s feelings and perspective on things.

Another comparison of the original and Toms version of the 600, this time it’s the soles.

Who on New Balance have you skated with the least, but who you wish you were able to skate with more?

I would say Tiago and Westgate. They both got on close to COVID so we haven’t been plugged into the same trips as often as I would live. I would love to see both of their respective process(es) for filming tricks—they’re both so insane in terms of the tricks they are able to do.

Do you keep up with video releases?

I try to keep up with recent releases to get motivated, but I tend not rewatch modern videos much. Videos that I pop in again and again still are Blueprint’s Lost & Found, Rowley’s part in Sorry, and Nick Trapasso in Suffer the Joy. The videos I grew up watching are the ones that still give me that tingling feeling.

You previously mentioned you can be particular about what you skate. So, what do you skate?

Before I got on Krooked, I didn’t really know that there’s a ‘length’ to a board. I had no idea when it came to board dimensions. (Laughs). So, when I first got on, they asked “Hey, what boards do you ride?” and I answered “I’ll take some 8.5s”. And they replied, “Yeah yeah, but what length? What wheelbase?” and I said, “What do you mean?” I was told to go on the DLX site and take a look, and when I did I was like, “What the fuck is all this?!” I had no idea if I skated an 8.5 x 32, or an 8.5 x 33, or what the fuck. I had no idea. So they sent me a bunch of 8.5s in different lengths and wheelbases and whatnot for me to figure it out. I like to skate the same thing over and over again, so it was a pretty funny process trying to figure out what I liked for a few weeks.

I told them I didn’t want to deep dive too much and to just send their ‘standard’ shapes so I didn’t go off the deep end. It was rough because I’d be skating a longer 8.5 and be comfortable, and then the next week I’d skate a shorter 8.5 and be like, “This is terrible” until I skated it for a bit and then question whether I liked shorter boards now. (Laughs). Then I spoke to Mike Anderson, who has his own shape and everything, and he said “if you like something, just stick with it or you’ll go insane trying to find the perfect shape.” That was an interesting process. There was a time when I skated 8.3s, but every time I snapped a board and had to skate someone else’s board, it was always an 8.5, so I just started skating 8.5s. Similarly, I’ve continued to creep up in wheel size too. I used to skate 51mm, and now I skate 54mm.

A roof drop 3mms higher than it would have been before Tom upped his wheel size.

What led to the creep up in wheel size?

I got tired of eating shit in cracks around London. Plus, 54s last longer, and eventually become 51s anyway.

So, with all this going on, are you mentally prepared to be the belle of the ball?

I’m just trying to enjoy this busy time in my life. I’m not the type of person that loves birthday parties or those types of personal celebrations because I find it all a bit overwhelming. So, I’m just trying to think to the future and how I’ll likely look back fondly on this time in my life.

Speaking of personal celebrations—you just got a Thrasher cover. Did you ever imagine that you’d be on the cover of the world’s most recognizable skateboard magazine?

I could have never imagined I’d have the opportunity to even be in the magazine, let alone on the cover. I am so grateful. It’s so exciting. It’s one of those things that doesn’t even feel real. I haven’t even seen it properly yet. All I’ve seen is a prototype with the cover attached to the front.

How’d you even think to try skating that spot? Let alone decide to make the narrow ollie part of a line?

It was just a classic Jacob Harris spot he found years ago. The ollie came about after wanting to get a line before it that included this really skinny bank that’s situated in an area before I start the line in the video. Unfortunately, when I couldn’t quite figure out how to skate the skinny bank. The first time I went there must’ve been winter of 2019 when we were filming an Out There for Thrasher. Then more recently when Jacob and I were shooting for the new shoe in London, I was racking my brain for new places that we haven’t filmed before, and that one popped up again in our conversations. So, we went there the next morning and just ended up doing it. There was no thought of it being on the cover, but Darwen is just such a skilled photographer that he made it look incredible.

What about the ollie itself? Describe your process in even getting up the courage to dive down that narrow chasm.

It actually felt pretty natural overall, but I was terrified of kicking out. A friend of mine, Chris Jones, had actually tried to ollie it years ago. He had one go at it, but it kicked out and then pinballed back and forth between both walls. His ass hit first and it shoved him into the other wall. The big thing for me was figuring out how to get my face furthest away from the frontside wall without hitting my ass on the backside wall. That was the hardest part of it. You can see in a couple of the attempts that I’m just way too close to wall. It was a matter of an inch at times, but the trouble is that I couldn’t feel whether I was too close during the run up. I could only feel if I was too close once I was in the air.

It was absolutely terrifying once I was in the air. Now that people are posting it here and there, and I’m seeing it a lot, it sort of gets diluted and I forget how terrified I was at the time I was doing it. It was a real victory the first time I landed it, but we were there to put it in a line. After the next failed attempts, and after I hit the wall a couple times, I asked Jacob to show me the footage of the first stand alone ollie so I could see how I did it. It didn’t give me much hope when I saw my knees were millimeters away from the wall on the make. That’s when I decided, “Ok, there’s no real technique here. I just need to do it.”

Tom says there’s no technique to this, seems hard to believe.

How’d Jacob get you back there for the cover reveal with your family?

He’s sneaky. We were getting some b-roll footage for a shoe commercial, and the night before he suggested getting some little bits of me walking up those stairs and pushing around in the area above. So, the next morning we got some footage of me pushing across a bridge, and we got it pretty quick. I then got a text from the missus saying I should stay out longer and get a couple pints with Jacob to catch up. So then we decided to go get some shots around those stairs. I was walking up the stairs, and I know he’s filming me, but I figured it was for the commercial. I get to the top of the stairs and the first thing I see is my dad and I was confused. I thought maybe it was just a coincidence that my dad was just chillin’ at the top of these random stairs. Then I saw the missus and I thought, “Huh, maybe they’re just chilling together.” Then once my kid popped out with the mag, the trap was sprung. It was surreal.

Tom Knox Has a Pro Shoe