Skater Stevie Williams was <U>attacked by Nazi skinheads</U> during a recent trip to Europe. But that didn\'t phase him. He has been through shit growing up that would\'ve made most kids quit before they could even pop an ollie. When he wasn\'t being beaten up by black kids for his love of skateboarding, Stevie honed his skills in Philly’s ironically named Love Park, a place that used to be synonymous with fists, knives and guns. By the time he hit 15 he was already restless and headed to the West Coast. Like something out of a Steinbeck novel, he wound up on floors and in doorways without food or friends...
Somehow Stevie managed to pull out a part in the massively popular Chocolate Skateboards Tour video that helped redefine street skating. We met up with Stevie while he was on a promotional tour with RBK in Serbia and talked about fear...
<U>PHOTO BLOG: STEVIE WILLIAMS SKATES SERBIA</U>
Vice: How was growing up as black kid in Philly trying to skate?
Stevie: Y’know, people are just unaccepting of shit that’s different just cos it wasn’t playing basketball or whatever. They just don’t get it. I mean I knew all the kids from round the way but I still got in a bunch of fights all the time. It was tough being ten and a half and being in West Philly and wanting to skate and just getting shit. You’re always living in fear of the cops too you know? We were getting chased four, five times a day. But that kind of fear is good. It keeps you on point.
It must have been pretty scary turning up in California alone at 15?
Well, all I knew was that trying to skate on the East Coast was harsh man. Real harsh. I knew my boy Marcus McBride to talk to on the phone and one day I was just like: I’m a be there in a week. I just made that decision you know? I didn’t even know what Marcus looked like or where I was gonna stay. No school, no parents, nothing. I doubted myself a whole lot of times. It was the same when I first got to LA. I didn’t really leave the house for a month cause I was just intimidated by the whole place. Then one day my boy Keenan Milton just came and got me out of the spot and made me go to a party and cheer me up. It was the first time I was feeling happy, I was partying till late. On my way home though I began to feel something was wrong, I just didn’t know what. The next morning Mike Carrol called me and told me what had happened. It was like right when I was feeling happy for a minute my boy Keenan passes on, drowned, just like that. That was a dark time right there and it was on the 4th of July. Every year I get the same dark chill on Independence Day. After that I was back in the house for like two months. Dark times, the fear was high-level right there for sure.
There is always a massive pressure to be putting out video parts. Have you felt scared trying to pull big tricks out for a video part?
I only just started going down stairs again. Stairs is scary.
How about sketchy spots?
Oslo, Norway. We were chased out of a spot by some Nazi dudes, seven skinhead guys and I was the only black guy in sight. We split real quick, that was some scary ass shit for real.
You are in Serbia right now, is it weird skating a city that was war torn just a couple of years ago?
It was? Man, no wonder it all looks like it’s falling down. I like it though; it’s one of the best places I’ve ever been in Europe, good kids.
It is also the world’s second largest producer of raspberries.
They need to start getting some nicer buildings up in here then.
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I know it\'s probably a difficult subject for him to talk about--and I\'m sure he\'s been interviewed-to-death about it in skate magazines, but his childhood is a really interesting story. The way he describes his fear and feelings of being an outcast are rare things to come by from a kid with his background. People tend to like to inflate their own myth, but this guy seems real. I would\'ve liked to have heard some more about his coming up in the skating world in this interview, but I guess that wasn\'t exactly the entire aim of this piece.
Posted by: Gffffff | <U>02/10/2007 at 22:23</U>