“Yo, fuck that guy. He just like – he comes around to skateparks and events and just like, tries to start fights with kids, like, – what are you even doing? He calls himself a professional skater but I never seen him skate once, just basically fighting kids and bein’ a dick.”
“That dude sucks. You’re asking if I’m a fan? Fuck no, that dude ain’t got a single fan on this earth unless they like getting harassed and beat up by some 40 year old guy.”
“I heard that Travis Yellen likes to go to punk shows and he’ll just start punching the wall. Like, – what?! He’s just like… this ogre that everyone wants to avoid because he can’t chill or just like, he’s obsessed with punching and kicking stuff all the time and beating up on people. Why hasn’t that dude been arrested yet?”
Travis Yellen stood there with his arms crossed, staring at the video editor as his manager glared at him.
“Are you gonna beat me up now, Travis? We’re making skate tapes and stunt tapes and stuff. Is this what it has come to? I give you thousands of dollars and you go around the country beating up teenagers and tossing your reputation down the toilet?”
Travis looked back at him and shook his head.
“You wanna know who those guys are? Jocks and assholes. They come up go the park trying to hate on skaters. That’s what the videos aren’t showing – these guys are just haters too. They hate skaters- so I do what I gotta do and enforce and somehow I’m the villain?”
“Jocks and such. Huh. Do you have the video of the actual fights?”
“No shit I do.”
“OK, so we frame it as skaters vs. jocks and jerks. That should work. What we’ll do is a perfectly symmetrical scene for the cover of Shred magazine, one side it’ll be astroturf and a bunch of football players huddled up in formation and then on the other side it’ll be skaters on a big half-pipe or something ready to smash their heads in with some boards. Then we’ll do an interview with you, and we can film some actual skateboarding footage, and -”
“I don’t give a shit. I MEAN I don’t give a care. I’m trying not to curse anymore. You want me to skate? I’ll just fall over like a crooked old scarecrow, dude. I’m pretty sure my knee caps are falling off.”
“I see.”
“Just, like – how about this, find a guy that looks like me. Use him and some crappy camera. Let him get 50% off my name and I get the other half so I can go home to my wife and kids and be a father.”
“You have a wife? And kids? Since when?”
“Are you kidding me, dude? Children are the future.”
“Haha – what?”
And Travis lit up a cigarette and walked out of his boss’s garage, and went home to his family. Later that night, he got an email from his boss with a video attached.
“People talk mad shit on Travis but that dude is my hero. I didn’t even know how to skate and I was like 12 and my board fell apart right in front of everyone and I swear the entire skate park was laughing at me and I was about to cry but then Travis Yellen comes in just like the Hulk and starts kicking into the wood, he’s not even walking just sort of kick-walking and is telling everyone to shut up, and that everyone fucks up and it’s like, totally silent. And he walked over and helped me up and I swear to God I was about to cry and Travis spent like $50 buying me a board and something to eat and showed me a bunch of techniques and even gave me his number and told me to call if I ever needed advice or wanted to talk to someone. He’s a really chill guy when he’s not pissed off. I still talk to him, we’re friends on Facebook and I stopped skating after an ACL tear from rugby like – five years after that – I wasn’t even that good a skater. But he told me to ignore all the skate culture and to just get good grades and start a family and go to church, which I thought was a joke but he showed me the ways and I have nothing but love for Travis Yellen. He’s a legend.”