Wake up Massi
‘Piss Drunx logo? Yeah fuck it!’
Getting a marker out to cheekily ‘decorate’ the mags we’d send out to the people working for our advertisers was not common practice (for obvious reasons), but that day, delirious and bored out of our minds of printing Royal Mail labels and packing envelopes, me and Vaughan Jones (who helps with our mailout) thought it would be hilarious. It was not. I don’t know if Mark Baines saw it and wasn’t impressed or if he just never clocked – I guess we’ll probably find out when he reads this – but it didn’t get the desired reception.
Interviewing him about his team management role at New Balance we touched on some of the experiences that shaped how he works, from his early Blueprint days, to his time in LA with the Warner Ave crew, all the way to his transition out of professional skateboarding, quickly making me realise why that infamous PD tattoo wasn’t necessarily just associated with jolly memories of downing 40s with my childhood heroes. What was meant to be a quick 15-minute chat turned into a pretty deep hour-long, full-circle type of conversation, that I don’t think either of us expected. Some of it was jokes, some of it was heart-breaking – all of it shed light on some of our industry’s growing pains (and how far it still has to go in certain areas). There’s a lot to unpack in there, so before I somehow find a way to put my foot in it again, I’ll let you guys get started!
All photos in Athens by Sam Ashley
Interview by Arthur Derrien
Can you maybe start off by telling us a little bit about some of the first team management figures in your career, and any memories you might have of discovering how the whole sponsored skater/TM dynamic worked?
Mark Baines: One of my first experiences of dealing with a TM type figure was on a trip to Holland many years ago… I think it was ‘95 maybe. We all took the ferry over, and en route to the port, Joe Burlo (who owned Faze 7 Distribution, which ran Blueprint/Panic) kindly took us to a bank so I could cash a cheque he’d just given me, which was really nice of him… I think it was £300 maybe. Fast forward a few hours and I’d spanked the whole lot on ferry fruities (slot machines) before we’d even arrived, which was both dumb as fuck and started my shitty relationship with these things… I remember getting quite a bit of shit for that. But Joe was cool, he went out of his way to sort me out on this trip so I had some money in my pocket. You could tell he thought we were the best skateboarders on the planet, which we weren’t, but it was good to have him thinking that.
Andrew Verde, switch frontside crooked grind
My first actual TM at the time was Alvin Singfield though and he also always really looked out for me and the other guys. I remember a tour we did where we went to check in to a hotel near Newcastle and they turned us away. We were all waiting in the van as Alvin was sorting the checking in and suddenly he came running out of the hotel, started the van up and drove off! We were all so confused. And as we left the car park some police cars started driving in. Everyone knew it had to be linked to us but only one person actually knew how… A few miles down the road we got surrounded by riot vans and police cars, with a police helicopter above just in case. All of us got arrested and put in the police vans. I think they were fully expecting like a team of rugby players though so they were kind of laughing when they saw us… We just looked like a random bunch of scrawny kids. We soon found out that the last hotel had called ahead to this one to warn them (it was a chain so they knew where we were going to be), and had contacted the police who were waiting for us to check in.
What did they do with you?
We spent the night in the cells, which was actually not that bad. I remember we could all hear each other so people were singing songs with (Matt) Pritchard doing the old ‘OGGY OGGY OGGY, Oi Oi Oi’.
We were let out around 4am and carried on to Wakefield after our night in the cells with very little sleep and did probably the best demo of the tour! Alvin had a job to do first though, and that job was to go via the nearest train station to drop the hotel damage culprit off. Matt (Pritchard) was Audi 5000 (out of there). Turns out he’d put a pillow he’d pissed on down the toilet amongst other things, so the TM had to react. It was sad, Matt was gutted, we were gutted and I think Alvin was gutted too but he knew it had to be done. And fair play to him because he didn’t back down. He was like, no, you fucked up. You do have to set limits…
The footage is at the end of Mixed Media. I had to put tape over the tabs of the VHS and record over that bit before giving my parents a copy because you could see the police and the helicopter up above and Mike de Geus (RIP) saying ‘all this for pissing on a fucking pillow’. Good times.
Dale Starkie, kickflip from the curbcut to fakie
What about when you moved to America? Did you see a difference in how people were being team-managed over there?
Yeah so I remember they would always talk about the dark man, which was originally Jamie Thomas I’m pretty sure. But they used it to refer to TMs in general, you know, as in the guy in the background pulling the strings. So yeah I definitely saw a difference, particularly with the Warner Ave crew, because all their TMs were getting them good shoe deals. And it was a lot gnarlier you know, like say if you were on Zero, or Birdhouse or Baker, the board brand TMs were the ones making sure their dudes would get the best deals. And yeah I’d never seen that because for us, there was just no way a British guy could possibly get paid from a shoe brand. You might get four pairs of shoes a month, if you’re lucky.
So it was very different, just in seeing the influence and sway these TMs had on the industry, like ‘if you want this guy, you’ve got to pay him this much’. I’d never really seen that, because I always just thought the riders just got offered whatever they got offered from the brand and there was no middleman.
I read that towards the end of your time out there you were really struggling with anxiety, that all the partying that came with the Warner Ave scene was kind of pouring oil on the fire and that nobody around you really understood what was up with you or was equipped to help… Can you tell us a little bit about that period and how you navigated what you were going through at the time?
So I think at that time, I was 17 or 18, so quite young. And I’d gone out there with Carl Shipman and Chez (Neil Chester) initially, and Carl had been saying stuff like, ‘I can get you on New Deal, Blueprint’s not gonna do anything for you…’ It was a weird time just being quite a young lad and having people in my ear telling me, ‘you could do this; you could do that’. It was quite difficult. But eventually, I was like, okay I want to go to America and see what happens…
And I’d been having these sort of panic attacks before, but didn’t know what they were. At the time I used to smoke weed quite a lot… And of course a lot of people get that, but I was young and didn’t link the two. But I know now looking back that it’s obvious, but you know, I thought weed would suppress it or make me feel better.
So in America for the first few months, it was cool. I was with Carl and Chez who I was quite close to, but then they left and I spent a lot of time with Bill Pepper and Kenny Hughes initially. And they were great and looked after me for a bit… But then after that I ended up going to stay with Alex (Moul) and Ali (Boulala) in Huntington Beach at this place Flip was paying for, and uh yeah… They were partying a lot. Like you know the UCI rail Ali switch tailslid?
Tyler Surrey, switch backside flip
Yep the Kenny Hughes switch crooks.
Yeah, well anytime anything like that went down it was a celebration, so it was always lots of beers and stuff… And I was used to being around drink because in the UK people drink a lot here. I probably had my first drink when I was 13 or 14 so it wasn’t like a big deal to me, but because no one had any responsibilities, everyone was just drinking all the time. And obviously that’s not a good thing at any point in life but especially when you’re young… And in the day I’d feel fine because I was skating and it would feel new and I was filming a lot, but I’d be having more of these panic attacks, not understanding what they were, you know what I mean?
And then four months in, when it eventually came to me getting my return flight, Alex and those dudes convinced me to stay and I ended up ripping up my plane ticket. I’d had stuff in 411 filming with Geoff (Rowley) and I was skating a lot so it felt good, but then I started to feel a bit homesick… And I had no money. I’d quit Blueprint (which was stupid) because they’d said they wouldn’t pay me if I stayed out there, which I couldn’t get my head around, and people out there kept saying ‘it’s bullshit they aren’t supporting you!’
And then other different things happened… Things that are always pretty rough wherever you are but when you’re on the other side of the world it becomes extra difficult. The panic attacks got worse, but I wasn’t really able to talk to anyone about them because I myself had no idea what was going on, plus there was a lot more stigma around this stuff. People would just be like, ‘urgh, you’re mental…’, you know? It wasn’t like now when everyone can talk about it and understand it. So I’d just be there with people like Andrew Reynolds, Erik Ellington, Jim Greco… All these dudes, and I’m just fucking there having an internal breakdown thinking ‘I’m losing my marbles here’. And they probably didn’t even realise it, because I don’t think you could necessarily see it… But I was constantly anxious.
Massimo Cristofoletti, noseslide nollie flip
And looking back at all this, do you think it’s a situation where had it occurred 20 years later, a team manager could have stepped in and helped?
Yeah I wish someone like that could have helped me, because I’ll be honest with you,
I spoke to a lot of people about it at the time and they didn’t want to know. And even years later when I was back in the UK and back on Blueprint, I told people and they still didn’t want to know. At that time you were just a burden. You were putting a downer on things; you know what I mean? No one wanted to hear your shit.
For years this was in part why I didn’t like to travel… Because I’d go on trips and… And again it comes back to that thing of drinking. You’d drink to… Okay so when I got back from America I couldn’t leave the house without drinking. I had to eventually tell my parents what had gone on over there because they were worried. They thought someone really serious had happened to me in America, because my mum would come home from the supermarket and I’d have had two beers before midday.
But I went to see someone around then who explained it really well to me. You know in Pink Panther when Clouseau comes home and Cato always just jumps out? That’s how this guy explained anxiety to me. It’s like, yeah, it feels like at any time it could jump out, but it’s about how you react to it. You know what I mean? He was the first person who was able to break it down into layman’s terms, you know, into a way I could understand it when none of my TMs or any of the older guys at the time understood it.
And in America when all those kids at that time were just drinking and doing what the hell they wanted, no one stepped in and said anything, and I could see that it was going to end… That something was not right. That amount of drinking and partying and stuff like that, it’s not… Not to be the fucking party pooper, but it’s got to end at some point, in some way. Like, I didn’t like the promotion of all that stuff. But then again I think maybe I didn’t like it because I knew it was causing me more problems. Like even though I was doing it, I knew that drinking would make me feel better for that night, but that the next day, I wouldn’t feel better until six o’clock when I opened a beer, and that I’d spent the day feeling anxious…
Charlie Munro, switch ollie
And so in the context of how much mentalities have evolved around all that stuff, do you think helping with issues like these should now fall under the remit of team management?
As a TM your job is to look out for your dudes. You sort out their trips and shoes or boards or whatever, but you also have a responsibility towards them. You can say ‘ah, but it’s just a job’ or whatever… But you do need to know if there’s a problem with any of them. And I’m obviously not claiming to be an expert on this stuff because I’m not, but there’s certain things where it’s obvious, like if people start to get worried about travelling or anything like that… And that’s where I can say, ‘don’t worry, when you go away it’s with your friends and if you do feel shit you can just come back.’ Or whatever you know, just little things where if I’d had people in my ear saying this stuff it would have made a really big difference for me and made my life at that point a lot easier.
Yeah. And the work The Ben Raemers Foundation hasbeen doing with people that work for brands is a huge step in the right direction. But also, as you said, you guys aren’t trained mental healthcare professionals… Do you feel like there’s a line you’d have to draw in terms of intervening with that stuff? Even if it’s a blurry one?
Yeah I mean I have friends now that are going through what I was going through then and I tell them that they need to go speak to someone. Because it’s obviously good for your friends to come put their arms around you, but a lot of the time they’re just going to tell you what you want to hear, you know? And having someone trained to explain to me what anxiety is, really changed
things for me, looking at what’s causing the problem, what exactly is happening in my body… Explaining that the more you try to suppress it, the more it’s gonna come back. And that in my case actually putting myself in these situations that tend to trigger it, the ones I’d always try to avoid, accepting that it’s there, etc., really helped. But again that’s just my experience and I don’t know what someone else’s might be, why they’re feeling that way or how it’s manifesting itself. But it’s great that we’re all more aware about it now, but you do have to be careful, like I’ll talk about my experiences with it because at the time when it happened I felt like I was on my own…
Dee Collins, switch heelflip
But then also you’re very conscious that there’s a limit to the help you can supply and know when to refer people to professionals.
Exactly. Unless you’re qualified you can only do so much. But with the team riders what I try to be to them is all I can be: someone they can trust and come to. To be honest though, the guys that we have I’m not worried about at all. Like they’ll drink a bit or whatever but in no way do I look at that and think ‘hmm I’m concerned about this…’ You know what I mean?
But the Raemers Foundation thing… It’s amazing how much that has changed perceptions on this stuff, because I’ll be honest with you, people used to take the piss out of me. Especially with weed because it was a real trigger for me… I dunno why, but just being around it would set me off. And when people ask me about weed today, I’m like yeah most of the time it’s sound, it’s just when it starts affecting you like it affected me that you need to be careful. And team managers do have a bit of responsibility there… And I’m not blaming anyone, it’s just a bit of a shame that for so many years people just didn’t understand. Because you can’t see it, you can’t just put a plaster on it. Or put stitches in if it’s a massive cut…
Dale Starkie, roll-in
Are there any other areas where you feel the industry could do with evolving a bit, especially with stuff that pertains to your role? Your metaphor there just reminded me of stories of skaters taking super gnarly slams on trips, and people just standing around a dude that’s just hit his head or something asking, ‘What do you want to do? Want us to take you to hospital? Want to be taken back to the hotel to rest?’ With the skater lying there all fucked not knowing what he wants to do, wishing someone would take the decision for them… Throw booze into the mix and skaters being skaters, always desperate to protect the ‘vibes’ at all costs and it gets pretty sketchy. Like these are potentially dangerous situations where it should be someone’s responsibility to step in and make the call and I can’t help but feel like some kind of formal training there for people in these roles would go a long way…
Yeah I mean when I fucked my knee up in America, I didn’t go to the hospital straight away and it was the worst decision I ever made. Up until two years ago I was still having operations on it and that slam was 20 years ago. For that same knee issue I’ve had five operations on it. If I’d gone to the hospital straight away, it might have been a different story…
Yeah if there was a team manager there who’d done some kind of first aid training or something where they could more confidently help make the right call it could have been a game changer.
Yeah… And I mean situations like you described before are gnarly. Like if I was dealing with something like that there would be no two ways about it, it would be straight to hospital mate. And I actually do have some first aid training because I do the skate camps.
The weird thing with trips is that it’s almost like people assume that with everyone’s added injuries someone there would know what to do, but it’s not like that and I agree, that’s why you need that. But yeah, it’s true that right now it’s not something where brands are like, ‘you should have this’.
Davide Holzknecht, backside tailslide shove-it
Yeah… And obviously I wasn’t trying to put you on blast there like, ‘Do you have first aid training?!’ Ha ha, just meant more as a general thing, it feels like the industry has a long way to go with a lot of stuff. Like even unions or a body that would help pro skaters get a bit more protection and feel a bit less like disposable marketing commodities, which I know a lot of pros of your generation have felt at different points in their careers.
The thing is skating is so unique in the sense that it’s not like any other sport. There are no rules and regulations in place for most stuff, and brands aren’t necessarily pushing for that to exist.
Which I can understand, any time any sort of governing body forms it’s usually pretty bone. Like I find watching the Olympics water down what we do as cringe as the next man…
Yeah, but I do think having things like this in place can be good if they are done for the right reasons. The problem is that when you get a bunch of people to control something inevitably it then becomes about them and not what it’s meant to be. If you had a body or something like that acting in the best interest of protecting the skaters, helping assist the brands, that wasn’t self-serving: that would be great. But in skating the shit that pops up is always awful, and often led by people who are just desperate to work in skating. To me the only way this could work is if this was something that was led by people who have had lives as pro skaters, been on trips, and already worked in the industry, so that it’s really like, ‘this is what I’ve seen happen on trips, so this is what we need in place’. But also because a lot of the time skaters are scared of governing bodies… You’d need people who can speak a certain language, but also people who have been on the ground doing it.
And so how long have you been in this role, doing the team management at New Balance?
Five or six years maybe.
Flo Mirtain, switch varial heelflip
And what was the transition like? I remember reading that you lost DVS, WESC and Blueprint all in short succession (your main sources of income), which sounds terrifying, and kinds of brings us back to some of the stuff we were discussing earlier…
So from my early 20s I’ve always had people telling me ‘this won’t last forever’. And I felt like I could never enjoy it or fully relax into being a pro because I was always like, ‘fuck, this ends… This sucks.’ I don’t know if they were trying to ruin it for me or what, but because of that, from the moment it started it was always at the back of my mind.
Anyway DVS was the first one, and I remember getting a call from Gabe Clement, who was the team manager at the time, and he just explained that they just had to make some cuts… Obviously I was upset, I was gutted, but I appreciated the way he went about it. Gabe was cool and he was a good TM… And I understood, I was a UK dude on DVS you know what I mean? I was like division two.
Soon after that it was WESC, and luckily I’d just started these skate camps I was doing so I had a little bit of income, but it was a very small amount. That’s why when I lost Blueprint, I ended up skating for Fabric. I got offered a little bit of money from them, which prolonged the whole thing… And meanwhile, as this was going on, I was buying up bikes on eBay to do them up and sell them… So I’d plan a route to pick them up, buy a bunch, one sale would cover the petrol money and try to make money like that… I did that for a little while not making much money until I got on Numeric, which was obviously really good and they paid me a little bit…
But it’s weird because you kind of never… You don’t want it to end you know? And that’s tough. And at the time I still felt like I had something to offer, I was still filming and the last part I put out I was quite stoked on. But then I got injured again…
That same knee?
Yeah… Basically the screws that had been put in my knee had snapped some years before but the doctor had always said it would be fine as it was in my bones, that it wouldn’t move. But the broken bit of the screw did eventually move. It went to the back of my leg and locked my leg. You could hear the screw grinding my knee when I’d bend it, it was mad.
That was the September before Covid, and I had an operation then to remove the screw, but then I needed a second operation as I was getting this weird locking in my knee, which I had to wait for, for like two years or something because of everything that was going on… And then that was it.
It was mad because you always think, ‘fuck, I wonder when I retire what’s going to happen? I wonder if I’m gonna have like a last video part or last board’ and there was nothing. It was just like; it was just done. No one really spoke about it or… Not that they should, it’s not like you want some fucking parade as a send-off but it’s so weird after that long… I’d been pro for longer in my life than I hadn’t you know? And suddenly it just ended.
Thankfully though Seb Palmer at Numeric got me in to help (Dave) Mackey with team stuff as he was initially doing all that on top of the marketing at the time, which at first was just working with the UK dudes, but eventually turned into setting something up in Europe and putting the dudes that I wanted on, which is what I’m doing now.
Tyler Surrey, kickflip frontside nosebluntslide
It’s amazing how that worked out for you. But also yeah, it is crazy how for most pro skaters, you dream of doing it, it’s almost all you do for most of your life then in a heartbeat it’s gone and you’re lost, no money, no support, no idea how you’re meant to ‘retire’.
Yeah and there’s just no one there. It’s horrible. And that is one thing where there really should be something in place for those people. Like if I hadn’t been given this opportunity I don’t know what I’d be doing now… All I’ve known since I was a kid is skating. I quit school at 16 and didn’t stop travelling and filming until the end, I put my heart and soul into Blueprint… It’s insane. You commit so much of yourself to this thing, but suddenly there’s nothing there for people. It’s just like: you’re cut.
I guess you’re in a good position to implement something to change that!
Yeah, and we have had to let go of riders before, which really sucks, but we always try to give people some notice so they can prepare for what comes next. Like, ‘okay, we’re no longer going to be able to pay you from this point.’
Because skating is so weird. You can be the fucking flavour of the month, and everyone’s blowing smoke up your ass, then two years later, there’s someone else, and people don’t give a fuck about you anymore. And mentally that can be quite difficult, you know what I mean?
And I was lucky in the sense that when I was younger I had older people around me telling me to watch out for people that could use me up. Because there are people that just use up skaters and toss them to the side.
Yeah it’s really good that you had friends without vested interest that were able to help guide you in that way.
I sometimes wonder how it all works with agents… Like not team managers but the personal managers that a lot of pro skaters have these days to fight for them to get good deals in exchange for 10 or however many per cent of each contract. What’s your thoughts on that side of skateboarding management?
I’ll be honest with you, I would much rather deal with the skater directly. Because of how I am I myself will always fight their cause, to try to get them more money or whatever it is they need. I’ll always try.
Davide Holzknecht, kickflip
And without taking a percentage of that contract…
Or convincing them to do corny adverts for mainstream brands that might down the line affect how they’re perceived (and in turn affect their chances with certain ‘cool’ board brands, which has a knock on effect on shoe deals etc.).
Exactly. But also it’s hard because if you are earning a lot of money, you might need someone to speak on your behalf because those contracts are probably quite complex. But that’s like for 2% of the pros out there.
Yeah, so for like the Tiagos of this world…
Yeah. But for the other 98% I don’t personally see the need for it, but then that’s based on how I do this job. I don’t know what other team managers are like and how they are thinking about their team riders. But I personally am always going to do everything I can for my riders because I’ve been on the receiving end when it’s not like that.
And I would have never had an agent myself, but then Seb (Palmer) once said, ‘well maybe you should have had an agent, you’d have more money.’ Ha ha. So who knows.
True. But maybe you’d have made more money from skating but you wouldn’t have this job because you’d have been convinced to do some stinking shit that would have destroyed your street cred, ha ha.
Yeah and with an agent you’re just like one of 20 dudes on his books, and like cool, he’s setting up meetings to get you consistent pay increases but they’re essentially going to him anyway! When I’m helping the guys on the team with my experience of being in their position, the last thing on my mind is what I can personally gain from that.
Andrew Verde, gap to backside tailslide
Which to me feels like a healthier dynamic…
Yeah and sometimes I feel like if they just had that trust in me it would be better for everyone. Because if I can get them more, I will, you know? And again, for the vast majority of the people we’re talking about here, like what’s the point? Do you want to lose a couple of grand off that contract with the amounts we’re talking here? Just speak for yourself and if you’re right with people and conduct yourself in the correct way you’ll get a favourable response. And they’ll do everything they can for you!
Fuck we’ve been going for ages but it would be nice to not end it on this…
In the context of all your experiences and how they’ve informed how you do this job and what you want out of it: what do you find the most rewarding about it all? Specifically when it comes to working on a video project, like the one this Greece trip will feed into?
The thing I buzz off, honestly, is seeing a bunch of dudes who’ve got a good work ethic with skating, who see it, who get it, who understand why they’re doing it, and what the end result is going to be. And just seeing them bond… The crew we have, they didn’t know each other three or four years ago and now you put them in a room and they buzz off each other! And that’s how it was for me. That’s what I went through and experienced a lot with Blueprint and DVS. And that getting together and pushing each other to film: that’s one of the things that I loved the most about it all, and I buzz so much off seeing these lads embracing that. They’re all like, ‘right, we’re doing this video’ and they all fucking go at it. They work hard, they have a good time when they go away. We don’t spend a lot of money on trips, we do things quite budget, so we can do more of them and they never complain. They’re not like, ‘these guys get to stay in these fancy hotels, why are we here?’ They’re in an Airbnb and they’re just grateful that they’re getting to do it. They just want to skate, travel and experience all these places. And I do wish I could be there a lot of the time skating and filming with them… Because I miss filming. That was such a huge part of going on trips like these for me. Accumulating footage and knowing it’s going towards something special, then seeing the final product, especially with Blueprint… It’s something that I feel is slowly getting a bit lost. Like this thing of trusting the process and not putting everything you film out straight away, you know? Getting a proper filmer, and really waiting until it’s ready, releasing it properly, etc. Like at times it’s felt like if Dee could just throw everything he films straight on his Instagram he would, ha ha.
Massimo Cristofoletti, noseslide
But then you’ve shown him how his shit could look filmed properly, edited properly, and I’m sure he gets it now. Like that’s also therole of a team manager in my opinion, being the bridge between young people and our culture so that this fundamental part of it is protected.
Yeah, exactly. And they’re all really respectful, good fucking dudes… My role is just to facilitate and help them carry on making these videos as
they have been, you know?
