Slow Impact 2026
The Great Skate Debate hosted by Sam Korman
After getting off the plane in Phoenix, post 7pm Iced coffee to fight the jetlag, I find myself in a bar, the Yucca Tap Room to be precise. Still a bit delirious from the long journey from London I look up from my Heineken 0.0% to witness Gifted Hater, on stage, asking, “What’s the number one problem in skateboarding today? People go too slow.” Well Slow was the reason I was here, Slow Impact to be precise. Joa’s diatribe on the problems with waxing was just one argument in “The Great Skate Debate” hosted by Sam Korman, a recurring event at Slow Impact in Tempe, Arizona. I’d flown out to cover the 4th edition of Ryan Lay’s gathering in the desert. Four days of talks, hiking, architecture, friends old and new, delicious tacos, Antwuan Dixon, and of course, skating later, I spoke with Ryan and Kristin Ebeling about the whole shabang.
Words and photos by Will Harmon
I know both of you were at Pushing Boarders in Malmö in 2019. Is it safe to say that event sparked the idea for Slow Impact?
Ryan Lay: Yeah, 100%. I think during Covid, we were just all craving in person events again, or just like in person community building. We were sad that Pushing Boarders kind of faded away. I had been to WOF (Wheels of Fortune), which is Kristin’s event, and seeing the mechanics of how it worked, I felt encouraged to take the plunge.
Kyle [Beachy] even mentioned something like, ‘What if you could do CPH Pro in the desert?’ or something…
RL: I mean, the other thing is I’m from Phoenix, and we had success building these skateparks, and we had Skate After School and Cowtown there, and we used the office space the first year… So we kind of had all the necessary resources. And I just felt like Tempe is a weird and small enough city that with the combination of skatepark, shop, university, good weather in the off season, it might just be a place that would be worth visiting for a few days.
Kristin Ebeling: I wanted to add that prior to Slow Impact starting, I had started going there (to Arizona)… I mean, maybe I’ve been there three years in a row even… Like going in February to skate and just get away from the weather in Seattle. And I feel like that’s also kind of what makes it cool. Ryan and I had met just through running skate organisations or whatever, and so yeah, it was a welcomed escape. And so a lot of people had done the same, there’s all these people from Chicago and Portland and stuff like that, right Ryan?
RL: It was like a natural energy of people visiting from the Midwest and the northwest in Arizona in January and February. I feel like February is kind of like the cracking point for winter, for a lot of people, where they’ve relaxed from the holidays a little bit, gotten back to work, and then they’re starting to feel antsy about, I don’t know, just getting out and getting some sun.
Ted Barrrow’s architecture tour around ASU
Yeah I was surprised to meet so many people there from the Pacific Northwest. How would you say Slow Impact differs from Pushing Boarders?
RL: I mean, I was pretty intentional about making it more of a skate gathering, or a curated skate vacation, rather than an academic conference. And I think those guys did an amazing job, but my takeaway, aside from it being incredible, was that it’s really hard to get a lot of skaters together to sit inside for multiple panels a day. You just only have the bandwidth for so much. And so I just started thinking a little bit more about how to make an event that’s a little more dynamic. And obviously, WOF is a very dynamic event as well… But yeah, like, what are the things I like to do with my day, you know? I want to learn a little bit, I want to hang out with friends and drink coffee, I want to go skateboarding… Maybe I want to go get a drink at a bar, maybe I want to go for a hike… So you know, maxing out the days…
Yeah…
RL: It’s funny too, because I feel like, in some capacity, as a pro skater I’ve become a sort of ambassador to Arizona skating. And so I thought a lot about, like, what is the best way to present Tempe skateboarding to people? Like, the best bars that I like to go to, the funnest spots you can skate to, the best hikes… Like, what’s the best three or four-day schedule you could build out here? And then also trying to draw some star power from the skate industry. Then also, pull in a Pushing Boarders-esque academic component. And the first year we did work with ASU (Arizona State University), so that is a big part of it, doing knowledge production. But, yeah, you want things to just be a good mix, because you can only handle so many highbrow conversations, you know?
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think you had a fine balance, because everything would stop kind of around three, and then people could go skate or do what they wanted for a bit, and then there would be something in the evening.
KE: So many different activities!
Paper Sessions presented by CSEF
How are the talks set up? Who chooses the speakers?
RL: Just me, but then for the Paper Sessions Mo [Maurice Crandall] and Kyle [Beachy] and CSEF go through the applicants.
KE: I feel like Ryan just frantically calls all of his friends for months leading up… I’m on this list of people that get a phone call, and Ryan’s like, “What do you want to do?” Like, “Do you want to do a thing? Like, What are you thinking? I’m thinking about this. I talked about this person with that.” He’ll just call and chat with people and then over the course of months, it formulates, through conversations. It’s like Ryan’s organising style in a nutshell, haha…
RL: There’s no fancy Google Doc, that this thing is organised in, and there’s no formal meetings… It’s literally like, I’m on a three-hour bike ride and I call Bobby Poirier, he’s definitely Slow Impact alumni. And I had a phone call with him as I was biking down a two-hundred mile stretch of the 101 on our bike trip for hours, like, asking about Slow Impact ideas… One intention I usually have going into planning Slow Impact is like, what topics have been kind of rinsed, you know? Like, skate urbanism is really popular in this moment at events like these, and I think that’s really important, but again, you’ll see the same types of people who end up on a lot of panels. So I try to do the best I can to present an alternative program to what is out there.
KE: I feel like Ryan is playing off of momentum in the broader community. We’ve talked this year like, “Oh, what do you want to do? You want to do something?” And I couldn’t think of anything. And we agreed that we don’t want to do just like the “girls panel”, you know? I feel like we’ve evolved… Humans have evolved past the need for the girls panel [laughs]. It’s about finding where there’s momentum, where there’s things that are kind of new or evolving or emerging or pressing at that time. I also feel like there’s a lot of people who get more and more opportunities, like, if you did a Paper Session, then most likely you could be on a panel the next year, or be on the debate. It feels like there is a life cycle of people that can come through the event and get involved in new ways, and get that phone call from Ryan a few months out from the event and contribute.
Kristin, in the past you’ve been on panels most of the other years, right? This is the first year you were a bit behind the scenes, no?
KE: That was intentional. I feel like I’m trying to be a model for my community and for myself too, it’s okay to step back. Also to be honest, I didn’t have any great ideas, and it’s been a really transitional year for myself, leaving Skate Like A Girl, and I’m going back to school, and I told Ryan I just want to be a worker bee. Like, just put me to work; I want to be helpful. I just wasn’t really feeling the creative aspect of it. It got pretty burnt out the past year. But I also think it’s important in our community… I was inspired by Ashley Rehfeld’s Paper Session last year, where she kind of talked about… Also, like Gifted Hater put out the piece “Extinction Event”. There is just a natural tendency, I think, for the old heads and skateboarding to linger a little bit too long. And I think it’s important to, at times, not forever, but to take a step back and create a little bit of space for others. You know, I think there’s a scarcity mindset sometimes, I think especially for women or marginalised people that haven’t had a voice. I find myself at times being like, “Well if nobody’s gonna do it, then I have to do it,” and I put a lot of pressure on myself to be that person at the table. And I think I wanted to experiment this year and be like, what would it feel like to take a pretty big step back and not have a seat at that table and see what happens and not have that scarcity mindset that I’ll never be able to do it again, you know?
Awww…
And how did that feel, being behind the scenes?
KE: I think it was awesome. I love doing something new. I kind of hate the feeling of Groundhog Day, like, “Oh, we did this before,” you know? And I think this year was really unique. And honestly, it was really fun. I liked helping in a new way. And I also know, because of Wheels Of Fortune, what it’s like to be in Ryan’s position in a lot of ways. And how you need people to just do the thing for you in that moment, and you’re not going to be able to be nice about it. Just like, “I need this right now!”, you know? And you need people that are like, “I got you.” And it was fun to be on that other side, it was very, I don’t know, cathartic, maybe in a way.
And then picking back up when you guys said a few minutes ago, that some of the people that were featured this year were people that had submitted papers the year previous. Like Taj Hanson, apparently he had a paper last year that was so good that you were like, “Oh, let’s put him on this talk.” Is that kind of the way it’s been working?
RL: Yeah, and it’s not even really like, “Oh, your paper was so good.” It’s just like some people come and they just blend so well with the community, and they really understand the scope of the event. I mean, the best types of speakers at an event, like Slow Impact, are people who can blend core skating with whatever kind of academic or professional work that they’re doing. And so Taj was like that, Max Harrison-Caldwell had done that the year before, it’s just nice. I really appreciate the people who go out of their way to come to the event for the first time and apply to the Paper Sessions. They stay and really become part of the community. So again, you can’t just keep putting the same people up on stage every year, but I do think that every year I walk away feeling like, “Wow, that person is so talented, and it would be really cool to pair them with someone who’s a little more of a draw,” right? Like a lot of people this year, probably came for Antwuan [Dixon] or Ted Barrow and left being like, “Taj Hanson is so bright. What a great person,” you know? There’s so many standouts from this year, Lee Dubin, Kyle Mesteth, Farran Golding, Mathias Rothstein, like those people were so impressive. Bryce…
Bryce Noe’s Paper Session
Yeah Bryce Noe, the freestyler!
RL: Yeah, those are the people that I hope we can get more involved with next year. And I mean, again, when Sam [Korman] started the debate at Slow Impact a couple years ago, I didn’t really know Mathias that well, and he just crushed it at the debate. And now, like, that’s basically who we model the debate after. It’s like, Matthias is the best at this… Look at what he does, and we’re going to have him be a judge. So just trying to create a life cycle and also a culture, right? Like every good community building event should have its own culture. So that’s just like a way to sustain it and bring new people in.
KE: Yeah, I want to comment on Lee [Dubin] real quick, because as far as I know Lee started skating during Covid, met Skate Like A Girl and people in our broader community through events and programming, and got convinced to come to Slow Impact. Lee came to Slow Impact as a participant, hung out, shot photos at the QWT session, was really inspired, and I ended up going street skating with them one day, blah blah blah. And I guess they met Brian Glenney, who’s like a Slow Impact alum, a super academic guy, and had a conversation with him. And then later Lee was travelling through Vermont, where Brian’s from, and ended up, you know, getting coffee with him for three hours. They connected and started collaborating. They ended up getting a place together at Slow Impact this time. Lee ends up presenting a Paper Session this year, an amazing presentation, talking on non-binary skate spaces and stuff. And it’s just like, it was cool to see that happen.
Grant Yansura’s video night
Yeah, I thought Lee Dubin’s talk was really amazing about designing more friendly and inclusive skate spaces. And I wrote down one of the quotes that they said, because it really struck me. Lee said, “Being kind is infinitely more important than being cool.” And to me, that almost sums up the vibes of Slow Impact as a whole. Would you two agree?
KE: I would agree with that, yeah… Even when Ryan belittles me for not being able to feeble the flatbar, haha.
Bryce Noe’s talk about freestyle skating being the “Bastard Child of Skateboarding” was quite eye opening for me, and he really got a warm reception. I’m not sure if it was the Slow Impact crowd or openness of the skateboarding community in 2026, but for some reason I can’t imagine that talk going so well at say an ASR trade show in like 2003. What other forbidden or taboo conversations would you like for Slow Impact to host?
RL: I will say that having a good amount of self-awareness is integral to Slow Impact. And so the conversations that, like, I really wanted to have, that I think a lot of people are having in skateboarding right now, like when I’m on tour or at the New Balance office or something, is: Why is skateboarding so fucking old now? But the challenge is that a lot of people don’t want to speak candidly about their real feelings about it. So that’s kind of a frustration I have… There are topics that I really would like to cover, but you can’t just manifest the perfect panel to talk about an issue, because there’s all sorts of institutional and professional restraints from allowing people to speak candidly about it. I mean, I’m an old skater who’s pro for New Balance, so I wouldn’t say that that’s a forbidden category… This is like a thing that everyone seems to be talking about right now, but you can’t really get the right people on stage to talk about it in a way that it needs to be talked about or needs to be discussed.
KE: Yeah, it’s like, all the people that would have something interesting to say or, like, have a real dope perspective, are all people that have way too much skin in the game, they’d be like crucifying themselves.
RL: There’s also a conversation about young people and their role in why they’re not as prevalent in the skate industry. It’s not purely just about old heads. And so that is a fascinating element to this conversation that kind of puts a target on your back, when you talk about it. What is up with young people’s drive and motivation at the moment, beyond just skateboarding?
John Dahlquist
It’s a big Gen Z issue to be honest.
KE: I do feel like it got a little bit younger this year. I felt like I saw some… Maybe I’m just being hopeful, but I feel like there’s more young people. You had all the younger people from Skate Like A Girl that came…
Yeah… What did you guys think about Betsy Gordon’s talk about archiving skate media? Does it concern you that so much of what we consume today won’t be properly archived?
KE: I’ve been feeling this way for so long. This is a huge reason why Shari [White] and I started doing Skate Witches, which is a print zine. I have a degree in history and like, studying at a major university looking at primary documents, like, literally union notes from 1920 you know, and being able to have access to that type of documentation is super important longterm. I would say Instagram really put a pretty big growth spurt on women’s skateboarding. And I noticed it was pretty much all on Instagram. There was like, #girlsthatshred stuff… That’s how I met and found a lot of other women skaters. And it scared me that everything was just digital on a platform, like a MySpace, that’s just going to be extinct soon, you know? So we started doing the Skate Witches zine because it’s tangible. That was the big impetus.
You can’t easily search for a post on Instagram, that’s the biggest problem.
KE: Yes, and I know that wasn’t specifically what she’s talking about, but it definitely made me really nervous. But my friend Will [Simons], is doing a project with Kevin [Marks] from Lookback Library, scanning all of the old mags. So we have an archive of them.
Joshua Rowe and Tommy Barker of CSEF, which helps skaters get scholarships.
Yeah I met him. He was asking about Free. I told him we have all the digital archives saved, they just need reformatting so they’re more accessible. Ryan, anything you’d like to add?
RL: I mean, I guess one thing that was really interesting for me is that I actually have been struggling with documentation of the event, and this year, we didn’t record two of the big panels. And I thought a lot about the event being a little more ephemeral. So there’s some tension there between, like, I do think it’s important for things to be archived, but I personally I have been gravitating more towards the idea that, like, Slow Impact is just this candle that burns for four days, and you have to be there, and if you’re not, then that’s it. I didn’t put a lot of resources and energy into documenting things this year, and the event can’t really grow much more. And I’ve seen the trajectory of things like Copenhagen Open and comparable events, Slow Impact can’t be 1000 people… I wouldn’t know how to do it, it would be a full-time job, it would lose or ruin a lot of the intimacy of it and then beyond that, when you put a panel discussion completely out of context about a specific topic, without, like, the curation of the whole event onto the internet, and I’ve seen this firsthand, it kind of distorts it so that you’re just looking at it through a different lens with no context or intimacy. I don’t really have a growth mindset with Slow Impact personally, like, I’m not trying to grow it like a business. I want it to stay small and intimate and somewhat manageable. And so, yeah, I’ve been struggling with… I want to document some stuff, but I also like for it to be impermanent. Like people make zines, they trade the zines, they have really good conversations… Like the people who are there to watch Antwuan [Dixon] just got to see him speak, and probably a lot more candidly than a lot of the interviews that I know are coming out about him in the next month or two. And that feels really special in this moment. We’re in an era where everything is videoed for future reference, you know? It feels special to have something that’s just like, “Nah, you just had to be in that room at that time.”
It’s difficult finding that fine line between archiving/preserving and losing the immediacy of witnessing an event in real time.
RL: I’ll say that I think Betsy and Kevin Marks’ and Natalie Porter’s work is hugely important. Print media is obviously a really vital part of our culture. And I agree, like, you gotta take some of this shit that’s just all over the internet on a bunch of platforms that are probably gonna be gone in like five to 10 years and put it somewhere for people to reference. But that’s a little different conversation than like, an event.
KE: Antwuan’s talk… That felt so special. I’m one of like 300 people that got to be a part of that. Everyone else just gets to hear me retell it and gush about it, but like, you were not there, if you weren’t there. And I think that’s a really special thing for me. That was the biggest takeaway that I had from the event. Like, that’s what I felt like I really gained, just having that experience was really amazing.
Spencer Gillespie and Antwuan Dixon
Yeah, I mean, I left the whole thing feeling so lucky to have witnessed that.
Ryan, your Ode to Dan Pageau’s Canadiens jersey was brilliant. How did that come to you? And Kyle [Beachy] told me that he’d been pressuring you to do a little talk/reading every year, but you’ve always resisted. Why this year?
RL: I mean, I like all of the events, and I want to do all of them at some point in time. And last year I had, like, a pang of regret for not doing the reading. And I told myself that I was like, “Oh, I’ll do one and I’ll write it in the off season, like in the fall or something.” Obviously I talk to Kyle all the time, so I committed to it. And then, I wrote a good chunk of it over Christmas break, and then I ended up putting a lot of the final touches on it, like, literally, straight up until 30 minutes before I read it. I printed the final version of it right before I walked into Cowtown.
KE: I will say one of my favourite parts about being an old head at Slow Impact with all my younger friends and like women, and the trans, gay community, is like, they’re all sitting and they’re kind of listening to Ryan, and their faces are like, “What the fuck is he even talking about?” And I just, like, pull up the Dan Pageau YouTube video, and I was playing it for the girls, and they’re like, “Oh, it makes so much sense now, okay, cool. I didn’t know you could do a line up to El Toro. That’s crazy!”
RL: That was actually really fun to work on. I did a ton of research. I was like, researching all these hockey facts, where the jerseys get made, the Canadiens’ playoff run in the early 2000s, and I obviously took a lot of creative liberties. He’s not wearing a Saku Koivu jersey… But I just think I was inspired by some previous readings. It was like, I could just do whatever I want, it doesn’t matter, and it would be fun to create this whole like fan fiction around what feels like one of the most like iconic outfit choices of all time, in combination with like a really confounding line that like should not have led to you to trying a switch front board on El Toro.
I mean, the confidence is just incredible.
RL: I will say that I also sent him a really long DM to try to interview him, and he didn’t even read it. It was left unread.
That’s a shame. Well, I loved your reading regardless.
I just want to say, although we showed up a little late, I really enjoyed the hike. We were like 200 yards behind everyone, but you know I love a sunset, so it was so sick to climb up those rocks and see that. I think that’s pretty rare to have a hike at a skate event, thank you for organising that. I don’t really have a question here, just…
RL: So, yeah, I mean that just stems from, again, what are the things that I like to do in a day in Tempe? And also, everyone’s like, fucking 40 can only skate and drink so much. The first year of the event, I did the hellride strategy of just planning drinking events every night, and then I realised more than half of our audience is sober, and probably a growing number of them are becoming sober, so and then two, it’s awesome to have events that don’t require any planning. Like, I just had to show up and walk. That’s great. Everyone loved it, and it creates an interesting visual element and new spaces for conversations. You want to leave with great scenic photos, not just like a camera roll of Casey Moore’s photos (those are good too).
We hiked up that
KE: I feel like for people that don’t interact with the desert climate on a regular basis, or never have, I think it’s really cool to see, like, the red rocks and yeah, the sunset. But also just the general Arizona landscape, it’s a trip. You feel like you’re on Mars.
I wanted to talk a little bit about Perry and Mitchell, because these parks are not slow, but low impact. haha. Ryan, didn’t you have a hand at designing some of these parks? Because what’s so incredible is there were pros, there were beginners and old heads, and there was something for everyone, and not one obstacle was over two feet high – people were loving it.
RL: Yeah, the original Mitchell, we didn’t design. And if you notice, like that ledge and the flatbar are much higher than a lot of the stuff that we’ve had more of a hand in designing. But we designed the additions to Mitchell, like the quarter pipe and the little thing in the curb. And then Perry, I fully designed that park with Tim Ward and Skate After School. And, yeah, we basically did that from scratch. The Arizona Lottery approached us about building Perry in conjunction with the City of Phoenix, and we found the site for it, which was an abandoned tennis court. And I think trends in skating were changing, and skating was getting older, but then also a lot of the kids we work with, at Skate After School, were already skating these types of obstacles. I just realised that if you pare everything down, advanced skaters are happy to skate smaller obstacles going really fast, and beginner and intermediate skaters are also going to have a great time. Also, having a lot of breathing room is super important. That was something I considered at Perry. It was just like, I skated a lot of bad parks in California, and they just cram way too much shit in.
View this post on Instagram
Yeah I know that one…
RL: Like the standard quarter pipe that you have to drop-in to that doesn’t even give you enough speed to the bump to ledge or the bump to bar, and it’s like “no”, just having space for you to throw down and choose your own adventure is actually preferable.
KE: I’ve been a part of a lot of design processes and stuff and have literally been on Zoom calls, arguing with designers. They were all men, you know, saying, like, “Oh, you can’t feeble a flatbar if it’s 11 inches tall.” Just this like, kind of macho idea about what skateparks are. And I just feel like people’s eyes are bigger than their skate skills or whatever. They think that if you ask an average skater, like, “Oh, what’s the best height for a ledge?” “Uh, I dunno, 16 inches.” And it’s like, “No, we need more like 12.” Like, people don’t really have a great concept of how big obstacles should be and what’s really fun and what feels safe to learn on.
RL: I want to just add an anecdote, like, I’ve literally sat in on skatepark design meetings where one of the guys is building a bowl with the intention of Pedro Barros coming to skate it, haha. And I’m like, “Maybe that shouldn’t be our starting point.”
Haha…
RL: So with Perry the city redid the ground on the tennis court, but we did all the obstacles for 20 grand. I actually remember when we presented the final draft to the city, they were kind of like, “Huh? This doesn’t really look like much of a skate park.” And I was like, “No, trust me, people will really love this.” And since then, I’ve sent them testimonials, because people travel from quite far to go skate Perry.
I know New Balance has helped significantly with the funding of Slow Impact in 2026, was this the case in the previous years?
RL: I would never have done Slow Impact, even the first one, without New Balance. They helped fund the first one, right when I got on board. I had approached them about doing an event with a very small amount of funding then, and they took the risk on it. So that’s why I’m getting a New Balance neck tattoo.
The Slow Impact x New Balance 480
Haha, cool. Maybe this is too hard to answer, but do either of you have a favourite talk this year? Or one that really moved you?
RL: I mean, come on… Antwuan. I mean, aside from Antwuan…
Yeah maybe I should say, “Aside from Antwuan, do you have a favourite…”
KE: Well, there’s a couple standout moments. I’m gonna say Antwuan for sure, and more specifically, when he talked about people working at a prison that he was at, like, knowing him from his video parts, and yeah, getting less time because of that. Like, that was crazy. And, and then also, like, Bobby’s [Poirier] “Anything at all”, I was tearing up. I thought that was just so beautiful. And Lee’s Paper Session, that was amazing and like, funny. I thought Lee did such a good job of, like, being on time and having slides that I felt like really worked with my brain, at least, like, able to hear what they were saying and then seeing the slides and them just being funny and engaging. I guess, yeah, those are some of my favourite ones, but I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting.
Antwuan Dixon, 2026
RL: I mean, in addition to those, Bryce’s freestyle talk, I loved, I always love Brian Glenney, and he did a great job. People who stay on time do a great job.
KE: Haha yeah. I loved that jam session this year too. That was really, really fun.
Yeah, I blew it. I missed that, but I won’t next time. Don’t worry.
KE: Yeah, Sean Bonnette was there and was helping kind of play auxiliary musician. So I got to play “Deceptacon” with my friend Carlee, who, like, grew up listening to AJJ. Sean was on guitar, I taught Ted [Schmitz] the baseline, and this other guy the guitar part, and then Mo [Maurice Crandall] played drums, and we got to play Deceptacon together, which made me feel spiritually alive after that. That was one of my favourite, favourite moments, for sure.
One thing I wanted to point out was that there weren’t really any panels this year. Just one on one conversations; fewer people up there… Was that like a conscious thing?
RL: Every time I try to cover a really broad subject with a bunch of people, it just doesn’t work very well. And that’s not to discredit any of the past panels, but it just hasn’t worked well for me. There’s not enough time to introduce everybody and some people don’t feel comfortable taking command of the mic when they should. And so I was just like, “Yeah, I think that this needs to be honed in more.” it’s just nicer to get a tight knit community, and also it’s easier for them to organise it. You know, I gave Ted and Taj the leeway to organise their talk, and I missed most of their talk because I was working, but I think that they did a really good job. You can just work a lot better like that versus when you’ve got 5-6 people who are trying to set up a Zoom meeting with busy schedules a month out, like, it’s going to take a lot more work to get a great product.
The group for the ASU architecture tour by Ted Barrow in front of one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s last designs
KE: I would argue that because of Pushing Boarders, because of Wheels Of Fortune, we’ve had panels… Slow impacts, this is the fourth year of them… It’s like, there’s been a lot of panels in the past and I would argue it’s not a lesser product; it’s just a different product. You get a really broad overview of a topic. I think if you have the right topic, that’s specific enough, but works for all the panellists, it can be good. But I think when the topic is a little too broad, it can be awkward. And then obviously people’s personalities can play into that too. So ultimately, it’s more interesting, instead of hearing a broad overview of something, if someone tells a story. So instead of a lot of drills, drilling, kind of deep, it’s like one drill drilling really deep, you know? So I think that’s what you get, like Jerry [Hsu] and Sandy’s [Kim] conversation, for instance, or like Spencer [Gillespie] and Antwuan, is you’re gonna drill deep on one person. And luckily the people that were speaking were great and endearing, and like, Antwuan killed it. But I do think, like, if Antwuan did not bring the right energy to this. Like, it could have been really bad, you know, but, like, he really killed it, and was so funny, and so him, and it was so special, but I do really think it depends on the people.
Jerry Hsu and Sandy Kim
Can you think of any ways that the format could change in the future?
RL: No, this year felt pretty good. Changing… I don’t know. I’m conflicted about changing things, because once they work, they become easier to organise. And the event is only once a year, and I’m just like, I might change some locations, and then also, I will say last year, my takeaway last year was that all of the events need to be dialled up to be better. So this year, we did more and more work on the front end. We interviewed 20 presenters for the Paper Sessions and honed it down into 10. And then even with the skate debate, like, we put more consideration into how to curate that so that it’s dialled up a little bit more because I felt like the events are great, but if you can have, you know, nine out of 10 people really understand the assignment and deliver on it, as opposed to, like, five or six out of 10, that’s just gonna make the whole event smoother and more entertaining. So I don’t know, I’m open to having other events, but we’ve had Van Deck Parks play like, at this point now, four years in a row, they play a different set sometimes, sometimes not. And I don’t think anyone is feeling bummed on that.
Yeah…
ASU skate rack
RL: So there’ll be some tweaks here and there, but I don’t know, I’m receptive to feedback. We did a hike for the first time last year, and I was like, “Oh, people seem to really like that, and it was fun and easy and I actually got to sleep that night.” It was at a different location; it was at a mountain in downtown Tempe. So, yeah, changing the locations and obviously rotating the cast of people, but I feel like the flow of the event is pretty good. That being said, it’s fun to take risks and try new things. So yeah, we’ll see.
KE: One thing that we talked about when I got to town was like, “Okay, how can we, like, make sure the people get connected? Just getting people to say ‘hi’ to each other?” Next year I would love to do a little bit more around: “Say what’s up to your neighbour. Here are some questions to ask.” I think that would be really cool. And I also just think specifically for my community, because the feedback that I got from my community last year when I told them, “You got to come, I haven’t got a lot of my friends to come.” And they’re like, “Dude, I’ve never been in a room with that many men before my life.” They’re like, “damn.” Their idea of skateboarding is going to Skate Like A Girl meetup or going and skating with their friends, which is mostly like women and trans people, like they don’t really participate in the broader skate scene, which is mostly men, which is a little jarring if you’re not used to it, right?
Yeah…
KE: So more experiences for like, the more established community, more dominant skate community, like, mostly men, to engage with the women and trans community and start to build more bridges, like I saw with Brian and Lee becoming friends and working together. And so I just think about, like, how can skateboarding continue to evolve and grow and be exciting? I think it comes from those communities connecting from opposite ends of our broader space. And so we’d love to see more opportunities to do that intentionally. And I definitely want to, I want to think on it and come up with some, like, fun ways to do that that don’t feel like you’re in school necessarily. So yeah, that’s my only thought.
Closer exhibition by Jamie Owens at Cowtown
RL: Yeah, Kristin nailed it. I also wanted to add that this year I also put a lot more consideration into attendee involvement and participation. I always intended for Slow Impact to be like a counter to an event like CPH Open where you go and ogle at pros, essentially for four days, and like maybe you run into Julien Stranger at 7-11. I want there to be more ownership and involvement. So the zine fest and Mo [Maurice Crandall] came up with the idea to do the open mic, which was amazing. And we have to do some curation on our end, but having more space for people to show up and be like, “I participated in the zine fest. I didn’t need to be asked. I wasn’t hand-picked and I left feeling like I was part of Slow Impact,” you know? Like, “I really contributed.”
KE: Yeah, I love that.
RL: More of that is great, you know?
Ryan Lay at Cowtown
KE: And I think you get that through the Spot Seekers, like the street skating during the day, and I love that you do the recognition at the end. Honestly, that’s my favourite part. When you recognise people and thank everybody, and give everybody, show funny little clips about everybody… I think that’s really cool. And I think that, going back to my earlier point about connecting, I think when you’re naming people by name and putting their clips on screen, people are starting to be like, “Oh, that’s that person.” And there’s a lot of like, “Oh shit, okay.” And you’re, you’re learning about them. You’re not just running through thank yous, you’re like, “This person from this thing.” You did a really great job at that. I just think that’s so beautiful. And people start to feel more a part of it, and feel honoured. And like you said, Ryan, they feel a part of it. I think that’s why it’s so beautiful, it’s community driven, even though, obviously, you’re doing like, 95% of the work. I do think having a lot of people feel like they’re a part of it, I think, is important for the longevity and just the culture building around Slow Impact. Like you said, it’s not just ogling pros, if anything the pros are lingering and hanging out. They’re part of the crowd. Like, Patrick Praman bopping around, and last year there was like, Jordan [Trahan] and Kenny Reed and Leo Baker is just like, meandering about, you know? I think that’s a really cool feeling.
Your friend might sit on a tiny board at the Cowtown reading only to find out it’s Alexis Sablone’s!
KE: Oh my god Alexis! Haha…
I swear it was like a 7.4!
RL: Haha, Alexis’ board dimensions put on blast!
So can we expect a Slow Impact 2027?
Yeah, I think so. I felt like this year was the first year that I finished it, and was like, not feeling like, “Oh my God, I can never fucking do that again,” which the first three years I did have that feeling. But yeah, Kristin made all the difference. Seriously, in all honesty, having Kristin and Skyler and a handful of people who really helped on the execution. Anyone who went to the first couple Slow Impacts and watched me wear myself into the ground, and that’s like, my own fault, because I’m bad at delegation, but Kristin, Eli and Skyler really made the event run a lot smoother. Like Kristin said, she understands how to run a high octane weekend event and how stressful things can be when you just need something done immediately or having the anticipation to know that you’re going to need something like, “Oh, this person’s going to need food.” Or, like, “We’re going to have a problem with the audio.” Like, how do I solve that before it’s even a problem? So, yeah, it just felt like it was much less of a burnout for everybody. I think everyone kind of felt that way. I hope that Kristin had fun and all the other people.
KE: Yeah, I definitely had fun. And I like having grunt work jobs to do, that were just kind of mindless and just like checking in, making sure you ate, and just trying to be helpful, you know? I like doing that and anticipating those needs and stuff. I think you did a really good job planning; you did a good job with it all.
And Ryan you still got to go out and skate and kill it and go out at night. I’m sure you didn’t get much sleep…
KE: Ryan really gets, like, not a lot of sleep. I was shocked.
RL: Haha, it definitely was, like, four or five hours every night. There’s a reason I’m sick every year at the end.
Did I mention the sunsets?
