Tom – How long have you been freestyle skateboarding for?
Mike – I think I got my first freestyle board for Christmas in 2005. I was doing freestyle tricks before then, but I guess that’s when I decided freestyle would be my main focus.

Tom – What made you want to create Waltz with Daniel Trujillo?
Mike – Daniel and I had been talking about making freestyle stuff for a while — videos, goofy shirt ideas, etc. Some close friends of ours had floated the idea of doing their own freestyle company and that sorta sparked the conversation. You need to interview Daniel. He has much cooler stories than me. We were spending a lot of time around YouTube brands and I wanted to draw from some of the ideas that they had with a new brand. Something community focused. Plus we both liked the same sorta flavor of artwork…

Lloyd – Thanks again for agreeing to do an interview! Would you like to introduce yourself for any new readers?

Marius – Thank you too!
Yes, my name is Marius Constantin and I`m from Romania. I started freestyle skateboarding around 2007 and for a very long time I was the only one doing it, but that changed when I started making tutorials on YouTube in my language. I own Nose&Tail skateshop, the only skateshop in eastern Europe that sells freestyle gear and I am a big supporter of the freestyle movement.

Lloyd – I recently watched your two part travel blog about journeying to the Urban Rural Ride in France. Is there one specific memory that stands out to you the most after travelling over 2,000 kilometres to get there?

Marius – Part 3 is out just as I’m writing this, you should check it out. Travelling over 2.000 km…

Tom – How long have you been freestyle skateboarding?
Dean – I started freestyle in the early 80s, but technically I have been freestyle skating for 4 years.

Tom – What’s your current board setup?
Dean – I ride a Moonshine double kick Kill Your Idols 7.3″,  Paris trucks, Venom bushings, Waltz Stinkers, Synopsis bearings, Seismic skids.

Tom – Current favourite song?
Dean – HIM, The Sacrament.

Tom – What’s your current favourite trick and one you’re working on?
Dean – No handed 50 50 and No handed 50 50.

Tom – What plans do you have for your skateboarding in 2023?
Dean – Push harder, learn more, progression, getting my flow together and getting a routine.

Tom – Who’s your current favourite freestyle skater?
Dean – Everyone, I can’t put names on them because everyone brings something so great and different. I can’t just name one. Right now…

Tom – How long have you been freestyling?

Terry – I started skating in 1985 and got my first freestyle board about 10 months later.

Tom – You’re the owner of Mode Skateboards. How long has Mode been around and what are some of the highlights of the brand?

Terry – Mode started in 2010. The first boards we ever made were brought to the 2010 world freestyle championships in Philadelphia and sold to other people skating in the contest. I had just started learning about screen-printing and those were the first ones I ever printed. To date, I’ve hand-screened every Mode board we have ever made. I like being in charge of that aspect and being able to do small batches with always-changing color schemes. I also like that my wife, Jenna, designs most of the graphics.

Tom – Favourite freestyle trick, as well favourite skateboarder growing up?

Terry…

Dan – As I last checked, you’re in the States right now for a pro freestyle contest in Arizona. You’re quite the skateboarding globe-trotter! What contest or event sticks out to you the most? Any specific memories or stories you’d mind sharing with us?

Denham – I’ve been getting around a bit! I’ve been lucky enough to skate in a lot of contests, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. One that’ll always stick out to me is my first contest, Paderborn 2015(?) I think it was. I was advised to enter pro despite only being back into freestyle for a short while. I got utterly smoked, which led me to have a difficult relationship with contests from then on in. I think that baptism of fire was a good thing looking back on it. It motivated me to work a lot harder. 

Dan – Your skating is—among other things—lightning…

Tom – How long have you been freestyle skateboarding for and how old are you? 

Francisco – I started skating in the summertime of 2017, but I was forced to quit around the very end of 2019 because my family thought that I was taking it too far. Ever since then, I’ve been struggling to skate again on a regular basis, with the occasional short-lived comebacks. 

I was into freestyle from the get-go, before I even knew what it was. It occurred to me really naturally. 

Anyway, I always like to tell people that I skated for 2 years, but have been a skater for 5 years. I’m 20 years old, soon to be 21. 

Tom – What is the freestyle skate scene like in Lisbon? 

Francisco – Simply put, there is no freestyle skate scene in Lisbon. I’ve been trying to get some of the local…

Tom – How old are you and how long have you been freestyle skateboarding for? 

Jacob – I’m 15 and I’ve been skating freestyle for a little over a year.

Tom – Current board setup? 

Jacob – My current board set up is a Waltz Karaoke complete with trucks I don’t know the name of.

Tom – Who is the first person you saw freestyle skateboarding?

Jacob – The first person I saw was Rodney, but I never thought of it as freestyle, I thought of it as like weird 80s skating. The first person I saw freestyle skating and knew that it was freestyle was Mike Osterman, in the video he did with braille.

Tom – How many contests have you entered? 

Jacob – Only one, the Thunder Dome, but I plan on going to more in the future. I had a blast!

Tom – Who is your current favourite…

Q – We’re excited to see that you are competing in the World Freestyle Round-Up in the Pro Division. What can we expect from your routine, and how do you practice for a competition?

Lillis: I usually go through my full routine 4 times each session. I warm up with dynamic stretching and then just roll around for a few minutes, then do my routine 4 times. Sometimes in sections, sometimes in full back to back. Depends how I feel, I am on medication for my anxiety and it makes me a bit weak.

My routine is unfortunately the same as last year’s in Brandenburg and Japan. I always try to improve my routine, but I don’t switch things around for no reason, just for the sake of it. It must feel better, my routine is like a painting that never gets finished. If I make my first run perfectly…

Tom – How long have you been freestyle skateboarding?
Jesse – I’ve been skating freestyle since the early 2000s, about 20 years ago now. I was around 14 or 15 when I really got into it. Freestyle was even more underground at that time than it is now and had even less recognition in mainstream skating. We had a small community centred around an internet forum called the F-Forum. There was a small group of people; Bob Staton, Terry Synnott, Witter Cheng, Tony Gale, Lillis Akesson, Keith Renna, and Tommy Harward, Masahiro and Toshiaki Fujii, who were keeping freestyle alive at that time.

Tom – How long did it take to film your newest video part?
Jesse – I’d been wanting to film a new part for almost four years now. I started filming a new part back in 2019, while I was living in Thailand. I had a lot of…

Tom – How long have you been freestyle skateboarding for and how did you get into it?

David – Almost 3 years now, I got into freestyle as a pandemic hobby. I picked up skateboarding a few years earlier, in my mid 30’s and was learning bowl skating when they shut down the skateparks. I ended up skating in parking lots and that’s where the freestyle bug bit.

Tom – Current board setup?

David – Normally, you’d catch me on a spoon nose Waltz board, but I’m currently on an old, now defunct, Canadian brand, a Bamford freestyle single kick deck. I got it from a local (Phil Larin) who was thinning out his collection. It’s on Ace trucks with Waltz Deep Space Explorer wheels, the hardest bushings I can pick up from the local shops and whatever bearings were around at the time. 

Tom – Current favourite trick?