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…