Ishod Wair: 20 Year Issue
Photos by Joey Muellner.
This interview appears in the 20th-anniversary Issue (buy a copy here) and is apart of the Analog To Digital: 20 Years of Culture and Change Podcast Series (listen to it here).
Ishod Wair nollie back heelflips down sets of stairs that I would be exhausted walking down.
From Since Day One in 2011, he has been one of my favorite skaters, which is humiliating, really. I am twenty nine years old, and when you think about it, having a favorite skater as an adult is an embarrassingly childish thing. Even more embarrassing, Ishod is only thirty one. My favorite skater is only two years older than me. It’d be so much better if he were old and decrepit, but we were in high school at the same time. While I was learning to tailslide, Ishod was having his Real part remixed by Quartersnacks. What a horrible, horrible feeling.
Anyway, I’ve tucked my shame away and swallowed my pride long enough to elect to have him featured here in our twenty year anniversary issue as one of our twenty favorite people, because he is, and for many reasons. Ishod is not only exceedingly, devastatingly good at skating; he’s also begun to delve into another favorite hobby of ours: photography. It isn’t uncommon for people in skating and surfing to give photography a go. However, what separates Ishod from the others who make the foyer is that his photos aren’t shit. In fact, they’re quite good. I reckon he’s one of those people who are good at everything. Oh, to be blessed. Unfortunately we aren’t that, so we have to settle for being blessed by his presence, his pristine nollie flip, and this interview.
Where in Australia are you?
Sydney.
Doing what?
There’s a Monster tour happening out here. Later today we have two demos. One at a skate spot, and another at Bondi. Should be a pretty eventful day.
I never really hear about demos happening anymore, it’s a sort of antiquated thing.
I feel like now, since there was a huge lull with Covid, big tours like that weren’t happening as much, but I feel like demos are liked now. We skate, kids skate, kids skate with us. Now you get on a session, whoever gets to skate with us - it’s a little bit more open ended than it being blocked off. Now, competitions are more of a demonstration than demos are a demonstrations.
Are you a shy skater?
Nah I’m not really a shy skater at all. I don’t really think about other people when I’m skating. I’m in my own head.
What were you doing in 2003?
In 2003?
Yeah.
Pshh 2003. How old was I? Twenty years ago I was probably just starting to skate. I started when I was eight, so not just starting, but back in the day, the first five years, you didn’t make as much headway as kids now because there’s so much to learn from. The first five years of skating when I started was pretty slow. We weren’t traveling around and pro skaters and contests and skate parks popping up. It was just me and three or four homies in my town just kicking it tough around town and being little kids.
Where are you from?
I’m from Bordentown, New Jersey.
Not a big skate scene there?
Nah, not at all. My town’s really small. I started going to Philly when they made this train line in my town called the River Line. It went from Trenton to Camden, and from Trenton you could go to New York, and from Camden you can go to Pilly, and there were all these other towns along the Delaware river that we could go to. When that train system got built when I was like thirteen or fourteen, that’s when I could go get out of town.
You were taking a train to Philly at thirteen or fourteen?
Not yet, I was just doing like the other towns very close to mine. The other towns were really close, I just didn’t have a car, so on the weekend we could take a fifteen minute train ride to another town. As we got older, our parents got more comfortable, and I would be allowed to go to Philly.
What has been the biggest change for you in skating?
Oh, it’s fully the internet. 100%. The internet, Instagram, 100%. There is so much access to seeing what’s getting done. Yuto or Shane learn a crazy trick in the skatepark, they post it on the internet and kids can immediately see what the standard is. When I was younger, you gotta wait for a magazine or a video to drop to see the biggest pros doing the next big thing, and that could take months or years. Obviously magazines were coming out, but new videos weren’t dropping, you weren’t able to see a direct connection to your favorite skateboarder.
How much emphasis do you put on maintaining Instagram and posting clips and interacting with fans?
I’ve always been pretty bad at communicating, which is a pretty bad trait. I’ll go away and won’t talk to people and shit, that happens to me a lot in life. I’ll kind of kick back and people won’t see me for a while, and then I’ll come back. Normally, I love posting clips and doing this and that. It’s kind of hard for me to interact with everybody because I have a big following, it’s hard for me to reach out to people and have conversations. I like to post a lot, at least, but I’ve also been dealing with an ankle injury, so I guess they just gotta wait.
Do you read the comments?
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think they’re funny. And anybody who I follow who are my friends will be commenting on my shit and it’ll tell you when someone you’re following comments, but from then I can read all this other stuff. Sometimes I say stuff back, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I have the time of the day, sometimes I don’t.
A lot of people have said that the internet is the biggest change in skating, and they talk about how you don’t have to be pro, you can just have a huge following. Being any sort of public figure, fans having such a direct line to you is such a different experience.
Yeah, it is direct to consumer. You are just on skin.
What has kept you stoked and inspired to keep participating in the industry?
My friends, and skating is actually sick. People emphasize the stuff that they don’t like. Skating is broad, and there will be so many things and places that it goes that you won’t agree with, but that shouldn’t be what you focus on. You should be focusing on the things within skateboarding that make you happy and make you want to do it, and if you don’t like it, don’t pay attention to that stuff. Super easy. If you don’t like it, don’t pay attention to it. Let that person do whatever they’re doing because they like it. They don’t have to like it because you like it. Sometimes internet comments sway people into doing this that or the third, but you don’t have to go out of your way to say, ‘what you’re doing is wack’ because it’s making that person happy at some level. If you don’t agree with it, just see yourself to the stuff you like.
Just scroll on by.
Yeah, you don’t need to fixate on it. A lot of people want that type of energy, too. People do stuff to push buttons sometimes.
Have you heard of pits and peaks?
Nope.
It’s like, what’s been the best, what’s been the worst. What do you think has been that for your career in skating in the last twenty years?
A peak and a pit? I mean, the whole thing is a ride. It’s beautiful that I get to do what I love and through the people who support me - the fans and brands that support me - have let me have a lot of freedom in my life. The ride is still continuing, so that’s good. The pit? I don’t even know, man. Everyone’s got ups and downs in life. I can’t put a finger on one thing. Nothings ever perfect, nobody’s life is every perfect or without downs and ups. It’s really up to how you think about life.
You’ve been into photography lately, aye? How’d that start?
Yeah. Fourteen years ago I used to shoot with disposables and polaroid cameras a bunch. I still have the film. I kept it because back in the day people were like, ‘if you shoot film, just save it.’ So I have my film and cameras from years ago. I lived bi-coastal, Philly, Long Beach, LA. All my cameras and film were in Philly. Just because of the point in life that I was at, it was tough to bring all these boards, all these clothes cause I sweat a lot, and then a camera bag, so I’d just leave that stuff at home. A couple years ago, I fully moved to California, got a dog. Covid Dog.
Covid Dog, yeah.
Happened to a lot of people. Love my pup. I moved all my stuff and was cleaning my office and in this box, I had my Polaroid camera, a bunch of disposables, and this Lumix digital. I took the digital camera - later, a Hasselblad Stellar - and started shooting with it on Manual setting, at all times, just so that I could figure it out. Just the graphs for the f/stops and the shutter speeds kind of made a lot of sense. It gave me an idea of how to use the camera. I got an F3 and didn’t have a light meter, so I’d just take shots on my Hasselblad, get the exposure right, and then set my F3 to the same settings. That’s where the film picked back up.
What’re you shooting now?
I got this little Ricoh, an FF9SD limited. I got a medium format Fujifilm camera. There’s 35mm in here right now so the photos will be panoramic, and then this is a half frame. Pen F.
What do you think draws you to film?
Growing up, when I was a kid, I’d go to my grandma’s house and there would be photos of the family. It was actually physical. You’d open the book and see all of these memories. My mom young, my family young. What’s gonna happen in twenty years? You have a little computer chip and it breaks and you gotta crack the code to get a photo off of it? You need to hire a computer hacker?
Monster Children is a print magazine, and just like film, it is a physical thing, and is sort of obsolete. What do you think is the value of that tangible, physical medium?
That’s really up to beholder. I like the physicality. I like reading a physical magazine or walking through a homie’s house and discover a magazine that grabs your eye for some reason - I like that more than searching an infinite screen of information and clicking on all this shit- it’s just different. It doesn’t have the same feeling, virtually reading than actually picking up a magazine. If you’re looking at a photo or art, would you rather have it in your hand or look at it through a screen like you are force fed every little bit of information throughout the day? I’d rather have it in my hands.
What advice would you give to 2003 you?
Phew, I don’t know. I don’t think like that. I mean, I feel like I turned out pretty good. I’d be a completely different person if I told myself something- an insecurity that I thought would help me. It’d change me as a person and I’m pretty comfortable with myself as I am.