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RICKY OYOLA: You know, I don't think I've ever been on a
trolley before.
We always skated.
I'll get a sticker for you, man.
I'll give you something to zoom in onto.
It's kind of juvenile, right?
-How long after New Deal did you start Traffic?
RICKY OYOLA: Couple months.
Yeah, not that long.
Well, initially it was just me.
Shawn Williams was one of the first young kid out of Jersey
I gave boards to.
Rich Adler, Henry Panza got on.
And then after "Static 3" came out, or "Static 2," I asked
Josh about Pat Stiener Pat came on.
And then we had Bobby and Jack.
And then it was us three.
I don't know exactly where I met Bobby first.
But I've known Bobby for, geez, 15, 20 years.
And I really respect his overall body of work, which is
that he's a little intense.
People think I'm intense.
But he's just a different kind of intensity.
BOBBY PULEO: Son of a ***!
RICKY OYOLA: Our thoughts on skating are so similar, more
so than anybody else's.
So that's why when he got on Traffic, it was so fitting.
It is very fitting.
JACK SABBACK: Traffic, to me, it was like Rick, Rich, and
like the dudes in Philly, and then like Bob.
That was kind of the core to me.
That's who I talked to.
That's who I was friends with.
I had a couple offers, and I was going to ride for Element.
But then I didn't, because I didn't know
anybody on the team.
This was like Bam era.
It was kind of weird.
If I'm not going to make that much money, I'd like to ride
for my friends.
I was just kind of like, all right, let's do Traffic and
try and do it.
RICKY OYOLA: Jack is one of us, one of our styles.
He's a kid that we kind of groomed.
Our way of thought groomed Jack, Rich, and Damian, and
all these dudes like this.
I would go out with Jack and Rich as much as when I used to
go out with Surge and Matt.
It was a group.
We were all part of the same group.
Pace, right?
PACE: Yes.
RICKY OYOLA: Pace, how are you doing?
PACE: [INAUDIBLE] skateboarding?
RICKY OYOLA: Pace, yeah, see you remember.
Years ago, we wanted to skate it, and you guys were always,
always, always open.
I said, look man.
You let me do what I do.
I'll come here and do some business, play some pool,
drink some beers, do my part.
PACE: Do what you want out there.
Just if you break your ***, you got to walk.
That's the only rule.
RICKY OYOLA: Well, I'd probably come in and buy a
beer first.
My buddy did something amazing on this thing.
I mean, I'm only getting old and ***.
I don't know if I'm going to have the legs
for this ever again.
But if I do, man, this is something I've
got to at least try.
Because I pussed out so many times.
Skating is nothing like what it was when I started.
I wanted to get good, because I wanted to
be on Street League.
I wanted to be on TV.
Traffic is nothing like that, nothing like that at all.
I still try to get dues who think the way we think a
little bit, as far as freedom goes.
No, if you don't want to skate in contests, I
don't give a ***.
I'm not going to make you go anywhere.
And if I had some money, I'd make you give me clips to do
the website to make sure we're relevant.
The biggest problem that I've had since I've started this is
that I'm always on the phone with my kids, and I'm yelling
at my kids because they're asking me questions or doing
what kids do when I'm on the phone.
It just couldn't work.
So I just stopped.
And I relied on people emailing me.
I'd talk to Eastern, and distributors, and overseas.
Japan really has been my biggest market forever.
They really kind of helped out a lot.
I finally got to go to Japan after all those years.
I'd much rather have been able to go when I was kind of
skating, more at my peak rather than on the way out.
But I did get to go over there.
It was fun and met tons of dudes.
And it was great.
JACK SABBACK: Who sings that song, "Big in Japan"?
You know that one?
-Yeah.
JACK SABBACK: All right, whatever.
But that trip was awesome.
That was kind of like to me, I knew it too, it was kind of
like Rick's last hoorah.
Because he'd never been to Japan.
And he's huge over there.
It was so fun.
Like, old man style-- we were just drinking beer, skating
street all day, just cruising around.
It was one of the best times of my life, man.
RICKY OYOLA: It would've been better if Bobby wouldn't have
got deported.
They flew out there and got deported that day, because his
passport expired in April.
And it was May.
He didn't even like the idea anyway.
He didn't give two *** that he flew all the way back home.
Knowing him, you know his philosophy is he doesn't like
seeing *** out of Philadelphia or New York.
He likes that way of skating.
Whenever I get photos--
my [INAUDIBLE] part, half of it was in Barcelona.
He hated it.
He didn't want me to skate anything but Philly or New
York, because he wants us to identify with our style.
***, I rode for companies that he would die.
I rode for Lost.
And I was psyched on Lost.
Chad was also in team, was rad.
Pat Duffy got on.
It's just that the image of the company is
surf *** ***.
It's not surfing like Billabong or [INAUDIBLE].
It's like surfy ***.
And surfers are pretty *** retarded.
But they give me a paycheck.
And I rode for it.
I needed it.
But, I mean, I put effort into it, don't get me wrong.
But Bob would never, ever do that.
But I understand where he's coming from.
But I'm just not that far into it the way he is.
JOSH STEWART: And neither of them would be insulted by me
saying that Bobby Puleo and Ricky are probably two of the
most opinionated and stubborn people I've met.
They have a very rigid view of how they see the ethics of
skateboarding.
And the path, I guess, that you'd say that Ricky with
Traffic and the people who kind of fit that mold and
follow that path, I guess you'd say, they're choosing
this hard life.
It's like I'm choosing to build a company around
something that is under-appreciated, takes three
times more energy.
Go try to film a trick, a legitimate trick, at an
original spot.
It's so hard to come up to get something done.
It's a shame because the things we care about, and the
things we put our energies and our time into, are understood
by such a tiny bit of people.
And those tiny bits of people who actually understand and
appreciate it are usually older and they don't pay for
stuff anymore.
They've come up with a way to bro deal or they get a board
at cost from the shop.
And so there's such a tiny buying market for the stuff
that actually matters, like in my opinion, Traffic, or Hops,
or these small brands run by people who actually built the
scene that everybody loves.
So there's no money to support it.
RICKY OYOLA: Now Syndrome is now blowing it out the
way it should be.
But I still need marketing dollars, because they're
blowing it out to people who really don't know.
And we need to educate people on what Traffic represents.
What makes Traffic different, and unique, and good, which it
is, but how will people really know it?
I try to get the dudes on Traffic to do what
they need to do.
But I don't have money for them.
So it's hard to demand *** from people.
So it's like Traffic is still going.
It's still moving forward.
But the pace at it, you're going to lose
people here and there.
And evidence with Plunkett and Sabback, who are both amazing.
There's barely any money coming in.
That's why Jack's not riding for Traffic is because he
wasn't getting money consistently at all.
And Stereo didn't offer him that much money, but at least
it's consistent.
It sucked.
I didn't want him ever to leave, just because I wanted
to build something as a family.
But it's not going the way it's supposed to be going or
what we all want it to be, that he had to go.
It'd be nice to win the lottery and just get him back
and be like, look, dude, now we can do it the right way.
JOSH STEWART: Jack, I think, stuck with it
as long as he could.
He chose something that he knew he was going to make a
lot less money off of and lead a harder life.
Doing it for the cause is as rad as it can be until you
can't survive off it anymore.
DAN WOLFE: One time Rick sent me an email.
Like ***-- maybe I should have listened to
you that one night.
I'm broke now.
And I was like, whatever.
I'm broke too.
Respect goes longer than money, so I wouldn't worry so
much about that, Rick.
At the same time I think it's all just time period, because
even non-East Coast pros from his era sort of got
leapfrogged financially by the skateboard industry in the way
it just became over the past 10 years.
Even if right after [INAUDIBLE]
Rick packed up and moved to California, he might have been
a little bit better off.
But I don't think he would have been as well off as he
would have if he was just born 10 years later.
JOSH STEWART: There's a very few handful of dudes on the
East Coast that's part of their identity to stay true to
what they thought was real skateboarding or real street
skateboarding.
I feel like Ricky, what he meant to the East Coast and
just to like skating in general, he's gotten the least
back for it.
RICKY OYOLA: I've succeeded in skating, I believe, but I have
a family and stuff like that.
And I have not succeeded at all financially.
I have a regular job.
I drive a *** big *** truck.
I deliver produce now.
I don't mind it.
My dad was a truck driver his whole life.
I'll probably get my CDL and probably be a
truck driver too.
For me, I'm 39.
I have these anxieties of damn, what could I really
start that I'm actually going to be able to do and be
successful at, starting at such an older age?
I've always believed that I deserve
something like skating.
It's not really the best way to think.
But I've always and still believe that way.
And I held out.
I almost wish that I didn't become somebody in skating.
I probably would have had more fun at skating.
And I would be a lot farther along in my regular life.