John Cardiel Just keep pushing
John Cardiel has lived his life at full-throttle speed. Despite a tragic accident that almost left him paralysed, skateboarding’s passive aggressor never gave up. He stood up, fought back and is now pushing the fixed-gear revolution harder than ever.
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“Yo, Tanya!” whoops a loud Californian accent, cutting through the low-level hubbub of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn red light district. “Taaaan-nya!”
‘Tanya’, an indistinct brunette, is leaning out of a fourth floor window above Pearl’s Table Dance Bar, inspecting the warm summer’s morning and completely unaware that the yelping tease across the street is directed at her.
“Hey, Tanya,” the voice continues, brimming with mirth and accompanied by some frantic arm-waving. “It’s me! John! From last night! You said I was the best you’d ever had!”
The booming voice collapses into laughter before turning away and leaving ‘Tanya’ in peace. He shakes his head but is still beaming with a rich, infectious grin. “All my friends who go to strip clubs always say, ‘She liked me for real, man.’ I’m like, ‘Of course she did, dude.’”
This voice belongs to John Cardiel, and these antics are being unleashed two minutes after we first meet. The skateboarding icon has journeyed from his hometown of Sacramento to put in some face-time for long-time sponsor Vans and help promote the European leg of their Downtown Showdown comp. When we meet, the thirty-seven-year-old is sitting on his own at a temporary bar set up for the event, head buried in a core skate magazine. But after a handshake introduction, his character ignites to life. All California stoke and upbeat verbal gestures, his manner is not atypical for someone who’s carved a career out of the board sports industry. However, there’s nothing stereotypical about this dude - he’s far too good-natured, too damn genuine, for that.
Stocky and statuesque, he’s dressed in a mid-nineties skate uniform of loose baggy cords and an Anti-Hero Skateboards hoody, featuring red, green and gold drawstrings that belie his Rasta leanings.
“You gotta hear this,” John says enthusiastically, pulling out his iPod and offering up headphones that blast out the reggae beats of The Heptones at eardrum-piercing level. It’s unsurprising, really: Cardiel has lived his life with the volume turned up.
After a final wave to ‘Tanya’, we head to the backstage area of the event. The heads of young pros turn to look at John, seemingly envious of anyone who gets to sit down with the man himself. We take a seat at a picnic table. John turns down a coffee, despite admitting he’s exhausted after a transatlantic flight, and we set about reflecting on his brightly burning career.
HUCK: You are renowned for always pushing hard and progressing skating to the next level. What is it that always drove you to go the extra mile?
John Cardiel: I hate seeing repetitiveness. I want to do something different, a different way. Anything that is repetitive, I try to stay away from. If it looks to the eye that something is that easy, I will step it up in my mind to make it harder for myself, which in turn will push [me] and [make me] feel better about it.
Is that an adrenaline-based thing?
It’s a mental satisfaction thing. I want to feel good about what I did and not just be like, ‘Uh’. I don’t want to be light-hearted about something - I want to feel strongly about it.
What do you make of skateboarding today?
The progression in skateboarding is fucking awesome. I love to see how gnarly people are getting. I just wish I could get some of Maloof’s money, that’s all. I see all these kids making lots of money and they’re killing it and I just wish I could do that. [Laughs] That’s the only thing I’m missing out on.
Is there a particular moment in your career that you’re most proud of?
Everything has its own sincerity. You know, sometimes when you are just at a local parking lot, and you do a big fakie manual - you just lock into it perfect - sometimes that’s just the best feeling ever. I can’t say that one feeling outweighs another.
Check out the full feature in HUCK #025, out now.
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John Cardiel (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (1)
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Dave