Meeting WKND’s New Kid, Avery Johnson

Photos by Allen Phillips.

If Avery Johnson is a name that you’re not already familiar with, you will be very soon. 

He’s the newest addiction to WKND, so new that he doesn’t even get dialogue in skits yet, just pukes, gets bloody noses and is made fun of by Jordan Taylor. Avery fits the WKND squad like a match made in heaven, with his high skate IQ and great eye for spots. One watch of his Enter the Museum part he filmed with Matt Bublitz highlights that, with extremely tasteful combos and grind to manuals you could only dream of your ankles being strong enough to handle. 

I’ve been a fan of Avery’s skating for quite some time now and wanted to hit him up to find out more about him. I called him while he was out skating some crust with the WKND crew.

Are you out skating now?

Yeah, I’m somewhere in LA out skating with the WKND squad. It’s pretty fun, we started at a skatepark this morning, looked at a couple of things and now we’re at this crazy little bank ledge thing.

Wait, bank ledge thing. That sounds so good.

It’s pretty cutty.

Crusthunters. You grew up in Huntington, I feel like everyone who grew up there has a story about a spot in their high school. Were there any at your school? 

Yeah, all of the schools had spots, but a lot of them got knobbed or the schools got redone. I think my high school had these really popular ledges that people would skate and there were four stairs that my friends and every other generation of skate kids grew up skating.

Did anything notable go down on those ledges?

It was mostly early Baker Boys, which is pretty sick to go and watch that. Those ledges aren’t too skateable these days.

Sitting in math class looking out the window being like ‘Reynolds skated that ledge.’

My school didn’t have too many windows in classrooms [laughs].

Wait, what?

Yeah, a lot of it was brick and then the hallways had windows.

That’s crazy. Matt Bublitz told me that him and Tom K hit you up without ever really meeting to go skating together.

Yeah, that was a crazy time in my life. I had met them once super randomly at a pho restaurant, I was a little nervous and shouted out ‘Hey’, they turned around and I was like ‘You’re Tom right.’ One day he hit me up and asked for my number. I was in Huntington skating with my friends, and he asked if I wanted to come skate a spot in Long Beach. I went and it was him and Matt Bublitz, that was the first time that I spent a good amount of time with them.

How was that first time going skating with them?

It was a little nerve-wracking, but I enjoyed it. I got a clip and felt good.

How long after that did you start filming for the Museum part?

Pretty much that day.

Woah, so it was pretty much straight to it.

Yeah, we had gone out filming and there were talks about working on the Museum project, then one day they asked if I wanted to have a part in it and I was so down. I never had too much of a filmer after high school, so when those guys hit me up, I was ready to throw myself at anything.

Were you wanting to film that whole time after high school?

I’d just film stuff on the phone, honestly. Spend hours trying to get a phone clip [laughs].

[Laughs] How was filming the Museum part?

There were some hectic times, but it was a pretty enjoyable time all round.

Can we talk about the rail to manual section in the part?

I don’t know what I was on right there, that hurts to do now, maybe I need to hit the gym or something.

How did the idea come up to do those?

Watching Chris Milic do it a lot, he would do caveman boardslide to nose manual and random boardslides or grinds to manuals and I always thought it was so sick looking. So, I tried to give it my own twist.

Oh man, for sure. I love that stuff so much. It was cool you did it all on similar spots, like out rails or mellow handrails with high drops, which also kind of sounds like the worst thing to do them on [laughs]. 

Sometimes it was really bad, I skate big wheels, so I’d get wheel bite and end up on the floor constantly. It definitely hurts but when you roll away it’s like euphoria.

What was your favourite one you did?

The boardslide fakie manual. We were on kind of a time crunch to do that because Matt had to go somewhere. We met up super early one morning, got it done and left.

That one was dope. How long after that did you start getting WKND boards?

It’s been almost two years of being on WKND and it has been amazing, those guys are the shit. It has to be the funniest group of people I’ve ever hung out with.

Who are the funniest people in the crew?

Oh god [laughs]. I’m definitely going to have to say Grant [Yansura]. Nikolai [Piombo] is always saying some funny shit.

Where does [Riley] Pavey sit in this?

Dude, Pavey is on another realm of funny. He might be on top of Grant.

No way [laughs]. How is it filming with Grant with him being the funniest dude on the session?

Sometimes I’m like ‘Oh my god dude you need to chill’ [laughs]. In Canada, Pavey would be doing something, and I’d just be crying laughing.

How has filming for WKND skits been?

I don’t talk so it’s pretty easy. I just bleed and throw up.

I liked your cameo in the new one.

That was so nerve-wracking to watch Grant put that on the big screen. It just pauses on my face with a bloody nose and it kind of looks like I have a lazy eye too, it looks crazy [laughs]. I fuck with it though.

It’s so funny how you’re just there.

Yeah, it was pretty hard to stay serious with the camera in my face and then people barking at me. It’s just like oh man. 

What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen Tom do to skate a spot?

I feel like everything he does is kind of crazy. He remade an old planter from an Arto [Saari] clip. We all thought that he bought the dirt and a rock to make it, but he just took dirt from the surrounding planters and made it all pristine. He’s done so much crazy shit to fix spots that Matt and I skate or for anyone. He’s the best.  

Have you had any wild experiences with him trying to skate a spot?

One day after skating with the WKND guys he asked if I was down to go look at this underground handrail. We park and skate down the street then take an elevator, maybe three or four stories underground. It was straight up the back rooms, white lit endless tunnels, we found the rail and the run up has a lip right before you pop. We somehow found a piece of plywood to roll on, after about seven tries I saw a pair of dudes walking towards us rather quickly, and as I signal to Tom they sternly said, ‘Stop right there!’ We made the getaway to the surface faster than it took us to get down and ghosted out of there.

Dude, woah. Were they cops?

Yeah. Big time. They ran after us, and we ran up a stairwell to a random door and bombed it down in separate directions. I had so much adrenaline, I was not getting arrested.

What was the building?

It was a government building in downtown LA. We were walking past file rooms, outdated offices, junk, campus trucks, you name it.

That is so gnarly. He is so sick. He always is doing the most in the coolest way possible.

He’s a freaky genius with that stuff honestly. One day he invited me to his house and was like, you have to check out what you are doing, and I walked into the garage, and nothing was in there other than cardboard. It was easily 70-100 pounds of cardboard. He’d made this full cardboard room. It was a little overwhelming [laughs].

That’s so sick. It was for the New Balance clip, right? 

Yeah.

How was filming the Museum stuff with the TVs?

Some parts were a little easy, other parts were a little scary. We put a TV on the highway, which was really scary because it was like what if someone pulls up, if someone can’t see it and has an emergency stop and runs into it or even worse a cop drives by and is like ‘What are you guys doing’ sees a TV and generator on the side of the highway.

Oh, yeah. That one was gnarly. How did you do that, did you guys drive up and stop?

Yeah, you can kind of pull over. We pulled over and all three of us manhandled the TV and the generator, we drove away to this lookout spot and made an entire loop.

Didn’t Tom pull you into a TV too?

Yeah. We had a wall of TV’s and some of them were full, and I wore four or five pairs of pants, a couple hoodies and four shirts and I was pretty much jumping into a prone position while he would yank the fuck out of my arms to get me through the hole.

Why were you wearing so many t-shirts?

It hurt with less, I had to just jump through a wall.

To wrap this up, can we talk about going to the medieval fair with a broken jaw?

That was pretty sick. I felt like a bird, I was ripping pieces of chicken and trying to crush it with my tongue and swallow it [laughs]. I was throwing chicken, tomato soup and a bit of red wine to spice it up in a blender and would drink it. I had a USB-C blender, and I would bring it around and clean it wherever I went. 

How long couldn’t you eat for?

I don’t think I ate food for seven weeks; I would just have liquid. If I was really fiending I would just blend insane food. Like stuffed pasta shells, a couple eggs, a little bit of bacon.

Damn, could you vape?

I would hit it through my nose because I had screws in my mouth [laughs]. I held out for about two weeks, and I was like ‘Dude, I’m itching right now.’

Through your nose is crazy [laughs].

It was not fire. It would burn a little, then I would have a really painful sneeze.

Surely that hurt so bad.

Yeah, sneezing or having to yawn with your jaw forced shut hurts so bad.

That sounds so painful. I’m glad you’re all good now.

Yeah, me too, some people break their jaw, and it creates more complications. I think I got away pretty lucky all things considered.