The Nora Vasconcellos Interview
Nora Vasconcellos is the best, but I’m sure you’re already aware of that considering you’re reading her guest issue.
Over the last ten years, she’s made her mark on skateboarding while ticking off all the boxes on the skateboarder bucket list. From moving to California and working in the industry, to turning pro and filming some of our favourite video parts, to talking at the United Nations, to releasing her own pro shoe, and now, her greatest achievement, being the guest editor of Monster Children. Still, after all of that, she isn’t showing signs of slowing. And we are excited to find out what else she has up her sleeve.
I put on my finest purple T-shirt and jumped on a video call with Nora for what unexpectedly became a three-and-a-half-hour conversation where we talked shit, sent each other memes, and ranted. She answered my questions, told me stories, and treated her cat, Telephone, with what she called ‘cuteness aggression’.
We both had a great time and I hope you enjoy reading the interview because it’s probably the only interview Monster Children will ever publish where love for Nicki Minaj was a topic of conversation.
What has it been like being the guest editor?
It’s great. It’s so weird because I feel like I can do whatever I want but the more effort I put in the better it’s going to be. It’s been cool. I’m definitely excited to see it come to fruition. I am so not organised in the way everyone else is for this so I’m just appreciative that everyone is willing to put up with me.
Have you done anything like this before?
Nope, I’m stoked.
How did you work out what you wanted to put in the issue?
I just tried to make a web in my mind of people who I am stoked on and inspired by. I feel like everything has happened pretty naturally; it’s been very effortless. It’s been good.
What’s it like doing interviews?
I like to talk so I don’t mind. I’m just like, ‘whatever, get me a drink and let's cruise.’
Some of the earliest footage I remember of you was from the Girls Skate Network Vlogs. What were those days like?
They were so sick. That was my friend, Lisa Whitaker, she always had a camera. She was the only person who would show up and film women’s events and she’s also filmed so many of the girls. Before I moved to California, I would go onto Girls Skate Network, or it was called The Side Project at that time and watch her videos. You would go on and watch Vanessa Torres on a session with a bunch of people. She had a bunch of good random footage and good skating. She would also connect people. When I moved to California, I just started going skating with her and that’s how I met a lot of the crew. She is like the fairy godmother, even if she isn’t trying to, she is changing everyone’s lives.
Those were the best because vlogging has gotten so weird and terrible but that era of the loose, nothing scripted, no selfie shit, it was really good-intentioned and had good vibes. It feels like you’re there when you’re watching it.
Yeah, watching those felt like you were on the session.
It’s so sick. It’s a pretty genius thing and it’s funny because I’ve seen some skaters try to recreate it, but it isn’t the same. I think a lot of that is because of who Lisa is, her personality and how easy she is to be around. She just brings out the best in everyone. It was so funny too; she would always be catching the silliest shit.
At that stage did you ever expect that skateboarding was in a few years going to take over and become your full-time job?
It must’ve been like 2014, or 2015 when I saw it moving in a direction where I thought maybe it would. But when I moved to California it was more of a thing where I wanted to live somewhere where I could be immersed in it. Have good weather, and have a million options of where to skate. Then working in the industry. I worked at Welcome Skateboards for four and a half years. Then that definitely became the goal. Getting on Adidas and having the opportunity to travel and have certain things expected of me in that realm really changed that.
Around that time you got sponsored by Welcome. It was so small when you got on. What were those early Welcome days like?
The first time I met Jason [Celeya], the owner, we were at a skatepark, and he was like ‘do you speak English?’ and I was like ‘yeah’. He was like ‘we’ve seen you skate around, and we thought you were from Brazil because you appeared out of nowhere and can skate’ and I was like ‘I’m from fucking Boston’ [laughs]. Then I saw him a week later at the same skatepark and he asked if I wanted a job. At the time I was working at Pacsun at the mall, my mom and I were sharing a car and a bedroom. He was like, ‘I own this company Welcome,’ and I had known what it was because I had seen someone post a few of their boards. I started working at his house in his garage. I was like to him ‘I need $280 a week to live in California, can I make that much with you?’. And I could, then three months later I’d say we got a warehouse. It was just Daniel Vargas and me at that time. Then I was working there for three warehouses. It’s crazy. I eventually was doing international logistics; I did all the big orders. I did a lot of collections, chasing people for money. It’s crazy now, we have two warehouses, breakrooms, offices and all these employees and multiple office locations. It is so sick.
“I got to go pro and go to Disneyland for the first time, on the same day.”
It’s rad because there is still stuff in the office where I’m like, ‘I had this little thing on my desk.’ It’s cool to be at the starting point of a business like that and seeing it grow. I think skaters are fucking entitled and spoilt and they don’t understand how business works. All they expect is boards and royalty checks and cash for trips. It’s like dude there are souls and people behind everything that you’re doing to ride your skateboard. It’s just silly. You can tell who has had a job and who hasn’t.
There was also that time when the Welcome team squatted at the Berrics for a week. How was that?
Dude, yeah for the United Nations (the Berrics vid, not the diplomatic assembly). That was so weird. We stayed there for four nights. I don't even remember what we ate. Erick Winkowski took this air mattress that Daniel and I had because we were dating at the time and popped it. I also remember being in my head and I don’t know if I even got any clips in that United Nations. It was fucking weird; it was definitely a different time. I think we didn’t know how it worked. So, we were just like, ‘I guess we just stay here at the Berrics and drink Mountain Dew.’ They had all these giant cheese wheels, like these weird obstacles in there and we were messing around with those. The team was so big at that time, there were so many of us there. I think I blocked it all out. I can’t remember much.
That was crazy, there’s like that 45-minute-long skate jail clip too on YouTube from that.
Oh yeah, Logan [Devlin] made that. We were like babies in that.
What have been some of your favourite moments from being on Welcome?
Fetish was super cool. It feels good to have a part in something rad and it was a project that we had talked about for a while. Then Séance was super cool too, the night of the premiere was so much fun, we had such a good time and had great music playing. Going pro was just the coolest, it was crazy. It was funny because they were like ‘we are going to go to Disneyland for Shane’s birthday’, and they kept on being like are you coming, and I was like ‘Yes! I’ve never been to Disneyland duh’. Then I show up and they turn me pro and then everyone is like we are still going to Disneyland. I got to go pro and go to Disneyland for the first time on the same day. It was so perfect and awesome. Then getting to see where it is now, it just feels good to be a part of something like that and it’s been over ten years now, I am so stoked.
Now we have a kid, Jake Yanko who skates for us. He is fucked up and some of the footage he is sitting on is insane. He is twenty-one and he was a Welcome kid. We started giving him boards when he was fifteen or sixteen. Now we are getting to the point where we are having people ride for us whose entire skate history has been based off Welcome because they’ve only been skating for ten years, it’s so crazy to see how that’s affected them and their skating. The ebbs and flows of how skateboard brands last and work, is just crazy.
The trajectory of it all is so cool. I still remember seeing a Welcome board for the first time and being like what is this and the guy at the shop was like ‘it’s this brand from Seattle’.
Yeah! Everyone to this day. Still think it’s either from Seattle or Arizona.
I remember hearing a rumour once that you were the best-selling board seller is that true?
I think it’s true.
Oh my god.
I know it’s nuts. I remember they put something in the back of Thrasher about it where they put all the fun news. Someone told me that and I was blown away. I just felt accomplished.
“it was one of those things where I felt that maybe I was not as qualified to speak at the [United Nations], but it is really cool that I get to be a part of stuff like that.”
That’s so cool. What was it like filming for Fetish?
Pretty cool because it was all VX, and I definitely didn’t have a normal skate grom upbringing. I grew up in a skatepark and skated vert. I didn’t have the crew who would just go street skating. I’m bummed I didn’t have that, but I feel like Fetish was the first time I got to do that. One thing with Jason from Welcome is he would always be like you should skate street because you can, and it made me get out of my own ways. Now I primarily skate street. It’s funny seeing the evolution of skating. I just bought knee pads and a helmet the other day for the first time in two years, because I want to get back on a vert ramp because the more stuff you skate all the time the better you are all the time. There is so much fun big stuff around here in San Diego, it would be fun to pad up a bit. Fetish was cool because it felt so good to see it all come together and then, just to have that little crew was great. I love the different stages of Welcome and I love seeing that and having that as a moment in time.
I love that video so much.
It’s so good. Dude, the soundtrack is so fucking good too.
Seriously. It’s incredible. That video is one of the biggest things that shaped my taste in music. Did you choose The Style Council song you skated to?
Yeah, I did. I am so stoked on that song still. Songs are so important to me. For Séance Jason picked the song, and he picked a Purity Ring song, and I didn’t know until I watched it. I like mixing it up like that. I have a part coming out this summer and I have made this crazy curated playlist because I want it to be perfect. I want to try to get into the editing bay with David [Serrano] who’s filming it and try and put more of my own in there because I have always let the filmers and editors do it themselves. I love doing that stuff, I’m not filming videos or sitting in an editing bay, but I do it with my stuff even just making my little videos and stuff like that. I am always picturing how my part looks, I have a catalogue in my mind of tricks and listening to certain songs in the car and thinking about how it’ll all lay out. Yeah, I would like to be more involved. Fetish was cool. I was stoked to get a whole part on VX before we turned into this everything-is-digital era.
How do you go from skating to The Style Council to Nicki Minaj?
Because that’s how my brain works.
So, the way I was inspired to use the Nicki Minaj song is because there is this school pep rally, and everyone is dressed up like they’re in Harry Potter and they’re dancing to that song. I knew the song, but I had never thought skateboarding. Then I saw these motherfuckers in high school dance to it and was like ‘oh let’s go’ [evil laugh]. It’s so good I want to go to high school again just to go to that high school. I was like ‘it’s the pandemic, we’re skating to Nicki Minaj fuck this shit’. She’s so hectic. She’s so funny. Yeah, she’s crazy. All her shit is great.
It’s so funny though, my music is all over the place too. I show people what I listen to and they’re like ‘are you joking?’
Dude, me too. What I’m listening to at the moment is insane.
Are you a massive Nicki fan?
I’m not massive, I didn’t love her anti-vax bullshit. But I think she’s funny as fuck and I think her music is so good. I’m more of a fan of Megan Thee Stallion and Doechii. Nicki Minaj, Megan Thee Stallion and Doechii, that’s like danger, all of them are so good.
Oh, for sure. Did you see Nicki’s call to Boris Johnson?
No, what? I’ll find that now.
Okay, this is a broad one but... Where is the craziest place skateboarding has taken you?
I’ve got two of them.
The first one is they flew me to Manchester in England for a day or two to be in a shoot with David Beckham for a soccer cleat and he was only on the shoot for an hour. Basically, he’s the star and then I’d skate through all these people, there’s James Harden, Aaron Judge from the Yankees - all these sports stars. It was wild. For two days they rehearsed this commercial without us in it. There was just this cute girl there, who didn’t look like me but she was a girl who skates from England and they had her stand in for me and she was wearing a t-shirt that just said ‘Nora Vasconcellos’ on it. Then there was this stand-in for David Beckham who had all the tattoos and everything he looked the exact same, this is just what he does. Then David Beckham is actually there and in the commercial, I would skate by him and do finger guns and point them at him. I remember being like ‘are the guns cool?’ and he was like ‘oh yeah you’re totally fine’ and then I said ‘I could just come past and smack your ass’. I sexually harassed David Beckham. I remember just being like fist in my mouth ‘that was so hectic, who am I’. It didn’t happen though. I was just trying to make a dad joke, and he found it funny and was laughing but I remember being like ‘who am I, what absolute monster am I right now’.
Then the second cool thing is I spoke at the United Nations (the diplomatic assembly, not The Berrics) about sustainability in 2018. I sat in the UN where they do the things they do, with an astronaut, Dapper Dan and some other people who are way more qualified than me to talk about Adidas’ plans to reinforce sustainability. It was sick. Adidas has a pretty impactful plan and they do some cool shit. I talked about their partnership with Parley which is an organisation that pulls plastic from the ocean and weaves it into fabrics. Adidas does a bunch of stuff with it which is cool. It was crazy. I am so happy there is no footage of it because I know I sounded crazy. I blacked out completely when I was talking. It was one of those things where I felt that maybe I was not as qualified to speak at the UN, but it is really cool that I get to be a part of stuff like that.
You were injured for a bit recently, right? What happened there?
Yeah, I broke my ankle. Dude, I spoke to a psychic, and she was like ‘stay away from Clockwork Orange’ and I broke my ankle where they filmed the first scene of A Clockwork Orange in London. She told me that in May and I broke my ankle in September. I went through a pretty bad break-up a year and a half ago and I got covid and moved. I had five friends who at this point had spoken to this psychic. She would say things and she was always really positive but everything she said came true. So, I spoke to her, and she said a lot of crazy shit. She said some stuff that was way too on point. At one point she was describing my ex and was saying you were never supposed to be there for so long, he’s really twisted, he's like one of the boys from A Clockwork Orange. Then she was describing him and said his Instagram name. She couldn’t have figured out who I was before, I didn’t use my last name when I made the appointment. She pulled out some of the craziest shit. She knew I had just gotten back from the east coast and my grandmother died, and I had brought back all these quilts she made and a ring. She was like ‘oh your grandmother, you don’t have to keep all that stuff, she’s just proud of you, you can just keep the ring’. Then she was like you have a big love interest coming in August and I was like what. Then she asked when I was going to Paris. I was like in September, and she was like I think he’s coming with you. I met the love interest in August, and we started hanging out. He didn’t come on the trip though. She was like ‘stay away from A Clockwork Orange though, anything A Clockwork Orange stay away from it’. Then we go to this spot in Wandsworth in London. It's the first scene in the movie. I was trying to ollie into the bank and that’s where I broke my ankle. In the clip when I broke my ankle, an ambulance is driving past. The ambulance wouldn’t come to pick me up because I wasn’t bleeding out. So, we had to hail down cops and they had to lay me down and wheel me up the embankment I had just tried to ollie in and put me in the cop car. It was so fucking crazy.
No this is actually insane.
Yeah, it’s fucked up. She was just saying so much crazy shit.
You are probably the only person in skateboarding who has trademarked a colour. Everyone who wears purple pants is instantly biting you. How does it feel to own a colour?
Yeah, owning a colour is pretty cool, waiting for that Pantone cheque my dude [laughs]. The colour thing is so funny, I think people think I’m more serious about it than I am.
Did you get a tattoo of Nicole Hause’s first graphic?
Yeah, I got it two weeks before and I had to hide it. Then the night she turned pro, she had the board, and I was like look! That was so sick. She did not expect it at all. Her girlfriend flew in from England, but she wasn’t answering any of her calls before the party and she was so bummed. I wanted to just beat her up [laughs].
One more before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you about the Stance party where you dressed up as Leticia Bufoni?
So good. So, I hit her up before I did it because I wanted her to know I wasn’t making fun of her, and I am genuinely going to be her for Halloween. I asked her to send me photos of her tattoos, I needed to know what they were so I could copy them. Sheezy drew on all the tattoos with Sharpie, and I had a fake nose ring in. At the party, I was ordering a drink, and someone came up to me and was like ‘why aren’t you wearing a costume?’, people thought I was actually Leticia. To this day I think that was my best work. It was pretty nuts. I think she posted it like she was stoked on it too.
Get the Issue #72, the Nora Vasconcellos Guest Editor Edition, here.