A Primer on Clive Dixon in Colombia
By Paul Zitzer
Clive Dixon had a New Jack in Issue #128 of The Skateboard Mag where his trip to Colombia came up. I remember it because, well, I did the interview. But then a month later TSM ran the article about the trip itself and I thought, “Hmph, maybe his interview should have run with it in the same issue.” But since you can do everything you ever wanted with a website that you couldn’t do with a traditional print magazine, we’ve decided to rerun the part of the interview where he talks about Colombia. On a side note, Clive is rad enough that he can get away with ABDs for days.
Paul Zitzer: What’s the story behind you getting a mullet?
Clive Dixon:Well, we looked up a photo of Patrick Swayze and he had this crazy mullet. So I went into this barbershop and I got my haircut into the Swayze. I was rocking that down in Texas for like three weeks.
PZ: You probably blended right in.
CD: (Laughing) Yeah it was hilarious. But then we went to Colombia and I was like “Oh shit, I’m going to stick out like a redneck sore thumb.” And turns out I was wrong, I guess that’s like the normal haircut there. Everyone had mullets. I fit in again.
PZ: What took you to Colombia?
CD: Bart and I were shooting a lot and he was telling me how he was going to South America with the Glassy Sun Haters, and he was saying he wanted to go to Colombia because his brother lived in Medellin. He was asking if I thought we could get people to go. I was like, “Hell yeah dude I’d love to come and skate.” So we pulled it together and went to Colombian and had a little apartment and had this crew of guys show us around every day. It was sick. The locals showed us all the spots, they were really cool, I think they want to make a little business of showing people around.
PZ: At any time did you feel your life was in danger?
CD: Maybe Bart's life, I think mine was safe. We saw some crazy things though. We saw this kid get beat up and mugged right in the middle of this park with tons of people standing around watching, that was pretty crazy. All the time cops would come up to us and have us stand apart and they’d search us. That would happen every other day.
PZ: What were they looking for?
CD:I think they were looking for guns.
PZ: Did people say, “Oh, David (Gonzalez) grinded this, David ollied that.”
CD: Um, no we didn’t really see any spots that David had skated. We skated with his brother a bunch though, his brother is sick, he rips too, he’s freaking gnarly. He boardslid this crazy handrail into the worst ground I’ve ever seen in my life, and rolled away, I don’t know how it happened. The locals there ripped too, going to the skatepark was like going to the skatepark in California. Everyone skated, everyone was good.
Photos by Bart Jones
