Gabe Gwynne: An Interview From The Road.

Gabe sliding one near Eugene Oregon. Photo: “Boots” Riley.

Skate road trips are always good times—I’m actually in LA right now waiting for our rental Dakota pick-up truck to finish getting loaded up so we can start heading into Colorado and New Mexico for Buffalo Bill, Atomic Bomb, and Ditch Slap.

When you travel in such close quarters you end up getting to know the skaters you’re traveling with—for better, and for worse.

At the end of last month, on the spring Maryhill Freeride trip from L.A. to Goldendale, Washington, I had the chance to get to know some pretty rad skaters. One of which was an eighteen year old Australian rippa hailing from the Sydney area. his name is Gabe Gwynne. Gabe is a cool-cat and it was not long before I was witness to his serious downhill skills, and style. About half way through the trip I’d collected some pretty epic images of Gabe, and so decided it would be a great idea for each of us on the trip to ask him one question, whatever come what may, and then pack that into this interview you’re seeing here.

Mr. Gwynne getting hyphy with a chicken in West Oakland. Photo: Pep Love.

(George Mackenzie's Question)
When did you change your name to Gaycunt McFagbeard?

One day I logged off my Facebook to find my name had been changed to “Gaycunt McFagbeard” . I thought it was pretty original and let it chill for a while.

(Matt Kienzle's Question)Why, at 18, do you look like a haggard 30 year old?

Probably ’cause I’m not a straight-edge bitch!

(Louis Pilloni's Question)
We've been skating a lot of skate parks on this trip—being that your background is
downhill, what do you feel about us stopping to shred bowls and shit like that?

To be honest skate parks and bowls scare the shit out of me. I’ll cruise around and carve some banks for a bit of fun—maybe one day I’ll be able to ride the bowl like a motherfucker.

(Marcus Bandy's Question)
Why am I the perfect person to travel with and how excited are you to do it all
again next week, but for twice as long?

Perfect person to travel with? Fuck off! You spend half your time yelling at me for putting your bag with your laptop in it in the back of the car, and the other half trying to use your gut to claim shotgun, but you take good photos and crash a lot at the skate park, which is pretty entertaining, so I guess it wont be too bad.

Gabe Gwynne, Bofaxin’. Photo: Too Short.

Gabe Gwynne would like to thank Louis Pilloni, SkateHouseMedia, Wheelbase, Sector 9 and Hopkin Skate of Australia.

Also, I just found out that Gabe’s Dad is an award winning Australian novelist and screen writer. Feed your brain and support a skater-dad author by reading Phillip Gwynne’s first novel Deadly Unna?, a tale of the racial tensions in Australia between Aboriginals and Europeans. I just ordered that shit on Amazon.