Push: Jacob Pelletier

Interview by Andy Evans

Photography by Leo Sharp

Jacob, give us a quick snapshot of who you are.

So, I live on the Isle of Wight, and I spend quite a bit of time at work. To offset that, I continue to skateboard.

And what is an average day like for you?

That is a very good question. I wake up at 6am for my apprenticeship, which is in aerospace engineering. At this time, I’m working in manufacturing, specifically in the production of assemblies, which is the culmination of parts. At the end of the day, if I get time, I skateboard to relax, and enter a different train of thought.

OK, let’s talk more about your work please, as that sounds super interesting. How did you get into aerospace engineering? Who do you work for, and what does your job actually entail?

To be honest, I’d rather not say where I’m working as that invites potential targeting. To answer your question as to how I discovered the career path, a few years ago I lost my grandfather. As a small child, he told me stories about how he’d worked on rockets back in the 1950s. Growing into adulthood, you question those memories; it was at his funeral that they were confirmed. Without realising it, I’d taken the same stream of interest with my obsessive hobbies, such as building FPV (First Person View) drones, 3D printing, and 3D modelling.

I also need to ask about the diary I’ve seen you posting on your Instagram, dubbed ‘The Bible’. What can you share with us about The Bible? It looks pretty complex…

So, you’ve seen the pictures of my diary. Before entering my apprenticeship, I had minimal experience working in a high-level environment. Most people think that perfect recollection is how you get good at what you do. In engineering, factually knowing what to reference and how is the actual skill. As part of a team, I have to be sure that what I say is correct. The Bible is my cheat sheet of what I’ve learned in the past.

Have you lived on the Isle of Wight all of your life? What is the experience of living on the Isle of Wight like?

I was born here; it’s a fantastic place if you like a quiet life. You can go out in public and people have a fairly good attitude. The shop life isn’t that good, but the beauty of the landscape makes up for it.

How does being a skateboarder on the Isle of Wight differ to anywhere else?

The landscape is quite different. When I first started skateboarding, the roads were quite old, so if you wanted to hillbomb, you’d need confidence, and soft wheels on your board. Since then, the roads have been re-tarmacked, so commuting on a skateboard is quite nice. Most people live on top of a hill, and most the parks are at the bottom.

And have you ever met David Icke on your travels?

Surprisingly I have not, though my uncle lives near him.

He’s probably one of your most famous residents, isn’t he?

There are quite a few famous people who actually have second homes on the Isle of Wight. I’ve heard Rowan Atkinson might have one… It’s a lot of hearsay, to be honest. David Icke is the name that keeps appearing, and such as yourself, people do ask about him.

John Cattle has obviously done some David Icke themed things for Wight Trash; that’s how I learnt about him, I guess. Are there any other fun facts about the Isle of Wight that we should know?

In the 1950s, the Isle of Wight was used for the Space Race. At the end of the war, the Americans got the scientists, and we got the technology, and as a result, we were actually ahead in the Space Race, in the 1950s. So the Isle of Wight has a very deep and important history.

Aha, the Black Knight! Please tell us more about this, for those who might be unaware.

So, I don’t know if you’re seen Oppenheimer, the film? But it was the result of those events. Specifically, the Black Knight was used to gather data on missile re-entry. When the Soviet Union began developing the first ballistic nuclear missiles, projects such as Black Knight were our response. What I’ve been told is, a large portion of what we developed here on the Isle of Wight was used by our American allies for their space program, but our country cut funding and our space aspirations fell into obscurity.

Coastal wrap around at dusk whilst trying to boot Leo's lens clean off.

So Jacob, how did you first discover the world of skateboarding?

As a child, I had a PS1, so I got to play the Tony Hawk games; I got to see the commercial aspect of it before skating myself. In later life, around 16 years old, my friend actually gave me my first skateboard, his name was Adam Geoghegan, and we went out for a skate. I remember trying to keep up with him as we skated to the spot, and constantly kept coming off. After that I continued to consistently skate, then I met John Cattle…

Of course you met John Cattle (laughs).

But this was very early on. When he first met me, I was wearing a pair of Dr Martens with my board.

Brilliant (laughs).

Yep (laughs). So I wasn’t fully equipped, except for the skateboard itself. But yeah, he told me to try a couple of tricks, and it just stuck.

And how did it progress? What was your earlier skateboarding like, and where did you skate?

When I first started skateboarding, I was tarmacking for work, I ended up going down Ryde skatepark, which had five-to-six foot ramps, in high visibility work clothing, absolutely covered in oil. Initially, I started on a smaller ramp, eventually moving to a jump box, then a quarter. To be honest, I was too scared to drop in for the first two years, so the way I learnt was by tailstalling (laughs). Before then, I could do quite a few other ramp tricks, but to drop in I learned through being in the heat of the moment.

Then how did you first get introduced to freestyle?

So originally, Wight Trash Skateboards sponsored Joe Moore, who I believe moved onto Powell-Peralta. But before the move, he released quite a few really interesting freestyle videos with Wight Trash. I’d only ever seen the, in a way, standardised form of skateboarding found on ramps and street, but as soon as I saw Joe Moore, the freedom and how spontaneous freestyle was, was an allure to me. So after seeing that, I actually went out and bought a second board, and tried to set it up for freestyle. Initially what I built was a standardised popsicle board with low trucks, also the wheels weren’t aligned up for rail… It was a challenge.

What sort of freestyle tricks were you first drawn to?

Getting into rail actually, in different ways, which most people know as primo. There are so many ways you can get into rail, with different foot placements, ready for the next trick. For example, one trick I loved in the beginning was to pop, bone your front foot, footplant with your back, grab it with a mute, then fingerflip it into rail. Tricks such as that, those were the ones I got quite interested by.

I should have maybe done this question before, but how would you describe freestyle to the layperson?

Well skateboarding comes from surfing, and in surfing, everyone has their own style, similar with freestyle, there are no rules, so there are no wrong ways to do something. A lot of people have a strong opinion about how you’re supposed to pull off a trick, or the actual ‘official’ way of saying how you need to do a trick, but with freestyle, you figure it out yourself, and everyone’s calculations are ever so slightly different. The only exception for me is toe touching during caspers (laughs).

As you moved on with your freestyle skateboarding, you started to incorporate it into different terrains. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

After getting into freestyle, I used to go down the park with two boards. One was for ramp, and the other was for freestyle, and after a point, I started trying to do tricks on each board from the opposite discipline, then the two started to merge. As a result, I started to set up both boards so they’d somewhat meet both requirements.

Tell me what sort of freestyle tricks have you managed to incorporate on ramps?

There are a few. For example, there’s the M80 [freestyle kickflip to pivot], and you can also do an old school kickflip and land in rail on a flatbank, then drop that back down to four wheels and ride away. There’s also pogoing on top of the ramps. There’s a lot you can do.

I like that. I think there needs to be more of that (laughs).

Yeah (laughs). At John Cattle’s indoor, the challenge I was trying to do was to air out and land into pogo, then half finger flip it back into the ramp, instead of going onto your tail and pulling it up into pogo. There are quite a few tricks that you can do in a smooth flow without any stopping or transitioning between the two. Ramp and freestyle can merge into the same discipline.

What do you think of someone like Andy Anderson, who blurs the line between freestyle and ramp or street skating?

I have watched quite a bit of his stuff. Even the way he solves problems… Sometimes a tool will come out, like the ‘anti-wax’. Watching him invent tools and solutions for skateboarding to make things that weren’t originally skateable skateable… That’s quite inspiring.

I think some of your skateboarding crosses over with his, I’d say, because you’re leading freestyle into terrain where it wouldn’t usually be used. For instance, the one trick that I saw you doing was the primo to primo off the wall, down a drop, which I’ve never seen anyone do before. How did you think of that as a viable trick? Because to me, that seems terrifying.

Like most tricks, it was an invasive thought. I skated past the spot, and I saw it… I had actually tried it on a thinner wall before, but not to rail, just to roll away. Most skateboarders bail so much that it becomes second nature, and it’s the same with primos as well. I feel confident when it comes to bailing out of that trick, so that primo one didn’t feel too scary for me.

To me, that really stood out, because that’s one trick that most people aren’t comfortable with, even freestylers. To do what you did is really difficult. Did you have any accidents doing that one?

I had a few close calls. The challenge with that trick was to get the correct rotation of the board, so you can land into rail. If you under-spin it, you’d land strait on the wheels with the board upside down, but after bailing so many times in freestyle, I felt confident when that would happen, so I wasn’t too scared by it.

A lot of the stuff you’ve been drawn to – the technical rail moves and all of that kind of stuff - what kind of level of obsession do you think you need to have to do this kind of skating? I’ve done some of it myself, but the things you do, that does take a huge amount of focus. Is it a certain type of person that is drawn to freestyle?

So, in later life, it’s been suggested that I might have autism (laughs).

There's an element of not caring about what others think. It's you and your board.

All good freestylers do have autism (laughs).

So from an obsessive standpoint, spending your evenings trying to figure out a trick, or what is even possible that you haven’t seen anyone else do before… You spend quite a lot of your life just thinking about what can be done. So yes, you have to be quite obsessive.

I don’t think I know a freestyler who isn’t autistic, if I’m honest. Genuinely. Maybe the autistic are the dominant species; this is what I actually think, in some ways. My brother is diagnosed with mid-range autism, and I can see the advantages of having some of his pattern of thought. Certain things come much easier to him.

I like the way you said that, the topic is a hard one because people fail to recognise that there’s a range. Some have it harder than others; I’m quite lucky, as in some cases it has been a strength.

It’s very interesting that in the world of freestyle for sure, these kinds of people are drawn to it. Darren (Nolan) and Joe are on the spectrum. I know Darren is definitely diagnosed autistic.

I think there’s an element about not caring about what others think. It is you and your board.

Freestyle has had a pretty bad rep of being uncool, so not caring what people think is fundamental in becoming a freestyler, I feel. It’s not the ‘cool’ skating, it’s not like the ramp stuff, it doesn’t impress the general public in the same way. Were you aware that it wasn’t considered cool, before I just told you?

My experience of the skating community’s opinion on freestyle is that I feel like a lot of people haven’t been exposed to it. Before people see tricks, and they just hear the word ‘freestyle’, there’s a stigma, but there’s an element of informing people, and showing them what can be done. There’s a respect there when someone actually tries to replicate it, and see that it is a weakness of theirs.

You can see it when Tony Hawk discusses freestyle, he’s got deep respect of it, because he knows how difficult it is. I find that actually the skaters who are surer of themselves, they’re more pro-freestyle than the ones who aren’t. Let’s talk about your setup for freestyle – have you made any modifications to your board to stop injuries, make certain things easier and so on?

At the moment I’m skating a Moonshine board; that’s doing me quite well. I’ve got skid plates at both ends of the board, which protect the kicker from razor edge. I’ve got high trucks from Tracker which… very early on I snapped my baseplates.

Classic freestyle breakage.

Yes (laughs). So my baseplates are actually from Bullet trucks, which I believe are entry level, but they’re doing the job. I’ve got some Offset wheels on the board as well, and griptape on the trucks, for grip with pogoing.

The Freestyle Gospel According to Jacob: Divine mid-pond pogo whilst the sun sets on the Isle of Wight.

What would your advice be to someone who was looking to get into freestyle skateboarding? How would they start?

My advice would be to get comfortable rolling and moving, because a lot of the tricks, if you can land them and roll away comfortably, then the only challenge is the trick’s complexity. The fundamentals of traversing different landscapes are so important, even simply commuting on a skateboard, and getting used to that. For me, ramps allow me to ride away from freestyle tricks at different angles, in different directions, quite comfortably. If my feet land back on the board, I’m rolling away.

This is a sentiment you very much share with the most punk rock freestyler ever, Daniel Gesmer. He literally embodies that school of thought; that if you get the fundamentals of skateboarding down, then everything else freestyle-wise falls into place. He freestyles like he’s ice dancing; he is peerless in what he does. Where do you see the future of freestyle? How do you see it progressing in skateboarding at large?

I see it ending up even more in every single form of skateboarding, whether it’s street or ramp. With skating, it’s become about how big can a trick get, with freestyle I feel like there’s an equivalent there that can feed into the different disciplines.

I think there needs to be a design overhaul of the hardware in the near future, allowing for new tricks.

Do you think someone like Andy Anderson is at the forefront, bringing this synergy between the different disciplines of skateboarding? What do you make of the phenomenon of Andy Anderson?

When you watch Andy Anderson skate, or even be social on film, he seems like a very indiscriminate person. He allows every trail of thought in skateboarding, and it seems like that is the future of skateboarding. He wears a helmet, which something not many people do, and if anything, he’s making skateboarding his own, whilst also defining it.

In a sea of actual conformity, he is really quite unique. What are your predictions for freestyles incorporation into skateboarding at large? Are there things in particular that you would like to see happen?

I think we’re overdue a new design of skateboard, but Andy Anderson has done that, hasn’t he?

He has a bit, but I think even he says it hasn’t been done properly. Tony Hawk was talking about this, about how board design has been stagnant for a long time, and there has to be something new coming in.

I think there needs to be a design overhaul of the hardware in the near future, allowing for new tricks.

That’s interesting; it would take a hardware revolution to allow new tricks to actually come into skateboarding. I think that’s very likely.

Specifically the actual wood… I don’t see the trucks evolving too much (laughs). There’s been an extreme interest in new board designs, and a lot of people are deviating from the standard popsicle, and as a result, that actually gives freestylers a chance of making new tricks. For example, there are a lot of skateboarders here who like pressure flips, and with different board shapes, their pressure flips slightly change. Stuff like that could lead to new tricks being possible.

And I know it’s hard to say now, but how do you see your own skateboarding progressing? Are there any goals you have for yourself?

What I enjoy doing is fluidly transitioning between tricks, so I want to improve on my flow, from a freestyle standpoint. I see my future as refinement on what my style is.

Were you surprised that The Skateboarder’s Companion reached out for you to do a freestyle interview?

Yes. I was extremely surprised. You don’t see freestylers, other than Andy Anderson, really pushed forwards. A lot of people are aware of Rodney Mullen, but very few have deeply explored his origin prior to street, so from a media standpoint, I’m extremely excited and surprised to be noticed and wanting to be explored.

Have you any last words, thanks, or words of wisdom? You know, the poignant things that usually come at the end of the interview.

Design your own tricks and carve your silhouette. Originality spits in the face of conformity. My inspirations are Joe Moore, John Cattle and Tallack. Thank you again for this opportunity!

Follow Jacob - @the____afroengineer