Ten Mas - Vic Welsh - by Jared Cordtz
1. Present day; father of three, married, school, working full-time, hobbies, etc. What is an average day or week like for you?
I work all night. In a hospital. it’s pretty nuts. It’s not Greys Anatomy where you have all these super good looking people making out in closets and stuff. No one is walking in with a gun and making someone put a baboon heart in their dying child. None of that. Just sick people complaining about being sick. I feel for them. A lot of hardworking people that outside of the hospital are dealing with normal people stuff.
I love being a dad. Coolest thing ever. Everyday I wake up having these boys that think I can change the world. They really do. I know I can’t do shit. But they think so and that’s all that matters. I can change their world. I got to respect that. My biggest fear is the day they realize I can’t do anything about how terrible this planet is. Till then I want to make sure they laugh everyday. Have a reason to be happy.
Love my wife. Coolest bird on the planet. She tries really hard to understand me. I don’t think anyone can put a finger on it. She comes closes.
My days are nuts. I wake up at about 3 pm on a work day. I work all night so this is normal. If I work at 6pm, then I try to go for a run and eat then back to work. I do 12 hour shifts so I really don’t get much time for anything else. I’ll play with the kids for a little bit. then off to work. The 4 days a week I am off, I usually will wake up and try to figure out what I need to get done. It always seems to be something with my car or motorcycle. I’ll work on that for a bit, and then do stuff around the house or whatever Amanda might need me to do. I’ve been injured so I will try to get a run or workout, play with my boys and then watch the news or some documentary at night followed by a movie. Pretty boring but that real stuff. If I were healthier I would skate somewhere in there. Life ain’t ” yippe ky yay mutha*uckers” (die hard) everyday. Some times it just simple.
2. Besides skateboarding, photography is a main hobby of yours. You have been known to wake up before dawn and go on little missions to shoot photos. You seem to be attracted to structures and hard corners or lines, so top 5 things or locations to photograph and why.
I love downtown anywhere. It’s usually the oldest part of any city. Always has more of a story, and even if it doesn’t tell you anything, you can still find some cool stuff. Waking up early has many advantages. The light is pretty awesome. I live in Arizona so in the summer time, going early means you will get some nice weather. Also I like to get to Lux Coffee or somewhere and watch it come to life. I’ll usually be the first or second person there and just sip on my coffee and catch up on the news, I can very much watch it come to life. Everything has lines, the hard lines are always so absolute. So confident is the only way I can describe them.
Scott Pommier
Gregory Crewdson
Orlando Welsh
Josh Caldwell
Chris Hornbecker
4. Top 5 skateboarders?
No particular order here
Orlando Welsh or Dennis Busenitz ( LOL )
Keenan Milton
Greyson Fletcher
Gino
Brian Anderson
5. Top 5 video parts?
The first Gino 101 part - Snuff 101 - http://youtu.be/5_0-ekOAMjw
Marc Johnson ( Man down Tiltmode )http://youtu.be/l-CmXO9ebq8
Poppalardo Fully Flared http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W7Tp_PTr7k
Brian Anderson Yeah Right! http://youtu.be/lUfFq5qAxlY
Keith Gruber La Buena vida https://vimeo.com/19199370
6. Top 5 favorite spots of all time?
Smoke Tree in Palm Springs ( smoke trees as some call it)
Train Station San Luis Obispo
Pecos Park in South Phoenix area
This one spot we found we called it the Bosnia Train station. It was dope. even though i felt the presence of dead bodies.
The Yard. Even though I’ve never been there. I look at the pics and am just antsy to see it in person. The gigantic cloverleaf bowl. What its doing for the desert is amazing. SO much good skate energy.
7. You have always been really into music, top 5 albums?
The National - That new album is too good.
The strokes, comedown machine.
Albert Hammond Jr. AHJ The Album cover alone is perfect.
Beirut -
Casadaga is always a good listen
8. You’ve been Doing the Mas website for quite some time now. What are your plans for Mas in the future?
I don’t care about page counts, I don’t care about advertising. Hell I’m not sure I care if anyone sees any of this. I used too. We used to have a pretty decent following. People watching our videos and stuff. its about skateboarding. Thats it. I would post some junk like, Birdcage or energy drink reviews. I mean, I dissected a duck embryo. You tell me one other skate website that has done that. It’s about being interesting. Something to read when bored. Trying to keep friends in touch. This is what this dude is up to. Cool. stuff like that. not really about propaganda like the berrics. I always thought it was funny. Homies would spend 4 hours on the berrics a day, forced to watch 30 sec mountain dew commercials to see a 15 sec clip of some 15 year old doing flip tricks. Or you can stop by mas skateboarding for 2 seconds get caught up on your homies and move on. Berrics always wins. A popularity contest. All good tho.
Let me tell you about popularity. Its the devil. Everything gets lost in it.
One day you are the coolest thing ever. Making everyone happy. Everything you do is gold.
as you get more popular, lights get bright. Then lights get brighter. You know what happens when someone points bright lights at you? you cant see shit. Eventually your vision is blurred and you are still doing cool stuff but you can’t see shit. You can’t see how people are responding. Hell, you can’t even see where you are going, or where you came from. Slowly those lights get dimmer. As they get dimmer, you start to see where you are going. Eventually those lights are gone and you can see where you are going, at this point its too late and you are going the wrong direction. Very few people survive those bright lights. Jordan, that’s about it. I look at the Berrics kinda like that. It’s certainly cool but I think people start to think that’s skateboarding. People that don’t skate think that’s it. No sunlight. Indoors and a handful of “cool guy” pros. Skate vampires. Berra telling people how to vote , how to eat.
but seriously, dude I have no Idea. Orlando and I really want to do hard goods. Not for a profit but for skateboarding. For our friends, to hook them up. I would love to give something back that’s a little more permanent. This website will disappear, we will all get old, but at some point it will be rad when someone post a pic of one of our boards online talking about what they found at a garage sale or something. It would be cool to sponsor some talent, to have a way to influence skateboarding. A way to tell kids, dude keep doing what you’re doing. Put the razor away. See here is the problem with scooters. Other than everything. These kids get really good at doing backflips and stuff, whooptie doos, or whatever the tricks are. Ok thats cool when you are 5, 6, 7, years old, but you know what, when you are 13? It’s wack. You look silly. Skating, you can do your entire life. Skateboarding took a long time to become acceptable. 30 years of people looking silly and making up stupid names for tricks. Razors can’t hold a candle to skateboarding. Skateboarding has legends, history. Razors have nothing. There is not a culture there. They have no etiquette. They snake each other, they play chase and stuff at parks. It’s just wack. My son has a razor but I tell you what right now I let him scoot around on that thing but soon that thing is gone. It’s cool as a confidence builder but other than that its trash. It teaches him to point both feet forward. Who the hell rides a board like that. both feet facing forward? like I’m skiing or something. wack. hate razors. The only thing a razor might teach a kid is how to survive adversity. I mean when you are picked on and talked shit about everyday, you will eventually get a tough skin.
9. If you could pick 3 people to ride for Mas from any team whom would you pick?
I dunno dude. I like these dudes lately. Inspiring even tho I can’t skate anything like them.
Marc Johnson. http://youtu.be/FrfN4IQdy6o
Clint Walker. http://youtu.be/TSmMKJs2lkg
Greyson Fletcher ( have you seen this dude? ) http://youtu.be/8jN0g_QLjxE
10. Plans for the future for the Welsh family?
Well for the short term future, we would like to spend more than 30 days in a tent this year. I think last year we came up a bit short but thats something we want to do. Hit Disney up 3 or more times. Annual passes this year. Get my leg back in order since I’ve been down and out for about 45 days now but who’s counting. Get my mom and dad closer to me. Watch the suns make the playoffs. Long term future means providing for my family. Giving my little dudes the opportunity to do anything they want. Anything. I want to give them the tools and let them figure out how to put life together. Skating. I want to skate more. I always do but it’s not number one in life anymore. it’s been regulated to about number 5.
titsay
germansingergirl
gummygunk
dededos
theartofmadeline
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn