Episode 4: Skateboarding with Chris Vidal of UPPERWESTSKATES

UPPERWESTSKATES: https://www.upperwestskates.com/

Chris Vidal:
We wanted them to accept us, but they didn't want it. They were making too much noise, skateboarding, and they're grinding and they're messing up our building and they're chipping this. And then the benches, they would put these things on the benches so we couldn't skate. Bolts on, in Midtown, on the marble benches and stuff like that. And then, like I said, skateboarding, it's always been a part of my DNA and New York and all of my friends, and it represents the shop and everything I learned through skateboarding, photography, videography, meeting people, talking to people, retail, footwear, artists, limited edition, drops, this, all that came from skateboarding.

[Pop and Play theme music]

Nathan Holbert:
That was Chris from Upper West Skates, and we'll hear a bit more from him in a minute.

Haeny Yoon:
Welcome back to a new episode of Pop and Play.

Nathan Holbert:
We have a good one for you. A pretty exciting one. Something different. Rather than sit here in the studio, which itself has been a little different this season, being able to be together in the studio, but we're not content to just stay in one place for more than a few moments. And so we had to hit the town as cool people like Haeny do. They just hit the town, right? So Haeny, where did we go today?

Haeny Yoon:
We went to Upper West Skates, owned by Chris Vidal, near Teachers College. 107, right? And Broadway...

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, Broadway. Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
To be exact. Can I talk about why I noticed this Skate Shop?

Nathan Holbert:
Please. Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
This past summer?

Nathan Holbert:
Yes.

Haeny Yoon:
So I think in our, in the episode that listeners you're about to listen to, we'll hear from Chris, who is the owner of Upper West Skates, which opened this summer in May. I think that's what he said.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
And I think this past summer I was walking down my usual route. I like to go for long leisurely routes or...

Nathan Holbert:
Being super cool walking down Broadway...

Haeny Yoon:
Exactly.

Nathan Holbert:
Like you do when you're a New Yorker.

Haeny Yoon:
Well, usually I just walk to the bagel shop, Absolute Bagel.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, delicious.

Haeny Yoon:
Anyway, okay. So I was walking down that way and I hear this music coming from someplace that's...

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
kind of loud. I guess Chris will think that's a questionable characterization.

Nathan Holbert:
It was loud enough to notice it.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
You were on the street and you're like, oh, there's music playing.

Haeny Yoon:
And it's pretty good hip hop.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
So I was like, oh, that's really interesting. So I turn and I realize it's like a skateboarding shop that I've never ever seen before.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
And so lo and behold, it's new. One of our producers, Lucius, got all the intel about it, so we were able to go and visit.

Nathan Holbert:
It is kind of a special place. And so we went in and we met Chris. We had a conversation with Chris about his shop, about how he thinks about skating and skateboarding and the weird and crazy ways that it intersects with media, with community. So that's what we decided to, we wanted to talk about skateboarding, skateboarding as this kind of unique form of play that we have, very different than the kind of play we've covered so far. I, of course, am a novice skateboarder. You though are an expert. So you want to say anything about your expertise in skateboarding?

Haeny Yoon:
No, I'm not an expert in skateboarding, but I'm a pretty wicked, mean roller skater.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh.

Haeny Yoon:
Not going to lie. I'm pretty skilled.

Nathan Holbert:
Tell me about your roller skating experience.

Haeny Yoon:
I'm skilled at it. I used to have white roller skates. That was the only, one and only time that I sprained my ankle was on roller skates because I hit it hard.

Nathan Holbert:
Nice. When you say hit it hard, you meant you did some cool trick? You hit that trick hard and then injured yourself?

Haeny Yoon:
Exactly. I was doing a triple axle...

Nathan Holbert:
Johnny Weir's in the background like woo.

Haeny Yoon:
Exactly.

Nathan Holbert:
And we're old enough that these were skates, not like roller blades.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
They were not roller blades. Yeah, they were roller skates. Four wheels. Pretty...

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Pretty cool.

Nathan Holbert:
Pretty cool.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. And I feel like roller skates are kind of making a comeback too, so...

Nathan Holbert:
I hope so.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. So anyway.

Nathan Holbert:
You don't want to talk about the roller rink anymore?

Haeny Yoon:
What about your skateboarding experiences?

Nathan Holbert:
I have extensive skateboarding experiences as you know. I, as a middle schooler, I asked for a skateboard for Christmas. I got a skateboard and it was beautiful. It was black on top. It had that kind of traction material. And it said Joe Cool. And on the bottom was a picture of Snoopy with sunglasses. Kind of a badass I was in middle school.

Haeny Yoon:
That is nothing like the kind of skateboards available at Chris's shop.

Nathan Holbert:
I thought about asking Chris if he's seen one of the Joe Cool originals, but yeah, I was too embarrassed, so I didn't ask.

Haeny Yoon:
Well, so why did we decide to talk about skateboarding? How does it relate to the theme of this season?

Nathan Holbert:
I think skateboarding is, it's just a different form of play than we usually have talked about here, right? We've talked mostly about play that involves media, whether that's playing with movies or television, or whether it's playing with games or playing with literature or comics, but we haven't talked about this sort of physical sport type play. And I think skateboarding in particular is a real fun and unique example of that because of the way in which it's a little bit off the radar. You're not going to, it's not a formal, you don't join the skateboarding team at your school. It's a thing that you're doing as a teen or as somebody who's kind of off the grid or being a little counter-culture-y.
And I think in our conversation with Chris, another aspect of it that I was certainly unaware of whenever I was cruising through Missouri on my Joe Cool skateboard, rural Missouri, was the way in which skateboarding is tied up in media. It's tied up in fashion. It's tied up in music. It's tied up in communities and people that are part of these very different communities coming together and skateboarding and working out their skills and their tricks together. And so, I mean, one of the things that just really jumped out at me was it's just this perfect encapsulation of what we know learning is. Learning is not one person, one brain, and some information that's coming into you. It's all of this complex system of people and places and culture and past experience, apprenticeship. It's all of those things mashed together. And so it's just kind of this cool intersection of a lot of things that we're, I think you and I are interested in.

Haeny Yoon:
And I feel like we should add, Joe Cool skateboard notwithstanding, is that neither of us really have a lot of knowledge about skateboarding.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, that's fair.

Haeny Yoon:
And so I feel like different from the other times when we talked about TV or books or some kind of cultural artifact, I think one of us had some sort of loose connection to what that is. And I think this kind of brought us into a space where we don't know that much about this kind of play. But then it was interesting to learn about it and to experience it on location.

Nathan Holbert:
On location. Exactly. And so what you're about to hear is our interview with Chris at his shop, Upper West Skates. It's a delightful conversation. And after we talk to Chris for a little bit, we'll come back together and maybe and reflect on our conversation.

[pop and play theme music plays]

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah we should just start by you.

Chris Vidal:
I'm one take Chris, anyway.

Nathan Holbert:
Nice. Yeah. So I guess to start, can you just maybe say a little bit about who you are, Chris, and how you got into skateboarding?

Chris Vidal:
Oh yeah. My name is Chris Vial. I'm born and raised in New York City. Born in Brooklyn, grew up skateboarding in New York. Started about 1986, I want to say, 87. 13 into 14 years old. Got hit by a car after two months and couldn't skate. Couldn't tell my grandmother I got hit by a car.

Haeny Yoon:
[inaudible 00:08:04].

Chris Vidal:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I couldn't tell anybody in my house because back then, I mean, as a kid you get in more trouble for being in the street...

Nathan Holbert:
Right.

Chris Vidal:
Than you did because you know you're okay because you went home, but then, oh, what were you doing in the street? So I had to hide that. Couldn't skate for a while. But yeah, I grew up skating in Brooklyn. We used to go to Fort Hamilton Army base. They built a half pipe.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
And then coming into New York, skateboarding in New York City and meeting people from all over the world, from all walks of life and just learning.

Haeny Yoon:
Are you self-taught or did someone teach you how to skate?

Chris Vidal:
Well, back in the days we had no instructors.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
It was just skate videos and you'd go skate with the people that you wanted to skate like and be around.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
It wasn't like, oh yeah, let me hold your board and do your ollie. No. It's like we used to hold on to the rails in the train and the doors and practice ollie kick flips just to try to land them...

Haeny Yoon:
On like the subway trains?

Chris Vidal:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, that's awesome.

Chris Vidal:
Riding into, taking the train into the city. I mean, it was an adventure for us because we didn't have skate parks growing up in New York. For us it was steps, ledges, handrails. Some of the buildings in Midtown have these banks. There was the Forbidden Banks, the Bubble Banks. There was different spots that we named. There was like Blue Park, South Street Seaport, the Brooklyn Banks was the main spot for us to all skate at and meet up at. And it was like the, it was our skate park. It was off the streets, it was away from everybody. It's just where we went every day.

Nathan Holbert:
So you mentioned that you didn't have classes or some nonsense like that you took, you just sort of go hang out with the guys that you wanted to skate like and kind of learn from them. Can you say a little bit about the ways in which the sort of informal mentorship and friendships and the way in which that connected to the ways in which you guys learned and practiced and all together?

Chris Vidal:
I think that skateboarding gave me a lifelong lesson about friendships, because we had nothing in the beginning. We would just go out and skate. Just wake up, shower, do whatever you did in your house, walked your dog, had a paper route, and then go skate. And you wouldn't come home till you were either tired or everybody else went home. There was nothing else. It was just get up and go out and go skate and go practice tricks. And skateboarding taught me never to give up. It took me a long time to open up this shop. And then skateboarding and just life in itself, being a lifelong born and raised New Yorker, it just taught me never to give up. I didn't grow up with no money. I'm Puerto Rican, but I'm a Poor Rican, and we just made do with what we had. I grew up on public assistance, you know what I'm saying?
There was no boundaries between us. We didn't know what colors was. Colors was the color of your board, the wheels, the only colorways that mattered was what you was wearing. Nobody cared about colored ways or nobody cared about where you were from. Just what parks or what spots were near you that we never skated. Oh shit, you're from Connecticut? What do you skate? Oh, they got this ramp. They got this, this. Oh, you're from Jersey. We skate in Lodi Park. We skate these walls in Kearny. Oh yeah, what? We never seen it before. Coming from Brooklyn and we'd try to figure out way on the path or the light rail or, and you learned how to travel when trains were cheap. You get arrested for jumping the train and not knowing what the hell you're doing.
But, you know, it's just, we were rebellious but respectful. We wanted to break boundaries but not break bonds with people. You know what I'm saying? We wanted to grind rails but not make people grind their teeth when we came down the block. Like I said, skateboarding, it's always been a part of my DNA and New York and all of my friends, and it represents the shop and everything I learned through skateboarding, photography, videography, meeting people, talking to people, retail, footwear, artists, limited edition, drops, this, all that came from skateboarding. For me, it all started through skateboarding.

Haeny Yoon:
Do you still skate now?

Chris Vidal:
I still have, yeah. I still skate. I don't go skateboarding like back in the days, but I'll go out and skate and hit spots and hang out with people and play games or skate and get shut out or do some old school tricks nobody does anymore and beat them and shit. It's fun.

Haeny Yoon:
I mean, I think we have to acknowledge that the shop is pretty cool. I mean, it's such a cool space and it's so different from up here. So I'm wondering, being from Brooklyn, lifelong New Yorker, why the Upper West Side?

Chris Vidal:
We moved to this block and then I was like damn, there's still no skate shop near the skate park. And they're kind of like, it's all the way uptown. So I was like damn, how can I give back to skateboarding from everything that skateboarding gave me? Well open up a shop, but it can't just be a shop that is skateboarding has to show everything that I learned through skateboarding, photography, and collecting art. If you notice there's a big influence on art and graffiti in my shop because...

Nathan Holbert:
Absolutely.

Chris Vidal:
Giving people that experience. Come here. It's like a real New Yorker. Somebody that got stories. Somebody that could teach you something more than just 5.99 plus tax.

Nathan Holbert:
Right, right.

Chris Vidal:
Thank you. It's not a cop and go thing. It's a cop and hangout and learn a bit about who I am. My kids be here after a certain time every day. So it's really a mom, it's more pop than mom and pop shop, but I put the work in, but you know what I'm saying, as far as the shop and the vibe, I try to keep it as New York as possible. I try to play some music that people they feel throughout the day. But I'm really a Frank Sinatra, a Biggie Smalls, Beastie Boys throughout the day. And I play...

Haeny Yoon:
That's a wide range.

Chris Vidal:
Some disco music, mo-town. I play some Miles Davis. That's just what I listen to because I guess I'm old and I don't really know the newest stuff. I play Migos a lot. You know RIP Takeoff. But let me put you guys on pause one second, all right?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Chris Vidal:
Yo, what's up bro?

Nathan Holbert:
All right, so we're going to pause just for a quick second because you're about to hear some noise. And that noise is people coming into the shop. Chris had a pretty busy day today and you'll hear him working on skateboards, using a file to clean off some of the grip tape, using a drill to get the wheels on the board. I'm saying all these really official skateboard terms, but the important thing here is it's going to be a bit noisy. And that's what you're hearing. You're hearing the shop.

Speaker 5:
Over there, just running around. What're you doing? Chilling?

Chris Vidal:
Doing a podcast interview with these people from Columbia. Helping the homie out right here.

Speaker 5:
Cool, cool.

Chris Vidal:
And then you just need a bearing or you have a bearing? Yo, check this out. I'm doing something back here real quick so we have to keep it quiet, all right?

Haeny Yoon:
Okay. So let me backtrack and ask you a kind of semi-ignorant question. So if someone comes in and wants to buy a board, okay, so when you say deck, you mean the board right?

Chris Vidal:
The deck. All right, so basically people come in, right? Skateboarding, skateboarding, skateboarding really is the definition of size matters. I don't give a shit what she says or anybody else says. When it comes to skateboarding, size matters.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay.

Chris Vidal:
The size of your deck matters. Your board, your skate deck, we skate widths, right?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
So smaller people...

Haeny Yoon:
Like me.

Chris Vidal:
Would want a smaller board because it may be too hard or they may get deterred from a size nine-inch board.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. So what kind of people are coming into the store?

Chris Vidal:
Oh, the worst ever. No, I'm just kidding. The greatest people in the world. We're in New York City. So it's mostly neighborhood locals that are walking like, oh my God, we needed this so long. And a lot of parents are so stoked that their kids don't have to go all the way downtown, or all the way uptown, or to Jersey, or order online and then get something they don't like or get something they didn't order. So you know, you walk into a shop like, yeah, this is what I want. I help you, or any skate shop, should help you feel comfortable and like what you're buying and feel like this is a commitment. Because as we get older, people get cars and I get new wheels and I get new rims and I get this. Skateboarding is the same thing for so many of us from eight to 80, I would say, even younger than eight. So your board is really a representation of who you are.

Haeny Yoon:
So a lot of little kids are coming into try it out too?

Chris Vidal:
Yeah, I get a lot of young kids coming in.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
I wouldn't say little, I would say younger from anywhere from, I mean, I just sold Rowan, this kid, his family comes by every day. He's like six.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, that's awesome.

Chris Vidal:
He's like in my kids school. I have six.

Nathan Holbert:
That's awesome. Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
And my kids are going to be seven next month. I have boy and girl twins, Chris and Harmony.

Haeny Yoon:
So I guess our last question is what do you...

Chris Vidal:
Dun, dun, dun. Let's go.

Haeny Yoon:
See now you're making it... Now it has to be amazing. So...

Chris Vidal:
I thought I was already amazing.

Haeny Yoon:
I mean, it is amazing. So you, what do you envision for the next generation of skaters? What do you see out there?

Chris Vidal:
I guess I hope they can learn the same way I did how to create lifelong relationships, how to absorb and also emit energy that everyone will build and grow off of. I think that now it's so different with the digital age and this and that.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
I don't want to sound old, but there's so many more opportunities for people to connect and to grow and to create where they don't have to be right next to each other, which is more important, but at least they can find people from all walks of life that are interested in the same thing as them as skateboarding. And then, hey, I'm into fashion too. Or I'm into photography, hey. So I think the truth for me is that I want to teach kids what I learned through what I call the art of skateboarding, which introduced me to more than just skating. Like I said, it was friendships, it was learning how to grow or just the experience that I had with people and the exchanges is what I want these kids to learn. And you don't get that from instruction, you get that from just going skating. But like the camaraderie...

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
The ability to just see the fake from the real with friends, which is what you learn from being around people so much, I guess.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. That's really beautiful. And I also have to say that there's a shop full of your friends right now.

Chris Vidal:
Yeah. They come through. They say, what's up. This area's never really had this, a place where kids can come, a safe space, like a spot that they can come through and just hang out and be themselves and nobody cares who they are or where they're from.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
As long as they're not just, don't be a jerk. It says on the board right there by Barbara Krueger, so stoked, these dudes are just here helping out. But I kind of say that the ultimate goal of the company is to create and establish a foundation for the growth and future advancement and placement of the arts and skateboarding in the Manhattan Valley, Upper West Side, New York City area. A place that was and is a safe, creative space for the kids of New York City to come together, learn from one another via the art of skateboarding, sneaker collecting, art, photography and whatever tickles their fancy. To provide them with a life lasting skillset our future leaders, these kids, can hone to perfection for the benefit of others. That's like the motto I wrote for my business plan. And that's what I stand by. So...

Haeny Yoon:
I love that.

Chris Vidal:
That's what it is. Just to make it a place like an institution where kids can be like, yo, you know what I learned over there? You know what I did over there? Yo, you know who I met over there and that's it.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Chris Vidal:
Upper West Skates, 2768 Broadway, New York, New York, between 106 and 107. Upperwestskates.com. Upperwestskates@gmail. Upperwestskates on Instagram. It's all that. And with that, I got some more people coming in the shop.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Chris Vidal:
I want to appreciate you guys.

Haeny Yoon:
That's great. Thank you.

Chris Vidal:
Columbia University, the homies, for coming through and making me feel awkward. Yo, you guys are the best. Thanks.

Haeny Yoon:
Thanks. Thanks, Chris.

[Theme music plays]

Haeny Yoon:
Nathan.

Nathan Holbert:
Hey.

Haeny Yoon:
That was an amazing visit.

Nathan Holbert:
Wow. That was so crazy. What a great idea.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
I'm glad you found that. I'm glad you found that place. I'm glad we went in and met Chris and chatted with him.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
What a wonderful, interesting, brilliant guy, right?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. It was really wild. I loved to be in that space and I just liked talking to him in a space and content that was totally his element.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Maybe you should say something about, you've mentioned, you mentioned in the intro and you mention now that the being in that space mattered.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Can you say a little bit about why?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah. So of course I went in being like, this is a show about skateboarding because obviously it said skateboard shop. And I think I walked out of it being like, this is a story about a shop and all the people who kind of walk in and out of it. And so I think obviously this is our second or third time, third time maybe, being there.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
And I felt like every time I go there I kind of just get something different out of the space. I think the first time I was like, oh my God, zines, I'm going to go pick them up. Then this time I noticed in a different glass case that was there. And I think as we were leaving, I was just thinking Chris was talking about this skate shop being like this multi-generational space where kids can come and feel safe and have a space that they can hang out. And I felt like as we were leaving, it was ironic that it actually became the place where people were hanging out.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. That's when everybody showed up. Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. And it kind of just reminded me of just how shops and those spaces are so important to community and neighborhoods. And I think it was, I just couldn't help but think about those spaces in my own childhood. How a place like Korean grocery stores, right? I think a lot of Korean American people will probably relate to the story, but I felt like those spaces were such a hub of cultural activity. And it was a multi-generational space because kids would go with their parents and parents would come and sometimes you had relatives would come and you would interact with these shop owners and there would be cross-generational interactions there. And the grocery store was more than just a place where you got food.

Nathan Holbert:
Right.

Haeny Yoon:
You also got a lot of your cultural knowledge there. You also got a lot of interactions there. And so it kind of reminded me of that space and how I was just thinking about how important that space was to my own community and to my own upbringing. And I think it's really cool to see that sort of be a space for people. He obviously knew so many people that came in.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
They were regulars.

Nathan Holbert:
He did sort of shout names as the door opened.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, exactly. Or don't worry about him, he comes in all the time.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's such a great point. It was a space that was sort of rich for a community, a place to gather, a place to talk about skating. It also made me, I think, realize how important this kind of space and this kind of community is to the sport or the activity of skating. So this is something Chris said a lot about how, I think when we asked him how he learned to skate, I think you asked him that and he's like, oh, it was about friends. His first answer was, it's about friends. And it was about people coming together and learning together and playing together.
It was about space. So not just the shop, which seems to be a really important kind of meeting and gathering place for this community of people. But also the parks when there wasn't skate parks, it was the banks and the benches in front of the banks. He mentioned, I don't know, probably 30 places during our conversation today that they would hang out at. So space mattered. And then of course the kind of culture around the activity mattered. It was about not just learning to skate and doing tricks, but it was about wearing the clothes. It was about listening to the music. It was about connecting with the other extreme sports guys and girls in the neighborhood.

Haeny Yoon:
I feel like the thing that I wish people could, I wish people that are listening could see what the store is like.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Because I feel like it's, the thing that really stood out for me was that he was like, I was into graffiti, I was into art, I was into photography, I'm into fashion. And I think I could see all of those elements in the store itself that it wasn't...

Nathan Holbert:
Absolutely.

Haeny Yoon:
As he's talking like that I can see, oh, this is not just a skateboarding shop. It's also a place that is basically Chris's identity.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Totally.

Haeny Yoon:
And it's all over this place. And I could, I thought it was just really nice, the aesthetic of that place even though it's like all these seemingly disparate things can come together and it's like an expression of him. And I think all season we've been talking about that, play and creativity and expression, and I think it encompasses that with skateboarding maybe being the starting point, but there's so many other things that are adjacent to that. So is there something that stood out to you at the store? So because people can't see it.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
What is something that stood out to you there?

Nathan Holbert:
Well, there was something you haven't mentioned that was there. He had a PlayStation and a TV set up, which I spotted immediately. Like, oh yeah, he had a kind of a couch back there. And I got to imagine that these young kids have come in and hang out with him and hang out with the other kids in the neighborhood. They'll sit back there and play some video games occasionally.

Haeny Yoon:
Call of Duty. I saw Call of Duty.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Maybe some Call of Duty. So yeah, that was something I spotted for sure. I didn't spot a Joe Cool rack on the wall or anything. So I don't know if he's maybe hasn't yet diversified his boards to the Snoopy line, but I'll ask him next time we see him.

Haeny Yoon:
The Snoopy line.

Nathan Holbert:
What about you? What was something that you...

Haeny Yoon:
Well, obviously I'm not...

Nathan Holbert:
Other than the zines,

Haeny Yoon:
I'm not a skateboarder. So although every part of me is so tempted to get one of those, I'm like I don't want to show up to work with a broken arm, broken legs and all my teeth knocked out. Okay, so.

Nathan Holbert:
Make for an interesting class session though if you...

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, so that's not going to happen. So I obviously was drawn to a lot of the other things that were in the shop, like the t-shirts and the hats.

Nathan Holbert:
The cool sneakers.

Haeny Yoon:
The shoes. Yeah, lots of cool sneakers. A lot of New York Knicks sort of things.

Nathan Holbert:
Yep.

Haeny Yoon:
And one thing I spotted...

Nathan Holbert:
Not only did you spot it, you carried it home with you.

Haeny Yoon:
Uh-huh. So anytime you see me with a Budweiser tote bag, you'll know where it came from. One of a kind. Three of a kind, actually.

Nathan Holbert:
Upper West Skates, there's two more.

Haeny Yoon:
There's two more left.

Nathan Holbert:
Maybe.

Haeny Yoon:
Maybe. Nathan might go get some.

Nathan Holbert:
There might only be one more after next week. 'Tis the season.

Haeny Yoon:
'Tis the season for Budweiser tote bags.

[Theme music plays]

Nathan Holbert:
This season of Pop and Play was produced by Haeny Yoon, Nathan Holbert, Lalitha Vasudevan, Billy Collins, and Joe Riina-Ferrie, at Teachers College, Columbia University with the Digital Futures Institute. This episode was also produced by Lucius Von Joo. Audio editing and production by Billy Collins.

Haeny Yoon:
For transcripts, and to learn more about our guests, visit tc.edu/popandplay. Our music is selections from Leaf Eaters by Podington Bear. Pop and Play, of course, would not be possible without the fabulous team that helps put this together. Thanks to Oluwaseun Animashaun for running the Pop and Play social media accounts where you should follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok under @popandplaypod. You can also follow us on Twitch under popandplay. Special thanks to Drew Reynolds, Jen Lee, Blake Danzig, Brianne Minaudo, Moira McCavana, and Lucius Von Joo who all helped with our outreach and or website support. Shout out to Ioana Literat for the Trashies, watch on Instagram and TikTok. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.