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Tim Payne Interview
January 31, 1998
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This old fart builds ramps. And he's pretty fuckin' good at it. Daryl did the interview because like a dumb fuck, i lost my wallet that morning.
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50-50 : So have you ever shit sawdust turds?
Tim Payne : No. Only in my dreams.
50-50 : How do you feel when you build a super RAD ramp in an elliptical fashion (Warped Tour 1998 Ramp) and all the pros whine about it.
TP : That rarely happens.
50-50 : What ramp are you most proud of?
TP : The charleston hanger. It's two full bowls connected together. Awesome. It was a capsule with two hips that went into a shallow end then it had a spine which connected both bowls with a miniature bowl with another hip in it. You could just haul ass from bowl to bowl. the deep end was 10 feet the shallow end was 6. Fast as hell.
50-50 : What happened with the Falkland islands ramp?
TP : They wanted me to fly down there and build a ramp for them, outdoor, on top of a hill, i said "fuck that"
50-50 : How did you start off building?
TP : I was about six and i started building tree houses I didn't start skating until i was eleven.
50-50 : When did the whole ramp building thing take off for you?
TP : About 1982, i worked for the NSA doing contest tours and stuff, Paul Schmitt recommended me so i built a ramp and everybody liked it, so much so that they asked me to go on tour with them, so every month i'd build a ramp at a new spot. I got fired at every contest by Frank Hawk, he wanted to standardize skateboarding, firstly it was a limitation, i could only build them 32 feet wide. then it was every ramp must have nine and a half foot trannie and a foot and a half of vert. Whenever i talked to the pro's i'd get all kinds of comments, so i just made it my goal to make the skaters happy rather than the organizing body, 'cuz after all they weren't skating the ramps. So i would be the first one at the area and i'd build the ramp by the time Frank got there he would come look at the ramp and fire me. After the contest he would always hire me again.
50-50 : So are you given space to build whatever you want now?
TP : I'm still limited by money and size. size is the biggest factor. that makes it a hardship because you always have to sacrifice something
50-50 : So what was the MTV street coarse like, was that fun?
TP : That was a lot of fun because that was the first time an organization voted on letting the skaters help design the coarse. usually the coarse is dictated by whoever builds it. Like ESPN has a bunch of binliners design the street courses or the bikers design the ramps which usually ends up being just another bunch of quarterpipes connected together . So anyway MTV gave me a preliminary set design and we started working on some drawings, then some of the skaters had some input, like Mike Vallely and some other fags. Mainly we just built this stuff on site, we had a huge area to build in about 150 feet by 80 feet. it was huge.
50-50 : All your traveling, is any of it for pleasure or is it all business?
TP : It seems like everywhere i go i have a lot of fun i haven't had a pure pleasure trip in a long while. Now that i have a family all i want to do is get back home as much as possible.
50-50 : Do you have your own little backyard park?
TP : No, the city wouldn't let us do that. I'm contemplating making a fish pond. If i ever got in trouble i could always fill it up. I would have to make it like a working fish pond, you know, a little waterfall running into it. In the summer when it's super hot i could fill it up and just play in it, come fall and winter you could just skate the hell out of it.
50-50 : tell us a funny Tim Payne story
TP : Oh, i don't know, i'm just always up for going out and shit, i tell you a funny story about Ali, that was him driving that truck!
So this is how the Warped Tour '98 Interviews ended, i forgot to ask a lot of questions, i pussyed out of asking a few, in retrospect i thought of plenty more silly things to ask them all, oh well, never mind. These were all island mike's questions, i have the tape to prove they said what's written, i had a lot of fun insulting them and i hope they all press charge's. If you want to see what questions we missed out on and what i thought they should have said just you wait.
-Ali from Scotland
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