-Where's his skateboard at?
-I don't know.
You mean Shawn?
-Yeah, the friend you came with.
He's a fucking bitch.
-You are, your boy's going to get fucked up.
-He's going to get his ass kicked if I fucking see him
again.
-Yeah.
Did he jet?
-I guess, dude.
But you tell me he shouldn't never talk shit because we
don't be talking shit about nobody.
-That's cool.
-You respect us, we respect you, you know what I'm saying?
-That's cool.
-Tell your boy,
-Where's his board at?
-I'll keep the [INAUDIBLE] focused in on him.
PATRICK O'DELL: Hi, welcome back to "Epicly Later'd." This
week's episode is about the Menace team.
And it's not about any specific person, it's just
sort of about a cultural shift in skateboarding.
-Fuck you got to say, niggah?
PATRICK O'DELL: You know, LA, New York, all these city kid
skaters that kind of came together as the team Menace.
It's kinda thuggy, it's kind of dangerous.
When I was a kid and somebody had like the NWA tape and it
was really bad to have.
Menace was like skating's version of that--
like skating's NWA.
Some of these skaters, like Fabian and Steven Cales, they
ended up doing a lot of time in jail.
Joey's found religion, he has a family, he's
doing really well.
We caught up with Eric Pupecki in Rhode Island.
Javier Nunez is doing great, he's an actor.
So these shows aren't perfect.
Maybe four or five times I made a plan with Green and
then it fell through.
I'm not talking shit on the guy, I'm just saying he's hard
to a hold of.
Basically I'm saying we don't have the
Kareem Campbell interview.
That's how it is.
For a long time I've kind of had this on the back burner as
an episode I wanted to do.
Like, I should do a Menace episode.
So I'm glad this is finally coming out.
I hope you enjoy it.
BILLY VALDES: We had no Kareem for, I don't know, forever.
He'll probably deny this, but I claim I
taught him 360 flips.
This is when he was on World SMA.
And I was trying to get on Grind King.
That's like '89 or something.
PATRICK O'DELL: Tell me about exactly how you got on Menace?
BILLY VALDES: Kareem was a hot boy at the time, winning all
these contests.
Skating for world after the whole, basically,
Girl/Chocolate team now, or then--
I guess now it's different, too.
Al Quinn started Girl Skateboards, and Kareem had an
opportunity to start his own company.
And since we had all been friends for a while, I guess
he saw something in this.
No, that's boring.
SOCRATES LEAL: Kareem came back, got on World.
We were all psyched.
And he was on World for a couple years before he came up
with the idea for Menace and just put together a team of
dudes that hung out in LA.
They always hung out at that extra large shop.
So he put together that team and said hey, wouldn't you
mind filming these guys?
I was like, oh yeah, I'm down to film these dudes.
This is the first transfer tip for Menace because that was
their first logo right there.
PATRICK O'DELL: What were the plans with all the footage?
SOCRATES LEAL: Well, of course we were going to try to make
them a video.
PATRICK O'DELL: What were the challenges of that?
SOCRATES LEAL: That Kareem needed to approve it.
It's his company and his first video, and I feel him on that.
He wanted to make sure it was top notch.
PATRICK O'DELL: He didn't think it was good enough?
SOCRATES LEAL: I can't put words in his mouth, you know?
All I know is that he just kind of put a stop on it.
Filming for Menace was one of those deals where it was at
the moment.
If you were there at a spot, and I had the camera and
everyone else was kind of along with
it, it would happen.
And if it didn't for whatever reason, like we'd get kicked
out of a spot or he'd break his board, then that day was
over and that would never happen again.
PATRICK O'DELL: Were you ever worried about going to some of
the sketchy neighborhoods and stuff like that?
Because I always heard of like Lockwood, people get their
cameras stolen.
SOCRATES LEAL: Yeah.
I mean, I found out about all that after I had been filming
it for like a year or two.
One day we were there filming, it was like a 4th of July, and
I remember hearing the shots.
But I was filming lines running around the schoolyard.
PATRICK O'DELL: Originally, not that many
people skated here?
FABIAN ALOMAR: No.
It was only a few gang members right here from La Medalla
neighborhood.
And then when we started skating here, they would kind
of give us a little bit of static.
I've got uncles from that same neighborhood.
And it turns out that my uncle snatched them up and told them
that's my nephew and his friends.
Those dudes are cool to skate here whenever they want.
And you know, back then I wasn't even trying
to look for no beef.
We were just trying to skate.
Trying to get away from the beef.
GUY MARIANO: These kids were like the outcasts of
skateboarding.
They didn't have the skateboard
image that people wanted.
I really like the fact that when Menace was started,
Kareem was really good friends with everybody in
skateboarding.
He could have handpicked just top skaters, but he came for
Billy, Joey, Eric Pupecki and Fabian.
It was the real thing.
It was just like you guys are a little crew, and I want it.
ERIC PUPECKI: It was like kind of the same thing as the
deluxe deal.
They don't know what to do with me.
That's what Menace is all about.
The team of guys that no one knows what
the fuck to do with.
All right, I'll take you, you and you.
Boom, now we got a team or misfits or whatever.
-All you motherfucking corns, eat.
ERIC PUPECKI: Like I said, no contracts.
Not even like, hey Eric, would you like to be on Menace
skateboards?
One day I'm on Menace now, I'm hanging out with all of them,
I'm on the team.
So it was just kind of nonchalant.
So that's why there was no real money either.
It was just different times.
LEE SMITH: I skated for ATM for about, I guess
it was like a year.
And that turned to 60/40 and kind of dissolved.
And then when Joey and those guys got with Kareem, I guess
Kareem was looking for an am.
And they were like well, we were already skating with Lee
on 60/40 at ATM, so let's bring him over.
STEVEN CALES: I got out of prison, right, and I'm hanging
out with Maurice Key.
He was going on a World Menace tour.
So I said, man, I'm just going to go see my boys.
So I'm on parole and I'm not supposed to leave, but I know
I could sneak away for a weekend.
I met up with Kareem and all these guys.
And so we went skating, and we did those demos.
I skated in the demos and whatever, and I guess I skated
good enough and maybe the World went back to wherever it
went to and I was on.
I was on Menace and somebody was like hey, this little
kid's on Menace, too, from out here.
And I was like oh yeah, who?
PATRICK O'DELL: What did he look like?
STEVEN CALES: He's just little with big hands and big arms.
He was a little pothead.
I was like dang, this is a bad ass kid.
But it reminded me of me because I was doing
that at that age.
JAVIER NUNEZ: Yeah, well I'm not "Little Hob" no more.
Everyone knows me for Little Hob.
It's been documented.
So like I said, from 11 to 13 being in New York a lot of
things were rolling for me.
Me and Maurice were skating that night and Kareem happened
to see us do our thing.
Got Maurice Key on World Industries.
And he put me on Menace before it actually started, but it
was in the process of becoming the real thing.
BILLY VALDES: We had plans for Ivan Perez in Brooklyn.
I wanted to get Rick Ibaseta on the team.
PATRICK O'DELL: Socrates was saying that Shiloh was going
to get on, too.
Or, these was talk of that or something.
BILLY VALDES: That's between Shiloh and Kareem.
I don't know, I thought at first it was, too.
I think that was the original plan.
I don't know who changed it.
Kareem's the mastermind.
Like it said, if you look at the bottom, [INAUDIBLE]
Mastermind distribution and he's lurking in the
background.
PATRICK O'DELL: Are they much different from 101, Blind,
Plan B, World?
SOCRATES LEAL: Well, yeah, image-wise definitely.
Because right off the bat, it seemed like their whole thing
was a thugged out image, the whole Menace.
In the first one, I was like beating up that kid.
SOCRATES LEAL: Yeah, that wasn't a skit.
We were at Lockwood and that was a friend of theirs.
And for some reason they always use to get off on
hitting him really hard.
So yeah, that day it started off as something simple.
And one of the dudes might let a couple of those kicks or
punches go a little too far.
He got a little hurt on that deal.
I think maybe they thought they had to put a little more
effort into it because the cameras were rolling.
JOEY SURIEL: Nothing was scripted, everything was
spontaneous.
Before I can only probably count two or three people that
ever used hip-hop in a skate video.
Now looking back at those specific times, it was just us
really showing the skateboard world skateboarding through
our perspective.
-Like this, like this, yeah.
-Make it look like that, bitch ass niggas.
-And I'll be honest with you, I never thought that we made
the impact that obviously I've come to know that we made.
Just from the response that we've been getting from all
these people that we deal with now on a different level.
And say wow, I remember what an impact it had on our lives.
And we'd see that video part over and over again every time
we'd go out and skate.
And I've said this before, I don't think it had anything to
do with cutting edge skateboarding.
But I think it had more to do with the way we were
presenting skateboarding.
It wasn't like we were inventing tricks.
But it was like the stuff we put out, it was quality and it
was genuine.
-I think Valele thought Joey was skating around with a
blunt around on the course.
-I think he thought a lot of our behavior was
inappropriate.
-Back in those days, skateboarders shouldn't
represent themselves that way, which I think is corny.
Because I mean, you look at fucking old Alva Dogtown Days.
We just kind of pulled an Alva move in the '90s, I guess.
Got psyched on ourselves.