-This where you grew up, this town?
BRANDON WESTGATE: Yeah.
I grew up just like five minutes from here.
We would skate from my house every day, and then skate
these benches back here.
I'll show you.
That's pretty much it.
There's a cool mani pad on the other side of town.
Well, there's nothing really.
-So how'd you start skating transition
and different stuff?
BRANDON WESTGATE: We had a little skate park for years.
And then once that went out of business, kind of just skate
Skater's Island.
We'd go there a bunch, and that place was just amazing.
-Who'd you skate with at Skater Island?
BRANDON WESTGATE: Pretty much just my friends, Shetler a
lot, and then just whoever was there.
STEVE RODRIGUEZ: We hooked up with him pretty
much the same way.
We did a demo for Solstice in New Bedford.
That's how the whole 5boro of mining that area for talent
happened, it started with Shetler and then Westgate.
DAN PENSYL: Westgate was Shetler's little protege,
skating some shitty little park back in the day in
Wareham, Mass.
BRANDON WESTGATE: Well, we had a little skate park called the
Skate Shop, and everybody in my town would skate there.
And Shetler lived in Wareham for a little bit, so he was
skating there.
And he set up a 5boro demo.
STEVE RODRIGUEZ: And there was this little kid who barely fit
on his board, he was like 12-years-old.
Again, this was before you saw-- the only little kid that
was good at the time was Kyle Berard, you know what I mean?
So this is basically like damn, look at this little kid
killing it.
-Yeah!
STEVE RODRIGUEZ: Like, when you skate so much and you see
so many people skate, you can just tell kids that have
talent and that have just that raw talent.
And you're like, this kid's going to make it.
Or this kid's going to kill it one day.
-Oh yeah, man!
-You could say it doesn't get more perfect than that.
Oh my god.
BRANDON WESTGATE: They just watching, they gave me a
board, and pretty much just starting going to New York and
doing demos with them.
It's pretty cool.
It's really fun.
Just like a bunch of dudes in a little mini van, doing demos
all over the place.
-Who were skaters you looked up to when you first started?
BRANDON WESTGATE: Probably Suski, Hosington.
Hosington could ollie really high, I liked that.
And he was just like a badass dude.
So, Weibust, he could kill it, best back tails.
Pretty much all those guys, because you'd just hang out
with them and watch them.
We were just like Steve or whoever would know these
people from the demo.
So we'd crash on people's couches at houses,
and stuff like that.
It was pretty cool, just like really bro and tight.
Just pack up in the van and just go for it.
DAN PENSYL: The thing with 5boro is it's
always a family decision.
Like, this kid's sick, let's see how he
works with the crew.
And he just worked with the crew, and it was
kind of a no brainer.
STEVE RODRIGUEZ: He's thrown into the van at like 12,
13-years-old.
He's hanging out with guys that range anywhere
from 18 to like 30.
And that's got to be weird, because I can't imagine
getting in a van when I'm 12-years-old.
But he fit in right away.
Either he fit in, or how it is with 5boro is we
make you fit in.
He just totally went along with everything that was going
on, whether it was skating something that he at first
didn't want to skate, like a full pipe or something.
Or duct taping him to a chair for his 15th birthday and
getting strippers and hookers to fuck with him.
DAN PENSYL: His 15th birthday, we ended up getting a escort
service, a lesbian show.
He tried running away when they got there, and we
literally had to duct tape him to a folding chair.
He was a premature 15.
He looked like he was 12, and he still
thought girls were icky.
ZERED BASSETT: Yeah, I remember I actually went on a
5boro trip because I'm friends with all those dudes.
And he had just went on one right before that, because he
just started getting stuff from them.
And they were telling stories about him.
Some demo, some girl that kissed him or something, he
spit in her face.
That was like, sounds cool.
Got to meet him.
STEVE RODRIGUEZ: Frontside flips with Westgate was,
that's the thing-- because at the time it was a cool trick,
and everybody was trying to do it well.
But he really did frontside flips where he'd kick flip and
then frontside turn.
It wasn't some illusion flip, and he just did all his tricks
super proper.
And the craziest thing was, if you watch him in the 5boro
video when he's ollying double sets and things like that, he
really was too small for his board.
Like, his front foot would always just flap around on the
front of his board, but he would still kill it.
Like seeing these little kids set up for nollie flips and
his feet are so far apart.
It's pretty insane to see how small he was at the time, and
just kind of like didn't even grow into the
equipment, so to speak.
-What's Steve Rodriguez like?
BRANDON WESTGATE: I guess he was like the godfather of
everything, just like straight to business.
Whenever I'd go to the city, he just
pushes around the city.
He was like a big influence on how I was filming.
He would kind of take me to spots and be like look, you
could film this line here and do this here.
And kind of like opened my eyes to a new way
of skating, I guess.
He would have us pushing around the city until I would
be like dead by the end of the day, legs just killing from
just pushing.
And he's always trying to get you to like, ollie this bar--
Huff tried it a long time ago.
Or like, I always skate by here and I think someone could
film a line.
STEVE RODRIGUEZ: Westgate was a kind of kid that had so much
talent he just needed a little direction,
because he could do anything.
And I'd skate with him in the street, and I'd say, OK,
you're going to do something here.
And I know he has so much skill that I could just tell
him do that, do that.
And he would just have the most amazing lines, the
cleanest tricks.
So much pop for a little kid.
It's kind of like a dream kid to have on your team.
DAN PENSYL: You could just watch him skate and you're
like wow, he kind of has this dude's style, this guy's pop.
Like, he's just got the mixture of all the best.
It's like he looks like a little Donny Barley, he's got
that power.
-Seems like a lot of people compare Brandon to you.
Do you see that?
DONNY BARLEY: A bit, yeah.
I think we kind of like maybe look alike.
Not exactly, but we maybe have the same [INAUDIBLE] or
something as far as appearance.
But if I could say that he looks like any skater out
there, I think he's got the Huffnagle power going on,
personally.
Because when people say he skates like me, I'm like, man,
you know I can get up there with some pop.
But I never really had it like Brandon's got it.
-That shit's got pop.
STEVE RODRIGUEZ: Just by word of mouth, and by the 5boro
machine just taking him everywhere on trips, people
knew who he was.
It was kind of bittersweet, because in one way it helped
us out so much as a unit, as like the 5boro family.
But then in the other way, that's what in the end took
him away from 5boro.
It's the same thing with Nick.
It's the exact same situation.
-What happened to make you want to leave 5boro?
BRANDON WESTGATE: I just wanted to
maybe pursue skating.
My dad would give me shit, like, you're not getting paid.
If you can't wait, you're just going to do this forever, and
this and that.
And I'd be thinking about it, and be like well, maybe if I
take this other opportunity, get more of a shot to just
skate for a living, I guess.
Yeah, that was probably the hardest thing that I ever did.
I was pretty much just like crying the whole time.
I think Steve knew.
I couldn't even really say anything, but he knew.
STEVE RODRIGUEZ: You could totally hear the trembling in
his voice, you know what I mean-- very
uncomfortable situation.
But again, this is like 14-year-old kid.
And I knew it was coming even before it was going to happen.
It was a shame that he left for Bird House right before
his 5boro video part was about to come out.
There's at least two to four minutes of footage that
probably no one's ever seen.
Yeah, it's tough.
But again, I'm psyched.
Look at him now, it's such an awesome success story.
And to see that, to me that's like oh, he achieved his goal.
How many people in life achieve their goals--
like, so few people.
But in the end, I see it as more about a relationship with
a guy that skateboards, a cool kid that skateboards.
And in the end, I felt like it was better for him
to do what he did.
If you look at those people like Nick Dompierre, Brandon
Westgate, Suski, Mike Peterson, all these guys,
they're all these
skateboarders that have longevity.
And they all are very like a
family-oriented kind of person.
So I think that those values that they took out of 5boro
just helped them even more.