THURMAN SEWELL: I have some twin people that hit us up
like, "Yeah, we're like you guys." I'm like, "No, no
you're not." You know what I mean?
You're just not.
SIDNEY SEWELL: You'll never have street cred, homie.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you'll never get down.
THURMAN SEWELL: Never get down.
SIDNEY SEWELL: [INAUDIBLE] to get where we're at.
[MAAL THE PIMP, "CHATTANOOGA"]
-Let's start at the beginning, I mean.
Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Have you guys ever been to Chattanooga?
SIDNEY SEWELL: Well, Chattanooga's actually a big
touristy because they have the aquarium, they have like this
Rock City bullshit.
I don't know how other people might perceive it, but the way
we grew up there, and where we grew up at was fucking gnarly.
THURMAN SEWELL: It's really a ghetto-ass
little fucking town.
CHRIS SCOGGINS: The first thing you're going to see is
the East Lake courts.
Look at those beautiful buildings there.
This is the most dangerous projects in Chattanooga.
Any one of these streets right here you turn down the wrong
time of day will get you killed, or it
might get you laid.
SIDNEY SEWELL: When we were kids we would like, you know,
fuck with hookers.
THURMAN SEWELL: It was so sketchy.
You'd be outside, and these fucking creepos would come up,
"You need a ride?"
CHRIS NIERATKO: Really?
THURMAN SEWELL: People have tried to kidnap us before.
SIDNEY SEWELL: Like why would they be wanting
to give us a ride?
You're fucking creeps trying to butt-fuck us.
You know what I mean?
CHRIS SCOGGINS: Look at this one.
They got more junk in the front yard
than 10 houses combined.
There's a cop right there, just hanging out, talking to
the dope dealers.
Smell the stuff cooking.
SIDNEY SEWELL: We grew up super in like poverty.
You know what I mean?
Like on food stamps, our dad was disabled, so we got like
these checks every month.
It was just super ghetto.
Our parents, the way they raised was they told us
everything, like how it was.
You know what I mean?
THURMAN SEWELL: We watched R-rated movies when we were
five years old.
CHRIS NIERATKO: So you look at that as a good thing?
THURMAN SEWELL: Yeah.
SIDNEY SEWELL: Yeah, 'cause we got brought up to see life how
it really is.
CHRIS NIERATKO: How many sisters you got?
SEWELL BROTHERS: Two.
SIDNEY SEWELL: Nah, man.
You know what's crazy is one of our
sisters went to Harvard.
THURMAN SEWELL: Studied her whole life.
Got this like financial aid into the private schools, and
we were kind of like counting on her to be like the family
fortune, like fuck this shit.
We're just gonna skate, and she'll be rich one day, and
we're not gonna have to do fucking shit.
You know what I mean?
Like we really had that mentality.
SIDNEY SEWELL: We never even went to high school.
CHRIS NIERATKO: Really?
SIDNEY SEWELL: We went to fucking half of eighth grade,
and like school?
Fuck school.
We always hated school.
All right?
We always got fucked with at school.
Like I'm sure now like in school, skate boarders are
popular kids.
It was not like that.
CHRIS NIERATKO: So eighth grade is as
far as you guys got?
SIDNEY SEWELL: Yeah.
Still to this day, I hate it.
THURMAN SEWELL: I don't regret quitting.
SIDNEY SEWELL: I don't want to go to any school.
People try to get us to go back to school.
No.
We were bad kids, yo.
We were just fucking punks.
We didn't go to school.
We didn't do shit except skate.
CHRIS NIERATKO: How about when your mom left?
She left your old man.
Why did she leave?
What was the reason?
SIDNEY SEWELL: She was unhappy.
THURMAN SEWELL: He was disabled, and she wanted to
live her life.
SIDNEY SEWELL: She had four fucking kids her whole
god-damned life.
THURMAN SEWELL: She got married when she was 16.
She was just over it.
She wanted to go live life.
SIDNEY SEWELL: So she did.
Mom left dad when we were like 12.
We were really close to our dad, you know what I mean?
Our dad--
THURMAN SEWELL: He had gotten a pacemaker.
SIDNEY SEWELL: It was just sketchy, kind of, and he'd
take insulin, take all this shit, diabetes.
THURMAN SEWELL: He would take about 50
different pills a day.
Like it was just crazy, I mean it was crazy.
CHRIS NIERATKO: And were you guys responsible for taking
care of him?
THURMAN SEWELL: Somewhat.
We watched our dad die.
CHRIS NIERATKO: What happened?
SIDNEY SEWELL: What happened was, man, I won't get too deep
into it 'cause it's pretty emotional, but--
THURMAN SEWELL: So he just woke us up one morning.
It's a Saturday, wakes us up like, "I don't feel good."
SIDNEY SEWELL: He got up--
THURMAN SEWELL: He starts going like that, he starts
blacking out, and we're like, fuck.
What the fuck, you know?
SIDNEY SEWELL: So I called 911, and they were like uh,
telling us how to do mouth to mouth and all
that type of shit.
THURMAN SEWELL: We tried all that.
SIDNEY SEWELL: We tried, and it wasn't working.
THURMAN SEWELL: Then the ambulance showed up, and they
were like doing the electric shocks, and we
just kind of left.
SIDNEY SEWELL: We were freaked out.
THURMAN SEWELL: We didn't want to believe it.
SIDNEY SEWELL: We were really hysterical.
THURMAN SEWELL: We thought, like all right, he'll be all
right, because they took him away.
SIDNEY SEWELL: But deep down we knew.
THURMAN SEWELL: We knew, but then we get a call like an
hour later, our aunts called, like yeah, your dad's dead.
It was just crazy.
CHRIS NIERATKO: What's the relationship with your mom?
SIDNEY SEWELL: We were all bitter about it, because we
thought it was fucked up that she left.
THURMAN SEWELL: So anyway, so we're in
Chattanooga, whatever.
My mom was in Knoxville, so after our dad died, we were
forced to move to Knoxville, Tennessee,
SIDNEY SEWELL: There's a guy--
THURMAN SEWELL: Another shit hole.
SIDNEY SEWELL: All right, but there's a guy we met named
Chris Scoggins, who was five years older than us, and he
lived right around the corner from us.
CHRIS SCOGGINS: That was like early '90s, pulled up into
this hood-ass neighborhood and saw these two cats sitting on
the front porch, and these two kids like finishing each
other's sentences.
I can't tell them apart, like fucking long-ass black hair
with like Misfits skateboards.
And we just start kicking it every day, just skating out in
front of the house and fucking with the neighborhood kids and
getting into fights and shit, and fucking with the
prostitutes.
They walk by, we holler at 'em.
And I guess in turn, yeah, we taught each
other how to skate.
SIDNEY SEWELL: He really showed us the way as far as
like everything, what's cool.
So we started skating in the hood, and we waxed this curb
up at a Dollar General store, and we really got into
skateboarding for real and really started skating.
CHRIS SCOGGINS: I was skating a lot, but when I met those
dudes, they taught me the difference between cake flip,
Nollie flip, switchfoot, fakie flip.
Taught me fucking who Pepe Martinez was, who Mike Carroll
was, who Stevie Williams was.
I didn't know all that.
I just skated.
Sidney and Thurman were my favorite skaters.
THURMAN SEWELL: It was amazing.
We had the time of our life.
We just skated.
SIDNEY SEWELL: All we did was skate.
THURMAN SEWELL: Every day, all day, and then just party.
JON NEWPORT: At the time, we were all catching rides to get
to downtown Atlanta to go skate, and we would go skate
with all the older heads, 'cause we were kind of on the
same shit, and there was this graffiti yard called 40 Yard
in midtown Atlanta.
Man, we all used to skate 40 Yard.
We all helped build it, and the twins used to come down,
and they wouldn't talk much, but they were ripping always.
Man, it was just a time.
CHRIS NIERATKO: I saw old footage.
These guys were good.
Why didn't you pursue skateboarding?
THURMAN SEWELL: Well, we did it in the way we thought we
were, but deep down that shit's like making NBA, you
know what I'm saying?
That was a dream.
That was everybody's fucking dream.
SIDNEY SEWELL: Really, our dream was just to get free
shit, like--
THURMAN SEWELL: A box.
SIDNEY SEWELL: Like get a box.
THURMAN SEWELL: That was amazing.
CHRIS NIERATKO: You never thought to go to California?
THURMAN SEWELL: We did, but I think we were
just scared back then.
I think if we would've been around people like
Pearson and all that.
SIDNEY SEWELL: Now we're homeless brothers.
THURMAN SEWELL: It was like we fit right in with them.
You know what I'm saying?
If he would have just been around back then, we could
have made it, I think.
JOSH KALIS: The first time I met the ATL twins, I think
they were called like the Kalis twins in Atlanta for
awhile or something like that, we just clicked, man.
Dudes were cool.
They got kind of the same history as me when it comes to
like the way we grew up and the way our families were and
all that type of shit.
Not to mention, they're full street skaters.
They rip.
They know pretty much everything that's has to do
with any type of skateboarding.
I'm psyched every time I see 'em.
CHRIS NIERATKO: So this is the playground.
THURMAN SEWELL: Yeah, man, this is fucking crazy.
SIDNEY SEWELL: Yeah, this place is amazing, like this is
a bougie-ass mall.
This is a bougie mall.
THURMAN SEWELL: This is like Stevie Williams' park.
SIDNEY SEWELL: You never know who you'll bump into here.
Anthony Williams.
ANTHONY WILLIAMS: What's up?
SIDNEY SEWELL: It's just fucking private and it's dope.
THURMAN SEWELL: Tupac piece up there.
SIDNEY SEWELL: Like a lot of fucking people came in here
and really tag it up.
Manual pad, fucking ledge.
Little ledges.
Damn, Dorian.
Slow down, man.
THURMAN SEWELL: Slow down.
Yeah.
Hell, yeah.
By the [INAUDIBLE].
We're gonna skate and see what we can come up with.
For us, we don't get to skate every day, but we're gonna see
what we can do.
We're not those dudes.
We still love it, but the act of doing it, I just wanna
drink and fuck bitches.
I don't wanna skate.
I'm not 13 years old anymore.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
-Nobody wants to see Marv Albert in a slam dunk contest.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
SIDNEY SEWELL: I wanna see it.
THURMAN SEWELL: Yes, we do wanna see it.
SIDNEY SEWELL: [INAUDIBLE]
THURMAN SEWELL: And we'll hype it up.
And we'll be like, aaah.
For real.
SIDNEY SEWELL: NJ all day.
NJ all day.
THURMAN SEWELL: NJ all day.
SIDNEY SEWELL: NJ all day, baby.
Gonna get back and skate, motherfuckers.
THURMAN SEWELL: That was sick.
SIDNEY SEWELL: That was dope.
THURMAN SEWELL: Hard ass trick.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
THURMAN SEWELL: That shit was hard, yo.
SIDNEY SEWELL: You got it now.
You got it now.
[HIP HOP MUSIC]
THURMAN SEWELL: We told Selena, like, yo, your fans
are fucking attacking us.
She's like yeah, don't fuck with my fans.
They're loyal.
THURMAN SEWELL: It's an army of, I would say, anywhere from
five to ten million people.
SIDNEY SEWELL: You wanna try to call her right now on
speaker phone.
See what happens.