-What part of Massachusetts are we in?
BRANDON WESTGATE: Wareham.
It's like right before the Cape.
There's a pawn shop right there.
That's where everybody steals everything and then turns it
in and then just gets in trouble.
This guy over here, Dr. Miller, he was a dentist.
And I guess he was giving people pills for blow jobs and
shit like that.
I don't know, he got caught somehow, and he's facing some
jail time and shit.
There's a little skate park.
If you guys want to check that out, we can go there.
I'd pretty much skate that all the time, whenever it's warm.
But these ones, these ones are better because they concreted
them right to it.
And it's pretty good, because it's all downhill so it dries
up pretty fast.
-But how they put them, all the bottoms have kinks.
BRANDON WESTGATE: Yeah.
But these ones aren't that bad.
It's like over time, one will sink and then the other won't,
so it'll be a crack.
But these ones have been pretty good for a long time.
This thing over here is the best.
Because you can skate it like a ledge, but then go into the
little transition.
It's pretty fun.
It's like nose bumps and shit.
It's pretty much it right here.
-Do you think when people complain about their spots you
can tell them that they have no excuse?
BRANDON WESTGATE: Well, this spot sucks to you guys, but I
love this place.
You guys, it's whatever, hate it.
But I actually like it.
JON MINER: It always seems like some of the most awesome
skaters live in the shittiest places for skating.
It's like Cardiel growing up in Lake O'
The Pines or something.
Or like Westgate way out in fucking Wareham,
or wherever it is.
It's like he doesn't need to skate with people or whatever.
He's really focused.
He just doesn't ever complain.
It's kind of like the joke, it's like he's down until he's
not down, because he's usually just down for everything.
PATRICK O'DELL: What's up?
Welcome back to Epicly Later'd.
We try to alternate episodes a little bit, or do some older
guys and then do some young guys.
And I feel like, of all the skaters right now that are
killing it, currently I would say Brandon Westgate.
I've known him since he was really little
when he got on 5boro.
And it's crazy to see him flow to 5boro to just one of the
best skaters in skateboarding right now.
Not only with the Zoo part, but the Emerica "Stay Gold"
and then the shoe release part.
It's just been nonstop footage, but then you don't
see too much of his personality.
I don't think people get to even know who he is, other
than just the skate footage.
So I'm always interested to go track someone like that down
and find out what they're like and what they're doing.
And he's pretty interesting.
He's up near Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
And he's got all this farm machinery, and this big house,
and all this weird, working man stuff.
So I went up, visited him.
And this is it, a short Brandon Westgate episode.
Hope you enjoy it.
BRANDON WESTGATE: You want to go out in this thing?
PATRICK O'DELL: Yeah.
BRANDON WESTGATE: Fuck, I'm freezing.
It's pretty much where everybody goes fishing.
Basically, I grew up right over there,
other side of the water.
ZERED BASSETT: I'm from Chatham, which is over the
bridge, Cape Cod.
But he's from Wareham, which is right on the other side of
the bridge which I guess is still considered Cape Cod.
So we grew up probably like 40 minutes away from each other,
30 minutes.
In Cape Cod, the town I grew up in is like mostly people
make their money off shellfish and fishing.
My family, like my father and my brother, grew up doing that
stuff a lot, and they still do.
My dad has his own company now.
He has a copper company.
They do copper fabrications and stuff.
The jobs that are available in Cape Cod is just you work on a
cranberry bog.
I grew up, there was a cranberry bog in my backyard.
PATRICK O'DELL: Your family works in the bogs?
BRANDON WESTGATE: Yeah, my dad does.
This is the claim to fame right there.
See how there's water around the edges?
It goes from one section to the other, and basically
floods them all up.
They basically only do that for picking or in the
wintertime.
Because if it gets too cold, they freeze them--
basically preserves the bud or the vine.
PATRICK O'DELL: So you've been doing it for a long time?
BRANDON WESTGATE: Well, my dad's been doing it pretty
much my whole life.
So I don't know everything, but I just know
the basics kind of.
Got all the hookups or whatever, so we've got tons of
cranberry juice and cranberry sauce.
PATRICK O'DELL: Is this the kind of work you probably
would have gotten into if you weren't skating?
BRANDON WESTGATE: Probably, yeah.
My brother's doing it with my dad.
I was doing it with my dad a little bit,
just here and there.
It's pretty cool, I guess.
There's times-- it kind of sucks, tell you the truth.
SEAN CRONAN: Yeah, his dad's a cranberry bogger.
It seems really hard.
It's not a job that I would want to have to do.
I would never want to have to do that.
Nor does Brandon, he doesn't want to have to do that.
ZERED BASSETT: I didn't really see him for a while because I
kind of moved to New York.
When he got on Emerica and then his ads would come out on
Emerica, I'm like damn, this kid's killing it.
And then I didn't really start seeing him again until right
before I got on Zoo.
And he'd come to the city and state, and we'd link up and
skate sometimes.
We grew up super close to each other, so I was just hyped to
see him grow as a skater and get better.
And he's a super cool kid.
So it's definitely cool to have someone that grew up
around you that's doing the right thing in skateboarding,
so I was hyped.
He doesn't get involved in all the stuff you don't need to
get involved in being a skateboarder.
BRANDON WESTGATE: Yeah, it gets boring around here.
But pretty much everywhere it gets boring anyway, so what
are you going to do?
PATRICK O'DELL: Not New York.
BRANDON WESTGATE: Yeah.
I don't know, I just don't like New York.
I just don't have enough space.
It's too confined.
I only like it in doses, I guess.
PATRICK O'DELL: You never go to Max Fish?
BRANDON WESTGATE: No, I've only been there once.
And that was at Emerica premiere and I only stayed
there for like 10 minutes.
It's not really as cool as I thought it was going to be.
It's really not.
I don't know.
I don't what the hype is about that place.
PATRICK O'DELL: Does it get boring at all here?
BRANDON WESTGATE: Yeah, but I usually just do
something to the house.
Figure out something to do.
ZERED BASSETT: Yeah, he's got a bunch of projects going on.
He's got his hands full.
He's got a girlfriend.
He's got a nice house.
He seems pretty settled in life, being as young as he is.
So I don't think he really has time to go drink and go to
bars and stuff, which is cool.
JON MINER: It's crazy how mature he is.
He's like 21.
When you go to his house, it makes you feel kind of shitty
about your own life.
Here it's like dude, this kid's 21 and he's
nailing it so hard.
This place is so awesome.
I live in this little shitty apartment
with my wife and kid.
His house is like your friend's parents' nice house
that you always want to go over to, you know?
Everything's so clean and just feels good.
It's really cute.
Him and his little girlfriend, they're so domesticated.
All these motivational pictures of them placed all
around the house, just like love, laugh.
They're this little couple living this very
domestic home life.
BRANDON WESTGATE: Oh, you want to see this thing I just built
for my girlfriend?
It's pretty sick.
My dad's got all these tools, so whenever I have nothing to
do all day, I just built pretty much the whole thing.
PATRICK O'DELL: That's awesome.
BRANDON WESTGATE: It's pretty cool, huh?
Got the top-- found this granite place, pretty cheap.
PATRICK O'DELL: What have you got outside?
BRANDON WESTGATE: It's a mess.
That's our garden over there.
That's that fence I just built that I was telling you.
SEAN CRONAN: He doesn't act like the normal 22-year-old.
When you talk to him on the phone, it's kind of like
you're talking to your dad sometimes.
It's like you're talking to a 50-year-old guy, because he's
always coming back from the lawnmower store, getting a
part for his lawnmower.
Or he's going out and power washing his house.
BRANDON WESTGATE: See, I painted this whole thing--
stained all that brown, painted all this shit.
Pretty cool.
It's what I do when I'm bored.
I just like to either build things or pull
them apart or something.
I don't know, I want to try to get a bunch of cheap houses
around here and fix them up and rent them out.
And if I ever need a job, probably have to do
something like that.
I used to go to school for marine mechanics.
The school that I was going to wasn't
even a real high school.
It was like a trade school where you do a week of
plumbing, or electrical, or auto mechanics or something.
DONNY BARLEY: His work ethic, man, his parents they left
that on him pretty good.
Because I told him that I needed to get work done on my
car, and he's like bring your car up.
We'll get in the garage, I got all the tools.
And he's got all these projects going on and he's the
guy that's going to stick his head under the hood of a car
and greasy, and I think that's super sick.
-What is this thing?
BRANDON WESTGATE: It's a lawnmower.
There's a big front piece that goes on.
It cuts the lawn and then it throws all
the grass back here.
But some guy threw it away.
My dad took it out the junk and rebuilt the engine.
And then that piece shit the bed, so I had to take out all
this other stuff.
PATRICK O'DELL: You got a lot of tools.
BRANDON WESTGATE: Yeah.
JON MINER: I think when he's home, he's just kind of
hanging out, working on the house, spending time with the
wife and dog.
Kind of just hangs out at home and starts to kind of go stir
crazy a little bit.
And then goes on skate trips and just lets it all out.
He nails it so hard, every trip he goes on.
His average is at least three clips, but usually more.
But it's like every skate trip he'll get something.
SEAN CRONAN: I mean, he's constantly on a plane.
He chose to live out here, but there's not really anything to
skate where he lives.
So he either goes to Boston, or goes to New York, or he has
to go to California.
He's comfortable where he is.
He's got his family, and he's got his girlfriend, and his
dog, and his house.
He has a very comfortable life where he is.
He doesn't want to leave it, and I don't think he should.
PATRICK O'DELL: How come you don't move to California?
BRANDON WESTGATE: I don't know.
I don't want to.
I like it here, it's quiet.
PATRICK O'DELL: There's never any pressure to?
BRANDON WESTGATE: No, I don't think so.
Nobody's told me I had to yet.
So.