[ JAPANESE / ENGLISH ]

Photo_Taiyo Tanida
Special thanks_Vans Japan

VHSMAG (V)：　First of all, let’s talk about the concept, Off The Wall. The rumor is that Tony was skating in a pool, went off the wall and caught air. Is that true?

Tony Alva (T)：　It wasn't just about one move. I think it was more about the attitude towards skateboarding because of the fact that when it comes to architecture, skateboarders are constantly looking for different ways to ride concrete waves. When I started skating in empty pools, we were not only emulating surfing on concrete, but eventually we started learning how to manipulate gravity to the point of being flying out and doing aerials. The very original concept of Off The Wall is not about just skateboarding, it's about your thinking too. It's about how you approach things in general, like life, surfing, skateboarding, art, music and everything. Making it Off The Wall was about something new and different. So it’s not just about the physical act of riding on the wall, it's about all those other things that come with the skateboarding lifestyle. And it's all incorporated into trying to do something that's unique and original.

Steve Van Doren (S)：　So we had learned that Tony was coming off the wall. I had a 13-year-old cousin, Mark Van Doren, and he stenciled the Turtle, which is the design of the Off The Wall logo, on the bottom of his skateboard. And my uncle Jim said, “What's that?” He says, “I just cut a stencil up,” because there was a lot of punk rock going on then. So he did that, and then we heard the word Off The Wall coming from Tony and it went in there. That's how the first logo came about and it's still on the back of a lot of our shoes today.

T：　It's a bit of a mantra though. It's something that you can repeat that gives you a feeling of creativity and positivity. To me, it represents that.

S：　Vans’ attitude of being different. We made custom made shoes from day one. You can come in and order green on one side, checker on the other, make a pink tongue and a yellow back. No problem. That's your individual spirit.

T：　And then it's evolved to a whole another concept where it's just called OTW. It's evolved and it's still evolving.

V：　Steve, you’re known to be out there cooking burgers for the people that come to events. Why is that important?

S：　Get the hell out of the office. I’m a different type of executive. We’ve lasted 58 years. It was my dad's company for the first 25 years, the next company had us for like 12 years, and then VF, our current parent company. This month is 20 years since they bought Vans. And a lot of times you don't learn anything by being inside. You want a job where you're an executive sitting in an office? Fuck no. We learned about checkerboard by seeing kids draw on the bottom white part of our shoe. So we made checkerboard rubber, and all of a sudden they went up to the canvas. It just didn't happen like, “Oh, let's do checkerboard.” No, the kids drew on their shoes first. And then somebody did it on the canvas, and we were like “Okay, we'll make black and white,” and it happened to be placed at the store that Tony originally bought in Santa Monica. Sean Penn went in 1982, and he happened to buy a pair of Slip On. He liked it, went to the studio and they called up and said, “Hey, can we get more of these checkerboard shoes for one of our actors?” So Betty Mitchell, who was the manager of the store where Tony grew up, brought two dozen up to Universal Studios, and the rest is history.

V：　In the long history of Vans, what are you proud of in terms of the things that you’ve achieved through the years?

S：　I'm proud that I’m still working at the company and I get to travel like this. I look at people’s feet in Tokyo and I see a sidestripe. And right away I think of my dad, who was almost 91 when he passed away. He passed away three years ago, and he wrote a book called Authentic. My older brother and sister are both blind. They lost their eyesight in their twenties. So my dad asked me to ask Tony if he would narrate the book. He did it and it’s on Audible. So Tony's voice for almost nine hours, he spent a week on it.

T：　Yeah. It took me almost a week to record, but the bottom line was that I did it before Paul passed. Paul actually asked me if I would be that spokesperson. His brothers and sisters recognize my voice without being able to see me. It's pretty cool. And it was a really amazing experience because now I really know the story too. Having read it and then gone into a studio and been the voice for it. So it's me telling Paul's story, which is a pretty amazing honor, to be able to do that and be a part of the founder's vision, dream and his real story.

S：　His book came out on April 27th, 2021, and about 10 days later he passed away. I think he must have known that he did everything he wanted to do.

V：　I was in Shanghai watching a demo and it was amazing to see skaters from all generations. Guys and girls, riders from all over the world too. I think that's something that only Vans can do.

T：　And everybody has a different style. Not everybody's skating the same way. Everybody's doing what they do and being creative to the point where it's almost like a full-on abstract art session. Nobody's competing. Nobody's trying to be the star of the show. It was more about everybody skating together and that's what Skateboarding is really all about.

Omar Hassan (O)：　It's not a competition, it's all of us having fun and pushing each other. About how all the different generations we had there, Vans has had some of the same guys and those same generations the whole time. That's not something that's new for us. That's what we do, we support skateboarding. We have roots, and those roots grow. It's something that we believe in. It's a Vans family. It's cool because it's organic, it's not contrived. It's cool that you noticed that, the different generations and how much energy we all had together because we're all friends and we just want to skate.

V：　Other than having all these different generations of skaters, Vans has done so many events in the past too.

S：　We did the Vans Warped Tour for 24 years. It's nice that we've always done different events like Triple Crown and Downtown Showdown. We also did the Vans Park series, and today it's one of the two disciplines for skateboarding in the Olympics. That got created because of what we did through the Park Series. We did that in the US for six years in a row, then we put one in Brazil, Sweden, France. We put one in Montreal and we did it each year there. So we built those around the world to keep it going.

O：　And I feel like back then especially, I don't think any shoe company was really investing in skateboarding and events like Vans was. They were really giving people a lot of good events. I think that helped a lot.

V：　What’s next for Vans?

S：　We slowed down since Covid. We're trying to get the momentum going back again. We've dropped the mic after 25 years for the Vans Warped Tour and our 30th anniversary is next year. I'm hoping that we're going to go do four or five big stops as a reunion in June. We're going to get our skaters to come out. There's a big punk rock concert. We're going to bring a ramp and skate there and stuff. Get the younger generation to see things that we do through their eyes and get involved more with youth culture. So We want to find out what young people are doing these days and get involved with them, and support them more.

VANS
@vansskate @vansjapan

Founded on March 16, 1966. Since the 70's, the shoe brand has been providing skate shoes that are still considered classics today, such as Authentic, Era, Old Skool and Sk8-Hi.