Andy Mac - always for the love.Andy Macdonald is one of the most successful vert skaters in history. He's landed countless podiums, traded X Games golds with Tony Hawk and been an ambassador of skateboarding as a positive outlet for youth for almost two decades. Coming from unlikely roots, in cold snowy Boston, Macdonald overcame the odds as an East Coast transplant to become a Hall of Fame caliber athlete.

Sometimes criticized for avoiding the grittier aspects of skateboarding culture, Andy has overcome the gossip by letting his skating do the talking.

Now a San Diego local, Andy is set to return to his hometown in a couple weeks for the Dew Tour Skate Open in Boston, so we thought it appropriate to dig deeper and learn the more about the life of this Beantown board maven.

- James Sullivan

Pro File: Andy Macdonald

J: Andy, first off, it's 2010 - how many competitive seasons will this be?
A : I turned pro in '94 for my first season, so do the math - this will be my 17th.

Andy on his Thrasher Mag launch ramp - note the snow
on the ground.

J: How was growing up skating in Boston in the early days?
A: It was challenging. You were very jealous of the kids that grew up on the West Coast. Growing up in Boston, you heard about surf clubs in California high schools, and you're just like, "What, no way. They get to surf during school?" They're so lucky. Meanwhile, I'm shoveling snow off my ramp that we built out of lumber that we'd collected from scrapyards with six layers of sweatshirts on.

Backyard lein.

Not that I'm complaining, it just made you appreciate anytime there was nice weather in Boston. It's funny because this is my 18th year in California, so I've spent half my life in Boston, half my life in California. And after half my life here in this dreamland for skateboarding, I still appreciate it every time it's November or December and I'm outside skating in a t-shirt and its a beautiful sunny day while it's freezing cold in Boston.

Front stoop front board. Old school.

J: What were some of the early influences in Boston?
A: When I was 5 and 6 years old, I had seen some of the local guys (my theory is that it was Kevin Day and Frank the Wrecka) that were skating at Maximus when that place started, but before that we were skating in the Boston Commons, riding banana boards. My brother had a banana board that I stood up and gone down the hill and just ride until you hit and tumble into the grass. The first modern skateboard I saw was the '80s style -- wood, a big 10-inch wide board in 1986.

Backyard hand plant.

J: What's that story?

I was shooting hoops down at a basketball court in Melrose, MA and a kid came rolling by on like a Target-brand skateboard, and he let me try it and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Big, soft urethane wheels; it felt like you could run up and down it and it just felt easy to me, so I was immediately trying to trade him my basketball for his skateboard. I went home that night and started bugging my mom to get me a board for Christmas that year. So at that point, I hadn't seen any videos, magazines, anything. I just got a skateboard and started riding, and my brother got a board around the same time. We both started riding together, and then my brother had some friends that were into skating. So through my brother, I saw my first issue of Thrasher and Tony Hawk was on the cover doing an airwalk, and I was like, "I want that; I want to do that."

Andy with his brother.

J: Yeah, except instead of having bought it at Target, he probably got it at Benny's.
A: Yeah, or Caldor's! I think I got my first one at Caldor's. My first one was a Veraflex. I liked the graphics. It was like a rip-off of a Gator graphic.

Early ramp sesh.

J: So how did you start getting into the vert realm?
A: We were just skating street because that's all there was. Then, through looking at pictures in magazines and stuff, we order the Thrasher ramp plans and stuff and started building jump ramps and quarter-pipes in our driveway and stuff. Eventually, we built halfpipes and then every weekend we'd go in to Boston and meet skaters from the surrounding areas and spend all day skating in Boston and then heard through the grapevine that Maximus was opening up.

Early days at ZT Maximus in Boston.

J: Maximus ruled. I used to skate there in college!
A: Yeah growing up in Boston as a kid, you could just take the train everywhere, so we got on the train and went all the way up to Alewife station and walked in on Maximus while they were building it and were just like, "Oh my God, this is gonna be it. This is gonna be the place. You can skate here while its raining!" And it was. That's the place I really learned to skate. Ken Deutsch "Vito", as they called him, kinda took me under his wing, started letting me ride for free. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was getting gym credit for skating at Maximus, and Vito would have to sign off that I'd skated there for a couple hours. He was my coach.
Banana board slalom - just like back in Boston
Common.
J: So the gym class credit must have been a dream come true, and you didn't even have to go to California.
A: Yeah, by the time I was a senior in high school, I had decided that this is what I want to do with my life. I wanted to move to Southern California and try to be a pro skateboarder, so part of the plan was working three part-time jobs and finishing my last year of high school so I could graduate. By that point, I had moved out to Newton and I graduated Newton North, and Newton had an open campus and they allowed me to do my class schedule so I could just do my classes in the morning, and I worked all my part-time jobs in the afternoon and skated Maximus at night.

Andy newly arrived in California.

J: So then off to California and the full scene?
A: Yeah. I was a total naive Boston skateboarder coming to Southern California where all the sudden it mattered who you knew and what clothes you wore and what tricks you did and that was all new to me. I learned the hard way - hard and fast - like whoa, I just thought it was about how good a skater you were, and it turned out that wasn't the case.

Andy in 1997.

I thought, I was doing well in amateur competitions and won the amateur nationals the past two years, how come I'm not pro yet? I just started banging my head on the door of the skateboarding industry, and they reluctantly let me in.

J: Did that correspond with vert taking a back seat in the '90s?
A: Oh, absolutely, especially when I first came to Southern California when I graduated in '92, vert skating was dead. Skateboarding was super on the decline, and vert skateboarding in particular was dead as can be.

Andy at early X Games - first backflip in
competition.

The last amateur nationals they had was in '93, and there hasn't been a national amateur competition since as far as how it used to be structured, where just like in swimming or whatever else, there's districts, regionals, and nationals. That used to be the way you climbed the ladder to earn your pro status, and then during the early 1990s, that all started to change and people started turning pro having never skated a contest ever. All of the sudden there are these video pros, like, get a good video part, you're probably turning pro.

Boston trash ollie - Andy voted best all around
skater in 1998 TW poll.

J: And then with events like the X Games, there came a resurgence in vert, right?
A: Yeah. I turned pro in '94, and there were still maybe three or four events. There was the World Cup in Munster, Germany every year. One in England, maybe one in Prague. The Tampa Pro had just started. And then Vancouver always had a contest called Slam City Jam. So there were maybe five events where if you got top 5, you could get enough money to buy a plane ticket and a hotel for your next one if you shared a hotel with somebody or like six other guys or whatever. Skateboarding was still very much in its infancy as far as the competition side vs. what it was soon to become with the X Games.

Andy's speech at the White House for a Drug Free
campaign.

J: What were those early X Games like?
So in '95, the next year, the X Games started, and people were just like, what is this? It was so fun. ESPN had no idea what they were doing, though. They built these crazy ramps with, like, pink swirls on them. Pretty embarrassing looking back on it. But in '96, I won the vert contest, and that was my first pro vert win, and I beat Tony Hawk and everybody was just like, who is this guy? And that kinda made my mark, and Tony and I traded X Games golds for the first four years of the X Games.

Made famous with Tony Hawk, Andy doubles up with
Dave Duncan.

He won the first year, I won the second, he won the third, I won the fourth, and then we teamed up for doubles partners because we shared a lot of the same sponsors. We both rode for Swatch watches at the time, we both rode for Airwalk for years, so we were doing a lot of traveling together anyways. So when it came time to pick a doubles partner, I was just like, we are already doing it on the tour and everything and we already have some doubles routines down, let's team up, so Tony and I teamed up and skated doubles for the next six years. [Watch Andy and Tony do a doubles run.]

Tony Hawk and Andy on the cover of The Skateboard
Mag.

J: Things have obviously evolved a lot since then with more contests like the Triple Crowns and Dew Tour and more prize money...
A: Yeah, and now with the Maloof Money Cup and Rob Dyrdek's Street League, there is prize money that was unheard of even five years ago. We've definitely come a long way. But that being said, the top five skateboarders in the world make probably what any one of the top 200 tennis players do. Like, if you're in the top 200, you're still making more as a tennis player or a golf player or something.

X Games backside air.

J: Last year Boston hosted its first Dew Tour. How was it to be able to come back and compete in your hometown?
A: It was amazing last year, and I'm sure it will be equally amazing this year. Boston is such a sports town, and to be in the Boston Garden where I used to watch Larry Bird play at Celtics games or Bobby Orr for Boston Bruins games. It's just amazing to be in that venue because it was the shrine of sports since I was a kid. To look up and see all the banners and stuff, and then I'm there skating, and people have come to see me compete. It's pretty full circle.

Andy took 3rd at the 2009 Dew Tour in Boston before
the home crowd.

I got third place last year, and I got up on the podium and I got a standing ovation. I could have got last place and people would've been like yeah, just cause I'm from Boston and I did it -- I made it as a pro skateboarder. So it's really heartfelt, just to be going back there and feeling all the support from all the fans in Boston. Definitely looking forward to it again this year.

Andy at Boston Dew Tour 2009.

J: Having been competing this long, do you still get excited about it generally?
A: Yes, as long as I'm still competitive. I was runner-up the past two years in the Dew Tour, and at this point in my career, everybody's like, "So how long are you gonna be doing this?" That's the number one asked question, and I'm like, well, if I can still get first and second in contests, then I don't see why its time to bow out. I'm still competitive and I'm still progressing. I just invented two new lip tricks that had never been done. It makes me feel like, well if I'm still pushing it, if I'm still skating better than I ever have, why would I stop?

Taking the Orange Line in Boston back to his Mom's
house.
J: Absolutely. And what about some of your fellow competitors? Some of the guys have been in the game as long as you - like Bucky and Bob and Rune and those guys. And then there's the younger guys like Rob Loriface, Adam Taylor and Alex Perelson and all those guys.
A: Yeah, it's that whole thing. People are like, oh, vert skating has lost this whole generation. But you know what, the young kids are coming up faster now it seems because they have so much access to transition riding. They grew up skating in cement parks, learning how to kick flip at the same time they learned how to roll the bowls and everything.

The car you drive says a lot: Shaun White's whip
(left) next to Andy's (right).

J: Speaking of competitors this year a lot of the media hype is about the return of Shaun White. He didn't compete last year because of all the Olympic stuff and the snowboarding and whatnot. What are your thoughts about his return to the competition?
A: It should be great. Shaun is one of the most explosive and exciting riders to watch, so, as usual, everyone will be gunning for him again. And its just neat that now he's got another gold medal under his belt so there will be that many more people wanting to come and see him ride. I've skated with him just a couple times.

Andy's come a long way but always with style -
Hurricane Slob - young and old.

The guy is so busy, it's crazy. But he lives up in Hollywood now so he doesn't have access to a vert ramp all the time, so he'll drive down here to San Diego. I skated with him his second time riding in over a year and he did all his tricks, like, yeah I got this, I remember this. Not super strong, confident, powerful, or anything, but he did them. And we were just like, yeah, that's Shaun, he can do it. The kid can do whatever he wants. So I fully expect him to be killing it this year on the season.

Andy' still got it - hopefully for years to come.

J: Well sounds like its gonna be a good season with everyone healthy and throwing it down.
A: Yeah, absolutely. And the finals this year are in Vegas instead of Orlando, so that should be interesting as well. See who makes it the night before the finals, like, I could have sworn I just saw him at the poker table!

All images courtesy Andy Mac