Interview with Adam Grandmaison (The Come Up)

About six months ago Adam Grandmaison moved out of his bedroom in Brooklyn to move to California. While he pursued BMX and continued to run his successful website, The Come Up, I spent a lot of time in my new bedroom hiding from New York's blazing summer and freezing winter. Originally when Adam and I "met" via AOL Instant Messenger by way of the B9 Messageboard, I was in California and he was on the East Coast.

Fast forward to April, 2011. I came home from work to find Adam on his laptop in my living room. He was visiting New York for a few days. A couple days later, I got out of the shower and found Adam in my living room again. It was then that I brought up the idea of an interview. He had a couple hours to kill so he obliged me.

I went back into my bedroom, wrote some questions up, some per roommate Brendan's help, and once again entered the living room.

We began.

Zed: Twenty minutes ago I came out into the living room. I just finished taking a shower, so my shirt was off and I said, "Do you want to do an interview?" What was your reaction?

Adam: Before you asked I was actually noticing that you have a lot of chest hair for a smaller dude, but that didn't necessarily impact my thoughts on the interview. I was still down.

Zed: You decided to do the interview.

Adam: Yeah, I'm happy to do it. I've known Zed for a long time, since the B9 board with the pictures of him in the wrestling unitard. Yeah, for sure.

Zed: That's an image you remember?

Adam: Yeah, that was your avatar for four or five years, something like that. I always thought that was a great photo.

Zed: I said I wasn't going to ask you anything about the B9 Board but it came up in the very beginning.

Adam: I don't care.

Zed: The Come Up website has been successful and you've been doing it for years now, what have you accomplished so far that was a goal that you set out to do?

Adam: The Come Up just started as a little blog. I started it because at the time there weren't any good BMX websites. There was a lot of good stuff going up on Youtube and shit. I wanted to put it all on one place. It was only kind of being posted on message boards, so I saw it as an opportunity to do a modern blog-style website, because there weren't many at the time. It spiraled out of control real quickly: I started getting advertising interest and had a ton of people checking it from the beginning. The accomplishments with it that I'd be most excited about or that I feel are most significant are that you could ask anybody who rides and they'd consider it to be the most important BMX website of all time...just the fact that any video that goes online, that's the place to see it. Kids just know that, and just having that relevance in BMX is pretty cool. My whole time riding, almost ten years before I started the site, I never had any involvement in any kind of business sense, I was just riding. I usually rode by myself or a handful of friends. To all of a sudden go from that to all of a sudden everybody knowing who I am. And all of a sudden I'm friends with all of these pro riders...it's been a pretty trippy thing. I got used to it for sure, but it was a crazy change of pace because I was twenty two when I started the site and I had had tons of injuries. I don't want to say I was getting out of BMX but I wasn't riding a ton. I was kind of real casual with it. You see most dudes when they get to their mid twenties, if they're not super involved in BMX they'll start to slowly fade away from it. That was almost the case with me.

Zed: Because of injuries? Your body can't take it as much?

Adam: Yeah, as you get older the injuries build up and the fact that it gets harder and harder to learn stuff. Also the main thing is just usually dudes stop riding when they're eighteen or so. A lot of my friends that I started riding with stopped riding and I moved to New York. For me it was primarily the injuries. I was almost starting to fade away before I started the website and then that just totally brought me back into it for sure.

Zed: So when people know you they'll know you from The Come Up but not from being the best rider?

Adam: No, no, I'm not known for my riding abilities at all. I've done maybe a few things that some certain kids are stoked on. But I'm one hundred percent known for the website and any riding is just kinda little side note.

Zed: What's your primary goal for The Come Up now?

Adam: I would say just expanding into other branches of websites. I can't really be super specific but we have other websites that are along the same theme as The Come Up that we're starting. I have a rap site. It's a rap review site that's called nojumper.com. I hooked up with this kid Yayo, he had a tumblr writing rap reviews. He basically hit me up saying that he wanted to be a primary writer for a rap website and he asked if I could help out with getting gigs going or whatever. And I was like, "Why don't we just start our own site?" Stuff like that is the kinda thing where I can use my knowledge of blogs and everything...how to handle advertising to sort of help out someone like him who is talented. We have other stuff going on in terms of bicycling in general. Which is exciting for me. But in terms of the BMX site...what we do now couldn't change too dramatically. I want to do more apparel through The Come Up. I want to do more exclusive content and kinda subblogs with other riders but that's all just little things tacked onto...we already do such a good job and I'm just so happy with our primary function. I don't ever want to get too detached from that.

Zed: So your primary goal is to basically maintain what you're doing.

Adam: The primary goal is to have everything important that's going on in BMX happen on the site immediately every day, in videos, news, everything like that. That's what we're known for and I feel like we definitely by far do the best job with it.

Zed: You mentioned the thing with nojumper.com...and I know you listen to a lot of rap music...what are your top three current rappers?

Adam: Ever since I was kid I listened to gangsta rap. Not necessarily mainstream rap but I like a lot of rappers who do have some mainstream appeal. Probably the most interesting rappers would be Gucci Mane, who I just fucking love. Waka Flocka. And Cam'ron is probably my all time favorite rapper. And he is still totally awesome in my book. There's a lot more underground guys that I like too, but those dudes are probably the most interesting in my book right now.

Zed: You like the stuff that Cam'ron is doing with Vado right now as much as the older stuff?

Adam: For sure...Cam'ron is the funniest, most braggadocios, unbelievable character in the past ten years of rap and everything involved with Dipset has always been super amazing in my mind. Vado is maybe interesting in a different way, but for sure, I like him a lot too. Cam'ron has been hugely influential on Gucci Mane, who's a guy who'll be super goofy and almost kinda...I don't want to say gay, but he says and does things that certain people could perceive as being feminine, and that's something you never ever saw before Cam'ron who would just be out there wearing pink. Just using a lot of terms and phrases, and just being Gotti with the jewelry. Somebody like Cam'ron, he's not really faking it, that's just how he is as a person, he's just really over the top. I love that shit. I can look at it from an outside perspective just thinking that it's hilarious, or just really cool witnessing this really insane character.

Zed: What about Lil B? Do you like that or just think that it's funny?

Adam: Lil B is awesome. A lot of people kinda like him just on the basis of it being funny. I think that they overlook the fact that he might not be the most technical rapper but he's got a lot going for him...just in terms of an unbelievable output of music obviously and then the other main appeal is probably that he has a huge range of styles that he draws from. He definitely takes a note from Soulja Boy's page where he's not afraid to be hugely derivative of other artists in a way that's really fun and interesting to me. You can see the Soulja Boy influence on Lil B's music and you can even see certain songs where he's taking on the persona of the early Cash Money guys and No Limit guys and using their phrasing. Lil B is just so open for whatever reason that he's just completely willing to say and do things that other rappers wouldn't do that are completely ridiculous. But I really appreciate him because of his attitude: being insanely positive when it comes to everything. I think that that's really what you need. I think the whole era of 50 Cent, being all beef related is totally over in rap right now. He's interesting to me because he wants to work with everyone, he's such a fan of the music, that's really fun to me, and why I listen to Lil B.

Zed: But he did threaten Kanye West.

Adam: To fuck him in the ass. Right. That's the kind of thing that you just never would have seen even five years ago in rap. That kind of stuff is probably why I'm such a big fan of hip-hop...being able to see stuff like that. I think it's awesome.

Zed: That new mixtape he did, Illusions of Grandeur, is probably his most positive thing so far.

Adam: In a lot of his early stuff he talked about robbing people and all that crazy shit. I've seen him on Twitter actually saying that he feels bad about writing those songs.

Zed: When you watch a few of his videos you feel like he's your friend because he's so charismatic and endearing. You want him to succeed.

Adam: It's so hard to dislike him once you give him a shot.

Zed: Exactly. Some people do listen to him initially and think it's funny, but then after a little bit they find themselves enjoying it.

Adam: And he never takes himself too seriously so it's easy for you to pick and choose which songs you're into. That's what makes me a fan of him. I want to see him do good so bad because I feel like he's such a cool character.

Zed: What about Odd Future, they've been blowing up.

Adam: I'm into that stuff. It's been insane. I followed Tyler on Twitter when he had five thousand followers and all of a sudden he's got a hundred thousand. That shit's really cool for a lot of the same reasons as the Lil B thing, to see these dudes who are really young unpolished and don't have a lot of industry tainting going on. To see them making waves is awesome to see.

Zed: They're all doing what they think, trying it out, because they're not old enough to realize what's right and wrong yet.

Adam: Even them making jokes about rape, that's the kind of thing that the average kid my age or their age probably thinks is funny but you'd never see a dude do it in mainstream rap because it's so offensive. But they don't have that industry grooming yet to tell them not to do that shit. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, because it's obviously very offensive for a reason. Seeing shit like that is fun and interesting.

Zed: It's unpredictable. You kind of gave a reason why you focused on BMX because there wasn't a blog for it, but if you were going to focus on any sport like that why not rollerblading?

Adam: I got into BMX when I was thirteen. It was less about doing tricks, it was more about there being dudes in my neighborhood who rode and they had no brakes and had two pegs. I thought this was some bizarre, crazy thing. It was a way to hang out with older dudes that were sixteen, seventeen when I was thirteen and they were fucking girls and smoking weed. I thought it was so crazy. It was just cool to be around that. As I got a little older I started to get more into doing tricks.

Zed: And smoking weed and having sex with women.

Adam: Shit that I wasn't doing when I was thirteen like that, yeah. I was just fascinated by them because they had really dark senses of humor, super sarcastic. I guess that's BMX's whole persona: being really negative in a funny way. It immediately drew me to it when I was younger.

Zed: Why not rollerblading?

Adam: I never knew anybody who rollerbladed. Even when I was a little kid I thought rollerblading was lame. I don't know if I would be able to start a rollerblading website even now, because I don't think anybody really does it anymore. I don't think it's very popular anymore.

Zed: Do you think it's more underground than BMX?

Adam: Yeah, definitely, because they took it out of the X-Games. I'm sure it still exists. Rollerblading is cool as hell. If you watch videos on Youtube there's some unbelievable stuff.

Zed: I don't know if it's the same with BMX, but when you ask skateboarders they immediately hate it.

Adam: I wouldn't say I hate it, because I'm older...it's just a different way to have fun. It's not really that different than what we do. Part of BMX that always made me attracted to it was just the fact that we would go out riding, we would ride spots that were twenty miles from where we lived. Just ride all day. That was really fun. To just take off and be able to explore the whole area that I lived in a way that I hadn't before then. Even now it's taken me all over the globe. So it's been sort of the same thing on a different scale with the business and everything.

Zed: The way you're talking about the town and looking at everything differently sounds similar to my graffiti friends talking...where you look at every different building differently. A totally different outlook.

Adam: For sure. If you're ever driving through a city with a BMX kid you'll notice him just staring at every set of stairs, every rail, every wall, because there's so many little things that are interesting to a BMX dude. Just like graffiti, yeah. I did graffiti for a couple years when I was in my teenage years. It was the same thing. Every little word you see written on a wall is interesting to you, and BMX is sort of the same way, you develop a weird eye for it.

Zed: I think that's interesting. Do you think monetizing a blog is going to be easier or more difficult in five years from now?

Adam: It's become easier for me besides the fact that the website's grown. It's become easier because of the fact that more and more companies are realizing that they have to advertise online. In BMX there were a lot of companies that held off on it, and even now there are big BMX companies that I could name that don't advertise online. But they do spend a lot of money advertising in print which is, from my perspective, misguided because magazines are incredibly...not a lot of people see them anymore...in BMX especially. More and more companies have come around to it, even without me asking them to or hitting them up, they've just realized they need to. Even if they don't advertise online they need to have a presence online, whether it's Twitter, Facebook or their own blog.

Zed: Especially because you're saying it's a younger culture, younger kids are all over the internet.

Adam: They don't read magazines. I'll still read a magazine. I'm not super interested in them, but a sixteen-year-old kid in BMX right now? I don't even think they want to fucking look at that shit. They might look at the photos but it doesn't have that relevance. I remember when I was a kid I would get a BMX magazine in the mail and that's all I was doing for the next week, staring at every photo, reading every caption. That's awesome but that doesn’t exist anymore.

Zed: I imagine a kid now follows more people on Twitter than pages they've ever read in a magazine.

Adam: For sure, that's the kind of stuff that they're acknowledging.

Zed: What happened with Red Bull and the OSS?

Adam: There's a kid on our team named Craig Passero and he smokes weed all day and drinks Red Bull all day. So I just wanted to make a shirt that said caffeine and marijuana. We were trying to come up with a design and I just took the Red Bull logo basically. But there's a circle in between the two bulls and we just put a big pot leaf there. We thought it was funny. It was selling alright online but then I got a cease and desist from Red Bull pretty much right away asking me to stop making it. I had to fax forms to them. They take it really serious. And especially in that situation I think they were really upset about their brand being associated with drug use. So we had to modify the image and we have a different version of it coming out. We replaced the bulls with a gorilla and a bear just because it doesn't make any sense but we thought it was funny. It's funny because we do a lot of logo bites, a lot of companies in BMX do, but I haven't heard about a lot of cease and desist over the past few years. It was cool to get it. I thought it was funny.

Zed: That's a testament to you guys getting so big that they actually found out about it.

Adam: That says something I guess. They probably have spies in the industry, in BMX who would report that kind of thing. But Red Bull is a cool company, they do a lot of good stuff for BMX so I definitely don't hold it against them or anything.

Zed: You moved to the Southern California about a year ago, what do you see as the main difference between New York and LA?

Adam: The main difference I see is that in New York the cost of living is so high that everybody has to have a job and they're working on their own business or they have a hustle or they have multiple jobs. In California it's much more laid back. That's probably the biggest difference. It affects the attitudes of the people a lot. And also, California is a lot whiter on average. Especially in BMX, everyone I ever rode with in New York was black or Spanish pretty much, because that's just the BMX scene on average. In California it's mostly white kids. Maybe you see some Spanish kids or Asian kids but it's a different makeup and that changes the feel of the scene. It's cool. I grew up in a small town outside Boston, in New Hampshire, then I moved to New York and that was such an awesome experience to get outside of a small town life. And then moving to Long Beach in California is somewhere in between a small town and New York. It feels like the smallest town in the world after living in Brooklyn for so long. It feels like I'm living in the woods again.

Zed: Because there's not people on top of people on top of people.

Adam: Yeah. It feels like a little town but it's cool because there are so many different places you can drive within twenty minutes or a half hour of you. Or you can even drive for three hours and be in Arizona. It's a whole different thing. I'm not saying I would necessarily stay in California forever but I was totally ready to get out of New York by the time I left.

Zed: Do you think women are more attractive in California?

Adam: I would say...maybe a little bit just because of the weather. You can exercise all year around outside. I wouldn't say it's a huge difference but maybe a little bit, yeah, in LA. But it's also different because if you go to Brooklyn the women are way less attractive than Manhattan on average.

Zed: Than Soho.

Adam: Right, if you live in a super trendy artsy neighborhood then you're probably going to be around a lot of girls that are young and take care of themselves.

Zed: How many tattoos do you have? I don't know if you can give an actual answer to this because a lot of it just appears to be one big tattoo.

Adam: I couldn't count it. But I have both sleeves done, my throat and neck and a lot of my chest and stomach and my shin.

Zed: So my question is if you had to get one removed which would you get removed?

Adam: I've gotten a bunch removed. My left arm was a sleeve that I got when I was real young, eighteen. It was so bad. I had this dude do it. He didn't charge me much but it was so shitty. After a while I paid a couple thousand bucks to get lasered a bunch of times and had it gone over. You can't even really tell at all anymore. I have pretty much everything removed that I want to remove except I have a girl's name pretty close to my dick. It's been lightened and I have to get it tattooed over, but I think I have to get it lasered one more time.

Zed: Do you get into situations where your pants come off and girls say, "What is that?"

Adam: Usually they won't notice in the heat of the moment but if I hang out with a girl multiple times maybe she'll notice. They've always thought it was funny or stupid. I've never had anybody be jealous.

Zed: Have any girls had the same name but been weirded out and been like, "We haven't known each other long enough..."?

Adam: Oh man, I don't think so, but maybe. I'd have to consult my list but I don't think so.

Zed: You have a list of names?

Adam: Ever since I first became sexually active when I was in my teenage years I was hanging out with older dudes who rode BMX...when I lost my virginity most of my friends had probably already had sex with twenty or more girls. They had lists so I was like, "I guess I'll make a list." I've always had a list. I used to have a piece of paper list but it's incriminating to have that around so I actually made a Google doc so it's on the computer. You couldn't look at it unless you were logged in on my e-mail. Just because I want to keep track. Once your number gets high enough it's really tough. I could never recreate my list now if I didn't have it. I could tell you the number but I wouldn't be able to fill in the blanks. It's good to just keep track.

Zed: What's the most common name on it?

Adam: Sara. There's like six Saras. Some with an "h", some without.

Zed: Is it more common with the "h" or without?

Adam: I'd have to consult the list. I don't know. But I think without probably.

Zed: I'm not going to ask you the number.

Adam: That's privileged information. I would tell you off the record. It's not that bad, I'm still in the sub-one hundred club. I feel alright about it.

Zed: That's a good club to be in.

Adam: Girls have freaked out on me about it but they don't really get that if you're traveling all over the place you kinda can't help it after a while.

Zed: If you ask a guy what's the number and he reveals it that's unfair to be mad.

Adam: Right.

Zed: If a girl told me she was in the sub-one hundred club I wouldn't care.

Adam: I wouldn't. From my perspective I could never be grossed out by a girl being promiscuous because I'm so much worse. It can never really bother me.

Zed: If I'm dating someone and I know she dated over one hundred guys that's weird to me, not the sleeping thing. Because that's belittling the relationship, not something that was necessarily just a one night situation.

Adam: If you trust her that's what matters. I know guys who are in their mid-thirties who have had sex with over three hundred girls. It's not even that they're that promiscuous it's just the fact that over time if you're single for that long shit happens.

Zed: Especially if you live in a big city.

Adam: Luckily I'm not quite there yet.

Zed: That's a funny luckily. To get off the sex tip, if you had to beat me up, how would you do it?

Adam: I wouldn't because you're a nice guy and everything, Zed. Probably...probably...

Zed: Just punch me in the head?

Adam: That would probably work. There's a lot of options, we could wrestle for a while. But you have a wrestling background, right?

Zed: Yeah.

Adam: So I might want to stay standing up because I don't know what you could do. My good friend Catfish is probably your size and his whole thing is he wrestled all through high school and college. He always tells me, "I could get you on your back." It's no big deal because if he gets me on my back I'm going to choke him out in two seconds anyway. He can do it even though I weigh a hundred pounds more than him. He can just get me onto my back because he's really, really good at taking people down. So I would be scared to do that to you because I don’t know what you're gonna bust out on me.

Zed: But even if I pinned you: I win but you could knock me out.

Adam: I'm totally not trying to get into fights at this point in my life because it's just so bad for business. I've done too much of that. Even if I did have a problem with you I'd probably just try to forget about it.

Zed: But if you did have to you'd just punch me in the head?

Adam: Probably because it's a little cleaner and more efficient. You don't want to be rolling around on the ground for too long. Any time I can just get a one punch thing going on...

Zed: Would you worry about hurting your hand on my head?

Adam: I've broken my hand in fights before and it sucks. It just depends on where you hit them. You're always going for the jaw because that's where you're going to knock them out and you're not going to break your hand on someone's jaw probably. When I broke my hand on this kid's head one time it was because I was so mad, it was this kid that broke into my dad's house and stole money from his wallet. I tracked him down, found him and I was on one hour of sleep. I was so pissed that when I saw him I just walked up and went to punch him. He turned his head and instead of hitting him with the front two knuckles I hit him with the pinkie on the side of his head and it broke the bone right away. Anytime you get into a fight when you're really angry that's the kind of thing that might happen. You see guys in UFC break their hands all the time. It just kinda happens after a while.

Zed: If I pulled out a gun would you just not hit me then?

Adam: No matter how mad I was if there was a gun I'd probably just try to get out of there.

Zed: Would you just jump out of that window? There's bars over the window though.

Adam: There's bars. I've never been in a situation with a gun so I don't know how I'd react. I've seen people with guns, but never pointed at me. I saw a guy get shot at Union Square one time on Halloween. A bunch of people got shot actually. It was crazy.

Zed: In Union Square?

Adam: Yeah, it was fucking unbelievable. There were so many people there that you just started hearing the shots go off and you just started seeing people run and then all of a sudden there were bodies on the ground.

Zed: What year was this?

Adam: Maybe 2007 or 2008. Yeah, it was crazy.

Zed: Did you see it start or just see the blasts?

Adam: I heard it and then I saw the bodies on the ground and then I saw a bunch of dudes getting jumped, like six dudes stomping on one dude's head. Actually, I saw one guy get shot in BedStuy. I was with Devin File and my friend Jeff Martin. We just saw a dude run up and just shoot a guy and take off running with the fucking gun in the air. That was a week before I moved. I couldn't believe it.

Zed: Was that a point where you were very happy to be leaving?

Adam: No, people get killed in LA all the time too. It didn't really freak me out like, "Maybe he's going to shoot me." It was just like, "Damn, that was a crazy thing to see."

Zed: I don't know if you can tell the story on this...but do you mind telling the story about a previous apartment and what you were doing to the wall?

Adam: Ha, okay, yeah, I'm sure Brendan told you about this.

Zed: You told me about it.

Adam, Ah, fuck. Yeah. When I was playing poker full time in the apartment I was living in, for some reason I don't know, I ended up jerking off onto the wall one time, the wall next to the bed. It didn't leave a mark or anything. It just wasn't there. I didn't think it was a big deal. Because I think it slid down the wall. This is really disgusting but this is something that happened when I was twenty two.

Zed: This the second story about being twenty two. The age of twenty two is when you're cumming on the wall and starting a successful BMX website.

Adam: This was that era when I was a total fucking loser.

Zed: Was the name The Come Up based on jerking off on the wall?

Adam: No, the name was based on something else. I'll tell that story next. But, yeah, I was jerking off on the wall and didn't see it. I did it a few more times. And then I just got into the habit of doing it for some reason. Then it left this weird stain on the wall. And then I stopped doing it because I thought it was gross. I hadn't gotten around to cleaning it. Brendan came over to my apartment for the first time and saw it and he started dry heaving just because he was so grossed out looking at it. And actually when I left that apartment I still hadn't cleaned it up, I just moved my bed so you couldn't see it. When I left somebody had written their name on the wall so I had to paint over that. So I got a gallon of white paint. I was painting over that and then I just painted over the gross cum stains too. So I layered it in paint.

Zed: Was it just a stain or was it protruding off the wall?

Adam: There was a slight protrusion I think. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I was just young and just fucking getting really weird from playing poker twenty four seven and didn't think it was a big deal.

Zed: Didn't you tell me you tried to scrape it off the wall but you couldn't?

Adam: I don't think I ever tried to scrape it off the wall, I think I just painted over it. It was a long time ago. It's a gross thing.

Zed: There's a nice protrusion of your DNA on the wall somewhere still.

Adam: Maybe somebody else cleaned it up by now. That was in Astoria. If you live in Astoria there's a one in million chance that you might live in that apartment right now. I would hope they cleaned it up better by now.

Zed: They might not know what the protrusion is though.

Adam: They might not...but they could think it was something worse. They could think it was fucking brains and shit.

Zed: Brains and shit might be better than a cum protrusion.

Adam: Haha, yeah, that's so gross. Fuck.

Zed: That could be an alternative name for The Come Up. The Cum Protrusion.

Adam: A lot of people ask about the name and it's funny because there's this kid that I used to be friends with, I'm not going to say his name because he's some nobody, but there was a premiere for one of the Animal videos and there's this dude Ed Pollio. He got on stage at the premiere and he shouted out this kid and said, "Stop adding me on Myspace. You're a fucking weirdo. Stop fucking talking to me, stop trying to be my friend." Everybody was like, "Oh shit." This kid was already not very popular in BMX at that point anyway. And then as we were leaving he saw me in the hallway. I looked at him and laughed, "Oh shit, you got called out haha." And he was like, "Damn son, they're just mad because I came up." And I was just like, "Oh...god." And I would always make fun of him for that because were sorta friends. When I started the site I was actually on A.I.M. with that kid and I was like, "Yo, I'm just gonna call it The Come Up." And he was kinda like, "Ah, fuck you, man. That's lame, making fun of me." And I was like, "Whatever," and somehow it stuck. But it's funny because a lot of people think that the name of the site basically means that it's a way for kids to get noticed and make money. They take it as a very literal thing when in actuality it was a parody of that sentiment. I've seen a lot of kids who basically became famous or started making good amounts of money because of their talent but their talent was mainly portrayed on the site, that's the main way that they got noticed. It's kinda funny, kinda ironic like that. But it definitely wasn't my original intention.

Zed: And OSS...is that backwards SSD?

Adam: We did steal their logo, but that was Brendan's idea I think. Brendan is the singer of Incendiary for those who don't know. I just wanted to start a little parts company in BMX. I had a bunch of dudes who I was riding with who were super good, like Garrett Reeves and Mike Mastroni and Craig Passero. I just thought it'd be fun to do a company. There was a short period where it was supposed to be done really big and official through a company in Canada but that didn't end up working out. It's gone from a whole parts company idea to being a crew of friends. We film together and make videos. It doesn't really make money, I probably lose money on it. We make shirts and hats. We're about to have a tire come out. We have bars. It's more like a small thing. I realize that if I made it a big thing it'd be really bad for The Come Up because a lot of companies would feel threatened by it.

Zed: And then they'd stop advertising with you?

Adam: I haven't actually had that problem but it seems that could happen. I think everybody involved is a lot happier just doing it as a real small thing. There's another company that I'm influenced by called Duo. They just make grips, tires and seats. It's all rubber stuff. That's the direction that we want to go in, just doing smaller things like that and just having it be a crew. We don't just sponsor dudes who are dope riders, it's gotta be dudes who we hang out with.

Zed: More like a club.

Adam: Just a bunch of friends who hang out together. Even somebody like Chris Long who's the Volume Team manager and he's certainly part of it to the extent that he's just one of our friends who we hang out constantly even though he's not a rider in the sense that he doesn't get coverage riding or anything like that. He's just our friend.

Zed: When you moved out I moved into your room. So I was going to ask you, what's the funniest or most outrageous thing that happened in this apartment. I heard a few stories about Dan that were funny but I don't know if you can share them.

Adam: Dan did some insane shit but I wouldn't want to air him out because some of them were so grimey. My favorite one from here...there's this little Asian girl who lived in this neighborhood. One night I went out and got real drunk, this was maybe a year ago, and I just saw her at a party. She just started touching me. And then we went to some bar. I ended up taking a shot and blacking out immediately. At that point I hadn't eaten for maybe eight hours, but right before I started drinking I ate just a big piece of salmon. It was probably a pound of salmon because at the time I was dieting really hard so I was just eating a shitload of meat and not any carbs really. That girl and I ended up going back to the house.

Zed: This house.

Adam: Yeah, in my room. We made out for a second. And then I went into the bathroom and immediately exploded puke all over the bathtub.

Zed: That's an expensive puke. A pound of salmon isn't cheap.

Adam: Right, because that's nine or eight bucks or some shit, right. So I'm just blasting puke. And I'm so drunk that I don't even at that point remember there's a girl in my room. I don't know why I puked in the bathtub instead of the toilet. And then I went back in the room and she was there. She had already called a cab to leave. She was just sitting on the bed listening to me puke. The weird thing about that was that it was so smelly and so hard to get all that salmon out of the fucking tub because it dried up when I went to sleep for ten hours afterwards. But then I woke up in the morning and I was still drunk. I couldn't find my phone and I was just telling Brendan, "I know that fucking girl stole my phone, she stole my phone." I kinda decided that she maybe didn't steal my phone because she added me on Facebook right after but I still thought it was so crazy I lost my phone. But then literally the day before I left to move to California I fucking was cleaning out my room and found the phone under my bed.

Zed: Just under the bed.

Adam: It was in a weird spot beside a book where I couldn't see it or some shit. Actually I can tell a way better story than that too. This is a good one because this is a girl that I met on B9. This is actually probably way better than that other story. There was a girl on B9 who had been posting a bunch just talking about how cool and hot she was and shit. At that point I hadn't really read B9 in maybe three or four years or something. I look at it once in a while. But Brendan hit me up, he was like, "Yo, I bet you could hook up with this girl because she lives in Brooklyn." I hit her on Myspace I think it was. We went out to eat. She's maybe a hundred ten pounds, a hundred fifteen pounds, a little skinny girl and during eating she just mentioned, "The other day I drank four forties." And I was just like, "No. There's no possible way you drank four forties. I can't drink four forties. Or maybe I barely can. But there's no way you can drink four forties." She immediately goes, "I'll go back to your house right now and drink four forties." It was so obvious what was going to happen but I was like, "Alright." We came back and bought eight forties and went to my room. The craziest part was that she did drink all four and I drank three and a half. She didn't puke. But I was sitting on the toilet in Brendan's bathroom shitting, blasting diarrhea into the toilet. And then partway through that I just fell over and just started fucking puking into the bathtub so much.

Zed: Again.

Adam: Just blasting puke into it. I think those might be the only times I ever puked in this house.

Zed: And both times were in the bathtubs.

Adam: Yeah.

Zed: Was this time also a salmon vomit?

Adam: Me and her went to Red Bamboo that night I remember for some reason. So it was probably some type of vegetarian puke.

Zed: Vegetables and tofu vomit.

Adam: Yeah, exactly. That was pretty funny. Yeah.

Zed: Was that the end of the story or is there...?

Adam: Yeah...oh, no, then what was funny is that I puked in the tub and then I think I was able to actually wipe my ass but then I rolled into the bathtub and was laying in my own puke. I just turned on the hot water and it felt so good just coming down on me. And then I passed out. I only woke up because it turned freezing cold. It was freezing me to death. I was shivering and shit. And then I just went to my room. I was alright the next day. I was okay. But that was pretty bad.

Zed: And you found your phone.

Adam: And actually, I'll tell this too, that night while we were in the middle of drinking those four forties we started making out and she started giving me a handjob. And her line she used on me was, "Oh, there's no possible way that we can have sex. Your dick wouldn't fit in my vagina." And I was like, "I bet you it will." And she goes, "No. You can try to put it in just to see if it will fit and I guarantee it won't fit." Then we had sex. That was pretty funny because it was the worst possible pick up line, or way to get sex going I've ever heard a girl use. It was so funny. Yeah.

Zed: That was her challenge.

Adam: It was a challenge, yeah, and so then obviously I put it in. Once it's in I'm not going to take it out. So we ended up continuing to do it.

Zed: Was she implying that her vagina was so tight?

Adam: Yeah, she was saying basically, "You have a larger than average dick and my vagina is so small that you couldn't do it." And I was like, "Well, we could try, I bet you it will." I don't remember it being particularly hard to get it in anyways. I guess she thought that was a good line or something.

Zed: Have you ever tried using the line in reverse? "I bet I couldn't put my dick inside of you."

Adam: No, I've never thought of it like that. I've never met a vagina that was so tight that I couldn't have sex with it. That would be a pretty shocking thing to find.

Zed: Alright, is there anything else I didn't ask you about? Anything you want to put out there.

Adam: Anything you want to ask I'll answer. I don't really have anything I'm promoting too hard besides the website and the company. Brendan's band. I'm going on tour with them in California for a week.

Zed: You can see Adam at Sound & Fury. He can give you more details about all of these stories.

Adam: Yeah, you can ask me whatever you want. It'll be funny because I haven't been to a hardcore show in a real long time. So I'm sure it'll be pretty funny going to seven of them in a week.

Zed: Thanks.