Curren Caples Week Day 1: Exclusive Interview

Welcome back to the latest installment of Vans Rider Week. This week we focus on Ventura, California’s and Flip Skateboards's golden-haired teen heartthrob, Curren Caples. For more than half a decade we've been watching Curren not grow and stack tons of online footage and photos in the magazines and yet he's never had a full-fledged interview before. With Curren skating in the Pro-Tec Pool Party this weekend we thought it was about time that he be sat down to answer the questions people have been wondering for years, like, is he ever going to grow, has he ever Frenched a girl and is he related to any vampires or werewolves?
We hope you enjoy the first of five days of Curren Caples coverage.

Where are you from? What’s it like?
I’m from Ventura, California. It’s mainly beachy. There’s not too big of a skate scene but it’s got the best weather on Earth. I live there and mainly surf and skate there and hang out.

You’re not originally from there, right?
No, I’m from where Cody Green was born in Akron, Ohio. I was just born there, lived there for two years and then we moved to Oxnard, California. I don’t remember anything from Akron from when I was little. My sister, my mom and my grandparents were all born there. My dad is from the San Fernando Valley and my mom moved out to LA when she was 10, they met when they were 18, at 25 they got married and moved back to Ohio and had me and my sister and came back out to California.

You go back there at all?
I’ve been there once when I was 13. It was cool. I liked the way all the streets were set up; it just seemed like there was a lot of land. I only skated one park there but I think there’s a lot of stuff to skate out there. I was out there with my grandparents so I didn’t really skate too much.

Your grandparents don’t skate?
No.



I heard you have a very famous uncle.
Oh, Eddie Munster. He’s my dad’s half brother. It’s pretty funny. I’ve only seen him twice and I never really watched that Munsters show so I don’t really know what he’s like.

Did he look like a werewolf when you met him?
No, the first time I met him was my granddad’s funeral and he was wearing a bowling shirt and everybody thinks he was drunk.

How did you get into skating?
I started on my own. No one really got me into it or anything. Where I used to live there were a lot of kids and a bunch started scootering and I got a scooter and then they started skateboarding so I got a skateboard. That’s pretty much how I started but for the first two years I skated barefoot in front of my house. I remember my parents telling me my feet were destroyed from griptape. I was doing ollies and stuff barefoot.



You seem like a natural tranny skater, how did you get into that?
The park that I used to skate every day in Ventura, Skate Street, was basically all tranny. They had 14-foot walls and stuff and I’d go there every day after school. My mom and dad would take me and stay there the whole time. I was 5 or 6 when I first started skating there and it shut down when I was 10. I wish it was still there now; it was so sick. The park was the best indoor park ever. The gnarliest thing I remember seeing there was watching some dude break his leg trying a noseslide on this hubba and his leg went over and his leg was snapped completely sideways. I know when I was little I got in fights with kids there too. I remember one of my friends almost pushed me off that 14-foot wall and we got into a full on fight. He was like 6-feet tall and I’m like 2-foot.

Did you ever win a fight? You don’t seem like you can fight.
No. I’ve only been in three fights and they were a long time ago. I remember I won one. The other ones I got my ass beat.

Did you get your ass beat for messing with people? I know you’re pretty good at messing with people.
Yeah, it was probably something like that. I was probably just talking crap or something. Me and Jake [Anderson], that’s just the way we are, I guess.

I know you torture [Andrew] Langi pretty hard, right?
Yeah, Langi would come to my house and play the worst music I’ve ever heard and I’d just torture him. He was down at my house because we were going to a Text Yoself for the Berrics and he just played this one song over and over and over. I told everyone that I was going to call him out on the Text Yo Self and I did and he was so bummed.

You had Auby Taylor staying at your house for a while. How did you mess with him?
It’s more like him messing with me. He was constantly trying to frame me for stuff to get me in trouble. I remember he put Saran wrap on the toilet and stuff like that and he’d blame me and my mom would get mad at me.

What did you do to get back at him?
He pees sitting down for some reason. He’d always get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom so I’d pee all over the toilet seat and he would just sit in it. You would hear him yell in the middle of the night.

Didn’t you almost get your mom run off the road for messing with people?
Yeah, it was me and Jake and we were flipping off cars. We were only 12-years-old. We flipped this one dude off and he got super mad and started chasing us and sped up all gnarly and cut us off really bad. It was kind of scary. After that we were just waving at people. My mom didn’t know we were flipping people off the entire drive from Ventura to LA; she had no clue. Up until then it was funny because people were flipping us off back and that guy just got so bummed.

Jake goes to school across the street from your house. Don’t you mess with him while he’s at school?
He doesn’t go there any more, he missed too many days of school and was forced to get homeschooled. He actually had to go to court; he had to pay a fine for truancy. The school system where I live is super stupid. If you miss two days of school you get suspended for a day; it’s the weirdest thing ever. And you have to have a doctor’s note. Jake missed too many days because he went to Tampa and I think his parents had to pay a $400 fine and he had to pay another $100 fine; it’s crazy.



What was the last grade you completed?
It was 5th grade. When I went to 6th grade I was going to go on the Flip Feast Tour and they wouldn’t let me miss school and I was going to miss 19 days so I had to be homeschooled. I’ve been homeschooled ever since.

Do you miss it at all?
Not really. I hated middle school.

Do you think you’re getting the same education at home?
Me and Louie [Lopez] are in the same school and we can set up how we want the school to be and we did it just to graduate and that’s it. Everything is basic. I’m taking consumer math; I don’t have to take really gnarly algebra.

Are you actually learning stuff? Or are you David Loy?
No, I’m not David Loy. My mom does the lessons with me, I don’t do them by myself like David does. I have dyslexia and it’s hard for me to do the lessons on my own because sometimes I’ll understand it a different way than it actually says. I don’t get everything I read so she helps me with a lot of it. I think it was in 3rd grade they realized I had dyslexia. I was behind. You’d read a book and take a quiz and I was way behind in those. The books I was reading and getting 100% on were 2nd grade books. I was in Sylvan Learning Center for a year and that did nothing. My mom always talks about how she put me in Sylvan and she could have been driving a Porsche for as much money as it cost and it did nothing for me.

It seems like your mom and your dad are super-supportive of you in everything.
Yeah, they’ve backed whatever I’ve tried to do 100%.

But you’re little so mom has to go on the skate tours with you, right?
Usually but this Flip tour I’m on now is the first trip I’ve ever been on alone.

Are you bouncing off the walls?
No, I’m trying to keep it as mellow as I can so I don’t get tortured.

So you’re not doing kegs stands and smoking crack yet?
No. I don’t want to get messed with. We found a dead snake yesterday and they put it in Luan [Oliveira]’s sleeping bag and Luan thinks it was me because Louie told him it was me and Ben [Nordberg]. Now he thinks it was me and he keeps saying, “I’m going to shit on everything you own.”



How did you get hooked up with Flip? When did you first meet Geoff Rowley?
I was 7-years-old. I was at the Volcom Park; the one they had in the big warehouse. I mainly skated vert then and I remember Tom Penny was skating the street; I actually have it on video. But then I met Geoff again when I was 12-years-old at the other Volcom indoor park and that’s when he asked me to ride for Flip. I remember I was riding for Powell and the Flip team manager at the time asked if I wanted to ride for Flip and I was like, “Oh, I just got on Powell and I don’t want to just leave like that.” A year later I got on Flip. I remember when Geoff asked me my dad was like, “Ok, the only way Curren will ride for Flip is if you come to our demo tomorrow.” We had a demo the next day at my dad’s skateshop and Geoff was like, “Alright.”

Your dad strong-armed Geoff Rowley into coming to your demo?
Yeah. It’s funny.

Tell me about your dad’s shop.
It’s called Momentum Ride Shop in Oxnard. I was 6-years-old when he opened it up so he had it 10 years now. It’s doing well right now. We went from a place where we were paying, like, 7 grand for rent to a place where we’re paying $1200 and it’s really cool. Instead of everything just going to rent now it can go towards more product. He’s happy.

Has he ever made you work the shop?
No, I used to when I was little. I remember around Christmas time I’d be there every day and I’d little set up 10 boards a day. I used to hang out there every day but now I just go in there every now and then.

As a result do you love or hate gripping boards?
I love gripping boards, I hate putting them together though. I’ve had so many bad experiences with the drill we had at the shop. I’d almost break my wrist. One time I went to screw in a bolt and the thing whipped around and hit me in the face. Now I only use three bolts in each truck because I hate putting my board together.

Daewon only uses two.
Gnarly. And he doesn’t even use the top busing. You really don’t need all four bolts.



How far is your dad’s shop from your TF?
Maybe like five miles away. The way that came about was when Skate Street closed down my parents started driving me everywhere to go skate and they got sick of driving an hour to go skate a park and then me not wanting to skate when I got there. So when I was 13 we came up with the idea to make our own park in Oxnard. We searched around for a good six months and then some guy was like, “I got a place in Oxnard that’s 3000 sq. ft. and it’s $1500.” So that was it. It’s like 15 minutes from my house. It’s sick. I just wish I had a bowl. We looked into doing it but for a good bowl it’s like 10 to 15,000 grand.



You have your driver’s license yet?
I have a permit but it’s invalid right now because I haven’t done the 3 two-hour lessons. When I get back from this trip I have an appointment set up to do those.

Since you don’t have a license you haven’t driven any chicks to your TF for private-time?
No. Everyone is always saying we should bring chicks back to the warehouse. It’s pretty funny.

Would you even know what to do with a chick at the warehouse?
No.

I heard you’re super nervous around girls.
I was but not really anymore. I’m fine now. I didn’t know what to say so I’d just be really quiet. I was really nervous and I was, like, shaking.



Do you remember your first kiss at Woodward?
Yeah. That was because of Louie and David Loy. A bunch of gymnast girls were walking by and David stopped them and was like, “Give Curren a kiss!” That’s how it started. Louie and David made me go one the vert ramp with her and sit down and kiss.

Was it a kiss-kiss?
No, just a peck.

No tongue?
No.

Have you ever kissed a girl with tongue?
Yeah.

GROSS! I heard everywhere you go the girls are falling over you.
Not really. It was crazy this year when I went to Australia though. I’d be on random streets, not even near events or anything and girls would be asking to take photos with me; it just feels so weird. I brought one of my friends along and he was tripping out because even at gas stations girls were laughing and taking photos. It’s funny because half my Instagram is girls from Australia. I think it’s because I skated in The Australian Open and Hurley put it on and they advertised it a bunch with my photo or skating.



Do you think maybe they just thought you were Justin Bieber?
Oh, I was telling all the girls that my friend was Justin Bieber’s backup dancer and they were all believing us. He was getting so bummed because all the girls kept asking him to dance.

What got you past the nervousness around girls?
I have no clue. Everyone was just giving me crap because I didn’t hang out with girls and that’s how it started. I just got over it. I thought it was such a big deal to talk to girls and I was always so nervous. Finally I was like, “What am I doing? It’s not that big of a deal.”

Yeah, they’re just like dudes. Except without wieners.
Yeah, but I just had such a fear.



It’s probably because they bite. What happened that time you told me you got knocked out in Huntington?
We were riding bikes down on the boardwalk. It was me, David Loy, his little brother, my sister and cousin and we were going to this one hotel because they had a water slide there. We were doing burnouts in the sand and all of a sudden this guy comes up behind me and kicks me off my bike and socks me in the face for no reason and then goes to get back on his bike. I was in shock. We did nothing wrong this time. We didn’t say anything. David Loy threw his bike in front of the guy and the guy started choking David and David had just broken his wrists that day. This was like a 50-year-old man and he was like 6’4”. It was the weirdest thing ever. There was a rave going on on the beach and me and my cousin ran and got these two massive, 500lb security guards. The guy tried to get on his bike and ride away and those guys picked him up by his wheels and threw him onto the curb and they were like, “Sit down! You’re not going anywhere!” The cops showed up and he got arrested and he just got a misdemeanor and they let him go that night. The guy should have gotten a felony for what he did. He was completely wasted, drunk in public, he was on a bike so that’s a DUI in Southern California and then he assaulted kids.

Did Louie get arrested when he punched you in the stomach?
I don’t remember that happening. He tries to act all tough.

Do you and Louie have that weird disease like Webster where you’re not going to age or get any taller?
Right now I’m starting to grow, I’ve gotten a bit taller recently but I don’t know about Louie.

How old is he? Like 30?
Yeah, he’s 30.

And you’re what? 21? 22?
16.



You like you’re 9. You’re 16 and been on Flip for 5 years, why no major interviews yet?
I have no idea. No one has really asked me to do anything. I’m doing one now but I usually get regular shots in the mags or in tour articles.

Do you think it’s been that you’ve always been a little kid and everyone is waiting for you to grow up?
Yeah, I think that has a lot to do with it. They want to wait until I can put out something worthy.

At night when you say your prayers before bed in your little pajamas do you ever look up at the sky and wish upon the first star you see that you were older?
Not that I was older just that I was taller so that I could do more stuff and have more pop.



This weekend is the Pro-Tec Pool Party at the Combi Bowl. How do you think you’re going to do?
I don’t know. I’m scared. Every time I watch that contest it’s so gnarly. You just watch guys collide and stuff. You can’t see who is in the other bowl, that’s what scares me. I’ll just try and do as much as I can.

You seem like you usually do pretty well in contests but you don’t take them that serious. You just go out and cruise around.
I don’t know why but in contests I don’t really try everything I can do, I kind of hold back. If I make it to semis I’ll try my hardest but for qualifiers I guess I do just cruise around. I like contests but I just do what I need to do to get by in contests, I guess. I’d rather just be skating a regular session.



Well if you don’t win the Pro-Tec contest, who do you think will win?
I think Pedro Barros will win it again. He seems like he’s going to win everything. He’s good.