Interviewing Gnarstalgia Creator and Skateboarder, Brian Denison
Brian and I both grew up in the Dallas area and around similar crowds/parks, however we’ve only skated together a handful of times. Despite this, we’ve always kept in touch. About 6 months ago, we got on a call together after speaking online since he has since moved to Colorado, (I’m envious, btw) and we talked about skateboarding and current projects. We quickly realized that our interests in creating something out of all our past skate stories, old footage, and current skills were very much aligned.
Among other projects and ideas, Brian went on to tell me about his new website Gnarstalgia which came with the tagline, “20 years. 80 tapes. 160 hours of stoke.” This, of course, references the 160 hours of skateboarding he has transferred from VHS-C, Hi-8, and Digi-8 tapes into organized and edited videos. After checking it out, I was amazed how much work he put into his edits and the website as a whole. I became super excited about the possibilities of this, (until now) lost footage. We decided to collaborate on a bunch of future skateboarding-inspired projects including my Lost Skate Spots series, some upcoming documentaries & videos, as well as this interview which will focus on his website and Brian himself. Enjoy.
Tell me a little about how you got into skateboarding?
“Haha, yeah, I started skating in early 1999 after playing the snowboarding game Cool Boarders 3 on the first Playstation. I was pretty good at it and was sure I would be good in real life too if I could only get the chance to ride one, but I lived in Corpus Christi, TX, which is about as far from snow as you can get. So my mom told me if I learned to skateboard first, she’d take me snowboarding. I busted out an old Nash I had gotten when I was six and literally rode it till the wheels fell off. I remember one, along with its individual ball bearings rolling down the driveway, but from there, I was hooked.
Soon after I started, we moved up to Dallas and I would go ride out in front of my house and at the local school. By then, THPS had just come out and the popularity was exploding. We had a whole grip of kids, like 15-20 that would skate with us. Around that same time I started going to Eisenbergs, and that’s really where I started to meet all the homies. I was there almost every day, and skating solidified into pretty much the only thing I cared about.”
What's your involvement/history with
Dallas Skate Crew?
“I knew a lot of the dudes from skating at Eisenbergs. Mostly Juan, Anthony, Murph, and folks like that. But I really spent most of my time hanging out with Sturgeon, Severs, Kyle, James, Shawn, and Jojo. There were a bunch of smaller, random skate crews back then, and they all had different names. Even though I lived in Plano (ugh, I know), I spent most of my time in Garland and Rowlett. I remember Corey Rosales was all about “RSC” - Rowlett Skate Crew. So a lot of us repped that for a while.
But as I got older, I was spending more time with the DSC dudes, especially Darby and David Pool. By then it seemed like a lot of the crews were all homies anyway, and DSC was definitely the main one. I had gotten into graffiti and learned how to draw DSC in like a thousand different ways on all my school notebooks. Like a nerdy little kid, I’m pretty sure I asked Anthony or Juan or somebody if it was cool if I rep DSC too, and they were like “Yeah man of course!” So I was stoked, haha.
Pretty funny in retrospect, but from my perspective we were all just one big ass group of friends and it was fun to have something like that that held the crew together. I remember Anthony had written a small bit about the history of DSC on this super old website too. Probably super long defunct now. But it was about how the whole thing got started when they were young too. OG shit. It’s rad to be a part of it all, and much respect to all the homies.”
What was one of your favorite skating memories from filming?
“Dude, I’ve got so many! But the best one probably has to do with when Kyle Estes ollied the old 16 stair at Richardson High School. I think it’s a 20 now, but in the same spot. I remember Kyle was only 12 at the time, so the set was literally 4 more stairs than he was old. Insane! He was obsessed with Baker back then, and we all were like oh shit! This is definitely gonna get you on the team! He repped Baker hard, and had also just done a PERFECT backside flip down the Garland 9, so dude was on fire.
I think it was Kyle, Sturgeon, Shawn, Jojo and me there that day. After like 10 slams, he ended up getting the rollaway (check out the footage below!). But a few months after that, another local, Tyler Maguffee, told me he wanted to fs board it. Tyler, Jojo and me went to go check it out and ended up bondo-ing the crack in front of the rail so he could hit it. But as luck would have it, we got caught. We tried to play it off, like we were students there who had tripped and fallen on the stairs and wanted to fix the crack. Security did NOT fall for it though, haha. The next time we went back, they had skate-stopped it. SHIT! Sad to say it, but don’t think it ever got skated again.
Fast forward a decade or so, and I’m working on Gnarstalgia, but one of the only tapes I can’t find is the one with Kyle’s 16 stair ollie. So bummed. Then one day while I was hanging out with David Pool, I told him about the project I was working on, and how I wish I had that tape. By some magic of the universe he looked me dead in my eye and goes “Bro… I know where it is.” He then walked over to a safe, cracked it open, and inside was not just the “Kyle 16 Stair Ollie” tape, but also several of his own that he had filmed. What a lucky break! We took the photo below out of sheer disbelief. So huge shoutout to David for keeping that thing safe all these years.”
What skateboarders, pro or otherwise,
inspire you most?
“My favorite skater right now is probably Robert Neal. Dude has the sickest style, and always looks like he’s having the best time on and off his board. But in general, I’m just glad to still get to skate as much as I do. And to still have plenty of other people to skate with who love it just as much as me. It’s those who never lost the love for it who I find most inspiring.”
Tell me about your recently released project Gnarstalgia.com and how it came to be.
“So I spent a ton of time filming in the early 2000s. I would capture my footage each week, and edit all kinds of montages and sponsor-me tapes for the homies. I was on pace to release a video around ‘03 or ‘04. But this was during the time peer-to-peer sharing sites like Limewire and Kazaa were super popular. So in addition to logging multiple gigs of footage onto my poor little 56k computer, I was also downloading tons of other shit that was riddling my computer with viruses. And of course, I was not smart enough to back up my work on an external hard drive. The computer crashed and I lost practically all of it. The only things that were salvaged were the original tapes and any edits I had transferred over to them.
I then spent the next year re-uploading everything and backing it up on external hard drives, completely determined to still release the video. But of course, I didn’t learn my lesson about Limewire and Kazaa, and kept downloading shit. Before long, the computer AND the external hard drives were also destroyed by viruses and I lost it all again. That pretty much killed any fire I had left in me, and I just gave up on filming and editing for a long, long time. It wouldn’t be till college that I started to dabble again.
But in all the years since I lost the edits, I knew I wanted to make a video using the old shoeboxes full of VHS-C, Hi-8, and Digi-8 tapes I had sitting in the closet. I knew it would be a years-long endeavor, so I kept putting it off. Around 2018 though, I realized I was coming up on 20 years of skating, and releasing a video with all that long-lost footage seemed the perfect way to celebrate. By then, I had lost touch with a lot of the main people in the video. I’m sure they never expected to see that footage again. Out of nowhere, the name Gnarstalgia just popped in my head and the thought of surprising everyone with it got me super amped to get started.
But it took a full year to make it through all 80 tapes, capturing each fun clip and trick. From there, I had to start editing. I barely knew how to use Premiere, so I spent tons of time watching tutorials on YouTube to learn how to use overlays, mattes, color correction, logo animations, and troubleshoot countless problems that popped up. I really enjoyed it too. I was having a blast! But after the pandemic began, I decided to double down. This was the perfect time to dive in and really finish the whole thing. Finally, 2.5 years after I started the project, the whole thing was done. Two trailers, a 20-year recap, Eisenbergs Edit, Street Edit, Park Edit and Demo Edit. Plus a website featuring tons of long-lost montages and video parts from some of Dallas’ most well-known skaters. And all starting with some of their earliest footage. I think the name Gnarstalgia really does capture it. It truly is 20 years. 80 tapes. 160 hours of stoke.”
Where can people connect with you online and check out your stuff? [LINKS BELOW]
“You can find all 55+ videos on gnarstalgia.com, as well as the Gnarstalgia YouTube.
Follow @gnarstalgia_video on Instagram for highlights, unused clips, and tons of other old footage submitted from all your favorite Dallas skaters and filmers.
P.S. Huge shoutout to Jon Snyder (@Mini_Ramp), Mo Duncan Jr (@ModuncanJr), David Pool (@Timothy_Leary), Darby (@Darby_McVay), and everyone else for contributing old Dallas footage as well. And to Eric Kuhns for all the killer stuff he’s been putting out the last few years as well. You guys have made the project even more rewarding and enjoyable than I ever could have expected. Cheers! And keep skating 🤙”
Final Thoughts:
I’d like to thank Brian for taking the time to do this interview and I can’t recommend his website enough. Dallas has produced so many shredders and Gnarstalgia.com shows off so much of what has made the skateboarding scene here so amazing. I’d also like to add that this was one of my favorite interviews I’ve ever done and I can’t wait to create and collab more with Brian.
Additionally, check out the latest Lost Skate Spots episode where I discuss the now shutdown, Freestyle Skatepark. We hear Brian tell us a story from back in the day as well as share some footage for an edit he filmed that includes Bam Margera, Ed Templeton, Billy Marks, tons of locals, and more.
