I was always interested in skateboarding, BMX bike riding, flipping, gymnastics. Anything with tumbling, turning, twisting, and extreme sports.
I was playing tackle football in the street at five years old. Always being physical. Always being tough, just like a man's man. It was just always about being tough.
Growing up in Harlem, I was always in the parks playing ball.
I was always doing something physical. My brothers and I used to have handstand contests. We'd walk around the projects on our hands and see who could get the farthest. I was always playing football with them, basketball or racing in the street.
In Dogtown, skateboards are like bikes to the Chinese.
You know, when I was a young boy I used to play baseball in my back yard or in the street with my brothers or the neighborhood kids. We used broken bats and plastic golf balls and played for hours and hours.
I used to stay near Hazra Law College and play a lot of street cricket.
Skateboarding was everything to us growing up. It changes the way you see the world: you spend all day looking for ditches.
Where in normal neighborhoods, they would play stick ball and hockey and baseball, we used to slap box and bring boxing gloves down the street and box each other.
The last few years I became a lot more into sports. Growing up, the sports I liked were independent sports, like skateboarding. I was really into skateboarding, and not necessarily team televised sports.
This is something I've always wanted to do- to skate through a part of New York City that thousands of people ride through every week, feeling the energy of one of the original stomping grounds of street skating.
Street football is very important.
I'm a street footballer and you still get street footballers from Africa, South Africa and really poor parts of Europe.
The Varzea is kind of like street basketball in America or like the semi-professional football leagues in Europe. The pitches are all dirt, and you're playing against the marmanjo - the 'hard men.' It's known for being extremely physical.
