Meeting... Medium Skate Mag!

Joel Watamaniuk: The idea came sometime in Autumn of 2015, probably during a session in Toronto or Detroit. Will and I were discussing doing a zine for Love Skateboards,  something small that would focus on the product line up and the Love team. We had been running Love ads in Kingshit Magazine but I thought that it made more sense to focus our time and funds into a project that was entirely ours, which was also a suggestion of Will’s.

Before we started it, the conversation quickly changed from doing that to doing a zine focusing on brands and skaters that we were hyped on who weren’t just related to Love Skateboards. From there, it snowballed into starting our own low-key skateboard mag, Medium. We saw other people around the world creating magazines that were focused more on the creative aspects of skateboarding and we wanted to incorporate our friends and the photographers we knew into our own project.

Will Jivcoff: Medium is our excuse to get involved with the type of skateboarding we really believe in. Whether that’s an artist or skateboarder we’re really stoked on, or just a friend of ours who we believe in, we want to give those people and their work a platform. Magazines in Canada are traditionally bound to it’s borders and don’t often print skateboarding unless it’s based here. It’s rare to see a magazine like Solo, Grey or Free here in Canada so Medium is also a solution to those issues as well.

LSM: Where are you guys based, and is there anything in particular that prompted you to get such an enterprise started?

Joel: Will is based in Toronto and I’m about an hour outside of it in Kitchener. The lack of quality print content available in Canada was a huge factor in deciding to try this out. Years ago we had Color Magazine, which to this day may have been the best skateboard magazine produced. They went under and since then there’s been a huge void for anything artistically driven or focused on the creative side. I’m not claiming to fill that void, we just want to offer a quality printed magazine to an audience that may be looking for a bit more substance in a skateboard periodical.

"It would also be really nice if this project broke even one day too"

LSM: How much room do you think there is for print media to thrive on in 2017? What are your goals with this publication?

Will: As far as how much room there is for print media, I think it’s a tight squeeze, but what Joel and I found out from our first issue is that as long as there are passionate people pushing a project, there will be room for it. Sure, this isn’t the ‘glory days’ of print advertising but neither of us were around for that and we’re going to keep making magazines for as long as we decide to. Our first issue was thirty-two pages, half the size of our second issue, and the response we got was totally unexpected in the best way possible. We just thought people wouldn’t give a shit but at the time there was only one choice for skateboard media in Canada. I think people were just tired and bored with what was happening and ready for something new.

As far as our goals go, we want the magazine to grow organically. We want to feature skateboarding and people we are genuinely stoked on and fill the pages with quality content. We’re passionate about our culture and we absolutely want that to be the influence over what we do. Oh, it would also be really nice if this project broke even one day too.

LSM: Will, you've worked for King Shit before (back when it was still King Shit), right?

Will: I was the staff photographer at Kingshit Mag for two years, and then Managing Editor for two years after that. I didn’t agree with the owner, his intentions and the direction the magazine was heading so I quit without a plan just before Christmas in 2016. At the time, I was burnt out from the situation at hand and was pretty certain I wanted nothing to do with magazines.

I bought my first DSLR when I was sixteen and started shooting photos of my friends in Kitchener, Ontario where I grew up. It’s a smaller, rougher city that’s lacking on spots so it forced us to be as resourceful as possible when it came to making something skatable. There was always a group of us, albeit small, that were down to try and make something happen. Joel and Isaac (at Love) were the older guys at the time and my mentors, and they really helped me see the potential for skateboarding outside of Kitchener. That sounds weird now, but I was still in high school, had never been on an airplane and my mind definitely wasn’t thinking about much beyond school and my local skatepark.

I went on my first skate trip to Houston, Texas with Isaac and Joel and from that had my first published photo in Concrete Magazine when I was eighteen. From there, I kept freelancing for skateboard magazines within Canada. At the time there was four of them, which is crazy to think about, but I was able to support myself enough of that I only had to work a real job for six months of the year so I could travel and shoot stories for magazines the other half of the year. It was the teenage dream.

"Packing nuts and bolts in a windowless warehouse for ten hours a day [...] I just about lost my mind. I knew I had to make a move"

During this time I also interned at SBC Skateboard Magazine under Andrew Norton. He was the managing editor at the time and he really instilled quality skate photo ethics in me along with showing me how a magazine should be run. I also learned what it really meant to transcribe audio interviews by doing hours, and hours, and hours of it.

When I was about twenty, I was packing nuts and bolts in a windowless warehouse for ten hours a day in Kitchener and I just about lost my mind. I knew I had to make a move and do something, so I moved to Toronto when I was twenty-one, where I am now.

LSM: Love Skateboards and Medium - what is you guys' relationship like? May you briefly introduce the skaters who ride for, or are somehow affiliated with, the brand?

Joel: The relation between Love and Medium is very closely knit. The three of us, that’s Isaac, Will and I, have been friends for over a decade. Isaac and I were Will’s test subjects when he got into photography and we’ve always hung out, skated together, watched him grow in his art and he’s watched us build our brand up. Working together on Medium and Love has been a very natural thing growing out of years of close friendship, a deep respect for each other and a total trust in one another. Love obviously has a presence in Medium but the magazine isn’t controlled by it. Isaac runs Love, that’s his thing, Will and I run Medium, that’s our baby. A partnership between the two is just very natural. We’re all hyped on one another and our respective projects and it’s a natural course to push each other.

LSM: Between the France trip and all those contributors from all over the world being featured in this second issue of Medium (Alexey Lapin, Jonathan Mehring, Nicolas Huynh...), it looks like you guys really want to expand beyond your local scope. How would you like to see the magazine grow?

"It's important to support those around you who are pursuing their own paths"

With Medium, we take a look at the types of skateboarding happening around the world, put it together in one package and present it in hopes that it shows our readers someone or something new. This isn’t a one-off theme for our second issue; this is what Medium is about.   

LSM: What are your inspirations among the already existing publications from all over the world, any influences or just stuff you're stoked on perhaps?

Joel: For inspiration, I loved Color and 43 when they were around, and The Skateboarder’s Journal from Australia. It’s a text heavy skateboard related book that’s either a bi-annual or quarterly. I’m stoked on Sergej Vutuc not just for his artistic style, but his DIY work ethic too.

Will: Yeah, I wish 43 was still around. Everything about it was quality from front to back, down to the ink that was being used. Otherwise, I love zines and seeing photographers (skate and otherwise) working on their own independent projects. I think it’s super important to support those around you who are pursuing their own paths. I get a big kick out of traveling to new, weird places in the name of skateboarding to see what I can dig up too. I’ve pitched some weird locations for skate trips and am thankful for the people who have believed in me so far.

As far as future trips go, right now we’re working on planning a trip to Azores so if any Portuguese locals can lend us their insight about skating there, hit me up! After that, Russia and eastern Europe are on the to-do list for Summer 2018.

"We thought they were the shit; in reality, they were pricks"

Joel: We’ve got an edit coming out for the Paris trip we did with Medium this past summer and I’m also working on a Love video which is always a work in progress. We’ve been working on it for the summer and I think we’re going to take the next one to film before we put it out. I hate putting anything out that feels rushed or incomplete, so we’re going to do that.

LSM: Talking doing things right, starting this off with you guys, I definitely forgot about my favorite classic background introduction question... So to close this off now, how, when and where did you guys first took up skateboarding?

Will: It was in Kitchener and I was 10 years old when a kid from the next-door apartment complex showed up to play with a holographic Star Wars skateboard. He was raving about how they were on sale for $20 at Walmart so I went home that night and begged my mom for one. She came home from work the next day with one and sealed my fate.

Joel: My first skate memory for me was these two shit-head kids on my block growing up in Kitchener Ontario. Mike and Steve. They were a couple years older than Isaac and I and they were your typical asshole kids who had a jump ramp in the street and cops showing up at their houses regularly... in reality they were pricks. We thought they were the shit and we would just ask to try their boards. On our 12th birthdays, Isaac and I got boards from the local shop and the rest is history. Its been 19 years now and I still love every second on a board.

Matt Roberts, frontside heelflip. Ph.: Will Jivcoff