TYSHAWN JONES IS HERE FOR THE LONG RUN.

In an exclusive interview for HYPEBEAST Magazine: The Mania Issue. HYPEBEAST Features - Go in-depth and learn more about the culture. [HYPEBEAST]( [Features]( May 31, 2019 [TYSHAWN JONES IS HERE FOR THE LONG RUN.]( In an exclusive interview for HYPEBEAST Magazine: The Mania Issue. Ryan Plett / Zander Taketomo With his arms victoriously stretched to the heavens, eyes locked beyond the lens and into the viewer’s soul, rolling brazenly out of the frame into some infinite glory, Tyshawn Jones concluded Supreme’s second full-length skate video, BLESSED. He irreverently wore a do-rag and Supreme box logo tee, Jay-Z’s “Hova Song” playing in perfect, glorious syncopation. In that moment, all was right with the world. The best New York skater in a generation, skating for New York’s iconic fashion brand, to the tune of New York’s greatest artist. Young, gifted, and black. As both a skater and a native New Yorker, this was like watching waves align, the summer solstice, and The Resurrection—all at once. I knew I was witnessing history, and that I was a part of it. And that’s because I knew what it took to get there. I grew up in New York City, downtown, removed from Chinatown’s chaos or Alphabet City’s hustle, in a working-class Jewish-Dominican pocket called Two Bridges. By most comparisons, it’s a quiet area, blissfully stuck in a perpetual Sabbath. Canes outnumber strollers. The closest subway station is a 15-minute walk from my mom’s apartment. But Monday through Friday, I took buses, trains, and, when I was late, taxis to my school on the Upper East Side. It was an hour away, but getting there was important. My mother, put through private school on a receptionist’s salary, knew the power of an education in that zip code. For years, I was a passenger in the city I was born. I watched brown project buildings, clumsily repaired with mismatched bricks, transition into majestic, vine-covered prewars on FDR Drive. On the 6 train, I watched my friends’ custom-stitched L.L. Bean bags go home with their owners, my years-old North Face still soaking whatever lives on a train car floor. Ryan Plett / Zander Taketomo That’s how I saw New York: point A to point B, living life from the cabin—not the cockpit. But when I was 14, that all changed. A friend brought a skateboard to school. Another 14 years later, I’m still hooked. Skateboarding totally changes your worldview. Not just how you dress or talk, but in a way that unlocks the potential in everything from weather to architecture. From what I hear about acid trips, the effects are similarly profound and permanent. If you ride the 6 train above Manhattan, you eventually reach Soundview, where Jones grew up. It’s a working-class Hispanic and black neighborhood in the East Bronx. He got his first board from Target, a Kryptonics setup, with $60 his mother gave him, his uncle, and his brother. Jones first started skating in Hackensack, New Jersey, while living with his father, but started taking it seriously when he moved back to Soundview. ”I learned the streets and all that in the Bronx,” he says. “I learned how to travel around my city there.” Jones was 10 when he started, but progressed quickly. Although he was skating with older friends, he outgrew the obstacles near his house. A friend drove him to River Avenue Skate Park, near Yankee Stadium, a bit closer to Manhattan. “The people I was first skating with, they wanted to stay in the Bronx—they didn’t want to go anywhere,” he remembers. “I wanted to progress.” People from around the city gravitated to the River Avenue park, and eventually he met kids in other boroughs. By the age of 12, Jones learned to take the train himself and visited friends in posh TriBeCa and Battery Park, hubs for skating in their own right. [READ FULL ARTICLE ON HYPEBEAST →](   [More HYPEBEAST Features]( [[FASHION]( [8 Drops You Don't Want to Miss This Week]( [[FOOTWEAR]( [Church and Streetwear: A Match Made in Heaven?]( [Get The App Free on iOS and Android]( Follow --------------------------------------------------------------- 2019 HYPEBEAST Limited. All Rights Reserved [Manage Subscriptions]( You are receiving this email because you have subscribed to HYPEBEAST's marketing emails. You can unsubscribe from us any time by clicking [here](. It may take 48 hours to complete the unsubscribe process. Contact subscription@hypebeast.com for assistance on any enquiries. Our Mailing Address: HYPEBEAST, 10F, KC 100, 100 Kwai Cheong Road, Kwai Chung, Hong Kong