Jason Dill Is Proving There’s No Right Way to Grow Up

The Frontman of Fucking Awesome for Hypebeast Magazine: The Rhythms Issue. HYPEBEAST Features - Go in-depth and learn more about the culture. [HYPEBEAST]( [Features]( September 20, 2019 [Jason Dill Is Proving There’s No Right Way to Grow Up]( The Frontman of Fucking Awesome for Hypebeast Magazine: The Rhythms Issue. Kevin Wong | HYPEBEAST “Wait... What’d you say?” Just like that, my conversation with Jason Dill—one of my favorite professional skateboarders—painfully, awkwardly, stopped. A lump swelled in my throat. We’d been talking for 20 minutes, and although I’d covered only three of my questions, everything was going great. Until I questioned his soccer abilities. We’d been meandering: about how I grew up in the Manhattan neighborhood he used to frequent, a fight that happened in front of Fucking Awesome’s new Hollywood store, being freshly minted on adidas’ skateboarding roster. When I asked whether he had collaborated on the adidas Samba for its significance in punk culture, he jokingly quipped that there’s nothing punk in the world—except cutting your penis off. Revealing a bit of his dark humor was a friendly gesture, right? I shouldn’t have cared, but shamelessly did. Dill liked me, and my inner 14 year old was validated. “Is punk alive? I didn’t even know what it was in the first place,” he continued. He told me he just liked the Samba’s silhouette and soccer in general. Then we segued into the shoe’s commercial, and Dill revealed that he had kicked a beautifully bent chipper into the far corner of a goalpost. “Oh, that’s you!” I said, surprised. Which was a mistake. After some backtracking on my part, I learned that Jason Dill really does play soccer. And loves ballet. And Phillip Glass. It’s naive to judge him from appearances in GRIND editorials and Supreme lookbooks, wearing that unamused gaze as if blowing smoke in your face through the page. Or from one of his many classic video parts for companies like Alien Workshop, where even the most impossibly gracious maneuver rarely merits a smile. Don’t let any of that fool you. After a conversation with Dill, it seems more likely that his on-screen demeanor is simply part of the show. “At the end of the day, I’m an entertainer,” he tells me. “So, as an entertainer, I can be seen in the way that I want to be seen.” Basically, somewhere in his 28 years in front of the camera, he’s reconciled with the idea of having an audience. And like any good entertainer, he’s a rather charming conversationalist—genuine, disarmingly open, willingly empathetic. And yet, you always get the sense that he’s keeping some magic to himself. After all, without the magic there is no show. Kevin Wong | HYPEBEAST AT THE END OF THE DAY, I’M AN ENTERTAINER. SO, AS AN ENTERTAINER, I CAN BE SEEN IN THE WAY THAT I WANT TO BE SEEN. Dill has a lot of rabbits in his hat, like the successful skate brand Fucking Awesome (FA), which opened its first flagship store about a month before our conversation. After flirting with the idea of a shop in Tokyo first, the company (chiefly Dill) decided to set up on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. The strip is a thoroughfare of garish Hollywood nostalgia for sale: there’s the Hollywood Wax Museum, where Elvis stands immortalized in statue, practically dripping Vaseline on hotter days; there’s Musso & Frank Grill, a Roaring Twenties-era bistro swathed in brown leather and brass, slinging the best martinis in town—as stars and mobsters would attest. Yet the Fucking Awesome outpost, ostensibly a stamp of nouveau millennial culture, fits right in. A neat, white, gallery-style layout belies the curated chaos lurking within its walls. Dill designs pretty much everything: the board graphics, apparel, knick-knacks like pins or stickers—and collages are something of a preferred medium, which makes sense because the guy’s got a lot going on upstairs. Boards depict the Virgin Mary holding a stillborn (I think?) baby, while a giant wall juxtaposes Jaws, elements of gothic folklore and Diana Ross. Paintings, also Dill’s medium, are romantically horrific and everywhere in the store. “Not to be clichéd,” he says, “but life can be really beautiful, or it can be really”—tense pause—“disgusting.” His worldview is laid bare within the store; perhaps it’s one giant collage in itself. “You have to keep yourself occupied with the interesting, think-y parts. The smart parts.” And so when you enter the store, you’re walking into just that: the result of Dill channeling his creative energy into whatever canvas can absorb it. And the best—perhaps most satisfying—thing about it is, it totally works. 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