We sat down with the incredible Irish skateboarding photographer Rich Gilligan to have a quick chat about how our collaboration came about, read the small interview below & pick up the tattoo tee which Rich shot & designed by clicking here.

Q1. Who are you & what do you do?

I’m Rich Gilligan and I am a photographer. Right now my tummy is rumbling and my dog is staring at me to go for a walk.

Q2. How does the skateboarding scene in Ireland differ to other countries?

Skateboarding scenes everywhere are all pretty much the same – some people are dicks and some people are really sound. However the main difference with skateboarding in Ireland is that the ratio of dicks to sound people provides less dicks than most countries for some reason. Also as Ireland is this tiny island on the edge of Europe nobody tends to take it too serious here – which is a good and bad thing in a way. Good in that there is no room for ego’s but bad in that it can breed laziness and nega-troids. Basically as a skater in Ireland you have to deal with shit weather, small minded attitudes and loads of scumbags on a daily basis but this will all just toughen you up and make you shred harder. So yeah overall skateboarding in Ireland is amazing.

Q3. Is there a photographer in particular that’s standing out to you at the moment?

I am obsessed with the work of Paul Graham, Ciaran Og Arnold and Ari Marcopoulous at the moment.

Q4. Can you tell us a bit about the collaboration with FucknFilthy & how it came about?

You asked me if I was into it, I said yes. Then you told me you were going to tattoo your brains and I got worried.

Q5. What are you up to over the summer? You have a book coming out on DIY skate parks right?

I’ve been skating loads in this cool bowl that we built in Bray. Thankfully I’ve also been working away on some really nice commissioned photography work and I am just about to release my first book through an amazing french publisher (http://www.1980editions.com/19-80/). The book is called “DIY” and is a project I have been working on for 3 years about homemade skateparks all around the world. I should have a copy in my hands within the next few weeks and I’m a bit freaked out that this time next month it will actually exist in bookshops.

Q6. Any final words?

Keep on keeping on.

Thanks Rich, make sure to keep your eyes peeled for his new book, check out all of his work here & buy the tee here.

I’ve been following the work of PASS PORT for some time, an Australian skateboarding brand with a strong emphasis on design & quality made products. Their videos & the clothing they make is really brilliant, so I thought it made sense to catch up with the owner Trent Evans, have a chat about his beginnings & how the fantastic little brand started.

1. Who are you & what do you do?
My Name is Trent Evans & I run PASS~PORT. I guess I deal with a wide range of things from graphics, to the site, to packing orders and working with friends & artists on series and specific projects…

2. How did Pass-Port come about?
I definitely realised that in Australia there was not a lot coming out from any of the companies over here that was too exciting or different. I was keen to start creating a brand that could really do what ever we wanted at the time. If I knew of an artist I was really into or any other medium, I could approach them & we could slowly work on something together.
Be it decks, beers, a clip….what ever really.

3. How important is design to you ? All of your pieces / campaigns seem to be really well thought out
It is a huge part of our company, but at the same time we want to back that with quality of the product as well, seems to work for us so far. In way of direction, it comes down to what I have been into over the last 6 months & also the people that have got on board for each range. Will Brown has helped out with one series of graphics for the latest range & I am so stoked to be working with him both as a friend and an artist.

4. What skate brands around the world are standing out to you ?
Always and forever brands like ANTI HERO, KROOKED, GIRL & CHOCOLATE will be doing things right.
Other brands like HOPPS, POLAR, PALACE all seem to be on their own page as well, stoked on that.

5. Talk me through the new collection.
The amount of deck selection & attire we are trying to release each time seems to be growing, so its good for the people into our shit to have a broader selection to pick from every range. Really into the project we worked on with ARCADE in Auckland New Zealand. We have guys we hook up who are from NZ & we have always had a lot to do with our neighbouring country so it just seemed to fit. We produced Caps, tees, pins & decks & a percentage of sales went to the POPPY APPEAL for the ANZACS. Plus Will Brown worked on a series, always solid. Then I got to buckle down & work on a series of different boards & tees myself. Plus some new pants that I worked with Max Olijnyk called “DIGGERS”. I also try & release a new edit each range, I got to work on a clip for Geoff Campbell & his secky presh crew in Melbourne.
If you have not seen SECKY PRESH you should, GEOFF CAMPBELL not only is a solid skateboarder, but he also filmed & edited it>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNruxl8qnOw

6. What’s next?
Plenty… Also would be stoked to get our stuff over to places like the US, but all takes time I guess. If anyones keen to help just holla…. Cheers.

Have a look at what Pass Port do by clicking here.

I get sent quite a few press releases & emails about promoting books, magazines, photographers & clothing lines, but they rarely contain content that really grabs me. The email I received about “Rue” had me interested from the get go, it’s a harsh & beautifully photographed look into the life of the photographers friend, an addict & graffiti writer living in Boston.

We got to catch up with Michael, ask him some questions & take a look at some pictures which didn’t make the cut, have a look below.

Q1. Hey Michael, how are you getting on?
I’m doing alright, thank you.

Q2. Tell us how you became friends with Rue & a bit about him.
I became friends with Rue when I first moved to Portland, Oregon back in the early 2000s. I lived in this studio apartment in downtown Portland on Burnside in this building called the Marquette. The Marquette was an old building that was like 8 floors or something just filled with all kinds of degenerates and weirdos. This was the real Portland old school degenerate style. Not hipster. Strippers, drug dealers, winos, dropouts, hippies, punks, maniacs, freaks. No one had a real job and everyone partied with each other pretty much all day and night. Rue and his girlfriend lived below me, and they were friends with a girl I was dating at the time. Rue would knock on my door at night and we’d party or whatever. I lived in that place on and off again for years. The landlords were pretty clueless and owned a bunch of buildings in Portland. At one point I moved out for a whole summer and lived in another part of town but still had my keys. At the end of the summer I needed out of that house so decided to try my old keys. They still worked. Boom. No one had moved into my apartment and all my shit that I had abandoned was still there. I started mailing my rent in and no one ever noticed. This place was surreal, I’m telling you. At one point the Marquette became infested with bed bugs. A bunch of people moved out. Whole floors became vacant, and the landlords made some sort of bargain with the people that stayed I don’t really remember now what exactly happened. But the point is, they had no real idea how many tenets were in the building. I didn’t pay rent for about six months and they never noticed. They only found out when someone kicked down my door and stole my safe in broad daylight, I called the landlord and asked to move into a different unit and finally it clicked “wait, you haven’t paid rent in months…” After that I had to move out.

This is the time and place that I became friends with Rue.

Q3. How did the idea of photographing him come about?
It must have been quite hard at times, was there any point when you thought of stopping taking pictures & abandoning the project?
Well we stayed in touch throughout the years. I mean sometimes I wouldn’t talk or see him for months, or years. But then we’d reconnect somehow and take up where we left off. I somehow went from being a complete freak to curating photography at a small boutique gallery in downtown Portland by series of bizarre events which is the subject of a whole other interview. I became caught up in this little art world. I kind of straightened myself out some. At this point I kind of lose contact with Rue for awhile. I still heard stories about him, but I didn’t really see him.

It’s only a few months before I move to Boston that we get back together. I know I’m about to move, and I don’t really care about seeing most people but there are those certain people that I just have to get back together with before I move. Rue was one of those cats. I hang out with him a few times with our mutual friend Dylan and it’s good. We’re all on a different path but we’re all getting along. Rue is in pretty bad shape though. He’s really emaciated, homeless, can’t hold himself together. Dylan and I both take some pictures of him and his girlfriend and I just decide to keep going. Rue is really photogenic and not really shy about being in front of the camera. We’re all friends so it’s not a really uncomfortable situation. During this time, Rue is arrested a few more times, I put some of the mug shots in my book, and things just get pretty dark. Honestly, I figured he was going to die, so doing the book was a way of holding onto the kid.

I never thought of abandoning the project.
The camera helps to distance myself from the situation.

Q4. How’s he getting on at the minute?
I’m happy to say that as far as I know Rue is doing great. He was down in LA but he’s in Oregon again. He sent me an email about 2 weeks ago. He’s in rehab, been about four months sober.

Q5. What’s next, do you have any more books in the works?
I’m working on the next issue of No Thoughts, the 8th issue. I’m also working on a few other projects one is about people waiting for the train, and the other is more of a diary style project.

Big thanks to Michael for his time, you can buy the book (which I’d highly recommend) by clicking here & check out Michael’s photography here.

What do a teenage rapper & one of the most well known fashion writers in the world have in common? Their love for Supreme of course, have a look at this interview below with GQ’s Glenn O’Brien & Odd Futures Tyler The Creator on their love for Supreme & how they got into the brand.

GQ: How did you guys first become aware of Supreme?

GLENN O’BRIEN: Supreme is in my neighborhood in New York, so I’d walk by it all the time. I’d see 150 guys standing in line and figured out that’s when they’d have some kind of new sneaker or something in there. I didn’t want to be the old guy walking into Supreme, but then I was walking by one day and they were showing Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party from the ’80s on this big bank of TVs and I thought, Jeez, I guess I can go in there now. So I started going in there and buying shit, and I got to be friends with some of the guys who worked there, I got to know [founder] James Jebbia and the guys in the store.

TYLER, THE CREATOR: We would always skate around the area it’s at [in L.A.]. That was the only store in the area at the time that sold skateboards, so we’d go in there and buy boards, and I just gradually became friends with the guys who were working there. They would always just look out for us, me and my friends, when we were over there and out and about. They were like our big brothers over there and shit, they were older than us. I’m still cool with them to this day—I was over there yesterday. And over the last year, as I got bigger perhaps or whatever, I would always rap about it, and the guys at the L.A. store would always put a good word in for me with the dudes, the head guys, in New York. I eventually met Jebbia and Angelo [Baque] and all those guys, and we’ve been cool since. They respect me for doing what I do, and I respect them, cause that’s my favorite shit. It’s just cool I can be a part of this family and shit. They show me love, I show them love, they’re awesome, and I’ve always looked up to them.

GQ: One of the interesting things about Supreme is that they’re not gross about branding and marketing—they rely on quality product, word of mouth and a strong visual aesthetic.

TYLER: Visual aesthetic is important to me. I take video directing and designing album art and shit like that very serious, and they do, too. So that’s one thing I like from them, the way they design certain things—not too much, not too little.

GLENN: It’s sort of a non-strategy strategy. I think it just comes out having integrity. I don’t think we should be Communists or anything, but they do business in a kind of honorable way that I really respect. And that’s really rare, especially in the clothes business.

TYLER: That’s why I like them, because they don’t fuck with anybody. And I don’t really fuck with anybody. I keep my circle close and they do too, they don’t associate themselves with other brands that they don’t respect or actually like.

GQ: It’s not a brand that bends over backwards to woo you.

GLENN: Which is good, because I’m unwooable.

GQ: What do you think about Supreme’s emphasis on short runs? It seems smart, not just because demand outweighs supply, but because they can take the time to do a few things really well.

GLENN: That’s one of the cool things about James. He started making skateboard decks with artists and selling them for $65. And then people would turn around and sell them for $600. But did he raise the price to $600? No, he kept it where it was, because he’s serving his customers and that’s what those guys do. They have the right idea about a business. I hope I conduct my business in the same kind of way.

TYLER: The fact that the runs are so short means that two people feel special when they get certain stuff. Instead of 500, they’ll make 200, and then people feel more special knowing that only 199 other people have it.

GQ: Glenn, you wrote the intro to the book Supreme did with Rizzoli and are one of the few people to have interviewed James Jebbia, who’s known for being kind of press-shy. How did that come about?

GLENN: We’re friends, and I figured James would do it with me because he knew that I knew where he was coming from and trusted that it would be done right. For [the Rizzoli book], he just called me up and asked me if I would do it and I said of course. When I’m writing about something I like, it’s a pleasure.

GQ: What Supreme does transcends skate culture and taps into art, music, film, even politics.

GLENN: I don’t pay any attention to skateboard fashion or anything like that, but they work with artists who I respect and a lot of my friends have done stuff with them, and I think that’s great. They have interests that I can relate to.

TYLER: Same here. Like with music, again, what you said—they’re in different worlds and shit. Like skateboarding, that’s high value to Supreme, and then music and art, and they’re in the fashion world too. So, I don’t know. They’re pretty versatile.

GLENN: They were friends with Malcolm McLaren—

TYLER: I was gonna bring that shit today too!

GLENN: —and Malcolm’s somebody who also did clothes, but he did them in a way that was completely individualistic and a little bit political and out-there.

GQ: I wondered whether the geography of the downtown New York shop made Supreme more inclined to engage with the art world. Even the logo looks like a play on Barbara Kruger’s work.

GLENN: It’s not, actually. Well, I don’t know if you could say it’s a coincidence, but it’s a really common typeface, and red and white really stands out. I think the only importance of the store in SoHo geographically is that Lafayette is a big wide street that doesn’t have much traffic on it, so kids can skateboard in front of the store.

GQ: What are some of your favorite artist collaborations Supreme has done?

GLENN: There are so many. Christopher Wool. I like the Richard Prince bunny skull, I like the Larry Clark board. They’re all equally good to me. Peter Saville, the great art director who worked with Joy Division. I was really close with this guy Sean Mortensen, an L.A. photographer, and he put me in a Supreme lookbook. He went to live with the Zapatistas, the revolutionaries in Mexico, and they did all these shirts with pictures of the Zapatistas on it. That was great.

TYLER: There’s a lot of artists I didn’t know about that I learned about from them. My favorite collaboration they did was with Sean Cliver. He has decks with black dudes in KKK suits, a white kid with a Hitler mustache dressed as a pimp, stuff with John Wayne Gacy—just cool decks. I like his art a lot, and I didn’t know about him until I seen that shit. That was back in ’07, I believe.

GQ: There are forums on Odd Future fan pages dedicated to what Supreme gear you’re wearing. How do you feel about that?

TYLER: Yeah, that’s fucking weird. I try to tell all the—not even the kids, even people older than me—to just be themselves. Don’t wear what I wear ’cause I wear it; wear what you like. It’s weird when there’s another 20-year-old in an outfit I wore last week. I hate that shit! Wear what you want to wear. Don’t be a copy of me.

GQ: Do you consider yourself a fashion dude?

TYLER: I’m not into fashion, but I like design. I wear the same shoes every day. These same pants. I’ve been wearing this Supreme hat for a month. The only thing that changes everyday is my shirt and my jacket. I just wear regular T-shirts, truthfully, but I do like button-ups or crazy prints and designs—colorful shirts and shit. It’s either that or a regular white shirt. I’m not into fashion like that; I’ll throw on a shirt and be a fucking man, you know? I have this one button-up with a bunch of flags and metal on it, and I really like that shirt because I like the way that shit looks, but some people might take it like, Oh he’s into fashion. But I just like the shirt. All the little metals look cool. And I like tie-dye.

GQ: You did a lookbook spread for Supreme. I can’t imagine you’d be doing that for just any brand.

TYLER: Aw, hell no. People have asked, but it’s like why would I do that when I don’t even wear your shit and hate your brand? That was on one of my goal lists, to be in a lookbook for Supreme, so that was as close as I got. I was really fuckin’ happy. It was so tight. Aaron [Bondaroff] put that together. Hi Aaron!

GQ: What is Supreme doing that no one else is getting right?

TYLER: Nothing. That’s what it is, that’s why I like them. If that nothing makes any fucking sense. Everybody else is trying something, and they’re just doing it. I have to fart.

[Later on, GQ caught up with Glenn to ask a few more questions...]

GQ: Glenn, how do you wear Supreme as an adult male, versus how Tyler and his friends might wear it?

GLENN: Well, I tuck my shirt in.

GQ: How can dudes incorporate Supreme stuff into a look that’s more polished?

GLENN: You just wear the right size. I’ve been buying their chinos for years, I think they’re just the best; they also have very nice jeans. And I think those things mix perfectly—you could wear them with a tweed sportcoat or a blazer. I don’t like to dress head-to-toe in any designer or brand, but a lot of this stuff integrates really well into a wardrobe. The T-shirts are really well made, and they have a stretchy panel down the side so that they actually fit right. A lot of thought goes into these clothes.

GQ: What’s your impression of Tyler’s music?

GLENN: To me, it’s almost like stand-up comedy with a beat.

GQ: And you’ve seen Odd Future’s videos?

GLENN: Yeah.

GQ: What did you think?

GLENN: I don’t think he really ate that big bug.