Name, age, state, employer, hometown? Bartholomew Wilhelm Jones, 28, single, Skateboard magazine’s son!, Geneva, Illinois.
Lets start by the beginning. I want to know what it took to breed you. Tell me about your parents. What kind of people were they, what did they do, how did they conceive you?
wow! That’s deep. I don’t know. I think my dad was originally from Plainfield, Illinois, kind of like a cornfield town that’s all big now. He went to a private catholic school or something, but he’s not religious or anything, he maintains reality. And my mom is originally from Germany and she actually lived in Israel for a minute when she was a kid too, but then I think times were tough there, so her family agreed to a boat trip to the US and started living in st louis i think maybe… moving on dad went to college in st louis met my mom badda boom batta bing got married and forced me… wonder if they were taking any kind of drugs at the time, because I’m pretty screwed. My mom has had a lot of odd jobs over the years, from a school teacher, to running an antique store, to working in real estate, and my dad used to run a chain of record stores called Apple Tree Records, which was a time amazing because until I was 16 my dad could plug in any music for free plus free tickets to just about anything I wish he still had that but because of things like Best Buy, a circuit city, and places like that; Apple Tree sank. I went with my family to all the stores to close them, which sucked, but I found a lot of products. Now my dad runs a Play It Again sport so pretty much my mom and dad go to auctions and garage sales and stock up on used sports equipment so we used to have a lot of music in the house but now it’s the sport. equipment.
Let’s go to your childhood. Any traumatic event that still haunts you today?
I don’t think anything from my childhood still haunts me anyway but yeah sure…I’ve had a lot of those…I almost blew the heads off our family’s new pups with a Draino bomb, my nanny tried to having sex with me once, I don’t know, but yeah, I was definitely a spoiled kid, I still am.
What was your first encounter with skateboarding? When did you know this was going to be a long-term relationship?
I probably don’t remember the first meeting, but I know I was really excited when I saw these guys skating on flat ground and ollies over these roadblocks at this downtown festival we have where I lived called “Swedish Days.” All the guys had like two different colored Airwalk shoes taped up, painter hats, all embellished, I remember thinking, “These guys are bad, this is how I want to be!” Around the same time, I was always excited if I could catch “Skate TV” on Nickelodeon. Obviously, he had no clue about skateboarding, but he was super excited nonetheless. I didn’t actually start skating until a few years after that when a skate shop opened near my house called Rich’s which is funny to think about because the place was like a ‘circus’ but I just skated around the store and for me that was the worst thing that had happened at that time.
The funny thing is that one of those guys I saw skate a long time ago at the festival is now my good homebody Steve Davenport, he still skates, he still breaks! But yeah, I never really knew it was going to be a long-term relationship… I guess I never really got into anything else. When it comes to anything else relatively athletic, I’m full of goonbat panzy steez. I remember when some of the kids in high school were getting into other things like Golf, Cars, ETC… I really didn’t understand. I just remember thinking “Don’t you want to go skating?!” I went through a little phase when I was in art school, where I didn’t really like skating, I didn’t know what was really going on, I didn’t see the magazine or the new videos; I was more interested in becoming a “fine artist” at the time, but I think I’m a bit above that.
Being from Illinois, what are your thoughts on Barack Obama?
Being totally fried, I don’t really pay much attention to that sort of thing, but I sure agree with Obama. I remember when he was running for senator or whatever in Illinois, and there were all these signs with him, and I said to my dad “look at this guy who looks all pimped out” and he said “that’s the man you’re expected to be the first black president. Then, in my photojournalism class, I was assigned to take photos of Barack’s victory speech. And like any other fool, I was eating it; Obama only talks about things like… I don’t even know! Power, I guess, and then just looking at all the people so happy, there was just good vibes everywhere. And now it’s like the same thing again, but all over the country. I’m sure I once lived in the same city as Obama. It’s a very exciting time, but what do I know…?