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Monday, April 9

Nate Hanson Interview

By Scot McElwaney
www.BMXonline.com

Nate tweaks an X-up so hard you're surprised he can make it back out. Here he comes off the hip at Real Ride in Lake Perris, California. Photo: Souney

Where are you from?
I'm originally from Bellflower, California.

Didn't you live on the East Coast for a while?
Nope. I was at Woodward for about three months, but that's about it.

Who are your sponsors?
Fit, Etnies, Primo, and Little Devil.

How did you get the nickname "The Biking Viking?"
That was [Sean] McKinney (S&M). I am of strong Danish decent and my Grandfather, who recently passed away, was very into the family tree and Danish heritage. It came from that, I guess.

How did you hook up with Robbie Morales to do Fit?
Robbie just asked me one night. We were at a bar and he proposed the idea. I went in and talked to [Chris] Moeller and Robbie about it, and it happened.

What do you do at Fit?
I handle all of the technical aspects of the parts. I deal with the frame builder and I do the drawings for all the parts we make. That's pretty much it, but it takes a lot of time. It keeps me busy along with the other stuff I do.

How did you get into designing product?
I don't know. I've always drawn, so I guess it came from that.

Are you taking classes for it?
Yeah.

What companies have you designed stuff for?
Well, for some companies it hasn't really been my designs. I've just done the drawings for people. But I've done designs for Primo and Fit, and I guess Kink too, for my bike. I've done drawings for S&M, Snafu, and MacNeil.

Take us through the process of designing a part, from start to finish.
Let's say I'm designing a stem. I'll get a few different stems to take measurements from, just to make sure that I'm not going to do anything wild. I measure the stems and then write the measurements down. I'll make sure I have all of the crucial measurements, such as the bore for the forks and the clamp for the handlebars. Next, I'll sketch out an idea of what I want to do on paper. Then I start drawing it on the computer. I'll draw out the important parts first. Obviously if you're doing a stem that's the fork bore and the bar clamp area. Then you set the reach from the center of the fork bore to the center of the handlebar, and from there you can get creative.

What happens after you finish the drawing?
I give it to a machine shop and the machinist makes a sample. We either approve it or we make whatever changes are necessary. Then we give the manufacturer a purchase order.

Nate icepicks the sub box at Primo and then X-ups back in. Photo: Losey

How long have you been riding for Etnies?
I think I first started getting stuff from them in '95 or '96. A long time.

How did you get the Team Manager job at Etnies?
I knew that Rooftop was going to be relieved from his duties as team manager to pursue his riding career and to deal with his new family situation. So I stayed on top of it, kept asking about it, and eventually I got the job.

What do you do there?
Everything to do with the team; travel, all their incentives, getting riders product--stuff like that. Contest sponsorship, that all goes through me. Whatever else is involved with BMX. I'm the only person at that company that knows anything about bikes, well me and Scott Towne, an outside sales rep. So I do a little bit of everything.

You're basically working two jobs while going to school. Are you pretty crunched for time?
Very. The average day is pretty scrambling. I get up in the morning, go to Etnies, try to stop by Fit, then go ride. I have one class that I finished last month, and now I have an online class that I do at home at night. I do all the CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) work at home at night. So, it's pretty much BMX 24-hours a day.

Is that how you want it?
I'm enjoying it. Sometimes I get a little stressed out, and it makes it hard to ride. I'll keep thinking about the other aspects. I don't know. I'm having fun.

Do you hope to be able to make your living off of BMX?
Obviously I do in a few different ways, but I don't want to have to rely totally on that. I want to be able to do other things in case BMX doesn't work out ten years from now. I'm hoping that it will; it would be much better if it does, but that's why I'm going to school. If it doesn?t work out, I'll have something to fall back on.

How many hours a day do you get to ride?
Two or three. I went to Vans [in Orange, CA] four times this week, and those are two hour sessions. The lights are coming on again at TJ Maxx so I want to start riding more flat again. I can do that late at night, which is good because work takes up a lot of the day.

How did you get into BMX?
I don't even know. I really don?t know. (Laughter)

Did you start off riding flat?
Actually, I started off riding street. We'd go skate and ride street. We'd put our boards on our handlbars and end up riding both wherever we went all along the Lakewood and Long Beach area. Then Day Smith (Hoffman) got me into riding flat. He started coming over to my house in the afternoon. Later I met McKinney and everything happened from there.

How long have you been riding for?
Forever. Twelve or 13 years.

Why do you still ride?
It's the funnest thing that you could ever do.

What's the fun part about BMX?
I don't know. It depends on what you're riding. Going fast, heckling people, travelling and seeing friends. The whole thing is pretty fun.

What is your least favorite thing about BMX?
People making crappy parts. People being involved that definitely shouldn't be. Big companies not listening to their riders. Those are the main ones, I would say. I could say more, but I don't want to get in trouble.

Put these in order from most enjoyable to least enjoyable: Going on tour and doing demos, road trips, staying home and riding with friends, and contests.
Going to contests is definitely last. I'd have to say that right now staying home and riding with friends is numero uno. Demos would probably be third, and road trips would be second.

Who do you like to ride with?
Greg Walsh, Robbie Morales, Jon Povah. I like riding the bowl at Vans with Troy McMurray. I haven'y gotten to lately but riding flat with Dylan Worsley is always a treat.

Where is your favorite place to ride?
It's hard to say exactly. The Vans Bowl is one of my favorite things, its fun and you can haul ass. Primo is really fun. Those are probably my two favorites right now. The old Ventura park (Skate Street), but unfortunately it's not there anymore. That place was a lot of fun.

Turndown at Palace Park. Photo: Souney
What are some of your hobbies?
Vehicles, old cars, I'm into trucks these days. Trucks like my Blazer, I'm always into doing something with that. I've been heading out to the dunes, not that much this last year, but when I first got the Blazer... I went a couple of weeks ago, so I'm all over it again. I have a lot of fun doing that because you get to build the toy and then you get to go beat on it. If it breaks you just bring it home and fix it, then go again.

Tell us more about the Blazer?
It's a '72. I bought it from some guy in Ventura, California, for two grand. I took the whole thing apart and redid it myself. It's got a 383 Stroker motor, a Holi 750, a turbo 350 transmission, 3:73 posi in the back, 33 BFGs, and it's orange.

What is the B-Town Metal Shop?
[Laughter] That's my mom's garage where a lot of hacking, and grinding, and sketchy stuff goes on. You can see sparks flying in there at midnight. The neighbors aren't psyched.

What are some of your likes?
The bowl at Vans, which unfortunately they are tearing out? I don't know, eating.

What are some of your dislikes?
Bitch cranks in manuals?I don't know. I don't like a lot of things, but I don't want to talk about them.

What kind of music do you listen to?
Rock.

What was the last CD you bought?
Another Sabath album. The one that I had was scratched, so I had to replace it.

Are you into Napster?
I've been on it some. My girlfriend got me a CD burner for Christmas, so I've been into it a little bit. I've only burned three or four discs though.

What was the last song you downloaded from Napster?
I think it was a Slayer cover of "Hand of Doom" by Black Sabbath.

What's your favorite movie?
That's a toss up between Bones Brigade 3 "The Search for Animal Chin," "Dazed and Confused," and "The Usual Suspects."

Thanks/props?
Everybody at Etnies, Don, Beau, the Etnies team. Since I took the job, it's been super-rad working with everybody. Greg at Primo, he's helped out a ton. He's helped out a lot of people. Derek at Little Devil. Day Smith, Sean McKinney, Robbie for hooking me up with the Fit deal, Chris Moeller? I'm going to be a dick if I leave people out. Dave Parick for making me crash. John Povah, Glamis Dunes, and Ventura Skatepark, especially Bob Dobese. I don't know, I'm sure that there's a million others I'm forgetting, but that's all I can think about right now.

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