Questioned: Josiah Gatlyn

The kid who came outta Goldsboro, North Carolina and can currently be found performing his skateboard mastery on The Berrics.

How did he make it this far what can we expect from him in the future?

First off let’s drop a little background history on Josiah. He grew up skating in Goldsboro, North Carolina where pretty much there was nothing to skate. Luckily he had smooth pavement around his house to toy around on and he skated anything and everything, including a knocked down basketball hoop. His brother got him into skating but eventually quit after he found an interest in drinking and drugs. Josiah suggested I leave that out but it came into play throughout our talk.

After seeing how his brother would no longer skate due to his new use of his time Josiah told himself he didn’t want to go that route in life and therefore he pretty much decided then he was going to skateboard as much as possible and that was it. It was all he wanted.

He graduated high school at the age of 16 by being home schooled. His mom was a secretary at a church and the church allowed Josiah to setup ramps and whatever else inside during the winter and summer months when it was too cold or too hot to skate. Josiah isn’t sure how he got away with that for so long because he mentioned he did break some windows and damage some property along the way. But the church didn’t mind until a year or so later when he started really getting awesome with it and that’s when they got a little afraid and decided it was time to stop the skating inside the church.

Currently Josiah is staying at Chris Pastras house in Los Angeles, California and he is an amateur for Stereo skateboards. How did this kid go from skating off wooden trailers in his backyard to skating The Berrics on a daily basis? It was all a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

As it turns out he was on tour with a ramp company from Missouri who went through Arizona. He ended up staying in Arizona at the guys house who makes The Berrics Wax. The guy made a phone call to Jason King over at TB and asked if Josiah could go skate the park. As it turns out the ramp company was going to LA to film a promo for their video and they stopped by TB.

When I started talking to Josiah he was telling me about how he just recently completed being a stunt double on the show Cold Case. I guess they had a replica of Love Park which was called Peace Park and 2 skaters were battling for the best trick in the world. The other skater was being stunt doubled by Billy Marks. I think Josiah’s character ended up losing the battle and killing Billy Mark’s character to steal his trick. TV shows, gotta love em. He mentioned all the other actors were telling him about joining the actors union, but Josiah mentioned he was gonna stick to the skating for now.

I asked Josiah what his daily life was like in LA and he said he’s been working hard on a Recruits for TB. We ended up discussing TB’s impact on skateboarding and how it’s really pushing skateboarding. I compared it to his church back in the day and how it was kinda like that in a sense that it’s a spot he can go to and just shred nonstop. Josiah said everyday he’s up there he feels like a kid at a demo because there are so many people there just ripping on a regular basis.

Josiah’s been skating with Billy Marks and says that guy is a true professional in the sense that he gets things done. He mentioned Billy talks about the most random things whiles hes skating but he constantly destroys everything. He also mentioned how he was around for the filming of Mike V’s recent clip. He said Mike V is one of the most motivated skateboarders he’s ever seen in his life and how he will stop at nothing to get what he wants to get.

Josiah is one of the rare skaters out there who doesn’t drink alcohol, smoke cigs, or do drugs. You can see it in his style. You can also hear the drive in his voice. He said he just always wants to be happy and focused on skating without any distractions. Sometimes this focus can drive him insane. He said he pushed it super hard the first few days he was in LA and he pretty much destroyed his body because he was never stopping to skate. That nonstop energy caused him to have to take a week and a half off because his legs were so wrecked. This kids on a mission.

Aside from skateboarding Josiah is a super talented artist. His church’s pastors son was a computer programmer and kinda turned Josiah onto working with computers. He says he’s glad he has that skill underneath him because when he’s older it will come in handy if he wants to run a business. Creativity is key.

The crazy thing is Josiah led me to my next adventure in life by suggesting we originally do the interview on AOL instant messenger. Once we realized me typing super fast on a laptop and him pecking away on an iphone just wasn’t gonna work we switched to the old school voice-phone.

Oddly enough I haven’t used AOL instant messenger in years and while I was on it for the 20 minutes or so an old friend sent me a message and informed me Justin Brock, Brad Staba, Theotis Beasley, David Clark, and Dan Plunkett were all in Winston-Salem. A phone call later and now I’m catching a train in 3 hours to attempt to go meet up with those cats.

I told Josiah this and he said Theotis is one of the nicest people he has ever met and the rumors are true about that. Josiah mentioned when Theotis was leaving he put his hand on Josiah’s shoulder and looked into his face to tell him goodbye. He said he’s almost abnormally nice, but its the best and he’s the raddest dude on the Earth.

In closing I am sure you are gonna be seeing a lot more from Josiah in the future. He’s got a level head, an upbeat and stoked attitude, and you know all he wants to do is skate to the best of his abilities.

Thanks again to Josiah for taking the time to talk. You guys can see him today up on The Berrics playing Cairo Foster in a game of skate.