At 48, Max Schaaf is one of the elder statesmen of the culture who’s remained relevant throughout his career, which spans several decades. He walks Chops through the beginning up to present day in the latest Chrome Ball interview. There are tons of great insights in this lengthy Q&A. We found the bit about Schaaf’s approach to staying hyped on skating at his age, which involves staying slightly removed from it, especially interesting.

I saw an interview where you mentioned having to step away from skating in recent years, which actually got you hyped on it again…

Getting old in skateboarding is not graceful, man. You can quickly become a cartoon character of yourself with a wax sponsor and a pomade sponsor. It’s pretty dark. Which is one of the reasons with Real, so many times, I’ve asked them to kick me off. Let me go. But their whole thing is that Huf and I, we’ll always be part of the team. And if you want to do a board, if you have an idea, let’s do it. It’s no big thing.

I’m largely at the mercy of the people who own ramps now, which can be hard. Sometimes I’ll go to the ramp and get small-talked to death. Sometimes there’s some drama going on that I might have to deal with. I mean, all I’m trying to do is go up there, say “hi” to everyone, put on my pads and skate. After that, hopefully, I walk away.

I don’t stick around for the conversation, because at this point, skating’s almost like surfing to me. Sometimes the less I know, the better off I am. I’ve seen some stuff recently with people calling out other people for stuff and it’s just sad. It feels so unskateboarding to me. Unchecked egos and stuff like that…

Read the entire piece here.

Image Via Dave Chami / Chrome Ball Incident