Mark Suciu is the thinking man’s skater. Highly intelligent with a repertoire of tricks that ooze creativity, Suciu doesn’t make a move that’s not calculated. Given this, his decision to skate SLS for the first time in 2018 came as a bit of a surprise to many. He’s been to college, is sponsored by adidas, and has numerous amazing video parts under his belt with more to come in the future. SLS seemed about as far from Mark’s trajectory as a Monster Energy sponsorship.

Suciu sat down with Route One during SLS’s Pro Open stop in London this past May for an interview in which he breaks down the factors that lead him to decide to compete this year. While a lot of it has to do with challenging himself, he admits that it was in part about money. And he can justify that because the generation before him created today’s current contest climate. 

But then also, there’s money. I actually read this beautiful article by Ocean Howell that he wrote when he was still going to school. It’s a 20-page thing. He’s writing about the first X Games in ’95 or so. When Koston did it… and all these dudes. They were being vocal about how they were only doing it for the money. “Fuck X Games. Fuck all these major corporations. This is not cool. This is not what skateboarding is about. We’re only doing it for the money…”  What Ocean Howell points out is that they really fucked up there because that was the ticket that X Games was waiting for. They didn’t have that opportunity before. Nobody had taken the money yet. And they couldn’t get into this industry that was so punk rock, so cool, so anarchist, so countercultural. They knew they would make tons of money. They just couldn’t get in. So Koston and those dudes, they blew it. No disrespect, I’m doing the same thing here. But now it’s in a different context.

Watch the entire interview above. The selected quote begins at the 9:10 mark.

UPDATE 8/1/18: Suciu talks internet personalities, literature, and the Olympics in Part 2 of Route One’s interview. Watch it below.