(Photo: Jay Eichhorst)

Every time a video of Tate pops up online, people get to talking, and when his newest edit dropped last week that was the case more so than ever before. I had a few questions in mind for Tate so I hit him up for an interview and he gave some great answers. Walk with me…

For anyone who is unfamiliar with you, let’s just get your name, age and where you’re from out of the way:

Tate Roskelly, 24 years old, from Ogden, UT currently livIng in Salt Lake City, UT.

So I guess my general theme of this interview is that I want to figure out more about what your outlook on riding is. So I guess one basic question that might help give us an idea would be, what is your average day of riding like? Or if you think that’s too hard to answer, maybe I can just ask what the last time you went riding was like?

An average day I guess would be me getting off work chilling out for awhile, sitting around watching a video or something then going riding. I live in downtown Salt Lake now so I can just roll right out of my house to wherever I want to ride for the most part. As far as my bike riding goes I nibble around a lot i guess. Most of the time I am just fucking around with weird little shit, and by doing that sometimes i will just find a cool set up that works with what I was messing around with. Overall I am just having fun with my friends riding bikes.

It seems like you put out your 50/50 part, then that Fit web video, and then we didn’t see a whole lot from you for a while til this recent Volume edit. Any reason for that? What have you been up to?

Yeah that’s funny, I heard a lot of people thought I stopped riding or something like that. After those two sections I started filming for “Free Drinks”, after a while it lost funding or something and Purdy had to cancel it, so i have been waiting to use that stuff for a “Infinity x1,000,000″ video Jordan and Elf are working on. That was about the time I got on Volume and they wanted to do a web video, so I sent them a bunch of footage and I guess it got lost it or something ha ha! Then a few months after that the Volume team came out to Utah and I got to film with Christian a little and I had a few clips hanging around so I finally got some stuff out again.

In terms of other riders, who influenced you when you were younger and who influences you now? Do you take any inspiration from anyone or anything outside of bike riding? I’m sure you’ve heard this before that some of your stuff is almost reminiscent of Rodney Mullen.

Growing up watching videos had a big impact on me. I grew up in a small town near a ski resort so there wasn’t any real spots at all, or any other riders. One of the first videos I bought was the first Animal video so that style of riding had a big impact on me, those dudes are still some of my favorites today. After I got a little older I started seeing Matt (Beringer) around a lot and I was always stoked on creative stuff, since then there have been many influences, too many to name but I really like watching people who ride bikes their own way. Outside of BMX I definitely watch a lot of skateboarding stuff. For some reason the older I get I seem to get ideas from really weird things. I got the idea to ride under a semi watching The Fast And The Furious and that bike slide thing from watching superbike races.

Everyone seemed pretty stoked on the bike slide thing, how hard is that? Did it take a while to learn it? Is there a certain type of surface that works best for it?

Thanks, it took a little while to learn I guess, the trick is just leaning your bike as far as possible and just hold on tight. Once you learn them they are real easy and it’s a fun feeling taking corners real fast. It works on both grippy and slick surfaces. When its grippy it’s like a really hard tight carve and when it’s slick its kinda like a controlled drift, I call those ones superbike slides.

Some of the stuff in your new Volume web video seems like it’s almost more set ups, like staged almost. Like of course you’re not going to manual through a swingset every day and it probably took a bunch of people to co-ordinate it. So in that regard, it’s really like a trick you’re doing almost entirely for the sake of getting a cool looking clip, right? That clip in particular is kind of interesting to me since it sort of transcends a sort of boundary that riders don’t usually cross I think… not in a bad way at all, but what’s your outlook on that as opposed to an average clip?

Yeah there is a fine line with that stuff i think. I figure if you’re going to “set up” a spot it can be really fucking cheesy if it’s done wrong, maybe it still is silly to some. With the swing set clip I initially planned on swinging them by myself and having enough time to grab my bike and do it. After about an hour of trying I had my friend give the last two swings a quick push to get a couple extra inches. I think it just comes down to your perspective on riding though I guess. Some people might think it’s silly, but I have always tried to remember we technically ride “freestyle” BMX so you can and should do whatever the fuck you want.

I’ve gotta ask about the basketball clip too, is that something you had to work on for forever to pull? It’s definitely one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen a rider do haha.

One day I was riding this school and was getting bored, I had a basketball in my car and started trying to do some trick shots bouncing it off the wall and shit. All of a sudden I got the idea to use my bike and it went in within ten minutes of trying. I really wanted to film it so i had my friend Ben Williams film it for me, the only thing is it took a total of 5 hours of filming and a few evenings of trying it the second time. I definitely would like to thank Ben again for being patient with something so odd.

Do you alter your bike set up ever for certain tricks? I noticed your brakes have come off but do you ever switch to 0 or 4 pegs in order to do different stuff?

Every once and awhile if I have something I really want to do I might, not too much though, I did take my brakes off about a year ago.

I always read comments on my site saying that more riders should be like you, and should be more creative, etc. I think any kind of creativity is refreshing, but I also think there’s a real clear reason for why few riders are able to really push the limits… namely that you have to really be at a certain skill level to be able to come up with something that is new. But some riders are incredibly skilled and dialed, but never really veer from the basic path of established tricks. What’s your outlook on that, do you think it’s a real problem in BMX that riders aren’t creative enough?

Again, I think creative riding is a fine line, it’s pretty easy to just do stuff that would be “creative” but really sloppy and kinda just for kicks. I think it’s always good to take time with stuff until you have it down then find a sweet set up or something. It seems like some riders can just shut down a spot and film a video in two days and that’s awesome, I wish I could do it! For me though, things take a lot of time and I have to luck out on a set up to get a clip. You can usually tell tricks that had a lot of thought and time put into them and those are my favorite clips to watch. As for riders, there are a lot of different ways to look at your bike, some people push the established tricks really far and that’s definitely progression, others seem to take it more as an art outlet. I don’t think it’s a necessarily a problem that 90% of riding tends to blur together but it’s always nice to see something that makes you stop and think about it for a second.

I know you still have a job at a supermarket right? It seems like if you wanted to, you could probably live the all out BMX lifestyle with tons of trips and traveling, is there a reason you’ve kept working?

Well up to this point it’s been a really good job, all of the people there are really supportive of what I am doing, thanks Cory, so it’s been pretty easy to keep doing both. I do dream of being able to ride full time someday, hopefully soon.

Thanks for giving us some insight into your riding… any thanks?

Ben “Turtle” Williams, Elf, Jordan Utley, Skier Jay, Cam Wood, Mike Aitken, Everyone on 5050, Eddie, Volume and everyone involved over there, Lotek, Richard “Dick” Fox, Nick Fletcher, Cory llewlynn, Steve, Demolition, Skull Candy, All of my friends, everybody I forgot, The Come Up, my family. Thanks