Crispy Whips Interview – Jim Marino
Interview with Jim Marino, founder of Crispy Whips, an East Coast born skateboard, snowboard, and tee shirt company. Oh yea, they make films too.
In 2007 the idea just popped out of nowhere to start a brand. What’s going on with Crispy Whips right now?
Tonight, we’re just skating and cleaning the warehouse. And, I’m chasing my dog while I’m on the phone. I have a pit bull and a black lab. He’s a nut though.
Crispy Whips makes snowboards, skateboards, and tee shirts. Is the Landscape Whip your newest snowboard?
We just got those in, and that graphic is our signature. It was our most popular skateboard, and we used the graphic for our website. So, we finally decided put it on the all mountain board as well.
We’ve always had park boards and soft boards, and we also wanted to ride something that was good in the powder. Right now, we have four board models: the Landscape Whip, the Smile, the Trippin’ Out, and the Smokin’ Trees and Doin’ Threes.
Which board do you ride?
I ride the Smile with reverse camber.
Who does the designs for the boards and tee’s?
I take artwork from friends of mine that are graphic designers and stuff, and I always finalize everything.
We did collaborate with Sket One, a graffiti artist from New Haven. He did our smile snowboard. That’s our first and only board that we’ve done where I let one single artist do his thing with the board. He gave me like five designs and I picked one.
For the Tripping Out snowboard, that whole board is a compilation of drawings from people on the team that we put together. I did the graphics for the Landscape Whip and the Smokin’ Trees boards by myself.
How would you describe Crispy Whip’s style?
It’s always been hard for us to put it in words. Everyone involved with the team has a different style and we take ideas from everyone. That’s kind of what makes our style unique.
We have probably ten kids on the snowboard team and ten kids on the skate team. Then, there is probably ten other people involved with promotion and filming. Our style’s pretty laid back.
I’m obsessed with the Smokin’ Trees and Doin’ Threes shirts. What inspired them?
That was one day we were chilling on the boat, we wakeboard and wake surf. We don’t have a real serious wake board boat so the biggest thing we can do is a 360. And one of my buddies happened to say it, because that’s what we do every day. I think that’s actually one of the first shirts that we made. We probably have over 25 different designs.
We’re working on a new line for the summer. We’re going to have the smoking trees shirt in every color wave, and we’ll probably have like 10-15 other designs.
Are you worried about having too much competition with so many local board and clothing companies starting up?
Nope. We do have a lot of competition though. When we first started we were one of like the only independent snowboard companies from the East Coast. We are competing, I guess, as far as sales. At the end of the day, we’re all friends, and we all say what’s up to each other.
Basically, we’re in a few shops around New England and we sell a lot of stuff online. We’re trying to support the local shops. We don’t sell anything to major distributors or major skate shops. We’re trying to help out the shops that have been around forever. Trying to save snowboarding, from the mainstream I guess.
Crispy Whips SKATEboards from Crispy Whips on Vimeo.
Skate or snow?
Honestly, I can’t decide between the two. That’s why I do both. Growing up in New England I pretty much had the same thing every year.
Rails or backcountry?
I’ve never even personally rode any backcountry. I’ve never even been out West. I’ve just been chillin’ on the East Coast. However, I will be going out to Breckenridge in the next month to visit some friends. It’s going to be sick! Even though they supposedly don’t have snow out there either.
I ride a lot of urban stuff, and I ride pretty much anywhere around New England if it snows. Mount Snow was the first place our boards were ridden. Everybody on the team was from the Mount Snow area so we were there pretty much every day, a lot of good memories there.
Crispy Whips just got a new warehouse in Connecticut, what goes on there?
All kinds of crazy stuff goes on. We’re here every day for the most part. We just skate and film. Random people come in and out all day. We tie-dye all our shirts here, and store all of our stuff in here.
I don’t know if you read our story on Facebook about the shrimp. My dad gave us a bucket of, like, 50 shrimp that were left over from Christmas. I brought them down here to cook them for everyone. We ate like half, and I put the rest in the freezer. They were in there for like a month, and we forgot they were there because we don’t usually use the freezer. We just use the fridge for beer.
So, one weekend we went up to Vermont and someone unplugged the fridge. When we came back, it was not good. As soon as I opened the door, I knew. I took everything and threw it in the woods. It was terrible.
Crispy Whips releases a ton of skate and snowboard videos. Who shoots the videos, and can we expect more to come?
I do a lot of the filming for the skateboarding. And, then, we pretty much switch off when we all go snowboarding. Someone will film for 5 runs, and then we’ll switch. Dan Callahan, aka filmer Dave, he’s helped us a lot over the years doing all the Buck 90 stuff.
What’s next for Crispy Whips?
We’re trying to do our first ever skate DVD, so we might do a US tour over the summer. You know, film, meet some more people, and spread the word about Crispy Whips outside of New England. We’re talking about doing a loop across the country hitting up places like Mount Hood, Texas, Florida, Oregon, BC, Chicago and stuff like that. We’re kind of a bunch of hippies. I don’t really know my goal exactly. Just taking it day by day, having fun with it.
Find out more at the Crispy Whips Website and their Fbook.
Interviewed By: Sydney Lindberg
