Remington Diaz

• 
• 
• 
• 

I was born in Pembroke, Ontario in 1987. I spent the next 13 years growing up as an army brat, traveling from base to base across Canada. At the age of 10 I got my first skateboard, it was a Nash board. I never really learned any tricks on it, just used it to cruise around until I was about 13. Some kids at my school would skate at the basketball courts at lunch, I figured, "I've got a skateboard, why not try to learn some tricks". Skateboarding became an obsession to me, all I could think of all day was what trick I wanted to learn or what spots would be fun to skate. With the help of endless hours spent playing Tony Hawks Pro Skater and reading every new Transworld magazine my knowledge of the skateboarding world grew. I soon adopted favorite shoe brands, deck companies, movies and pro skaters. Eventually my bro and I bought a video camera so we could film some videos, whether it be our home made videos, animations, skate videos or just clips of us doing stupid things with the Bottas bros. Making movies, with my friends really got me interested in film and photography. At the age of 16 I bought a drum set, while my bro bought a guitar. My brother and I had always wanted to play music in a band together so we were thrilled to finally be able to do so. I grew up listening to my mom's disco and Motown while my dad listened to prog rock. I never really found my own style of music to listen to until my bro and I bought our instruments. The Rolling Stones & The Ramones were my favorite bands to listen to and I loved to play their songs. Eventually my love for music and it's different genres grew. I went from Classic Rock to Punk to Metal to Alternative to Hip Hop to Trip Hop to Electro House to Acid Jazz to Ambient Styles and back again. Music was my new thing and skateboarding was slowly fading away. One band that really changed me was N.E.R.D. They had an alternative, hip hop, funk & rock sound that caught my attention..... and they promoted skateboarding! I noticed that the group members were always wearing matching clothing companies, wether it was Bape, BBC or Ice Cream. Whatever it was I had to have it. I searched everwhere in town but the only place I could find it was on eBay. It seemed like every week I was buying something from eBay. Either Bape shoes, Bape tees, Bape jeans, Bape everything. I like to research things so I did some on Bape and I found that it was a Japanese street wear clothing company founded by Tomoaki "Nigo" Nagao. I didn't really understand the term "street wear" untill I started to branch out from Bape. After overdosing on Bape and seeing it everywhere, I soon grew sick of it. Every little gangsta kid on the street was wearing it and they had no clue where it came from and what it's history was (most of the time it was fake anyways). I had to find some new stuff so that I could stand out . I was on Whyte avenue one day and I stumbled into a store called Foosh. This store had everything I was looking for. Shoes, tees, music, and other collectibles, I loved it! After having a little talk with the store owner about street wear and what it's all about I was hooked. I found a website called Hypebeast where I would constantally be updated on all the latest hype on clothing, shoes, artists and music. That was the start of my obsession with street culture. Other companies like Stussy influenced me because of their roots in skate culture. Nike, Puma, Alife, New Balance & Onitsuka Tiger were my favorite shoe companies. Undftd, The Hundreds, Original Fake & Supreme all had amazing product. I started to buy collector items, rare sneakers, graffiti artist product, books, magazines, and toys. Nowadays you can find me jamming on my drum set, checking the net for the latest hype, blasting some heavy electro house at home and going out to skate. Things may be changing all the time but my love for these things will never stop.