⚠️ Trigger Warning: The following article and interviews contain discussions of domestic violence, abuse, predatory behavior regarding minors and sexual assault. ⚠️
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry and I’m a hypocrite.
I’m sorry and I’m a hypocrite and I’m a raging asshole.
I’m a raging asshole when provoked. I have a misanthropic, subversive perspective of the world. To many, the only thing more curmudgeonly than my resting bitch face is my personality. I’m terrible at working collaboratively and couldn't seem to keep an office job because my emails to businessmen and women who didn't understand skateboarding lacked decorum, so they call me "toxic" and "unhinged" now. I’m awful in social situations and, although not maliciously intended, I find it difficult to refrain from saying what’s on my mind, no matter how negative or off-putting it might be. I’m a transgressive, smug, passive-aggressive, contrarian, irreverent, absurdist, intentionally provocative dickhead because the music, art, books and film that spoke most clearly to me were the same, and it’s the lens through which I’ve come to view the world.
I’m 50, my hair is mostly gray and I’m on antidepressants that yielded a 25-pound weight gain. I’m irrelevant in skateboarding and it’s liberating as hell. Despite skating for 30 years, I was never very good. But I still do it from time to time and love it more than anything. I especially cherish my lifetime of memories skateboarding with my friends. I started an artist-centric skateboard brand in 2024, and it failed. I like failing. Failing is fun once you get past the whole “ego” thing. Very few people in skateboarding want to be associated with me these days. I got two DUIs in the early 2000s. I had a “player” phase where I slept with too many women and wasn’t honest about it. I cheated on two girlfriends when I should have ended the relationships instead. I also cheated on every Spanish exam in college by writing verb tenses on the desk before class.
In 1993, I shoplifted a used Nine Inch Nails CD from a local music shop that I could have bought for $3.99. Didn’t even get caught. Just last week, I was at the movies and accidentally put a pack of Twizzlers in my pocket thinking the the cashier already rang them up, so they were free. What a clepto! For some reason, since the fourth grade, lots of people think I’m gay. I questioned my sexuality for a few years in the late 90s and early 2000s. I’ve interviewed porn stars and am friends with sex workers. I love gallows humor. One time I was at a party and there was cocaine on the table for everyone to indulge and I tasted it. It was minty. Ate a pot brownie once; didn’t know it was laced; tripped my face off and finally understood how Tool makes their music videos. I kissed a man on a talk show once and now he’s a Trump supporter.
I’m bad at forgiving but want to learn. I’m pessimistic. I’m resentful. I’m negative. I ruminate. I have an affinity for karma, justice and revenge. My work is inconvenient to some because it exposes shitty behavior. I’m forgetting a bunch, but maybe I really am a massive, disappointing disgrace of a human being.
But I’m happier and doing better ever, and I’m proud of that. Therapy works. Medication works. Solitude works. A French bulldog works. It’s only fair, though, with all my woke lefty white knighting and investigative journalism, that I be held accountable too.
Confessions? Regrets? I have a few … here’s a big one:
Nyjah
In 2016 I was asked to be the writer for a Nyjah Huston documentary. Working on a film project was a dream and direction I wanted to take my career—so I leapt at the opportunity.
Four years prior, on January 24, 2012, after taping the Nyjah and David Loy episode of Weekend Buzz, I saw the infamous sex (we’ll use the term “sex” to tread lightly) tape.
Right now isn’t the time to delve into specifics of the video, but in pre-#MeToo 2012, I was not equipped, educated or mature enough to fully process what I saw, then act accordingly by speaking up and distancing myself from Jah and his bros in a work capacity.
Like others who heard about, or saw the video, I turned a blind eye. Maybe I wanted to pretend I didn’t see it. Maybe I excused it as “kids partying and doing messed up shit”. Maybe I wanted to rely on the disclaimer that I wasn’t there to witness the events in context.
What I know is I wanted to forget it and get back to normal, and there were long periods of time throughout the years where I did completely forget about that video. But from January 2012 through 2022, I wasn’t in the position to speak freely without obliterating my career. I wasn’t ready for the skate dream to end nor was I in the financial position for it to.
In June 2020, two-thirds of the way through the documentary, a sexual assault allegation against Nyjah, unrelated to the video I saw, surfaced on Twitter.
I was marketing director for USA Skateboarding at the time, which required intense background checks and Safe Sport training (think workplace harassment training on steroids) with protocol to report any mention of misconduct in relation to USA Skateboarding athletes or staff, so I sent the tweets to my manager. He immediately contacted Safe Sport. At that point it’s out of everyone’s hands but theirs, that’s the procedure.
By now though, my conscience had caught up with me. I’d lived through #MeToo, #TimesUp, the Women’s March, a rapist pedophile president voted into office, the Cosby and Weinstein takedowns, #BlackLivesMatter and the execution of George Floyd, COVID-19 and the lockdown and years of therapy that revealed depression and autism diagnoses. I was 10 years more mature and my involvement in the film and benefitting from it now felt icky and wrong.
I pondered withdrawing but given my already-selfish decision getting involved to begin with, I decided to stay and participate with different intention.
The final two years of the project, I observed from the perspective of a journalist who once laid eyes on very disturbing footage of Nyjah and his friends. I operated as a fly on the wall who already spent five years embedded with the family of someone now facing a second sexual misconduct allegation. I even helped start Nyjah’s brand Disorder with his mother and friends, consulting for six months. I’ve not been paid for the documentary. Should the film release, I will be. I intend to have my name be removed if they allow it, which means a screenwriting stepping-stone seven years in the making is gone, along with my first “writer” credit for a film. I’m at peace with that reality. We wrapped shooting the documentary in 2022 and that’s the last I was involved with Nyjah and family.
The Weekend Buzz
I hate that name. Didn't come up with it, but hated it from day one. The Weekend Buzz was a talk show I wrote, hosted and co-produced beginning in late 2011. It was a featured program on Tony Hawk’s Ride Channel from 2012 to 2016.
I don’t like the whole “times were different” excuse. The truth is, we did a fun show full of vapid storytelling and Beavis and Butthead pee-pee poo-poo balls and penis humor, some of which didn’t age well. We tried to recreate an environment that brought the audience “into the van” and as close to hanging out with their favorite pros, shooting the shit over a drinks or coffee, as possible—just like we see in the skateboarding podcasts of today.
A few situations still haunt me. The first was the Chase Gabor episode which included a very unexpected revelation of sexual assault, after which I laughed and followed up with a question that many seem to object to, “Which end of the screwdriver was used?”
I never felt the need to explain the question, because it makes perfect sense to me, but from a fact-checking standpoint, it seemed extremely relevant to determine which end of the screwdriver was used in the assault, given that the sharp metal end of the tool, once inserted into someone’s rectum, especially while restrained against their will, could puncture and severely injure the victim or result in bleeding out—versus the handle of the screwdriver, which is blunt, made of plastic or rubber and likely to result in a lesser injury. Rowley got it.
But the whole situation was a mess. What I should’ve done was reeled it in and gained more clarity regarding what Chase said. In my head I was reliving my own abuse from classmates in grade school, thinking “Kids are terrible to one another and I’ve been there!” Rowley turned around in his chair. Chase was beet red. We were bewildered and uncomfortable and I blew it.
No blame, but I’m as baffled as anyone as to why the editors included this story in the episode. I was ejected from the show’s editing process for being was too picky by the fourth or fifth episode, but people told crazy fucked-up incriminating stories all the time. Something as wild as what Chase revealed would normally have been removed during editing without question.
“Tell us about the screwdrivers in your childhood,” Erica recited. That’s what was written in the notes because that’s all we knew.
“Ask him about screwdrivers when we were kids,” Chase’s brother texted a day prior while I was prepping for the show. What I presumed would be a story about vodka and orange juice turned into a confession of a brutal sexual assault, by someone, on someone.
I bumped into Chase a few days later at Disneyland of all places. He explained he was the victim of the assault and that, in a moment of discomfort on air, he spoke in the second person “we,” making himself sound like the assailant. He never shared this publicly to clear his name, which is perplexing. Steve Berra, his then-boss at The Berrics, may have. I’m still clueless as to who or what to believe. I felt awful about the backlash Chase received after of the episode because the show was never intended to cause something like that—it was supposed to be innocent and fun and stupid. I publicly defended Chase on multiple occasions based on what he explained at Disney. It’s possible he was lying and I played the fool by standing up for him, which would suck, but I guess I’ll never know.
An interesting side note is that a couple years later, after his own episode of Weekend Buzz, Jamie Thomas contacted me inquiring about Chase’s story and emphasizing what he felt was a confession from Chase. “But he said he did it” was along the lines of what he told me.
I’m not sure what Jamie was getting at or wanted me to do, as he was far more powerful and influential within the skate industry than I, but he never shared his thoughts on the Chase incident publicly that I saw.
A curious “concern” when you now consider Jamie’s complete lack of action, empathy, apology regarding two of his long-time team riders, Chris Cole and Dane Burman, being exposed as abusers in the last year.
The second situation I handled terribly was Christine Flannigan telling us about Chris Cole’s outburst in their garage, which she and I posted many times as part of our interview in January 2025. The clip was streamed by creators like Red Bar, 2Lazy2Try, DanWebz and Gifted Hater. Some even commented on my reaction, and they weren’t positive.
In the episode, the context of conversation quickly shifted from the usual Weekend Buzz ridiculousness to the very serious matter of abuse, that didn’t register and I failed to properly address. I hate seeing that footage. I cringe every time. But resurrecting it was necessary to tell Christine’s story and leverage my misstep to illustrate what not recognizing or taking abuse allegations seriously looks like.
Mansplaining it to death is pointless, but if you’ve watched my recent interviews discussing some very sensitive, serious topics, then you’ve seen someone who learned from those fuckups. If you choose to remain ignorant to this fact because you want to continue disliking me, knock yourself out. If you want to pretend you don’t currently support artists and celebrities who did questionable work or fucked up in the past and evolved to something better and are doing better, then you’re lying to yourself.
There were likely times on Weekend Buzz when my questions rendered guests uncomfortable, and I persisted or didn’t read the room. I think the episode where we discussed the Johnny Layton nude photo with Dakota Servold and Johnny on the phone was like that. Lee was a huge prick to Ben Nordberg once and I felt awful about it because Ben was a friend and things were never the same between us after.
There was likely sexism and there was politically incorrect conversation. I'm sure there were invasive, poor taste inquiries. Plenty of stories were told about someone who wasn’t in the room to defend themselves. We should absolutely acknowledge all of this and my connection to it. With so many people creating content today, Chase’s and Christine’s interviews are harrowing examples of insensitivity and unskilled listening and my inability to pivot when necessary. From them we can learn how to behave in a more supportive, introspective and appropriate manner.
The Industry and Slap
Throughout my career, I’ve been overtly critical of the skateboarding industry and some of the people involved. For a decade I’ve shared it on Instagram, in real time. But for the last five years, I’ve also privately documented my experiences and clashes with industry peers, Slap users and moderators—and it isn’t pretty. A few hidden blog drafts from my website even leaked to unintended recipients. The posts are rough brainstorms for a future project, not polished pieces by any means. Sharing any unfinished work is a vulnerable feeling, but it certainly won’t be the first time, nor the last, that I’ll embarrass myself. Everyone should know who these industry shitstains are and who pays them, so I don’t mind sharing prematurely:
Richie Valdez: Producer of The Bunt who told my friends I “fake autism to get women.” When I first spoke about Richie, his friends and his roommate, pro skater Shawn Hale, came to me. You know what Shawn said? That “I need a new therapist” and that “No one calls people out on the internet anymore.” Weird shit.
Amidst a LinkedIn comment debate in August 2025, Richie told a woman on to “Make him a sandwich.” I realize none of us are the perfect ally, as it’s near impossible. But as far as I’m concerned, Richie’s “sandwich” comment isn’t unlike ordering a black person do something for you as a humiliating slavery reference. Both reek of celebrating, and laughing at, horrible acts of oppression. Richie is brazenly and shamelessly on some misogynist Andrew Tate bullshit with this one and that genuinely sucks.
Andrew Murrell: Writer, creator of @OverthinkingSkateVideos, and the guy who publicly accused me of “Threatening to sue High Speed Productions,” which is why Slap was presumed to be shut down for four days in early 2025.
I believe in the ethics of journalism. I studied writing for a decade—college and two rounds of grad school. No person knowingly engaging in libel, who refuses to post a retraction when corrected, should be able to work as a writer, so I have zero qualms calling Andrew out and letting SEO do the rest. I informed him I’d remove the blog if he made a retraction, but he remains unwilling to tell the truth.
“The Lurper”: Ex-writer for Jenkem and Slap regular who published that I “self-diagnosed my autism and was a trust fund baby with no real job.” Like Murrell, I informed Little Lurpy I’d remove the blog if he made a proper retraction, but that never happened. Just a few months ago, an old friend of his informed me that Lurper is supposedly the “trust fund baby,” as his father is allegedly extremely wealthy. Then the years of him dogging me on Slap all began to make sense—the art of projection 101.
I’m creating a public archive of content from the hidden “Temp Gnar” part of the Slap forum most people can’t access. Inspired by @HesSoMid, there will also be an archive with photos of Slap users and their (not just about me) trash talking. The photos originate from the Slap forum, posted by the users themselves and no doxxing will occur.
----
Turning the other cheek hasn’t panned out well for me in life. I endured years of abuse in my youth, where I never stood up for myself. I didn’t know how and I’ll regret it until the day I die. I have no desire to self absolve with “poor me” origin stories or excuses, because when I feel wronged or my rights are violated, it’s difficult for me to bear. I’m a mean son of a bitch. I don’t yell. I don’t get violent—I retaliate in written form, as sternly as I feel necessary, with little-to-no mercy. I will say as much as I desire, until I’ve purged. I'll do it for the world to see if I need to, the sole purpose being to send the strongest message possible, so it never happens again.
My options are to say nothing and let things boil internally until I lose my mind, or say something and risk whatever consequences. A middle ground is challenging. In my experience, so long as you are within the bounds of the law, treading lightly is useless—it rarely deters an antagonist or prevents them from repeating the behavior.
I did it with Don Brown and others at Sole Technology. I did it with Max Wettstein (sorry about that Bryce, you are an amazing human and skateboarder, and I went too far), with Kyle Beachy, with Richie Valdez and Andrew Murrell as mentioned, with Bryan Ridgeway and the USA Skateboarding staff, with a handful of Slappers who published misinformation about me and my mental health.
I’m not ashamed of standing up for myself, no matter how drastically I behaved. Antagonizing someone then blaming them for their reaction is the purest form of gaslighting. My golden rule is, “Start no shit. Take no shit. Always stand up for yourself and others.”
I’m also not ashamed of explaining how someone may have violated my rights. I see no problem communicating that I will absolutely exercise my privilege to litigate if necessary. I've spent countless hours working with my lawyer, protecting myself and learning the ropes in relation to my work as a journalist. If more people in skateboarding were knowledgeable of their rights and handing someone’s ass to them in court wasn’t considered such a a faux pas, our industry would be a better place. Companies might act right, or at least fear acting wrong.
There’s a documentary called Hot Coffee that explains the origins of the “frivolous lawsuit” and how corporations and media manufactured it to deter people from pursuing justified litigation—to create the narrative that suing someone when they violate your rights is something to be avoided and embarrassed of. In other words, victim blaming.
That said, I realize my approach is excessive, drastic and not the best way to handle things. I understand why some view it as “overkill,” but it’s worked for me since high school. For a multitude of reasons, but mainly my own sanity, I need to adopt a more level-headed means of resolution or forgoing resolution completely and just walking away. Working on it.
The Criticisms
“But you’ve posted accusations without evidence or context!”
Sometimes, but that doesn’t mean evidence and context doesn’t exist, nor does it make you entitled to them, you spoiled little shits. My responsibility is to the victim and to the truth. Their story and evidence are presented on their terms, at their pace. Not mine; not yours. Believe their story, or don’t, then learn how journalism has functioned for centuries. Start with New York magazine’s article featuring 35 of Bill Cosby’s victims. Then watch Bombshell, The Post, The Loudest Voice, She Said, Nightcrawler, Frost/Nixon, The Insider, Scoop and any other journalism movie or series out there.
- - - -
“BuT rObErT, wHaT aBoUt ThE mEmEs?”
How could I forget about the memes, bruh? Yeah, there’s been criticism that I partnered with meme accounts to promote my pieces with Christine Flannigan and Cody Davis.
Yup. I absolutely did that.
My “agenda” is my responsibility to these brave victims who trust me with their hearts and have chosen to speak publicly despite fear, risks and backlash. My “agenda” is to get as many eyes on their stories as possible. This, in turn, raises awareness and helps other victims not feel so alone. It creates a dialogue. It teaches people that abuse is wrong and has damaging long-term effects.
The content spreads; interest and curiosity grow; the victim and I gain more followers; I post more content; more people see it; more people share it; more awareness is raised and the cycle repeats. This is nothing new. Nothing unethical. We see and allow it every day.
Just like posting excerpts and trailers to promote content across different platforms, optimizing how each platform functions and each audience behaves, has been common social media and marketing practice for 20 years. Not sure what’s so shocking about my approach. We also see and allow this all day, every day on every device and medium imaginable.
And guess what? I’ll do it again. I'll do it as much as neccesary because skateboarding’s media is too chicken shit to touch these subjects and bum out their rapey abusive white supremacist homophobe bros. They’ve proven it for years, just ask Beachy!
It’s not just the media, though. The rest of the industry won’t touch this shit either, as not a single person I’ve seen, other than Josh Kalis and Gabriel Summers, offered public response to the Chris Cole story. Despite screenshotted proof of abuse and predatory behavior, not a single person in all of skateboarding has spoken out against Dane Burman for his interaction with, and solicitation of nude photos from, minors—nor have they spoken out against Jamie Thomas’ complicity in the matter.
Imagine being too intimidated to condemn raggedy ass, dusty ass Jamie Thomas, Chris Cole or Dane Burman because somehow it might affect your position in skateboarding? What a fucking joke.
It's a deplorable dilemma we have on our hands, and there were times I lost my mind over how helpless it felt. Full-blown meltdowns. What it taught me though, was how victims feel when no one listens or believes them—from their friends to their family to the police to the media to the public—it’s one of the most maddening, frustrating things I’ve ever experienced. This ever-so-slight perspective I’ve gained regarding how being a minority, or a woman, or queer, or physically disabled in America might feel has absolutely floored me.
Without a massive audience of my own or support from the media and industry, I will leverage any tactic at my disposal—anyone who wants to help spread the word, be it a meme page, Shredder news, a random IG follower, boosted posts, “shoving it down your throat” by “posting too much.” I will use teasers, anticipation, excerpts and slow reveals to keep the content flowing and the pitchfork-wielding gossip whores drooling and engaged. You name it and I’ll do it shamelessly—for the victims and the greater good.
We're battling short attention spans, manipulative algorithms, rapid-fire news cycles, lies, short term memory loss, drunk and stoned audiences and an ungodly amount of content blasted into our faces hourly; elements the likes of which none of us have ever experienced and still don’t truly know how to mitigate. Sometimes you must scream ’til you’re blue in the face to get people’s attention. Sometimes vigilance is necessary.
That said: views up, followers up, watch time up, engagement up, subscribers up, awareness up, victims of abuse speaking up.
One abuser down; one predator down—and the guy who was their boss is really hurting, but I’m not done with him yet. This is a marathon not a sprint.
Judge me all you want, but it’s working. Adaptation and resourcefulness are the name of the game in skateboarding, as they are in journalism. In these circumstances, the end justifies the means, and despite numerous accusations of wanting both, there’s no money to make, no “clout” to gain. If any of the victims I've worked with expressed concern for my tactics, I would address it immediately. We all still talk on a regular basis and not a single issue has been raised to me. Ask them yourself if you like.
- - - -
When I left skateboarding in 2022, rather than continuing to exhaustingly mask my mental illness, I wanted to be as “me” as possible. I felt that showing the world some unfiltered Brink, which manifested itself in a few manic episodes/post frenzies on my Instagram stories in 2025 and other things might be a good idea. Oops.
I need to rework that unmasking concept a bit, but I think there's something to it.
But most of what I do is a work in progress, as in, something I plan to write about, and let me tell you, skateboarding has a huge problem identifying and addressing mental illness. No matter how many “We need to talk about mental health” or “Check in on your friends” captions you read, the truth is, skateboarding is only good about reactively lamenting about how we should talk about mental health more—rather than actually doing something about mental health. Thoughts and prayers, amirite?
In fact, skateboarding still mocks and ostracizes mental illness far more than it creates acceptance and a safe space for those who suffer from it. I’ve literally never seen a bigger group of mentally ill individuals so absolutely shit at identifying mental illness in others, so absolutely shit at empathizing and addressing it accordingly, as I’ve witnessed in skateboarding.
If skateboarding truly cared about mental health, or even women or queer or adaptive skaters for that matter, everything you see, from magazines to websites to videos to streamers to forums to comments on social media to team riders to board graphics to ads to competitions to skateparks to meme accounts, would all be dramatically different.
- - - -
I’ve heard more than a few times that people find the dark humor and social commentary on my Instagram to be unsettling, especially when amalgamated with delicate, complex stories of abuse, suicide, sexual assault or dying from cancer. Valid criticism. No more news stories of dudes arriving in the ER with WWI shells “accidentally” shoved up their asses or endangered wild animals mauling poachers. Noted. I was spending way too much time on my phone anyway.
There’s plenty of room for improvement and I strive to evolve whether I’m in skateboarding’s public eye or not. I’ve waited 20 years to do these stories, so if I’m reporting on others who need to do better, I must do the same. We’re in some scary times right now. Listening, learning and standing up against injustice and the mistreatment of humankind is paramount. Let’s be nicer to the trees and plants and animals too.
The Cuckoo’s Nest
You’ve probably seen people refer to me as “crazy” or “insane” or “a maniac” or “losing it” or “schizo” … maybe you’ve thought it too.
You are correct. I’m fucking crazy. My therapist wouldn’t use those words, but let’s call it like it is. To be a skateboarder you’ve got to be insane, and sometimes, to be a journalist you’ve got to be out of your goddamned mind. But I'm more crazy than that, like, the clinical kind of crazy.
If you want to dredge up things from my past and smear campaign me because of the work I'm doing now, be my guest—won't change a thing I'm doing. If you think I’m the “wrong messenger” or “unfit” to represent these victims and tell these stories, please feel free to join me or take a stab on your own because right now, I’m all we’ve got and I fucking hate bullies.
Thank you for reading. Thank you to everyone who has supported the victims thus far and I hope you continue to follow along.
Start no shit. Take no shit. Stand up for yourselves and others. Always do the right thing.
- Brink