Maré Favela Build - Interview with Jerry Mraz

©Arto Saari

Huck magazine published an article on Jerry calling him the Batman of Skateboarding, and that pretty much gets to the essence of this living legend. In his city of residence New York, Jerry has a decade-long legacy of fixing spots to make them skateable (as seen in Jenkem) and creating new DIY spots across the 5 boroughs. On top of his commitment to skateboarding in his city, he has been THE driving volunteer force for a better part of our projects, sharing his knowledge and skills with far-away skate communities, being a role model to local skateboarders, and inspiring with his unique style that makes you want to skate (as seen on Thrasher). 

Jerry is just the best dude to have around on a build site and since a few projects it has become a thing for Jerry to shoot Super 8 films documenting the construction of the skateparks. In his latest oeuvre, he documented the skatepark build in Maré, a favela in Rio De Janeiro conditioned by severe armed violence and an ongoing drug war. We linked up with Jerry to see what he’s recently been up to, reminiscing about past build projects and talking about his motivation for joining volunteer skatepark builds around the world.

© Arto Saari

Last year you bought a place an hour and a half outside of NYC and you’ve been spending a lot of time working on the house. How has that been going?

Slow but steady. No shortage of work to do up there. I got huge plans but only the means to make baby steps right now. We still have the loft spot at Dobbin in Brooklyn too tho. It’s been a great balance. Dream come true. 

You’ve been working on various municipality skatepark builds in the States with 5th Pocket Skateparks. Do you still find the time for fixing up spots, building DIY ramps and skating the streets of New York?

Yeah I find time I just gotta look harder for it these days. Great crew over there at 5th pocket and pretty much everything they design is stuff I like to skate which always kind of helps. I’m learning a ton from those guys. I took a pretty long break from building stuff in the streets but I actually just did a two different bank to ledge situations in the past couple months here in New York. Felt good to get back on the horse again.

© Mike Heikila

You joined 6 of our projects as a volunteer builder. What was your motivation?  

Well when I look back on my life which is something I hate to do, the only thing that I’ve done that seemed like it actually maybe helped out and possibly mattered in the grand scheme of things was to work on those parks. I don’t know why but after you taste that feeling it makes a lot of other stuff I used to care about seem trivial. It’s weird because I also have a similar inclination that all that would go out the window if we had been paid anything at all. As rad as building skateparks is I do not feel quite the same way about doing it professionally. Money has a way of screwing things up. I guess I went off on tangent there. I initially came out because it sounded epic. Boy was it ever! But man I really hope this whole thing is just picking up steam.

The last project we did was Maré in Rio. What was Maré like compared to other places you’ve been to?

Grimy as hell man. Wow! I spent a grip of time in the hood but nothing like that. Drug mafia don’t play. I’m truly thankful that nobody got shot or held hostage.

The Super 8 films have become a signature of yours. How difficult is it working with Super 8 and in particular shooting in Maré?

Oof, well I can shoot em alright. That is I can shoot em when I can borrow a camera that sort of works ok most of the time. It’s getting my act together enough to get everything developed and out there for people to see that I really struggle with. I’m glad you guys pressed me to get this stuff done. All in all it is a finicky process. The Mare drug mafia was not down for the cameras. Pull out a camera down there and somebody down the street pulls out a gun. I did my best, it woulda been great to go through the streets all carefree and film people there. They’re rad.

You have travelled a lot. Which skate community that you’ve come across would you say most deserves a proper skatepark?

Man there’s so many places. Anywhere along the trans Siberian route would be amazing. Most of it doesn’t have many parks and there’s rad crews that could really use them. The place I want to see one happen more than anywhere tho is Bangladesh. I never been there but it seems to me that they’re one of the countries that are amongst the most exploited in this whole damn over exploited earth. I really hope some kind of movement catches on with folks that having cheap stuff to buy at the expense of other people’s lives and well being is just plain wrong. I buy some cheap tools here and there so I’m to blame too. I’ve been trying to be better about it tho but it’s hard. I don’t know what else to do other than vote with my dollar...

It’s really difficult to travel at the moment and unfortunately there are few to none builds currently going on that support skate communities in need. How do you see the future of this movement?

The future is bright man. Forecast is cloudy but it always is. The sun will be out again by and by and when it comes out and the coast is clear hopefully we can keep these cool little projects going. I hope we can expand on the whole scope of everything in these rad communities that take us in and give us at least as much in epic life experience energy as we give them in concrete.