The Godoys: The Iron Cross Story: Page 6

What Iron Cross stuff do you still have?

Don’t have any Iron Cross stuff besides one Art Godoy, one Steve Godoy, torn up t-shirts and that’s it. The shit’s so rare.

What are Owen Nieder and Justin Ashby doing now? What about Ternasky and Mag?

Owen—still skates, runs a silkscreen business. Justin—in Africa building resorts, still skating, this info is from one year ago so I don’t know his current status. Ternasky—dead, got killed on his way to Plan B…years ago. Magnusson—owns Osiris, still skates, snowboards…

 

General Thoughts:

Who was the biggest scumbag you had to deal with? Who was the coolest?

As far as what? I think Ternasky ended up being the worst. There were many more, why do you think we rode for so many different companies? Not all were “scumbags” some were just weak and didn’t see skateboarding to have the potential of WWF like we did, they were so conservative and weak. The coolest? Easily Matt and Robert Davis from Graphics Lab in Kokomo Indiana. They did all the stickers and still make stickers for our tattoo machine coils. MoFo was cool too. We weren’t into all the phoniness and bullshit and we considered all the people involved inconsequential.

 

Favorite Band?

Radio Birdman is our favorite band. We play with Deniz Tek who is the founder and guitarist from Radio Birdman, play bass and Steve drums, we’re called Deniz Tek and the Golden Breed. We’ve been Birdman fans since ’83 so playing with Deniz is a dream come true…Steve would say the same thing. “Hit ’em again” is a great Birdman song.

Gator and Hosoi in prison?

Gator and Hosoi…lame. Hosoi wasn’t as bad but drug addicts are drug addicts and they never get better…so fuck ’em.

What about Knox? (Steve’s son)

We raised him since he was 3 and he’s cool and punk and funny, he knows all the inside jokes and can swear like a truck driver as well as be mannerly, hard to believe he’s gonna be 13 in January. Knox’s mom had problems and has been out of the picture since he was 3 and she has no rights to see him. We got custody in court. Knox is Steve’s but both of ours cuz we raised him. Named after the singer of the Vibrators, who are friends of ours, they stay at the house in Long Beach when they play in town.

Do you guys still hang with Jason Jesse? You were tight with him, right?

Yeah, we were tight, still friends. We haven’t seen him in a long time. His mom delivered Knox, she’s a midwife. We got into some funny shit together.

What’s your favorite place to skate now, and who do you like to skate with? Pools or ramps?

Always like skating with Lance at the Combi pool at Vans in Orange. That’s where Steve skates. Been getting into pools because it’s like catching up on an aspect of skating that got interrupted by the death of skateparks and a pro vert ramp riding career…so pools, skate park pools, cement.

Favorite tricks? Just from looking at photos it appears to me that Steve is the invert guy and you are the ollie guy. Right or not?

Right, but we both do good inverts. Steve did the gnarly frontside inverts, like 10 feet across…he’d fly about 5 feet before he planted his hand and land 5 feet past! I like ollies and lien airs. Steve likes frontside inverts and andrechts.

Did you two compete at everything, or were you cool with each other?

There was never competition, always equal. A total support system. We shared alot of shit. It’s like having a best friend all the time.

Final Words?

I’m glad that after all these years people are still talking shit, not forgotten. We skated and annoyed just by being ourselves, honest. After all these years, we’re still doing the same things, punk, skating vert, surfing and tattooing…what more is there?

Pic originally appeared in Thrasher.

-the end

Epilogue: We made this interview in 2001-2002, and didn't get around to publishing it until 2003 because we wanted it to correspond with our second print issue of the new volume. In the mean time, we got side tracked with a million different things. One thing that diverted energy and time away from Skate and Annoy was a new skateboard company that we decided to start in late 2002 called Cold War Skateboards. After reading that a tentative signature model with Pool School fell through, and because we already had a kind of relationship with them, we decided to approach the Godoys about the possibility of releasing a Godoy model. To our surprise, they were all for it, and much sooner than we were able to think about production, Steve and Art had designed a shape and graphics. Skate and Annoy would like to make it clear that this interview existed well before the skateboard company even existed.