Rome Snowboard Design Syndicate

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Touching Base with John Makens

Apr 29, 2010 - 05:14 PM EDT

So, where are you right now?

I’m in Ocean Beach, San Diego. I’ll be here for the rest of the summer, maybe even a little into the winter too until I go back to Jackson, which will probably be around Christmas, that’s when it starts to get really good.

Tell be a bit about your trip to AK.

Alaska was sick. I went there with Willie McMillon, Adam Dowell, and Mike Mahon. We were there for 2 weeks, didn’t really have any budget, but we all got into King of the Hill which kind of became the focus of the trip. We did a ton of sick shit right off the road, tons of pillow lines and stuff. We also met up with a bunch of friends who had sleds so we got some trips up with them which was great. Saved our cash for a day of heli, each run there was 6-8000 of vertical, it was straight pow…so epic. I’m definitely going back next year, going to do King of the Hill again, and hopefully save up enough for some more heli time.

What did you ride out there?

I was on Design 162, great big mountain board.

Did you get any filming in this winter?

Yeah, I filmed with the Blue Bird crew for “Dobre Hombres”. Great group of friends. It was a little stressful on the snow front, but it was rad. We only had one filmer, so it was a large crew getting shots a lot of times with only one camera on us. Kevin Jones filmed a bunch with us too, which was awesome. We had some windows of snow though where we got a lot of shit done in small periods of time. Really a ton of it came right before our trip to AK which was relieving.

What are you up to for the summer?

I got a job rigging electrical for movie sets. I’m working for the Hollywood unioin on a show called Carriers, I guess it’s taking the place of Nip Tuck on FX. Pretty cool to be around the movie industry and see how that stuff works. I work with a super mellow crew and get to be outside for the summer which is rad.

Are you going to go all "Hollywood” on us?

Haha, nah, I’ll just be working for Hollywood.

Have you been working on any new art?

Not recently, I hope to paint more this summer, but it’s hard when you don’t have the time you want. It comes in waves for me, so it’ll come. I definitely have a lot of canvas stacked up and ready to go though and some solid ideas in mind.

When you’re not working, how do you stay busy in the summer?

Surfing as much as I can. I usually get a morning session, sometimes evenings too. I’m 4 blocks from the beach.

Tell me a bit about Remind Insoles.

It’s my business I’m running, that I started last summer. They’re orthotic insoles, super comfortable. It stemmed from my old clothing company IM Clothing, which had to stop because Will I.M. from the Black Eyed Peas sued me. It’s definitely been taking off, people are hyped on it. We have a super solid snowboard team on it, lot of legends.

Any last words?

No.