Matt Atreau Mercer Interview

Matt Atreau Mercer Interview by Diego Gamez

So I havn’t posted much in the past month. I had a bunch of kids in town and was just out and about shoot­ing and kickin it. SO I thought I’d bring it back with an inter­view with my homie Atreau. Atreau is from North Car­olina and we’ve been friends for about 6 years now. He’s done a lot and its time he talked about it.
First things first, whats your name and where are you from?
Matt Mer­cer, but peo­ple have been call­ing me “Atreau” since i was 15. I’m from Asheville,NC.
How long have you been skating?
I’ve been skat­ing for 16 years.
Whats the scene like back home?
The North Car­olina skate scene has it’s ups and downs. In Asheville there really isn’t a whole lot to skate. The ground usu­ally sucks and you get kicked out of a lot of spots because it’s such a small town, it’s like the cops have noth­ing bet­ter to do than harass skate­board­ers. You can’t even skate down the street for trans­porta­tion. We do have a few spots, some dia­monds in the rough. Mind you Asheville is the most lib­eral town in the south, it’s actu­ally know as the “San Fran­cisco of the south”. Even though we don’t have much to skate we have some really great skaters. Since it’s a small town there’s not a lot to do, so skate­board­ing is relief for some kids there, but more kids are into foot­ball or nascar rac­ing, haha. The weather gets cold in the fall and win­ter and we have some pretty good indoor skateparks. The thing i really miss about the scene back home is the com­radery, skat­ing with the homies, push­ing on each other and get­ting hyped.
What made you decide to move to the bay area?
What brought me to the Bay..? Well the first time i came out to the bay, I was 16 years old. I worked and saved lunch money until I had enough. I stayed in a house on South Van Ness with my friends older brother Mike Fort­ney, who lived with Cairo Fos­ter, and Elias Bing­ham. I came to sf every sum­mer after that until i was 18. I really liked the vibes out here and wanted to make the bay my per­ma­nent res­i­dence. Then in 2002 I skated a pro-am con­test in Atlanta,GA, and got 2nd place, win­ning $2,000 dol­lars. I used that money and moved to Berke­ley later that year. Unfor­tu­nately I was a bit irre­spon­si­ble and I ended up back in NC after about 4 months in Cali. I moved back in August 2005 and have lived here since.
Do you find it hard to break into indus­try out here?
Hahaha. Yeah, man. I found that it’s hard to break into the indus­try out here. Peo­ple are kind of clicky. It doesnt seem like every­one skates together. Seems like there are lit­tle clicks and groups of skaters. Where i grew up every­one skated together, so i guess that was weird to me. Also upon mov­ing to the bay, I found that I ended up hav­ing to work a lot and had less time to skate, film, etc. It’s expen­sive liv­ing out here for sure. When i first got out here i was doing lot of film­ing, shoot­ing pho­tos, skat­ing with and meet­ing indus­try folks. which was cool, but over­time i real­ized i couldn’t really make a career out of it with the lack of time, and the truth is most am’s don’t really get paid, and if you’re flow some­times your lucky to even get prod­uct when you need it. Hahaha. But none the less, I absolutely love skateboarding.
Tell me about the boards you’ve designed for Sat­ur­day and Funktion.
So yeah in 2005, I started skat­ing for a board com­pany out of Char­lotte, NC, called Sat­ur­day skate­boards. They did this series of boards for their am’s called “Un-pro” kind of like guest boards. They asked me to help design one for them. It was the com­pa­nies best sell­ing board at that time. In 2006, we parted ways. Most recently this past year, I linked with a new local board com­pany out of Oakland,Ca, called Funk­tion Skate­boards. Funk­tion, is about blend­ing Music and skate­board­ing. The owner George grew up skate­board­ing in Oak­land, and now also holds down par­ties DJ’ing in the east bay reggae/dancehall scene. George and I talked about col­lab­o­rat­ing. So was born my next deck. Art by Mar­lon S. Ingram and Erin Craw­ford. I designed the con­cept. I really wanted a pos­i­tive graphic, with some­thing for the youth to push on. The idea is basi­cally a skate­boarder push­ing on the path to his good, along the way he(or she) encoun­ters all kinds of pos­i­tive or con­struc­tive things to get into.
You’ve been work­ing a lot with the youth of the East Bay. Tell me a bit about what you do.
Yea man! I been work­ing with youth for about 10 years. Started out with day care at the YMCA, then onto after-school pro­grams, sum­mer camps, skate­board camp etc. Before i moved to Cali i was work­ing with the YMCA’s Out­reach pro­gram. This by far is my favorite work, get­ting to men­tor at risk kids, and kids with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties etc. Since i moved out here, I’ve worked with the YMCA and a pro­gram in N. Oak­land Called “Project Des­tiny”, teach­ing dance to youth in the inner-city schools. Nowa­days I’m out in Rich­mond work­ing at an ele­men­tary school in which I pro­vide orga­nized and struc­tured play dur­ing recess time, and also imple­ment a stu­dent leader pro­gram for youth to become role mod­els to their peers on the yard! I’m always down to stop skat­ing and give advice to the upcom­ing youth. Kids are amaz­ing, they soak up every­thing. So I try to make sure that I’m influ­enc­ing them in a pos­i­tive way.
Top 5 most moti­va­tional skaters?
1. Karl Wat­son 2. Mike Car­rol 3. Cairo Fos­ter 4. Adelmo Jr. 5. Bryan Derballa
I think that’s about it. Any shout outs?
Shout out! yeah shout outs to the North Car­olina crews! Peace­wall park crew, Mom and dad, ghetto youths, dj smoky, selcta kuri­ous, dj danekah, green b, dj serg, Jah yzer, bodi rock crew, adi­das orig­i­nals berke­ley!, Sehba! Give thanks to Joey Ter­shay @ Ace Trucks, Rob @ Push Skateshop, Chris Glunt (RIP Con­cus­sion), Craig @ Satori, Lucian Moon, Jerry at 510. Diego big up your­self! Bless up! –Atreau