Thrasher Magazine

Straight to the website interview for Brass. So, Nicholas Boserio...
Yes, Dane Burman. Dane Stewart Burman.

So, why’d you change your Instagram name from The Brass and got rid of anything The Brass related on there?
So, we’re going to talk about Instagram?

Yeah, it used to be “The Brass” and then you changed it to just “Nick Boserio” and underneath it was “The Brass” and now it’s just, like, good young cocksucker or something.
It’s “All Young All Brassy,” so there’s Brass in there.

Not very much of it.
Pay closer attention.


Trying to give Neen a run for his money-gun. Ninja Heelflip. Photo Flynn

Not much Brass left, though. You’re getting rid of The Brass. You’re trying to ditch the nickname.
I’m accentuating the Brass. It’s not just all Brassy or all Young. It’s All Young All Brassy. That’s a lot of accentuating leading to the Brassy.

So people can’t just type in, “The Brass” as everyone knows you by and find you on Instagram. So you’re a little more hidden. I think you’re limiting yourself.
Yeah, I’m hiding behind my true name. You found me out, but now everyone’s gonna know.

Alright, so you’ve been married for almost a year now.
Yes, it’s my one-year wedding anniversary this Sunday.

Doing anything special? Vineyard holiday?
Not a vineyard, no. Is that a thing?


Conventional kinker, hammer time back board Photo: Zalsavsky

I feel like it’s a thing. I don’t know because I don’t drink and I don’t marriage. So how, as a skateboarder, is married life different from the bachelor life?
Uh, I don’t live in a shit house. I live with my wife.

That’s a shit house. You have to wait for each other to get out of the bathroom.
I guess I’m sharing my house. I live with her instead of, like, five dudes. But that was before I was married, too, so I don’t know. It’s not different at all.

Who, past or present, would you like to have on the Zero skateboard team?
You could go with the Australia gimmick and put Mumford back on. That’d be cool.

That would be cool. He’d have to start skating again, though.
Oof. Dane said it, not me.


Just a couple of raw backsides, no big deal.  Photo: Flynn

That’s alright. He already hates me.
What about Jim Greco and we can get him to do all of our graphics?

I like Greco’s boards. Okay, who besides me would you like to have kicked off the Zero team?
I need all of my focus on somebody getting kicked off to be on you. I’m not even going to think about getting other people kicked off.

Okay, while we’re on this subject, why did you get kicked off Alien Workshop? Or why did they tell you that you’d never make it as a pro for them?
I don’t know.

What do you mean you don’t know? You know the reason: you fucking ticked somebody off, like Dylan or Dill or something.
I probably just didn’t get along with them. It’s like any team. A lot of the people don’t work out. This is how I explain it: I didn’t know that I was supposed to be getting on until I found out I wasn’t. So I don’t know why.


Hippie jump? More like some sleeper-cell shit on this high-jump inside grind. Photo: O'Donnell

If you’re gonna play the ignorance-is-bliss card…
I don’t know. I probably got pissed drunk and then did something stupid.

I heard it was because you got into a fight with Jason Dill.
Yeah, it’s because I tried to choke Jason Dill out.

I feel like Jason Dill is the sort of guy that if you tried to choke him out you’d succeed.
Your words, not mine.

Not that I want to try and choke Jason Dill out ‘cause he seems like a nice guy, even though I flipped him off one time for no fucking reason at all.
How did that go for you?


This cutty enough? Classic kickflip. Photo: Flynn

I don’t know. He just looked at me really confused.
I’d be confused as well.

I’ve told you that story, right?
I don’t think so.

It was when he was in Melbourne for a little while and he was going into Fast Times every single day to check his Facebook. I’d see him nearly every day and say, “Hey, what’s up, dude?” Talk to him every single day. It was cool, you know. Nice guy. And then one day I was skating to Lincoln to meet up with everybody and he was out in front of Fast Times and he gave me the wave and I turned around and I flipped him off and just kept going. And then a little bit down the road I was, like, “Why did I do that?” And I had no idea why I did that. It was just my natural reaction to flip him off and keep skating. And that was the last time I saw him for fucking years. I don’t think I’ve seen him since. So I don’t know if he realized or remembers or anything, but I flipped off Jason Dill for no fucking reason.
Very nice.

I’m not bragging about that or anything. It was a dick move one-hundred percent but I think it’s funny.
Well, it’s a little better than trying to choke him out.


Can your super hero do this?  Bump to chain-link 50-50. Photo Dominick

Yeah, like you did and got kicked off.
Yeah, I got really drunk and fucking tried to choke Jason Dill out and never got on Alien Workshop. So do you want to tell an actual story that really happened to go with this interview?

Do you think it’s funny that everyone thinks that Jamie Thomas is a skate Nazi, like the worst dude ever, but you get fucking hammered in the back of the van on every Zero trip and talk shit to Jamie the entire time and here he is turning you pro? Seems like he’s willing to tolerate a lot. Tell the story about the time you blew up the hotel room and he had to deal with it.
Oh, that was fucked. God, that’s a good story. So we drove from South Carolina into North Carolina. Fireworks are, like, 100-percent legal in South Carolina but not in North Carolina, but we didn’t know that. We bought a bunch of fucking fireworks from one state, drove straight into the state where they’re not legal at all, went into the parking lot of the motel we were staying at in the fucking middle of nowhere and went fucking crazy with them. Like, huge cannon fireworks, everything. We spent hundreds of dollars on them. Got kicked out of the parking lot, go back to the room, still having so many fireworks left and blew everything up. We shot Roman candles into the bathroom, the shower curtain got dirt from all of these flaming balls shooting out. There were black smoke dot marks all over the bathroom. The TV remote got blown up. Cans of beer got blown up. Everything, like, getting stuck under the bedsheets. The whole room got so smoked out. It’s me, Windsor James, Lannie Rhoades and I think maybe someone else was there, but I know us three were the main culprits. We fucking blew everything up. There was so much noise. This was at, like, four in the morning—a regular motel room. Boom, boom, boom, boom! Somebody starts knocking on the door and then we’re, like, what the fuck? Pretend that we’re asleep. Ridiculous. But we did it anyway—jumped into bed. Lannie takes all his clothes off, classic drunk skateboarder move, and answers the door naked. He opens the door naked and I shit you not, it’s dark in the room and light outside and he opens the door and you can see his silhouette and just all this smoke billowing out around his head and between his legs—completely butt naked, like, “Oh, I’m sorry, what’s going on?” And the people were just, like, “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re trying to pretend to go to sleep and you’re naked? This is complete bullshit. This place is fucked.” Then Jamie wakes up because of all of the knocking and the fireworks.


Boardslide transfer as casual as a walk in the park. Photo: Dominick

We were awake. I was in the room with him the whole time. We were just lying there listening to the fucking fireworks from fucking five doors down.
I’m sure Jamie was just, like, “Well, let’s get out of here.” So this lady wants to kick everyone out and he’s pretty much just, like, “Please. The rest of us are normal people who are also upset that these idiots are blowing up all these fireworks. Please, just kick them out and let us stay.” He just wanted to go back to sleep, ‘cause he’s just, like, a person who doesn’t even know us, putting up with this firework noise. So long story short, he drives us directly across the road, checks us into the motel across the street. And we’re all in the back of the car, like, silent. Jamie is driving us in the van and we’re all like bastard kids. He checks us in next door and it worked out fine. We didn’t even have to pay for the room. They didn’t even make us pay for the damages. I have absolutely no idea why. We fucking blew up everything, and I took a wet towel and fucking wiped down the burn marks on the walls. But there were fireworks in all the beds, the TV remote didn’t work and there was beer all over the floor from blowing the cans up and they didn’t make us pay for anything. I have no idea why. But yeah, Jamie’s not a skate Nazi. All the time—

Not all the time.
We might have been drunk and checking into the motel at four in the morning ‘cause we were checking out spots that entire night under Jamie’s command. That was good times. Hammered, making irresponsible decisions. See? I’m a really good role model. I am. It’s good clean fun. No one got hurt. No one ever gets hurt as long as we have fireworks inside of a tiny hotel room. Suck posse. Or did suck posse suck that night? Do you think I’m a positive role model, Dane?

I do think you are a positive role model for the children. Well, I mean you’re a positive role model 90-percent of the time until you get pissed in the van, and then you’re just an annoying cunt.
That’s a good balance, I guess.


Hard to get cuttier than Ol’ Mexico. Kicky front board in the land of cracks. Photo: Dominick

Yeah, I mean, it’s like yin and yang, you know? You need your little black dot in the white square sometimes. So you have your life pretty much together right now. You’re a man with a brand new car. You want to talk about your new car?
I got a car loan. My car is on street view. How about that? If you look up my house on Google street view you can see my car.

I remember being real stoked when Google Earth first came out and I saw my old house. It was, like, “Oh my God. You can look at shit.” And I could see my dog that had recently died running around in the backyard and I was, like, “Oh, my little dog.”
That’s a lot more meaningful and sentimental. Mine is just a car in a driveway.

That’s pretty meaningful and sentimental—first car in America.
Doing things. Big things. Here’s my car in the driveway. I think it’s symbolic of doing some good, something in America, some kind of progress. It was, like, the last thing on my list of major stuff I had to do in America. Get my license, get my fucking car.



Why do they call him Brass? Must be ‘cause that’s what his balls are made of. Double danger ollie con huevos. Photo: O'Donnell

It’s like a closed book, it’s, like, boom. Did it. I moved. I made the fucking thing. Yeah, that’s how I felt when I got mine. Now I want to fucking sell the cunt. So the last photo you had in Thrasher was an ollie over to grind down a 16. Have you taken a step back from that kind of skating? What do you think about this general low-impact trend in skating? Not necessarily that you’re doing that.
I’ve always maintained that I like cutty hammers; I don’t think I like hammers alone. Like, gnarly shit alone is sick, but gnarly shit that has something different about it—that’s the ultimate combination.

I just don’t have the cutty eye. I just go and find a rail and it’s, like, “Oh okay, no one’s 5-0’d it? I’ll do that again, I guess.” Then I end up with a bunch of 5-0s that are completely pointless. I guess I need to do the cutty low-impact thing like you.
What is this low-impact thing?


Tall snap to backside wallride. Photo: O’Donnell

Well, you’re not going to find a perfect 15 stair in the cuts. That’s not cutty. You’re not going to jump down 15 stairs with four cracks before you pop and a grate on the landing, are you?
No. Maybe if it was, like, a 14 stair that doesn’t have cracks at the top but you land into a hill? I don’t know. Does it have to be high impact to be gnarly? No. Maybe it’s the fact that so many people are doing all this gnarly shit on basic looking stuff that people are trying to do other stuff. Do you think I have a new direction in my skating? Jeez. Has there ever been directions? Well, you know what it is, I think from part to part you have to change some things, you know? You can’t just keep adding a stair. You have to change. Versatility to me is not just trying to do new things or push yourself. It isn’t just about trying a harder trick or trying to do the same tricks on bigger things. It’s, like, is there some way of skating or some certain spots that you haven’t been good at skating that you want to push yourself on?

So after this part you’re probably gonna focus on a manual pad. Is what you’re trying to say?
Yeah, I’m gonna go on a switch manual thing after this.

Switch manual. Perfect.
There’s the pull quote: I’m going to work on a switch manual video part.