« 17 Things You Didn't Know About Jason Dill »

Fakie 5-0 on AVE's Green Bench, 2003 by Oliver Barton for Skateboarder

Jason Dill had somewhat of a transient upbringing, moving 22 times from ages 8-17 after his father was incarcerated for intent to distribute cocaine when Jason was 8 (See GQ article). That same year, Jason moved down the street from Ed Templeton in Huntington Beach, opening his eyes to skateboarding. He first appeared in our world via A1-Meats and Blockhead right around the turn of 1990. After a quick stop at Black Label, then Color with the Wray brothers, Jason was anointed pro by Natas Kaupas via 101 in 1993. After 101 ended, and after a quick stint on 23, Dill was handed the keys to the “Polyethylene” kingdom in Alien Workshop’s Photosynthesis . In 2013, AVE and Dill left AWS to launch Jason’s decade old t-shirt company, Fucking Awesome, into a board Brand (FA). Those are the knowns. Now let’s take a look at 17 Things* you probably didn’t know.

* Disclaimer: This article was cancelled twice. It was originally intended to run on a different site back in ‘19. Then again (on another platform) in 2022. As it turned out, both editors decided not to run it based on talks with Jason. Four years later, I dug it out of my vaults. Apologies to anyone who takes offense.


1. JASON LOST HIS VIRGINITY TO A GIRL NAMED CORRINE AT THE AGE OF 15.
“I was 15. That and dropping out of high school were like back-to-back for me. First I got laid, and then I dropped out (laughs).”

2. JASON’S FA CO-PILOT, AVE, ALSO LOST HIS VIRGINITY TO A GIRL NAMED CORINNE AT 15.
“They didn’t meet and didn’t know each other—but both our firsts were named Corrine and I believe we were also both 15. I’m older than him (Anthony) so his was a little later. My Corinne was older than me. She was 17 and I was 15. So I was really moving on up in the world.”

3. THE SURNAME ‘DILL’ WAS ORIGINALLY ‘O’DILL.’
“The Dill name is Irish but it’s actually O’Dill originally. From the story I’ve been told, when immigrants would come into America there would be an alphabetical classification of food rations.” (Meaning the Dills would get their rations before the O’Dills, for example). “So they chopped the ‘O’ for that reason and also to not sound to ‘Mick-ey’. Because being Irish wasn’t that cool here at that point.”

4. JASON WAS BANNED FROM THRASHER IN 1993.
Jeremy Wray explains: “We were supposed to do a triple interview (J Wray, Jonas Wray [RIP], and Dill). We were all up in SF shooting with [Gabe] Morford, Bryce Kanights, and Tobin [Yelland]. The whole interview was shot, we had recorded the interviews too. It was all set. That’s when we both got banned from Thrasher for riding for Color Skateboards. Rich Metiver, the owner of Color, was also the owner of Union Wheels, a competitor to Spitfire and everything up there (DLX/High Speed). They yanked the whole article and banned all three of us (Jason, Jeremy, and Jonas) from Thrasher.” After Jason left Color, his photos started filtering back in. Jason finally got his first Thrasher cover in Nov. 2000 and a second in Sept. 2011. 

5. JASON ONCE LIVED ALONE IN AFRICA FOR 3 MONTHS.
“In 2003 I was sent there on a tour that was meant to last 10 days. It was for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and the electronics company LG. I was riding for Alien Workshop at the time. We flew into Dakar up north, then flew down to Johannesburg. We did skate demos with BMXers and different people all for the charity. We went from Johannesburg to Durban and then to Cape Town—that was the last stop—and then everybody was leaving and I just went to the travel agent and changed my ticket. I stayed in Cape Town for three months by myself, just at different hotels. Every day I’d walk around until I got lost and drunk, come home, and try to find my hotel. It was crazy. I can’t believe I did it and survived.” Asked why he finally left and whether his sponsors were tripping, Jason said, “Just time. I had been there too long. I had just made the Mosaic (’04) part so I think my sponsors were okay with me taking some time off.”

6. JASON IS 12% BRITISH.
“I did a DNA test the other day and expected it just to come back as a four-leaf clover. Just, ‘Boom, you’re Lucky Charms Irish.’ But I was only 88% Irish. I’m 12% British. I had no fucking idea. I thought my whole family up and down was Irish as the fucking Emerald Isle. I’m still predominantly Irish. But I just like to picture the inner fight now within myself of different breeds of white people.”

7. FUCKING AWESOME WILL TURN 22 IN 2023.
“That’s something that’s known but I’m not sure that people realize it.” While the board brand was formally launched in 2013, Jason and his partner Mikey Piscitelli screened the first Fucking Awesome t-shirts, which Jason describes as inspired by “probably some British magazine or something Japanese. I don’t remember exactly,” in the summer of 2001. “It basically started right before 9/11. Just by me being young and growing up around Supreme. I was 21 years old. It was very small and tiny.”

8. FA WAS ALMOST CALLED DILL.
“There was a moment (in ’01) when I was printing shirts with a label that said DILL (à la Stüssy). But that quickly changed to Fucking Awesome.”

9. JASON HAS ONLY MADE ONE SWITCH 360 FLIP IN HIS LIFE—THE ONE IN SNUFF (’94).
“I only ever made that one. It’s the one in the opening line in Snuff at Blackrock. I do it down the stairs. That’s the only one I ever landed and to this day even Anthony (Van Engelen) could never teach me how to do it. I can’t get my back foot back on.”

10. JASON’S MOSAIC (’04) PART WAS MADE UP ENTIRELY OF LINES IN ODE TO HENRY SANCHEZ.
“The whole thing was a line, only at like three or four different places. It was totally a conscious choice. I wanted to do something different. When I had seen Henry Sanchez' part (in Tim and Henry’s Pack of Lies [‘92])—when Gino and I were really young we went and got that video at the shop or wherever and took it to Black Label to watch it. We wanted to quit skateboarding. It was so good. But the Henry part is so sick because he just keeps going in circles. Jovontae [Turner] did that too. I just wanted to do something different. My whole fucking skateboard career is based on trying to be different in one way or the other.

11. JASON WANTED HIS ETNIES FA HIGHTOP AD TO FEATURE A PHOTO OF A SHOE HE HAD JACKED OFF ON.
In ‘08 Jason had an FA collab/pro shoe for Etnies and his contract gave him full control over his marketing. Jason first created the "Dill" graffiti art and then conceived the ad with Ryan Sheckler and his Range Rover, which was “kind of genius looking back on it,” according to sources at Etnies. For his third concept, Jason upped the ante. The FA x Etnies shoe was a high top with “Fucking Awesome” around the heel (highly sought after by sneakerheads today). For the shoe’s first ad, Jason had apparently jacked off on the high top, shot photos of the shoe with his semen on it, and sent those to Etnies to run as the ad. Unsure how to proceed, Etnies eventually printed a letter that they wrote to Jason explaining why they couldn’t use his photo and ran that as an ad instead instead. Somewhere at Etnies there is still an ad laid out with a cum-speckled shoe. According to sources at Sole Technologies, “The story became Etnies folklore.”

12. JASON WAS STRAIGHT EDGE.
“We spent a lot of time together in the Black Label van,” Jonas Wray (RIP) said. “Jason was completely against any kind of smoking or alcohol then. Completely. He’d tell you like, ‘You’re fucking stupid if you do that.’ Skip Pronier would be sparking up in the van and little Jason would preach to him. He was just a young spicy kid. He definitely had his own views and his own way of doing things.” Jeremy Wray added, “That’s the way he’s always been. He would have really, really strong opinions on something. And then he would completely 180 and have a really, really strong opinion that was the exact opposite of the one he had a week ago.” At least he’s consistent.

13. JASON ALMOST SWITCH INWARD BIG HEELED THE HUNTINGTON HIGH 7 IN 1992.
From J Wray: “Marcus Wyndham was the only person that had ever done it down a 4-stair. Jason was trying the Wyndham trick down the 7 inside Huntington High. The one with the slippery brick landing inside that hallway. He landed on one perfect but it shot out and he smacked his head really hard. He had a huge lump on his forehead and it knocked him out. He was super dazed. In the footage, you can see him stand up right after but his legs don’t work and he walks right into a trashcan. It would have been such a heavy trick if he made it.”

14. JASON ONCE TURNED DOWN $70K TO APPEAR ON A JAPANESE BILLBOARD SMOKING.
“I got offered $70,000 to be in a cigarette ad a few years back and I turned it down. It was supposed to be on a billboard in Japan. Just me on a billboard smoking a cig. It wasn’t for the brand I smoke. I probably shouldn’t divulge the brand. Actually, fuck it, I don’t care, I won’t get in trouble. It was Winston. I just couldn’t do it. I don’t smoke ‘em, but I probably wouldn’t pass one up if it was in front of me.”

15. JASON PUSHED MONGO.
Jonas Wray (RIP): “Right when we met him he was definitely mongo. That was just the way he felt comfortable. We pushed on him a little bit. Told him like, ‘There’s a better way to do it. It’s gonna be more comfortable.’ But he did have a great switch push after that. At first he was kind of resistant. But he did end up switching over. It was funny because a lot of the clips where he would power push into it they would cut out the mongo pushes. If he needed a power push it would come back.” You can see Jason switch back and forth à la Randy Colvin in the last line of his A1-Meats Dancing in the Dirt (’91) part.

16. JASON WAS TOO NERVOUS TO TALK THE FIRST TIME HE MET TONY HAWK.
“When I was around 14 I went to a contest in Houston. There was a vert ramp but it wasn’t the one on the Skatepark of Houston property. Max Schaaff taught me how to noseslide, half-cab to fakie, and some other basics on the vert ramp. There was no one there. It was just like a few people—Max, Moses Itkonen, Dave Metty, Salman Agah might have been there just hanging out. It wasn’t that big of a vert ramp, but I remember doing my rock to fakies, noseslides to fakie, my little half-cabs and Max Schaaff is teaching me. I’m getting up on the deck and all of a sudden Tony Hawk is just standing above me. He goes (in higher pitched Birdman voice) ‘You should learn how to do feeble-to-fakies. It really helps you get centered on the ramp.’ I’m looking at his face talking to me and then all of the sudden I just turned around and walked away. I was so freaked out that Tony Hawk was talking to me. I couldn’t talk. All I could think was, ‘Holy shit, it’s Tony Hawk’”.

17. JASON’S FIRST NAME IS ACTUALLY DONALD.
As reported in various interviews over the years, Jason’s full name is Donald Jason Dill. Jason’s mother gave him the name but opted later for Jason as Donald was actually Jason's father’s name (Donald SR) and after his father was incarcerated the name didn’t ring the best bells for obvious reasons. Jeremy Wray would still call Jason “Don” in a friendly teasing way but let’s stick with Jason from here on out.  

This article is dedicated to Jonas Wray (RIP) who passed away in April 2021 after helping with research for this article on his good friend Jason. Thanks also to his brother and living water-tower legend Jeremy Wray and Etnies for their help with research and big salute to one of my all-time-favorite skateboarders—Jason Dill. Stay you Jason. Buy FA product here.