Thrasher Magazine

Photo: Stolling

It's always tough watching your kids grow up. The young curly-headed Corey I first met was a pure and innocent dude from the Midwest, willing to fly down anything you could find him. But a slew of injuries and a lot of uncertainty made Glick change from the rail-ripping kid we all grew to love to an opinionated man, swearing off boring spots and sporting a mustache even Salvador Dali would be proud of. Interestingly enough, the man we know today is on a mission to tap into the joyful parts of his past. If this video part is a byproduct of Corey’s constant search for his youth, then I hope he never stops chasing it. —Don Luong


Take another viewing of Corey's closing part in Foundation's killer feature

Sup, Corey? Where are you right now?
I'm in Chicago.

That’s where you're from, right?
No, I'm from Gurnee—it’s northern Illinois.

Dude from Gurnee takin' a back heel for a journey      Photo: Pendry

But when people ask you where you're from, you say Chicago right?
I wish I could claim Chicago that hard! I'm basically from Wisconsin. Gurnee is right on the border.

What are you doing over there?
Just chilln’ and skating out here. I had to get out of LA. I just bailed on my spot and got an AirBnB out here for a few months. Don’t really have a plan for when I get back to California yet. Shit, I might not even come back. Just kind of playing it by ear.

You’ve been in Long Beach for almost seven years now. What sparked the move?
Well, I was getting the same feeling I got when I was living in Illinois as a kid, just feeling stuck and stagnant. That’s when I made the move to California. But I've been in Long Beach for so long now I just felt like I needed to explore and be somewhere new. I was going stir crazy.

Your exploration tactics and curiosity have been known to jam up the sesh. Whether it’s a gas station or a huge college campus, you're instantly gone. You’ll leave your phone in the car and we have to find you. Have you always been this way?
I think it happens a lot more on trips and places I've never been. Being in a new place just gets me excited to look around and find a cool photo to shoot or a weird little fun spot to skate.

Glick flicked into a front blunt fakie and bounced. That's how you make an exit

You seriously go missing though.
Yeah, I bum the guys out sometimes.

Souvenir came out in 2018. This is your first part since then. What's been goin’ on from then up to now?
Well, right after Souvenir, I fractured my fibula and was out for almost a year—like eight or nine months. It just took forever to heal because I didn’t get surgery. I thought I was good after it healed but then my knee started to hurt and I had no idea what it was.

I remember that time well. You got a gnarly clip and I thought you were finally back to full strength, but then you ended up flying in and out to get a cortisone shot for the pain.
Yeah, that cortisone shot didn’t help at all. It got to the point where I couldn’t even skate at all and I had no idea what was wrong. But what I found out was when I was a kid a part of my knee cap didn’t fuse together and it didn’t really affect me until I hurt my leg. So there was just all this strain pulling on my knee and making it impossible to skate without it hurting. That was a really gnarly trip; I was on it for almost two months and couldn’t even skate. At that point in my life I was feeling lost and kind of giving up. I was hurt for so long without knowing what was wrong and kind of thinking of moving back home because I’d never be able to skate how I want to again. But once I got the surgery and it ended up healing back to 100 percent. I just worked really hard rehabbing it and trying to get back to form. When I came back it just resparked and lit a fire in me. It changed my entire outlook on skating. I just started searching for that feeling again. I lost that feeling for so longz—what I loved about skateboarding. It changed how I wanted to film and my approach completely. For me personally, just going out everyday and trying to film the gnarliest or hardest thing just stopped being fun. I was just trying to rediscover that essence of skating that I lost for so long. I'm kind of in a constant search for it in anything I do or create now.

I feel like a lot of skaters in their downtime or when they're hurt don’t really use it to their advantage and end up piling out really hard. I recall you getting really into photography, art and learning how to play music while you were hurt.
I definitely always had interests in those things but without skating taking up all my time and energy, I could give more attention to my other interests. To be honest, it was really a blessing in disguise. I just always had to be making or creating something with my time so I didn’t feel worthless.

Pile out or vibe out, Corey makes the right call     Photo: Pendry

We collaborated a lot on this video. All the stop animations and super-8/Jazz-Cam footage was from either you and your girlfriend Sam. Was it always a known thing that you were gonna use all these things in the video?
To be honest it wasn’t planned at all. It happened pretty naturally. It started with us finding this crab on the beach that looked super cool and we ended up making a stop-animation story just for fun, out of boredom. This was during the peak of lockdown and it just kind of snowballed from there. I have so much junk and random shit I find in my house so we just ended up making a bunch of them. I showed it to you and you were planning on using it in my part and from there it kind of turned into us making a bunch of random ones to sprinkle throughout the video.

A return to Foundation form

I really liked all the dad-cam footage you contributed to the video. It feels like a video diary of sorts, just you documenting these random personal moments of your life.
I wasn’t on planning using any of this in the video. I just wanted to document these memories for myself because as cool as photos are, there's just something really special about looking back on video footage. I just looked online for the shittiest camera I could find and it ended up being a little digicam called a Jazz Cam. I'm stoked we used them in the video. It just adds another layer and gives it a real dreamy nostalgic feeling.

So this new part showcases a completely different side of your skating. What's the motivation behind your anti-pipe movement?
It all started by going on all those long trips with Leo and Dakota and them only wanting to skate rails. Not only were we going to rails, but we were going to the same rails year in and year out that I've already seen and skated or that have been completely killed. It just didn’t do it for me anymore. Don’t get me wrong, there's still rails out there I wanna skate but they just gotta be a little different or cool. I was just trying to expand, you know? I was just trying to keep things fresh and fun. New environments and terrain. I like going to a spot and it almost tells you what trick to do or how it should be skated, as opposed to going to a normal rail where you can kind of try whatever you want. So instead of you dictating the trick, the spot kind of tells you what to do and those are the best kinds of spots.

The wall calls the shots, blast up to frontside nose 

I love seeing the influence you’ve had on Julian Lewis. Your approach has been rubbing off on him pretty heavily. Tell us about our new rider Julian.
He's really quiet. A little weird but he's such a sweetheart. I don’t really know him that well but we spent some time on the road for this video. I wish I knew him better; he's really gnarly and talented. He's really en pointe and calculated when he's skating the daredevil spots.

You came out with two zines this year, Chunk zine and a zine for Vans. Have you always wanted to make zines?
It all just stems from being hurt, really. Ever since I got hurt I was documenting everything, just going on sessions hurt with my camera and shooting all these photos. It was during lockdown that I realized I had all this content I wanted to put out. Everything I do just kind of stems from being bored.

What is chunk?
Chunk is just my childhood crew I grew up with in Gurnee. It’s a word we would use for everything. For example: If we’re out and see someone twacked and bugging out, we’d be like “that dude’s chunked.” I mainly just use it to describe things that are so weird and indescribable. Chunk just kind of sums it up best .You can also call people chunk heads if they are being super chunk. It's hard to explain, just some inside jokes between the homies. I don’t even know how it started or the origin but it's been goin for a while.

Are there ever dreams to make it into a brand?
I mean, I just love making stuff and hooking up the homies but I don’t have any plans to make into anything. If it happens organically then maybe sometime down the road. It's just an outlet for me to learn and be creative. I’m learning how to screen print and sew right now. My girlfriend Sam is making some sick bucket hats too. It's all just for fun.

Finding the right angle, fishy frontside carve to ollie out      Photo: Pendry

Is it hard to balance the fun aspect of skating with the work aspect of it, the obligation to film video parts and shoot photos?
There definitely is a balance. Skateboarding doesn’t have to be jumping down the biggest stuff. You can still film a really good video part without those things. It was more just about growing and trying new things. It's more rewarding than trying to one up myself. I still really appreciate the guys that put it on the line. I love watching those parts, but for me personally it's just not what I strive for anymore.

Who are some of your favorites right now?
Myles Willard, dude. He's one of the best!

Dude, I struggle with it because I film him and I can record an entire session of his and it still doesn’t capture how amazing of a skater he is.
It's more of a feeling! You don’t have to have a camera on him. Just seeing his approach and how spontaneous he is. It’s the sickest.

So you're tryin’ to film a Midwest part next?
Yeah, every time I come back here it's always for short trips, so I wanted to stay for an extended amount of time and film. Just being in the city, there's so much energy and you push around from spot to spot, finding stuff around every corner. We got a good crew out here and I was just really sick of driving around LA getting kicked out of every spot—just had to change up the scenery. I really don’t have any specific plans for this part. I just kn0w I want it to be in the Midwest.

Changing up the scene and the stance, wallie 180 fakie 5-0 shove 

Well, I’m already looking forward to that one. Let's wrap it up with some thank-yous and what's next for the Glickster.
Gotta shout out everyone at Vans, Zach Sheats, Kevin Shealy, Frank, Tin, MB, Sinclair, Justin and Dylan over at Ace, Pizzle—Midwest legend, Burndog, Tony V, everyone at Thrasher, mom and dad and the fam. And, oh yeah, you, Don Luong!

That’s fucked up, man. Don’t forget about me!
My bad. We can put you first.

Damn, Corey, we've been doing this a long time, man.
Hell yeah, dude. I wouldn’t wanna do it with anyone else.

I'm super proud of you, Corey, stoked to do another video part with you.
Thanks, Donny, can't wait for the next one.

Shove nosegrind on some curved 'crete out in the wild, Glick's new approach pays off in Star & Moon. Another part can't come soon enough      Photo: Karpinski