Lacey Baker | Transworld Interview

"Skateboarding and the skateboard industry—no matter how polished parts of it may look today—were built on twin cornerstones of “Fuck You” and “I’ll Do It Myself.” When roller-skate manufacturers, the surf industry, and mainstream America at large failed to produce the products we needed to excel in the ’70s (urethane wheels, precision bearings, trucks that turned, et cetera), skateboarders rolled up their sleeves, hoisted a middle finger, and built it themselves. Now, some 50 years since the dawn of our “industry,” girl and women skateboarders worldwide face a similar scenario. Except this time, the entrenched status quo that is unwilling or unable to help them is the very industry supposedly built to include them. Lacey Baker has tried playing her position. She rode for Element and a few other establishment pillars only to feel like she was continuously the bastard stepchild on the team. She has tried to live off of the meager contest earnings set up by Women’s X Games and most recently Women’s Street League—only to return to school for two years before working a nine-to-five in order to finance her skate “career.” Now 24, Lacey is determined to take matters into her own hands. With Lisa Whitaker, Vanessa Torres, Amy Caron, and her crew at Meow Skateboards—in the DIY tradition of the industry’s original pioneers in the ’70s—Baker has decided to give up trying to find a place in the existing industry and instead simply up and build her own. Here’s her full story to date." - Transworld Skateboarding

Read Lacey Baker's full interview from the Transworld Skateboarding November 2016 issue here.