Still a relative unknown outside of the greater Northwest, Creature skateboards' Willis Kimbel is about to break loose. With a deep bag of tricks, a gnarly determination and friends like David Gravette pushing him to take things further and further, this is a skater you'll be seeing a lot more of.

Garric RayWillis Kimbel steps to a lengthy frontside 50-50 and hangs on for the ride.

Age? Sponsors? How long have you been riding your skateboard?
I'm 23 years old. I ride for Creature, Independent, Jivaro wheels, Shrunken Head skateshop, Next Adventure, Volcom (flow) and Dakine (flow). I've been rolling for a little over 15 years.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't your Dad Curt Kimbel? Wasn't he a pro skateboarder in the '70's? I think he's even famous for surfing as well.
That's my pops. He was a Badlander. I used to scope his old mags and see pictures of him skating pools, fullpipes, the Pipeland Skatepark and a couple of slalom shots in there. The first board I skated was his pro model from Bad Company. It was huge, no concave, square tail with 72mm Kryptonics.

I wouldn't say he was famous. There is some '70's surf flick called "I Crave the Wave." My dad, Chris Strople and Tay Hunt are ripping in it, though. It's right around the first kneeslide era.

Garric RayWillis Kimbel is right at home lofting an ollie to fakie at Burnside in Portland, Oregon.

So, I'm guessing skateboarding is something that you definitely grew up around at an early age?
I did. I loved those things before I can even remember. Supposedly I'd balance on the arm of chair with a banana board deck when I was a little guy. My mom was down for it, too. We lived overseas for a good portion of my childhood so that made it kind of hard to find people to skate with. I had no clue about any skateboarding going on at the time. I would ask my dad for boards out of the '78 Skateboarder magazine in the mail-order sections for my birthday; I was a little behind. Most the time I was skating by myself, then we moved back to the States and it was on.

I think it's pretty cool that you and your dad have both had photos run in Skateboarder magazine. Not too many skateboarders can say that.
Hell yeah. He got this one shot in these Arizona fullpipes at 10 o'clock or so. That's burly high. I used to trip on that photo. Bryce Kanights got mine at Burnside 30 years later.

You live in Portland, Oregon. What's keeps you from migrating to Southern California?
Oh, I sneak off. I go down yonder here and there. I can only put up with 7-day forecasts of guaranteed pouring rain for so long. I like it down there, too. I like it here more. Windell's and Burnside are here. So are a lot of really good breweries. Carne Asada is down yonder, though.

Recently you've been traveling quite a bit - weren't you just with the Creature team in Alaska? What were you guys doing out there? I'm remember you said it had something to do with a Discovery Channel TV show?
Alaska was a real eye-opener. Unalakleet ain't a joke. One of our fellow Creatures, John Ponts flies airplanes in the tundras. He's got a show "Flying Wild Alaska" going on the Discovery channel. It's pretty rad to see what people consider to be a normal day. Ponts showed us all sorts of crazy stuff: beaver hunting on the river, no night time, caribou breakfast. It was tight. One little Eskimo kid gave us each a walrus tooth he killed all by himself. We skated, too. Creature invaded Alaska, thoroughly.

Garric RayWillis Kimbel stands properly on jacked DIY transition tailslide.

For a few years you lived right next to Burnside. What's the craziest thing you saw while living there?
One time some weirdo climbed into my window and put a gnarly note in the kitchen. That was really, really bad. Burnside operates perfectly though, if you're a skateboarder. No scooters or bikes or any of that. No dweeber bottom feeders, just people who want to skate.

Skateboarding isn't your full-time job at the moment, it seems like you've been working with the GoPro camera company for a little while now, how did that come about?
I used to intern for Nike back in high school for all sorts of video production and my old boss passed my name on. Got a phone call. There's some top secret action going on right now.

What do you plan on doing for the rest of 2011? Any trips or contests that you have lined up?
Skate with the homies. Trips will pop up. Looks like I'm an Alternate for X Games Superpark this year, so that might go down. I was supposed to head over to Japan with Jivaro but the radiation is kind of a bag. I gotta scratch my itch and skate Windell's up on Mt. Hood in the trees for a minute and then see what pops up.