Brian KellyJoe Tookmanian stands firm on a lengthy switch backside 5-0 and hangs on for the over head-high drop.

Long-time Fiveboro and DVS rider Joe Tookmanian is one of my favorite skaters from New Jersey. I have to say that or else he'll beat me up. He was born and raised in the warzone of Paterson, which he tries to paint as quaint. Tookmanian has seen his fair share of reality there and seems bent on extracting vengeance on anything he skates. I don't think I need to tell you about his skate skills (If you need a tutorial go watch his last Fiveboro video part where nearly every trick was switch.), he's one of those guys that skates better switch than he does regular. With a new Fiveboro video about to come out and hopefully a pro board with his name on it, I decided to ask Joe about five topics close to his heart.

PATERSON, NEW JERSEY
I love Paterson. To me it's beautiful but to anyone that comes here they might not think so because there's a lot of crime, drug dealing and a lot of messed up stuff that happens here. If you grew up here or spent enough time here you'd think differently. Sure, I have had guns pulled on me a bunch; had everything robbed I had on me. I've gotten beaten up a bunch, had my cousin's teeth smashed in with the butt of a gun. But I don't really think of the bad things when I think of Paterson. That's not a reason to not like the place. It has a good feel. It has a lot of old buildings. As long as you can handle yourself and you're not a wimp you'll be alright here.

Courtesy of FiveboroJoe Tookmanian, all smiles.

CIGARS
Right now I'm trying to light a cigar but the wind keeps blowing my matches out. I got into cigars on a tour when someone let me smoke one of theirs; I liked the taste of it and have been smoking them ever since. I smoke either Rocky Patel 1992s or Ashton VSG. I've been trying to cut back. I've been smoking smaller cigars now. I still smoke at least five or six a day but now I'll smoke the small ones instead of the really big ones all the time. I've never filmed a line smoking a cigar but I filmed a trick smoking a cigar. It was a front board transfer on this parking block on cinderblocks with a quarter on the other side. I've gotten pretty good at skating around with a cigar in mouth but I've had some incidents in my car. I've dropped a cigar down and burnt myself while I'm driving and almost crashed but that's only happened a few times.

OWNING A SKATESHOP
My shop was called Took's and it was in Pompton Lakes, which is close to Paterson. It was cool. It was me and my friend Taz, who I grew up with, running it together. We only had it for a year. There just weren't enough people buying stuff. Now, with Zumiez and all the mall shops, it's impossible to keep a skateshop open. Times are tough. Kids didn't really have money to buy stuff so it didn't work out so well. It was a good learning experience, though. Now if I need griptape or something I always go to a skateshop, I never question prices, I always want to support the small shops as much as possible because I know how hard it is to keep a place like that open. And if kids don't realize that those are the shops that actually care about skateboarders and skateboarding and not just the money they're making from it, then soon we're not going to have any shops around that are real skateshops.

Brian KellyJoe Tookmanian takes a different approach with a switch wallie back tail in New York City.

FIVEBORO CREW
First of all, there are a lot of stories about those guys. They're all great guys. Each one of them has their own personality. But when it comes down to it, everybody has the same set of morals and rules that we live our life by. There are plenty of crazy times with them like the one time we were in Peru and the rest of the guys got in this huge fight with like 20 kids and Dan Pensyl was destroying them. It was Pensyl and two other guys against 20 kids and Pensyl's fist is like the end of a sledgehammer and he was just smashing these kids in the face and this is all on video tape.

But the biggest character, the most entertaining guy in the crew, is probably Willy Akers. And I don't mean that he's trying to be entertaining he just lives in his own little world. He's the nicest kid in the world but he never knows what's going on. He doesn't understand what is happening in the world around him. He's not a dumb person, he's just happy-go-lucky and doesn't care about anything and it's fun to watch.

THE NEW FIVEBORO DVD
We don't have a name for the video yet and I haven't seen it yet. It's edited. Tombo [Colabraro, the Fiveboro team manager] edited the whole thing and now he's re-editing it. But he's got to finish it soon. He said it's definitely coming out by the end of the summer. And don't mark my words on that because it's not up to me. But I think Tombo can do it. It's going to be tight. Everyone has been working a long time for this and I can't wait to see it when it's done. I'm looking forward to Pensyl's part the most. He's going to have some amazing stuff in this video. His stuff is going to be tight. Pensyl is like fine wine: he gets better with age and this is the best he's ever been now and he's in his 30s.