ELIJAH BERLE — On FA
Elijah Berle on FA is not exactly breaking news. He’s been photographed wearing the shirts on social media for months. When he left Chocolate alongside Jerry Hsu last Wednesday, it was only a matter of time before FA made some sort of announcement. That came the following day in the form of an Instagram post of a photo of Elijah with simple caption: “We love Berle.” While you can certainly take this cryptic message as confirmation, we like to air on the side of caution when it comes to posting team changes, and needed something more concrete. We got what we were looking for in the below excerpt from Anthony Van Engelen’s Chrome Ball interview that was posted online last night.
So, of course, we have to talk about Elijah Berle.
(laughs) It’s funny, I just called him. He’s probably gonna call me back while we’re doing this.
So, yeah… Elijah. What about Elijah? (laughs)
Well, all signs are pointing to FA.
When does this come out?
Whenever you want it to come out.
Well, if this comes out in November, then yes, Elijah rides for FA. I mean, it’s pretty obvious. He’s on Instagram with the shirt on, riding a board. It’s been in the works for a while now.
But yes, Elijah rides for FA.
How’d that go down?
Dill and I skated a lot with Elijah right when he got on Vans and Chocolate, right before he started filming for Pretty Sweet. I think he was only 16 years old at the time, but it felt like he was 26. We loved the guy. He had a fucking mustache, smoked cigarettes and skated like a man.
So we always loved him, but he was on Chocolate and that was cool. Those are our friends. But over the last year or so, I noticed that whenever the kids on our team would all be out together and run into Elijah, they’d start jamming him up.
“Ride for FA, Elijah!”
They were honestly the ones who’d always put it out there. Dill and I never pursued it. But somewhere along the lines, it started to gain momentum. I just kept hearing about it, so I called Dill.
“Have you talked to Elijah? What’s going on with this?”
“I don’t know. I’ll run into him and talk shop but I was never putting it out there to come ride for us.”
So I call Elijah, just to clear the air.
“What’s up, man? I’m hearing all this stuff. We’re not trying to steal you but you’re a grown man. If you’re ever feeling that you want to do something different, know that you have a place here.”
That’s basically it. The kids really wanted him on and it’s their team.
I can’t imagine the Crailtap camp was too thrilled about this.
Nobody likes to lose a rider, especially an Elijah. But I talked to Carroll, they were as cool as you can be about it. Everyone realizes that at the end of the day, its Elijah’s decision.
Our team is already so epic right now anyways. The only addition that I can really see is Elijah…
For more from AVE, head over to Chrome Ball and read the entire interview.
