I didn’t really know Ishod prior to PUSH. I had seen him, said hello to him maybe a handful of times, but I didn’t really know him or anything about him except that he lived on the East Coast and that a long time ago he was in the first Bang Yo’Self Contest. That’s about it. Doing projects like PUSH, you have the privilege of discovering so many things about a person. Things not many people know. You get to see where they grew up, who they grew up with, and often times you get to sit at the table with their family and talk about everything. We did that with Ishod. I was so happy to meet his family. I was so surprised at how open Ishod was to having us meet them and film him interacting with them because there are two ways people in Ishod’s position can be, the way they are with the public and the way they are with their family and sometimes those people in the public only want you to see one of those ways. Ishod is the same both ways. He’s extremely open, communicative and honest and his family made us feel at home and openly discussed anything we asked them. Being around his family made me miss mine and I think when you watch this it will not only make you miss yours, appreciate yours, wish you had one like that, but it will leave you wishing you could skate like him too because his part shows us that he didn’t win Skater Of The Year for nothing. – sb
