Interview With Bonfolk's Tim Black
What's your name?
Tim Black
How old are you?
36
Where are you from?
Brisbane, Australia
When did you start skating?
I started skating in 1997. My friends older brother was a drummer in a band and went on a trip to the States. He came home with this Alien Workshop Slick complete and we use to “borrow” it when he’d be out. We would board slide this retaining wall on his Mums garden bed. Completely fucked the flowers and his deck. I was hooked from that moment on.
When did you move to the States?
My first trip to the States was in 2003. I officially moved here in 2011.
How did you end up in New Orleans?
I met my wife Janna in LA who is a 7th generation New Orleanian so naturally we made the move to her hometown and started a family. That’s what you do right?
When did you start Bonfolk and what made you want to start Bonfolk?
I started Bonfolk with my wife Janna in 2015. We were living in DTLA and I would skate through skid row all the time and talk to different people experiencing homelessness. One of the main things that would always come up was the need for a fresh pair of socks. They would always tell me that it’s easy to get pants and jackets from shelters and goodwill but socks are something that has to be brand new.
Janna has a background in fashion design and I’m a photographer so we put our heads together and came up with the idea to donate a pair of socks for every pair we sold. ‘If we ever sold a pair’. It was very much a pipe dream at the time.
We took a trip back to New Orleans and quickly learnt that there were just as many people experiencing homelessness there, and we should move back and start our company. We’re extremely proud of what we do and happy to say we’ve donated over 400,000 pairs of socks and counting.
Tim kills it on a skateboard. Check his footage from 2003-2004:
And make sure to check out Bonfolk on our webstore:
