Quicksand – Raul Žgomba interview

Interview: Racan
Photography: Romac
Translation: Tenšek

Hi Raul, how are you? I know I’m going to sound like your grandmother, but how’s university, what’s the hold-up?
Hi Nikola, I’m feeling great, I’m young and it wouldn’t be OK for me to feel bad. The problem with university is that I’ve lost my interest in it and if something is not interesting to me I can’t make myself do it. The time has come for me to find a proper job and not lose time on student jobs. I mean, that’s OK because you have time to do other things.

You made Quicksand because guys from Tabula Rasa went their separate ways and pursued some other goals – the typical story. Can you describe this process for us? Did you also maybe want to move forward, or just catch some breath after this project?
This new video was a totally different process from making Tabula Rasa. For that video I exactly knew where I wanted to travel and film, there were more skaters involved, I made DVDs, etc. I started filming for Quicksand at the beginning of the pandemic; Antonio Peković, Dino Coce and I made an arrangement to make something happen. All three of us had nothing better to do and the VX was still working, so we made a couple of trips to each other’s places, seeing as we all live in different cities. We randomly searched for spots, got lucky and filmed it.

Yeah, I think that’s it for me as far as these kinds of projects are concerned. I don’t want to sacrifice that much time for these things any more. I think that we can just meet up, hang out and skate without filming for some project…

They’re building a new skatepark on the coast of the city. Pula, a small city, soon to have two skateparks (Fažana is still waiting for one), not bad, eh?
Yeah, I can’t wait. Every day a nice bike ride to the new park… After so many years of the same park we eventually got bored with it, we need the change.

When I see you around, I see you in a BMW, which means that you have some new hobbies and rituals. It can be too much sometimes if you just do skateboarding. Can you tell me why exactly a BMW from ’95?
To be fair, I bike around the city. But yeah, drifting is my new hobby. I guess that it was appealing to me because my father trained me for motocross and took me to races when I was a kid, and I still love driving cars and motorcycles. In terms of how you think about it, drifting is more similar to skateboarding than you might think. It’s also nice to rest your legs and take your mind off skateboarding every once in a while. It also saved me last summer while I was dealing with knee pain. I couldn’t skate for two months and I didn’t have anything else to do. A BMW from ’95 is the cheapest and most accessible car for drifting. I’m just going to smash it anyway – like a board – so you have to take the price into consideration as well.

Outside of the tourist season, Pula (as well as Fažana) is a dead city. But from a skateboarder’s perspective, that’s the reason why we love it. Do you think that someone new with a camcorder in their hand will succeed you one day, in the same way that you’ve succeeded me?
I’d be the happiest if the new kids developed an interest in filming, but when I think about it I’m just not sure if it will happen. They started skateboarding when the format of the full-length video was pretty much dead, and they probably don’t own a single full-length on DVD at home, which could inspire them to try and do it themselves. I’m not sure, but time will tell. It’s important that they’re skateboarding.

Watch Quicksand here.