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Please introduce yourselves. Who is the elder? R: I’m Ryan Babenzien, the elder. B: I’m Brendon Babenzien. Ryan is the older by about a year and a half.
When did fashion and sportswear first strike a chord in each of you? R: Fashion and Sportswear have literally been in my life for as long as I can remember. Our father was a HS Teacher and coach of a few different sports. Before my parents got divorced, which was when I was 8, I remember he always had sneakers because he was a gym teacher, that was his thing. gym teachers were like the original sneakerheads. So we always had all kinds of sports equipment in the garage and I was always into that type of stuff. And, on the fashion front, take a look at how my mom used to dress us. My mom tells this funny story of how we had all these amazing clothes my grandmother would buy us from
Lord & Taylor and how I only liked certain things. I was so adamant about what I would and wouldn’t wear she would cry sometimes when I wouldn’t let her dress me… I was 3. B: For me, it was probably very young. I was exposed to older guys because of skateboarding in the 70's. So it was really early, probably like 5 years old or something. Just seeing the cooler good skaters at the skate parks in Florida had a major influence on me. Then, when I was 13, I got a job at a skate/surf shop. That experience really helped too. I was ordering stuff for the shop and all of my friends at the time were quite advanced stylistically, so they had a big impact on me. guys like Don Busweiller, who went on to start Pervert years later and then become a legend for walking away from society altogether. He lives like Jesus now on the street with no connection to our world. He’s always taken things to the extreme and in a lot of ways is still influencing me.
What sports did you participate in as children? How did those influence your future paths? R: I played football, baseball, soccer, and lacrosse when I was young, pretty much anything. Lacrosse and football were the sports I stayed with on the traditional side... I probably should have played lacrosse in college but chose not to for the wrong reasons, that’s a different story altogether probably better suited for Psychology Today. Football was probably my best sport naturally, although I stopped playing going into 11th grade because our HS was super committed and very good. I wasn’t willing to work out on the off season and all that because I basically got into the CA SPORTS when I was about 8 - bmx, skate, surf, snow..we were early adopters for sure. Brendon and I used to skate this great park in Cocoa Beach FL, which is where Slater is from. I was 8, Brendon was 6! I still remember the first real board I got, Logan Earth ski with Road Rider 4’s…wish I had that now…I was a huge BMx rider, not racing really, but jumping anything and everything. 97