When I started filming skateboarding a little over a year ago, I watched so many videos featuring Andy. It started with videos of Josh Hancock, because his autograph on a baseball bat is still a center piece of our family room. In a video featuring the two, I saw Andy kickflip front board the legs of a shaky unstable bench with Kanye West-like confidence. At first glance, Andy Wissman is a burly man with a beard to boot. But beneath the burly exterior lies one of the wisest souls I have ever had the pleasure to come across in this spirit journey we call life. He is so wise I bet he is solely responsible for creating the idiom “pearls of wisdom”, but we will never know because the only thing that shines through Andy Wiseman’s Confucius caliber wisdom and advice is his modesty… And his skating ability… Also his sense of humor.

I had almost forgotten that I couldn’t really skate the day I went to St. Charles, due my extraordinarily weak wings, because Wissman kept me thoroughly entertained the entire time.

And boy is that beard something in person. My single solitary post on Slap’s message boards discusses my 5 year plan of quitting skateboarding to join the competetive beard growing circuit with Ted De Gros, but after seeing some of my competition, I am thinking about signing Andy up in my place. With a beard that extravagant you have to be wise… Or just crazy, homeless and under the influence of some illicit substances. Thank goodness it isn’t the latter.