It's rad and all to have your driveway's flatbar on lock, but Rune Glifberg owns the Vans Combi bowl. Rune's got it eating out of his calloused, grab-weathered hands. If you've never seen the Combi (a near replica of the original Upland pool), it's a god-damned bonecrusher. This thing is merciless. It's a certified death pit. And the subject of this interview has beaten it three times out of the past four years against the gnarliest competition skateboarding offers. What's his secret? "Power, speed, and a lot of different lines," he says. Nope. I'm gonna go with balls, straight up.—Carleton Curtis

FUEL.TV: You’ve won the Pool Party three out of four years now. How much are you bribing the judges over there?
RUNE GLIFBERG: I don’t know, I think the judging has been pretty fair. [LAUGHS] I just try to throw my skating out there and see what happens. It’s definitely been close you know, I wouldn’t want to be sitting up there.

FUEL.TV: What do you think is the secret to winning them over? No doubt, it’s a pretty gnarly spot to skate.
RUNE: Obviously you have to be doing some tricks, but I don’t think the tricks need to be the most important thing about it. I think it’s really about how much you put into it. Skating it like it’s a pool has been something that’s helped me do well in the past years. You see a lot of guys come up and skate it more like it’s a vert ramp.  I think you just have to watch [Chris] Miller and see how he skates it—that’s the perfect recipe of how to skate it really well, you know?

(It's gotta be the shoes. photo: Bradford)

FUEL.TV: Do you have a trick at the Pool Party that you’ve never been able to land in a run?
RUNE:  There’s been tricks that I haven’t done every time throughout the years. But the tricks that I’ve been trying have gone down one year or another. So it’s kind of sporadic, but I feel like I have a pretty deep bag of tricks but they don’t always happen at one event. Because it’s a 30-minute session, the one year where I got 2nd Place, I felt like I got stuck on one trick for a while and that’s what messed it up for me. If I would’ve just let that trick go and focused on doing other stuff, I would’ve probably done better. But you can always look at that later and learn from it, you know?
         But actually, one trick that I was trying, front Cabs in the bowl which I’ve never done in there, but I knew I could do it. I tried to ride out of one in 2005 and took a pretty good slam off that, so I was kinda over it after that. It seems like one you should be able to do in the heat of the moment, but I guess you have to learn the tricks first. Sometimes it works out though, like last year when I did that tailslide shove-it. I’d never done that one before but knew I could do it. I just needed to have the fire of the session to make me want to do it.

(Whoa dude, tailslide on the oververt. photo: R.Stratton)

FUEL.TV: What do think sets the Pro-Tec Pool Party apart from other tranny contests?
RUNE: There’s just a lot of mayhem going on there, you know? It’s not that big of a space, so the crowd is really packed in there. It’s a really intense type of environment and there’s a lot of money up for grabs, so that makes people try a little bit harder and it’s a really gnarly pool. So all of those things combined I think make for an excellent contest. The first two years were the best actually. Those are some of the most exciting contests that I’ve ever been a part of. Just the energy, it’s rad, when I watched the Masters which is usually right before we get to skate. That’s some of the most exciting skating right there. It’s not always about the super gnarly newest technical tricks—it’s really about using the pool and really laying into it. The pool coping has a whole different sound and is way more aggressive—it really shows when people are skating it.

(Frontside gnar. photo: Bradford)

FUEL.TV: When you’re skating the Vans’ replica with dudes like Steve Cab, Duane Peters, and Lance Mountain, do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a weird time warp?
RUNE: No, because I never got to skate the original Combi pool at Upland, so it’s just how it is. But yeah, I’ve gotten a chance to skate with those guys on other occasions so I don’t really have that vibe. But Christian Hosoi is going to enter this year, so that should be real exciting. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing that. He’s a guy who can give Miller a run for his money.

FUEL.TV: Is there anyone besides him that you want to see skate this year’s contest who’s never been in it before?
RUNE: I would love to see Tony Trujillo come back and skate it. He’s been around for the past few years, but he hasn’t been skating so I’d love to see him come back, he always brought some nice stuff. It’s a pretty gnarly environment to be in if you don’t have any sort of knee pads—if you get run over you’re pretty screwed. You’re better off if you have a little armor on you. I wouldn’t want to be in there with three or four other guys in the pool without any gear on, and I'm all for skating without pads, but at the Combi, that's probably a little too crazy. We’ve had some pretty close calls before.

(Rune owning the Combi. photo: S.Stratton)

FUEL.TV: What do you think is gnarlier, the Mega Ramp or the Combi?
RUNE: That’s a really hard question to answer, I can’t compare the two, but the Combi is definitely gnarly and so is the Mega but in two completely different ways. So uhhh, no comment. [LAUGHS]

FUEL.TV: What’s the gnarliest slam you’ve seen at the Pool Party?
RUNE: I think it was when Cab and Lance ran into each other the first or second year. Lance was trying to get a 540 right as the time was running out. Lance was coming out of the round and they just hit right on that middle section and it looked pretty bad. I think the guys in the Masters Division have more of that old rivalry from the 80s that they still have. I think that my generation has a little bit more respect for each other, to where we don’t try to run each other over and push each other down, where some of the older guys have a little bit more fire in them.

(Padless Smith of death. photo: S.Stratton)

FUEL.TV: Who are some of the young dudes that you’re stoked on?
RUNE:  Guys like that kid Ben Raybourn, I was out skating with Alex Perelson just today actually. So if he decides to enter the contest, he’s definitely a guy to look out for. He’s 18, super gnarly, probably be up in the a Top 5 if he really wanted to.

FUEL.TV: Let’s switch things up to you personally. Extremely Sorry, is the video close to being wrapped?
RUNE: Last I heard was a September premiere, hopefully that will come through.  I’m sure a lot of people are getting sick of waiting, it’s definitely happening. So we should be able to wrap it up over the summer.

FUEL.TV: What about your part? What can people expect from you?
RUNE: My part is going to be pretty much all raw, concrete skateboarding. It should be exciting. It’s just concrete madness, really. 

FUEL.TV: Are you going to use “Firestarter” as your song again?
RUNE: Ahh, no I’m going to mix it up a little bit.

(Getting flippy at Bondi. photo: S.Stratton)

FUEL.TV: You recently switched from etnies to skate for the new Cons program. How did that one come about?
RUNE: Well, I’m not going to comment on the whole etnies thing, but it was time for everyone to move on.  I didn’t have much time left in my contract but I basically asked to be relieved from that. And I happened to fall into the Converse opportunity and it seemed to be really exciting thing that was going to happen, and now I’m working hard putting a shoe into the works. The team seems solid, so that’s super sick. I remember riding Converse when I was a kid, the All-Stars and that, so it’s kind of like a full-circle thing for me. So it was time for me to make a change from my previous deal, and I’m super happy to end up where I’m at.

FUEL.TV: Does it throw you off when you’ve skated one shoe model for so long, then you switch to a completely different one?
RUNE: No, not really. I was actually really stoked to get into that type of shoe. I was getting sick of where I was at, so getting into something new was really exciting.  Sometimes is nice to just switch it up.

FUEL.TV: You were on that Built To Shred episode at Raging Waters—was that as fun as it looked?
RUNE: Yeah, that was amazing. Ever since we skated there, I’ve been helping out with a few park designs, but I still haven’t  helped design a park where we can put in a waterslide snake run. That thing was amazing. It was a little bit too slick, that was the only thing. It was really fast, it could be a little less steep but oh my god, if you built something like that out of concrete it would pretty much be the best thing ever.  So if there are any skatepark designers getting ready to build a new park, keep that one in mind. I’ll be happy to chip in some free work on the design to get this thing going.

FUEL.TV: Last question, who’s going to stop Chris Miller this year?
RUNE: If it’s going to be anyone, I think it will be Christian Hosoi. He’s a hard man to stop. Or if Tony [Hawk] wanted to step up, I think that would be very interesting. So Hawk, if you’re reading this, get your ass in the bowl buddy! We would love to see that, you know? He won the last Combi contest he entered, so why not come get another one? Add it to the collection, come out of retirement for that one. That would be amazing, I think a lot of people would love to see that, I know I would. It would be great to watch him do some crazy trickery in there, hit those old lines. Tony’s still got it, so why not you know?

(This is how you do a stalefish, friend-o. photo: Oakley)

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