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Nate Sherwood is a skater down to the core of his being. He skates for no other reason than that he loves it, and when he’s not out riding, he’s writing articles for Transworld Skateboarding or working hard on the next installment of Fuel TV’s American Misfits, which features fellow vegans Laban Pheidias and Ted Newsome. Nate is also the kind of dude who has no shame about inserting the word “skate” where you always knew it belonged but never had the courage to put it: If it weren’t for Nate, we wouldn’t have the Skate of the Union Address, skate o’clock, or even the vegan skate-edge movement.
This guy is funny as hell, he rips, and he can think for himself when it comes to social issues like animal rights. For some truly mind-altering insight into what makes the man tick (as well as some powerful reasons to take the peta2 Veg Pledge that even we hadn’t thought of), check out what Nate had to say when we talked to him last …
What are you up to at the moment?
I’m like Mr. odd-end job right now. I do a lot of stuff for Laban and Ted with American Misfits … then I just write little things for Transworld here and there. But I’d like to have a desk job some day, where you don’t have to say, like, “OK, this month am I gonna have this amount of money? Or am I gonna be able to make my house insurance or do I need to hit up my mom?”
You would regret having a desk job after like two weeks.
Yeah, I guess I would probably go nuts and just lose my mind and wanna get back out in the streets and do my thing. Thanks for that perspective, man.
No problem. So you mentioned that you went vegan after talking to Laban? What inspired you to make that change?
It just bums me out that you are stopping all these heartbeats. People are just really ignorant—they think that because animals don’t speak our language they’re not as intelligent as us. Which is insane—we’ve all heard the studies about, like, dogs sensing earthquakes a week in advance, you know? Humans can’t do that crap. We need Geiger counters, earthquake graphs, and sonograms and all that crap, and a dog is just like, “bark-bark-bark.” “What’s up, Lassie? We’re having an earthquake? Oh crap, we better get in the basement!” I think it’s ridiculous how people think that just because something doesn’t speak our language, they don’t have their own language and communication.
Yeah, people act as if animals can’t suffer, but if you look at what happens to them in factory farms, it’s just unbearable.
It’s just sickening—they have nerve endings; they obviously feel. If you clap, they hear it; if you whistle, they look at you, ya know? If you touch them, they’re gonna feel it. That’s why a dog gets so stoked when you pat his head—he’s like “Oh wow, thanks, you love me.”
 We have a campaign against this scary-ass animal-testing company called Covance, where our undercover investigator filmed workers abusing monkeys and shouting at them, cussing at them, and throwing them in their cages. How do you feel about the way animals are treated in experiments like that?
I never use any products that use animal testing. I’ve always been real careful about brands I purchase at the store—I try to use Tom’s of Maine, for instance. But for this company—that’s just absurd. How is that scientific?
They’re just allowed to get away with anything except when people go inside and take pictures and say, “This is what’s happening.” It’s the same thing that happened in our investigation into KFC …
Don’t get me started with those guys! It’s amazing how it’s so easy to get brainwashed because they have these commercials with, like, this happy old gray-haired grandpa-type guy, Colonial Sanders, who’s like “Look at me! Come to KFC!” Like this happy jolly guy, like “I’m a good ’ol guy!” you know what I mean? And it’s like this guy’s a fuckin’ Hitler, you know?
It really pisses me off more than anything when you see like a tuna commercial and it’s got a happy tuna with his thumb up like, “Come eat the tuna!” Like a big happy cow or a chicken smiling or something. Are you kidding me? Would I be smiling for human meat? What kind of shit is that? It’s so twisted.
You remember that ad campaign for California dairy that was like, “Good milk comes from happy cows”? PETA sued the state of California for false advertising, because cows used for milk are treated like crap and sent to slaughter just like everybody else.
That’s fucking genius. I know when I first moved down here from Oregon, I used to drive through the whole damn state of California and there are these huge slaughter farms—I like to call them Cowschwitz—just like nothing but miles and miles of cows, just stuck, inch to inch of each other in these fenced-in areas. They’re going to the slaughter mill and it’s just horrifying, and there’s just no way it’s like in those commercials where it’s like, “Hey, how’s it goin’? I’m a happy steer!”
 They’re making the cows look like they’re in this nice pasture with all this space and they’re just stoked on life and the female cow is flirting with the male cow, but I know that cow’s really stuck in a freakin’ 8-by-5 fucking wood bin with hormones and shit injected into her with a big ’ol suction cup to her udders, and that steer, he’s about ready to get his fuckin’ head cut off. I guarantee so many more people would be vegetarian if they actually saw how gruesome that shit is.
What would you say to people who had wanted to think about going vegan after hearing about this stuff but didn’t know where to start?
Go to any grocery store depending on what part of the country you live in, like Whole Foods or whatever, and they have a whole huge range of stuff—whatever floats your boat. There’s so much variety out there, so much delicious food out there that doesn’t have to contribute to suffering, ya know? Dude, Laban took me to this place in L.A.—I never even had a vegan cupcake, but it was the best thing I ever had in my life, it was ridiculous, and you could put that in front of a person that’s been eating dairy their whole life and they wouldn’t know the difference.
Yeah, like any kind of change you make in your life, it just takes a little bit of time to get used to it—but once you’ve done it for a couple of weeks, it’s like, “Shit, this is easy.”
Exactly, and it’s funny, too, ’cause the skate-shoe companies I ride for didn’t make anything that wasn’t suede at first, but you know, I went over to éS and éS shoes and they were great. There’s so much more synthetic stuff because of guys like Ed Templeton, who rides for Emerica. He’s fully vegan, and they made a whole synthetic line because they knew they would lose a lot of riders if they didn’t. I am sure there are a lot of people that skateboard that are like, “Dude, I don’t want to contribute to the death of animals.”
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Like we said, we really like Nate Sherwood at peta2. And like Nate said, it is really, really frickin’ easy to make the switch to a lifestyle that doesn’t support animal suffering.
To get started, take the peta2 Veg Pledge by clicking the button below.
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