Grant Hatfield

To celebrate Huck 45, curated by artist, skateboarder and chronicler of teenage California Ed Templeton, we are having a Huck website summer takeover dedicated to Ed’s longtime muse, suburbia.

In this regular series, the Suburban Youth Pop Quiz, we ask characters from our world what their suburban youth meant to them.

Number ten is photographer and Deadbeat Club member Grant Hatfield, who captures surreal and often comical moments of Southern California life.

Where did you grow up and can you describe it in three words?
Temecula, California. Conservative, urban sprawl, lifted trucks.

Who was your weirdest neighbour?
The opossums, coyotes and turkey vultures.

What was the most important record you owned?
Neil Young’s Harvest. It was my dad’s and he always had it playing at home or in the car. I still listen to it today.

Where did the bad kids hang out?
At the skatepark where I met most of my friends.

Biggest fashion faux pas as a teenager?
Spiked hair and Osiris D3s.

Who was your first celebrity crush?
I thought Gwen Stefani from No Doubt was pretty hot. I think she still holds up by today’s standards.

Describe your first kiss.
Her: BMW, Victoria Secret perfume, lots of tongue.
Me: Backwards hat, passenger seat, zits.

What happened the first time you got drunk?
I drank a bunch of champagne at a friend’s graduation party. I started spinning super hard so I went and laid down in a bedroom. Then my friend came in with his girlfriend and boned in the bed next to me thinking I was passed out.

What is the naughtiest thing you did as a suburban youth?
I liked throwing stuff at cars and duct taping across streets. Nothing too major.

What was the best party of your teenage years?
Some rich kid had a party when his parents were gone and a huge fight broke out. Someone knocked one of those heat lamps over through his glass sliding door, someone Chris Farley’d through a coffee table, girls were fighting. I wish I had a camera then.

What’s your most embarrassing suburban youth memory?
I was at roller hockey tournament and I went to take a piss at the sports park bathroom. I went into a stall with an overflowing shit toilet and peed into it. While I was peeing my rollerblades slipped on the wet floor and I fell arm first into the shit water. My parents weren’t there at the time so I had to sit there covered in shit and trying not to cry for like 30 mins.

What was the greatest lesson you learnt during that time?
I know now what I knew then but I didn’t know then what I know now.

Who would you most like to see at a reunion?
The class clowns and the nerds.

What was your first car?
A 1998 red Chevy Tahoe.

What was your food of choice?
I really liked teppanyaki style Japanese food, kinda like Benihanas. We would always to go this one called Fujiyama at a strip mall next to a Weight Watchers.

What was the biggest fight you ever had with your parents?
Maybe that one time I went out night skating with some friends and lit up a spot and didn’t come home until 3am. I guess my parents were trying to call me and I didn’t have my phone on me. They ended up calling the police and fire station looking for me. They were bummed for sure.

What book/film changed your teenage life?
On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I never really read the books they gave us for assigned reading in high school, I just kinda skimmed through them. This was one of the only books I read on my own during that time and I really connected with it.

What posters did you have on your bedroom wall?
Clippings from skate magazines, Nirvana, American flag.

Any hobbies you didn’t give up?
I still play guitar, skateboard, surf, bite my nails and pick my nose.

What smell reminds you most of your suburban youth?
Teen spirit.

See other interviews in the Suburban Pop Youth Quiz series and buy the Ed Templeton issue at our online store.