Touching "HomeBase" with Andy Po

"I’ve learned that investing back into the business community is just as important as investing into the skateboarding community."

It’s a little after noon on a hot, mid-July summer’s day and the streets of Southside are busy as usual. Cars and pedestrians weave their way through the streets and sidewalks moving towards their next destination, as the waitresses at any given diner or restaurant on West 4th Street hustle in and out of their eatery’s front doors, trying to keep both their indoor and outdoor costumers satisifed. As I sit down at Horn’s Restaurant for my interview with Andy, I can’t help but notice the recognition he attracts. Breezing past the first couple of tables in the restaurant, Andy is greeted with smiles and greetings from, what I’m sure are familiar faces. The ages and looks of the people vary, but the respect they give is the same. It’s obvious Andy is known around this area, and it’s obvious Andy is known around this area because he cares.

The guy has a warm vibe about him. The kind of vibe you pick up when you run into a good friend you knew from childhood but haven’t seen in years because time and the pathway to your dreams has sent you in different directions. As we begin to talk and I start to ask the questions I had prepared at breakfast that morning, one thing becomes clear to me. Clear like the blue sky that morning or clear like the Bethlehem water I’m currently drinking out of an old-fashioned, Moonshine jar handed to me by our waiter; it becomes clear that Andy speaks with a true, resolute passion. That the letters and vowels that are flowing out of his mouth are not words created from the mind to make a good interview but rather words sprouting from the heart. They seem more like words that he’s sharing with me rather than speaking to me; words that are giving me access into his own little world of ideas, passion, work and care for the better of the people and what he loves to do. And, man, if only for that half hour of time that we spent at Horn’s talking that morning, it was a pretty damn enthralling world to be in!

Shane Cunningham: First of all, just for the record, I wanted to ask what drew you to Bethlehem or were you from here originally?
Andy Po: I’m originally from San Diego, California. I grew up there – lived there ‘til about 10th grade then I moved out to Bethlehem after my dad’s job got transferred out to Clinton, New Jersey. The company suggested Bethlehem as a place to settle and said that the communities are better, the schools are better – so that’s how we ended up in Bethlehem.
SC: Cool. At such a young age you’ve already accomplished a lot with HomeBase and all you do for the skate community as well. I wanted to know, first of all, what inspired you to begin a shop like this in Bethlehem?
AP: Growing up in San Diego, skateboarding was everywhere. I mean, skate parks, skate shops, skateboarders – it was commonplace. At my high school, everyone was walking around with skateboards [but] I didn’t actually start skateboarding until my sophomore year of high school. I got involved with it through a friend that I was working on a project with. He gave me a hand-me-down board, he gave me some skate videos, so I started doing that and then I moved away. When I moved out here I kept skateboarding because it was something I could do on my own. It was actually how I started meeting all my friends. Getting to know the skate scene here in Bethlehem, I started realizing a lot of the things that were commonplace in San Diego didn’t exist out here. You know, you had skateboarders, you had people that loved skateboarding just as much as kids out in California, but you didn’t have a proper skate shop, you didn’t have skate parks, you didn’t have kids making videos. You just had kids kind of skating – which is good, there’s a real, true, genuine skate scene out here – but you didn’t have the things that typically support the skate scene so I saw that was a need in the community. I mean, at least, to open the skate shop, I saw that I could probably do something that was better than [that which] already existed in Bethlehem. Instead of having stores that said “Here’s your skate board, here’s your shoes, now get out”, I wanted to have a store that sold the products but also acted as an advocate for skateboarding. That’s why we spent so much time trying to build the Skate Plaza, because, I mean, that’s what a real skate shop should do. A real skate shop should bring the community together.
SC: So you played a focal role in getting the Skate Plaza put in on the Southside.
AP: Yeah, I worked with many people in the city. When I was younger – in high school – I volunteered for different organizations that tried to get skate parks put in in Bethlehem. I volunteered for as many of them as I could. There’s CAT – the people that do the bicycles. They tried to get the skate park built. You know, it got so far, and then it kind of stopped. Then there was BAFRA – the Bethlehem Area Free Right Association. That organization, also got so far, and then it stopped but both those organizations kind of laid the foundation for what became the Bethlehem Skate Plaza because, without those organizations pushing for it, we wouldn’t have had a strong foundation. By the time the Skate Plaza got proposed, a lot of people already understood why Bethlehem needed a skate plaza. So being a skate shop owner, being a skateboarder, I just continued to work and work with the city regardless of how slow it went. It was about a 10 year process to get that thing built. I think a lot of people that were initially involved kind of fell away because they just kind of figured “It’s been 2 years, it’s been 4 years, it’s been 6 years – nothing’s happening” but I just never gave up. In the end, because we waited and we worked with the city for so long, we were able to give them our input on the design, give them our input on construction and kind of [our input on] how to roll from top to bottom.
SC: That leads into my next question which has to deal with the message you send to the youth in the area. Being someone that these kids have to look up to with not only what you do as a skateboarder but also having your shop which brings all of these visions to life for the community, what does that mean to you in terms of the impact you have on the younger generations? How does that push you to think about the new or next thing you would want to do?
AP: I mean, I was always raised to be a positive influence, whether it was to my younger sister or other kids that I was involved with. I was always taught to not just follow. If everyone else was doing something stupid, don’t just step in line and do something stupid. I mean, I made my fair share of mistakes, but I learned from my fair share of mistakes as well. So, being in a position where I deal with kids that are in elementary, middle school, high school, early college – if I see somebody that’s making a mistake and they want my advice, I do whatever I can to use anything that I’ve learned in life [to help them]. I try to run the store so that it’s a positive place for kids. It’s a positive place that doesn’t just tell a kid “Do whatever you want, drop out of high school, just skate – don’t pay attention in class”. I try to do whatever I can to make sure that kids know that it’s a balance. We don’t try to sell kids on a dream of “Oh, you’ll be a pro skateboarder – just stop going to school or stop paying attention in class”. If a kid comes in and they’re talking about skipping school so they can go skate, we try to tell them that it’s not really a good idea. [We tell them] that they’ll always have time to skate but if [they] don’t make time for themself[and their education] now, their future is going to be crap. But I mean, as far as how it effects our business, we found that trying to play a positive role in the community – whether it’s in the skateboarding community or even the business community as a whole – [was a definite necessity]. That’s kind of how we build our whole foundation of supporters by doing things in the community – whether it’s working on Spring on 4th, which is a festival that gives back to the Southside community, or there’s the Skate Plaza or skate camps and skate classes for the middle school and elementary school kids. [Instead of] spending thousands of dollars to take out TV ads and radio ads, I would rather invest time [into] doing positive community events that people will see and say “Oh, that’s a business that we want to support”. I would rather try to build my business that way, in a way that really attracts people in and isn’t just some marketing ploy.

“Any time we get a kid that comes in and picks up their first skate board ... that's pretty exciting"

SC: While you’re talking about the kids’ future, I was a little bit curious about your future and if you had any plans or dreams of extension or if there was anything you had in mind for your next goal?
AP: With the way the economy is, having one brick and mortar store seems to make sense. It doesn’t necessarily make sense to me to open a store in Easton or Allentown because the kids from Easton and Allentown come here. So right now, I really like the idea of having one main store that we can focus on. We have our mobile skate shop which is, more or less, like an ice cream truck but it’s outfitted to be a skate shop on the inside. We drive that to different events – it has all our branding on the outside – so it’s like our moving billboard. I try to take that to as many events as I can and that’s something that maybe we will bring to other cities in the Lehigh Valley as an extension of the store. I want to try to get our online presence to be a little bigger as far as an online shop. Right now we’ve been doing a small, after school skate program through Northampton Community College and also Broughal Middle School. That’s something I’d really like to expand on – getting skateboarding into elementary schools and middle schools as an after school curriculum or an after school program that kids can do outside of just traditional sports.
SC: I know you’re involved with the community as well besides just the skate scene or the youth, as I’ve seen you at some DBA Meetings. I’d like to ask you to talk about your place in the community and what you like to see get done just to better the community as a whole.
AP: I mean, coming into the Southside as a younger business owner of the skate shop, we were very welcomed by the business community. Whether it was Jeff at Deja Brew or John Clark over at Home and Planet or anybody. Everybody really liked the fact that we were a new business that chose to open up on the Southside and from that point on, everyone’s really been supportive of us as a business and being here along with our goals with the Skate Park and what not. So, just as much as there’s a skateboarding community, I look at it as there’s an independent business community that’s huge in Bethlehem and in the Lehigh Valley in general. I think as an independent business owner, I’ve learned that investing back into the business community is just as important as investing into the skateboarding community. You know, we need more local businesses, we need to be a more sustainable city rather than depending on bigger and bigger corporations. I would hate the day that the only option I’d have for restaurants were chain fast food restaurants. I mean, I like the fact that we have a place like Molinari’s or Horns, where we are sitting now, or Goosey Gander. It would suck if Goosey Gander wasn’t there and all we had was Subway. I think that the Southside has a great balance of independent businesses and the other businesses that are here. They employ people that are from Bethlehem, so it’s a nice balance, but as an independent business owner, whatever I can do [to help, I will] – whether that’s being a part of the DBA and supporting the DBA events and initiatives. I mean, that’s a big part of keeping the downtown independent businesses healthy.
SC: I’ve been to many shops in New York City and stuff that sell the brands you have so it’s definitely great to have that in the Lehigh Valley. I assume it’s probably a passion of yours to see all the new styles when they come in so you can bring that to your crowd. That being said, I was wondering what your favorite part about what you do would be? If there was one thing that sticks out that’s really exciting about your job today, what would you consider it to be?
AP: After 11 years of being in business, you start to have to digest what you do as a job. You treat it with respect like anything else – any other job I had. I make sure I get up early, I invest my time into my emails, I invest my time into the website then I come into the store and invest my time into merchandising the products. So everything has its place and, in the end, I do love what I do. The harder I work for myself, the better the store does. There’s almost an immediate gratification for the work that I put in. If you’re sort of like “Oh man, this is awesome” all the time – y’know, it’s like anything else, you could get tired and used to it. The only way to keep moving forward is to treat it like a job, treat it with respect like a job and understand that the things that you do are necessary. Not everything that you do is because “Oh, this is so fun, this is so awesome” – it’s because it’s necessary to keep everything going. With that being said, through it all, any time we get a kid that comes in and picks up their first skate board – especially if they come in with their parents, and their parents want them to have a skate board, they want them to be active, they want them to be outside and doing something that’s healthier than sitting inside playing video games or whatever – I feel like that right now is what I get most stoked on. Setting up a kid’s first board and them asking questions about all the different parts and how to do tricks and things like that [is my favorite] because, in the end, that’s the future of our skate scene and that’s the future of our business as well. Every day we get a kid that comes in like that, that’s pretty exciting.
SC: I can imagine!! I know that there must be something that you would change if you could, or that there is some minor aspect in relation to all that you do that may pose as an obstacle. What would you say you would change if you could, or is there any part of what you do that you feel goes a bit misunderstood?
AP: It’s funny how many people will walk by when our door is open and look in and be like “Oh, I like the shirt that’s in the window” or “I like the shoes that I see” and then they will read the words ‘Skate Shop’ up on our sign and be like “Oh… that’s a skate shop” and then they will walk on by. It’s strange to me because, coming from California, a skate shop is just another business. It sells a style of clothes. We carry something for everybody – you don’t have to be a skateboarder. When guys that are 60 years old come in and buy Vans, that’s rad because that’s what I grew up being used to. In California, everybody wore Vans. Everybody wore Chuck Taylors or Nikes and other skate shoes. It was commonplace. We’re comfortable clothes and comfortable shoes. So I would say, if there’s guys in the Lehigh Valley that are looking for something that’s different than what you would find in the Lehigh Valley Mall, you should definitely stop by and check us out.
SC: Well, thank you for your time Andy and thanks for all that you do. Keep up the good work!

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