You may have seen a lot more of Moco lately, but she has been putting in hard work for over a decade. Yes, over a decade. She’s a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to producing skate content and living proof that athletic excellence can be achieved even with a pack of cigarettes and bag of Hershey Kisses in your bloodstream. Her passion for skating is so intense it’s almost palpable. I could not wait to sit down to dive deeper into this multifaceted skate mother.
This is a boring question, but I actually don’t know this about you so I gotta ask it, how did you get into skating?
Oh, I did one year of roller derby. Eleven years ago, something like that, almost 12. And I didn’t know how to skate at all. I remember I was always on the floor and I couldn’t go backwards. I was doing everything in my body just to do a bubble backwards, and I couldn’t move. But at some point, I just got really obsessed and would go skate alone in the street. We trained in a park 40 or so blocks from home and I skated there, so I just learned in the street at some point.
Did you have anyone that was influencing you to skate park and street, or was that just all on your own?
I started derby at the same time that Marina [Giorno]. You remember Marina?
Yeah.
At some point we were really tired of roller derby taking up all our life, all our time, so we just quit. Marina would always tell us, “We have to do this, we have to do this.” So we started skating the parks and street. I think we were four or five girls. But the only info that we had was Estro [Michelle Steilen a.k.a Estro Jen] doing tricks in a bowl. It wasn’t easy. It was super-slow learning.
I don’t think I even realized that you’ve been skating for that long. You and I started skating about the same time.
I didn’t film for a long time, I always just skated. I didn’t like the way I saw myself in videos when I started. It was maybe for six years that I would see videos of myself skating and I would be like, “Oh no, I can’t see that. No, please. Thank you. I don’t like it.”
If I see videos of myself from when I first started, I almost feel embarrassed because the skaters that are starting now, they get so good so quickly. That was not my journey at all. I was really bad for a really long time.
But it’s the information. We didn’t have the information then that we have now. Now you have a lot of videos and stuff. You can just see how they move their body and get ideas. We didn’t even know we could slide back then. Come on. I’m not a technical skater, so for me, some things I still don’t understand.
I mean, we’re all still learning. Everyone has their own skills and then things that they’re not as good at. It’s a constant evolution.
Yeah. They opened this really big transition skatepark three blocks from me. I’m skating transition every day. It was years that I didn’t do it, so it’s nice. I’ve been there a lot and learning new things.
I’m excited to see how that changes your skating.
I feel fit because I’m not a sport girl. I don’t stretch. I don’t train. This gives me legs.
When I skated with you in Puerto Rico I saw the way you ate. You’re not... I don’t know, some people are really obsessive about going to the gym and eating strict diets. And you’re like, I don’t give a fuck about that. You’re there with your Coca-Cola and your cigarettes—you’re just there to skate.
It’s not that I don’t care. I know if I go to the gym, if I eat healthy, I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to feel better. My body is going to respond, but I’m a mess. I have work, I have a kid. To stay really focused, eat well, and have time to go to the gym, it’s really difficult. It’s so hard, but I know I have to start doing it because I’m already over 30. If I don’t start stretching, going to the gym, and eating healthy, I won’t be able to skate as much.
I feel the same. I do care about working out and eating better, but it’s so hard to stay on a routine. I struggle with self discipline. You have a lot more going on than I think people realize, though. When you’re always busy, it’s really difficult to make time to have a training regimen and cook good meals.
No, seriously. It’s like, I have to buy food and cook it, take my kid to school, go to work, you have to go go go. We don’t know how to handle this stress and be healthy. No one teaches us how to not stress.
I don’t know if anyone really knows how. How old is your daughter now?
Six years old.
Do you feel like having a kid has made it challenging as a skater?
It’s not easy, but for me, it was a life changer. I didn’t have much interest in life. Everything was okay, but for what? I have to work, I have to get up, I have to leave. When I didn’t have my kid, I could do whatever I wanted. But everything was so… I really didn’t feel it. I had this “Why?”, like nothing made sense. Life didn’t make much sense. She changed me a lot in that way. She gave me a fire, something to live for with and without her because when you don’t have much time to do whatever the fuck you want, the time you do have is more valued. You just want to live it. When I started skating, I was always drinking, doing pills and everything. She straightened me up a lot and gave me a feeling of living for her. It’s not easy at all though. It’s so hard, but I wouldn’t change it. I really like the person I am now a lot more. She drives me crazy of course, but she’s my sunshine. All mothers I think have this guilt to always do good, but when I see her smiling and being nice with all people I think, Okay. I’m not doing that bad.
Getting time to skate is also difficult. My sister helps me a lot. Every time I travel, she stays with my sister. A couple years ago, my mom and my grandma passed away at the same time. They were the people who took care of her when I was skating. After that, my sister came from Brazil to live with us. Now we are in some way raising her together. It’s a lot of help.
Wow. I’m so sorry, that sounds like a lot.
I hope one day I will travel with her. She’s been coming with me to the skatepark. Sometimes she doesn’t like it. Moxi gave me a pair of skates for her. I really tried, but she didn’t like it. She likes the scooter or the skateboard. We lost the scooter one day, so now we go with the skateboard. She goes around and plays a little bit. She’s with her babies and her crayons, so that’s nice. I sometimes ask her to film. If she doesn’t want to skate, this is okay, but just understand that this is what mom loves to do. She has to be with me. She has to find a way. We have to find a way.
Find a way to get her involved.
Yeah, of course.
We’ll teach her to film. I’m 30 now too and I think there’s this societal pressure to have children in your 30s.
Here it doesn’t exist.
Oh, really?
In Argentina, that doesn’t exist. No one wants kids. When I got pregnant at 27, one of my friends was like, “Why?” It’s really bad for Eugi that she’s the only kid around.
Do you have advice for skaters that do want to have children?
Have money. Please have money. It’s really hard. I mean, it’s beautiful, but I wasn’t ready to have a kid. I don’t know how someone in their mind can be like, “OK, I’m doing this”. Understand you are not going to be the priority anymore, but always be sure to take time to yourself because your kid needs you to be okay. That’s something I really understand now. I need to take time for myself because when I don’t, I get cranky. When I get cranky, our relationship, she just absorbs my shit.
That’s solid advice. Self-care has been a big concern of mine when it comes to the idea of having kids. Shifting a little bit, I’ve always been drawn to your skating because it’s different. It’s not... I don’t know how to explain it, but the way you skate has some kind of artistic expression.
It’s like a dance?
It’s almost like a dance, but it’s aggressive while still being graceful. Where does that come from?
I just feel it. A few years ago I started to really feel it. I started to skate a lot with my filmer, Pablo. He has the same style a little bit. We just spent so much time together skating.
You edit videos and illustrate too, right?
Yeah, yeah. I do it. I didn’t go to college. I didn’t learn anywhere. I just spent a lot of time on the computer when I was a kid. Now I know things because the years passed by. When I was little, someone would ask me to do something and I just learned it. When you keep on doing stuff, you just learn. I don’t feel like I’m an illustrator or an editor. I just like to do it. Sometimes it’s not perfect.
I like to edit a lot, but I am self-taught, too, so I’m constantly Googling: How do I do this? Illustrating though seems so much harder to learn. It’s cool you figured it out on your own.
I drew a lot when I was a kid– a lot. When I was 14, I illustrated poetry books for a few independent editors. Now it’s something that doesn’t come easy, but I keep on and I keep on. Now with electronics, you can always mash things up in Photoshop, change it, go back, sit on it. Sometimes it’s like, Woo! Something is happening and this is fun. Sometimes it’s just stressful and you have to push on.
Do you want to get into any other facets with skating, like filming or photography?
I have a camera. I have a fish-eye. I would like to have a better one, but that has to happen when I have better work. I get some pretty decent shots sometimes, but it’s practice. I really like filming, but you have to have a person that likes to do the trick 100 times while you’re still learning... Next week we are putting Handmade online. I filmed a lot of that video.
The tour was for RSB, right? Do you have any highlights from the trip that stand out to you or anything about making the video that you want to talk about?
It was really beautiful. I stressed a lot. I enjoyed it sometimes and sometimes it was a nightmare. First day I went to Berlin, I stayed the whole night with a girl who is a computer nerd. She’s great. We made this huge map with spots and everything. Where we can go if it’s raining, or where we can go with layers of spots, everything. I had to talk to a lot of people from everywhere so we knew where to go. It was really nice. The girls were really chill. Everyone was having fun and everyone had really different skill levels. That’s the vibe of the video. It wasn’t really about putting together our best skating, we were just enjoying it. The whole vibe of the tour was like that. Just a group of people enjoying and skating. We didn’t have a proper filmer. We had a guy with a 360 camera that came sometimes and my camera. It’s like a complete mash-up of everything. Work with what you have.
I feel like there’s something extra special about videos that don’t have a ton of financial backing because you’re all doing it for the passion. There’s no other reason to be there except to skate and make something together.
Something really nice that happened was when I put on social media that I was going to Berlin, a lot of girls texted me, “Can I go?” And they just grabbed a flight and came.
I have to say thanks to Adrian, he let us do everything. We gave products to everyone and there were people everywhere jumping in. That was really nice. But someone always has to stress.
That’s how projects get done!
Yeah, of course.
Did you edit the video, too?
Yeah, I edited the video. Miret [Pelgrom] and [Monize] Moka were always taking analog photos. We didn’t get action photos because there were no skate photographers. The photos that we have are what the girls took. We were passing the camera around so everyone got photos of each other.
And they were so nice, so of the vibe of everything. Moka was one of the girls that told me, “I’m going.” and I said “OK, yeah, come!” She was living here [Argentina] in quarantine during COVID. She does this amazing art and clothing. When I saw all the photos, I said, “Moka, you have to do your art.” Moka made these collages then I animated the parts. It came out really nice. It was like group work, not even planned.
I think that’s the best when it works out that way because it’s organic.
Yeah, but it was a nightmare editing the video. There were four different cameras, audio, colors, so many shots. Tomorrow I have to send a teaser to Dog Days, but I don’t have it yet.
Oh, my god.
After this call, I have to put together like 10 shots, something like that. It’s been so much work.
People don’t realize when you have a bunch of different cameras, even though it’s helpful to have more people filming, the different cameras make it so hard to edit.
So hard and so much material. I wanted to release it in November… it’s like, every time I work with Adrian from RSB, he says, “Do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want.” And I’m like, “No, please! Tell me to do something. Give me a deadline. Come on. It’s too much freedom.”
That would make it too easy to procrastinate on things. Do you do things for work outside of skating?
This is really funny. Really weird, not funny. It’s not funny. I work in a government office. We defend the rights of children and teenagers. It’s like social work. I read all the, how do you say... I have to read all the text of violence and child abuse to families and assign a team to work with them and with the children. Three days a week, I’m constantly reading children’s nightmares. It gives you perspective. Sometimes it’s really difficult to help these people because it’s like they came from families that did the same thing to them. They don’t understand that they can’t put a belt to their kid. They were abused children, too. So it’s really hard. But sometimes you are helping. I don’t know, it’s really close to home and I can take days off if my kid is sick.
So it’s convenient work, but emotionally difficult.
Yeah, it’s a lot. The first month I started working there I was crying every day. Because I mean, we live really, really good. We are not seeing these things every day. Now it’s like, oh, this part of the world exists, but you block it out because you are okay. You have your house, your friends, your pretty life. I know there’s people having this life, but you don’t see it. It’s normal to them. I didn’t see it for a long time.
There’s a lot of horrible things that are going on in the world but it’s easy to just turn a blind eye to it since it’s not something we’re personally dealing with.
But it’s not bad because you can’t live life thinking about everyone. It’s not a bad thing to live your life. It’s great to help, but we don’t have to feel wrong because we are living our comfy life. We just have to be grateful that we have this life. If the universe offers you a chance to help, then you can help, but it’s not like you have to feel wrong for living your life.
I’ve had to learn to not let guilt overtake me sometimes when I am struggling in my own life, because I know other people have it worse than I do.
It’s like everyone’s experiencing their own life. It’s hard to be there for everything. There’s so much going on in the world. We are going to suffer. We’re human. Everyone suffers in different ways. You know, even kids that had everything, don’t have many problems, and their family gives them all they can, they still have problems. It’s a human thing I think. We do need to step back and see how great life is, though. We can suffer. We can have a lot of shit and difficulties, but my work gave me perspective. It’s like, okay, I’m suffering, but thank you for everything. Life is good.
Where do you hope to see yourself in five years?
I hope to be skating. And I’d like more money and travel. Sorry, but it’s real.
You don’t have to be sorry. It’s what you’re most passionate about.
I am enjoying it a lot. When I go on tour, it’s like this bubble. I can live another life away from my work and do nothing but skate. I’d also like to produce more. For me, the thing I love most about skating is producing. Of course, I love skating and having a nice time, but my passion goes hand-in-hand with filming. So, yeah. I hope to keep on doing that.
I think that’s very achievable.
Yeah? I hope so.
No, I definitely think so. There’s not many people in roller skating that are interested in filming and editing. You already have experience and the desire to learn more. The opportunities will just come.
