You were a skater for Zoo York?
No, I was the team manager, I was Mr. everything, Zoo York’s first employee, sales, Ad concepts, packing boxes, organized skate team to go to photo shoots, demos, driving the van, set up tours.

Your tag was MEAT?
Yeah, I used to write that everywhere, sort of developed a following, then I used to write stupid shit; I boned ya moms, can’t stop the meat rush; vegans love meat too;. So when it came time to name the shop, I came up with it just messing around

Dave’s quality feets…
I saw that, we were kinda bummed out on it, then they explained it was just a joke and then they ran it in another magazine, I heard about that and I felt it was kinda messed up cuz they did it after we spoke…. But whatever, I don’t care. Its complimenting me, that we are making enough noise in one years time, and now its known all over.

>phone rings for the 5th time asking about Rayguns<

How did the DQM shoe come about?
I have a friend who does the indy line in Oregon, who works for Nike. He heard about the whole concept and thought it was fantastic. I asked him, If you have the opportunity I would love to make something, cuz I have something in mind. I explained to him what I would want to do. He said “Wow that’s sick, well, what shoe would you want to do it on” I said an Air Max ’90, cause I don’t wanna do a dunk, a dunk is too easy to do. AND cause the 90 is super comfortable and we’re on our feet all day, so I was like I wanna make something that’s totally like a part of me. That I would absolutely wear, not because its “cool” or what not, I think more function than fashion. Plus, I was able to break the colors cause it comes in so many parts, so it worked out perfect. Then I sent in the art work, he was like “WHOA”, then I sent in the box art and he was like “WHOA YOUR KILLING ME!” Then he put it into play, and the people at Nike saw it and they were like “WHOA THIS IS FUCKING BANANAS!” and were like “all right, we’ll press send on this.” Even though its kinda early for me to get a shoe, you don’t just get a shoe out of nowhere, you have to be in the game, you have to be involved. But since I have a background with Nike, I’ve done a few shoes with them like color way wise, I did a blazer, I helped with the Zoo York stuff.

The Dunk?
Eli did the Zoo York dunk, I did a Cortez with them. They only made one sample pair. It got shut down cause SB was like “you guys just did the thing, your gonna do a lifestyle shoe, and you’re a skate company, don’t get to psyched”. That Cortez is literally in the back of my closet.

Dave pulls out a huge scrapbook, it contains all sorts of Zoo York history, ads, photos, stickers, and original art. Flipping through it Dave makes comments, and points out interesting facts of different items in this book. An ad circa ’94 features Robbie Morales, pro BMX rider. “When I was at Zoo York, we were trying to figure out how we were gonna get more sales, and I was like, BMX. Because, nobodies doing it. And they were like, “but we’re a skate company this is unprecedented”, and I was like I ride, so that’s how I can legitimize it, I ride BMX all day, and all my friends ride. So I got us the best guy in the business, Robbie Morales, and it just blew up, and now we have one of the best teams.” … then the next page is a photo of Mike Metzger the godfather of freestyle motocross….” Motocross came about when I was at Zoo, and Mike Metzger comes in and we’re shootin’ the shit and and he says he’s got a photo shoot with David Lachapelle, (“you know David? I ask) “Oh Yeah, I used to work with David, so I say to Metzger, you probably gonna be in a room with some muscle-bound black guy, and a midget, and everything’s gonna be pink…. Sure enough he went in there and it was crazy like that and he freaked out and was like “Fuck This! I don’t wanna ride for ecko no more”. So they re-negotiated his contract and Zoo York made more sense cuz its more of an action sport team, and cuz ecko owns Zoo York.”
“ Really?, cuz Zoo York to me has always been the dopest, street, most underground…”
“ Not anymore”, Dave chimes in.
“ Well I understand everyone wants to get paid, and you can’t skateboard forever”.
“ You can’t skateboard forever, right, but Ecko bought for the sheer freshness of the name, now you can get it at T.J. Max, its everywhere.”

“On some of the Zoo York clothes soon after echo bought them, you might remember a little bird tag…”
“ Yeah I’ve seen it, I always wondered what it meant”
“ You ever see that little bird that sits on a rhinoceros’ back? Well, that’s Zoo York, the little bird on Eckos’(the rhinos’) back! So they made like an entire season of clothes, thousands! And people started asking what it meant, and it was like an inside joke, but word got back to Ecko…. They didn’t think it was very funny!”

What’s up with these concrete dunks?
This guy basically left the shoes in front of 10 different stores in the world. He cased out the stores, like after he placed them wherever. He stood like from afar, and shot photos with a telephoto lens, shot photos of the people finding them. He put them on top of my gate, I didn’t even see them for like half the day, till my neighbor came in. He was like “oh, Dave I love those concrete shoes”. I was like “what concrete shoes?”,
“ the ones on top of the gate”
“ I was like, where?”
Then I went out side and was like “what the hell” so I bought them in and I had them here, so we started fucking around and putting them on skateboards and having people guess like what trick was gonna be done. People started asking me about them, and I was like…” I don’t know anything about them”. Then the guy emails me and tells me all about them, and shows the photos of us finding them. Then on the left shoe you can kind of scratch off the bottom and there is this card of authenticity says how many pairs are made and what pair you have. So I was like dude, I wanna do a show with you and Nike. I’m gonna have them fly you out. I’m meeting with them next week I wanna try and put together this show called “Concrete in the Jungle”, and have all the shoes come back, and show all the photographs of the people finding the shoes. At first people would ask “what are those”, and I would say “those are the John Gotti Dunks”!

“So there’s only like 10?”
“ Yeah, 10 pairs, Me, HUF, Undefeated, North Berlin, A1 in Amsterdam. A few other select shop”

“Is the anything you would like to say to the Australian sneaker youth”?
“ I would love to say something to the Australian sneaker youth, I Love those kids! I can’t wait to surf Bondi Beach!”

“I’m sure they would love to know when they could buy DQM stuff online.”
“ Well we sell to Our Spot in Australia, and a few other places down under, but definitely check out the new website, www.davesqualitymeat.com .”

Dave’s Quality Meats, is more than your friendly neighborhood butcher shop, if your good not only will you find the hottest hyper strike on the market, you might even get a history lesson on New York skate or art history! Before I took the 4 hour bus ride from Boston, Woody warned me…”just don’t ask him what his favorite sneaker is….”
Well, Dave says he doesn’t even like sneakers, he says has no clue he just wears them. I’m like “Yeah Right” well, he shows me a picture of some Deftones dunks, Berlin, Nerd (pharrell), and I think I saw some Supremes, there were 12 pairs in all. He donated them to the homeless shelter! So I guess that makes it official, everyone, including the homeless people in NYC are cooler than all of us!

Word.