Today we’d like to introduce you to Allen Dillard
Hi Allen, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started skateboarding in the winter of 2001 when I was 11. I remember desperately begging my mother to buy me a skateboard as an early Christmas gift. I’m sure neither of us knew that my life would be forever changed by that purchase, but truthfully, I am eternally grateful. Because there was snow on the ground, I couldn’t even ride it that night, so, it laid next to me in bed, and I just stared at it – looking at the wheels, the graphic on the board. Everything mattered, I had taken hours at the skate shop trying to pick out the perfect set-up. Admiring my decisions and daydreaming was enough for that night.
My middle school friends quit skateboarding a year or two later, but I never did. In 8th grade and 9th grade, I was more or less the only skater I knew, but that didn’t matter. I just before summer break between freshman and sophomore year, some high school acquaintances started skateboarding again, and I begged my mom to borrow the VHS-C handicam and duct-tape on a $20 fisheye lens from some sketchy eBay store. I was never the best skater, nor the worst skater, at that time, but I already knew how to make skate videos, more or less.
Looking back on that time, it was definitely less on the more or less scale, but for a lower-middle class high schooler in 2006, it was enough. That video never really ‘came out,’ it was just something passed around friends.
Once I graduated highschool, some chance encounters with skateboarders at the local skatepark downriver led to connections with the first skateboarders that took it seriously, looking at it more as a lifestyle than a hobby. The skaters I knew in the past would pick up the act, then set it down, using it as a time-killer until it was time to drink later in the day. The connections I made were with skateboarders who were better than me number one, but number two, were like me – it was all consuming to them. They’d look for spots, driving behind buildings and taking day trips away from our hometowns, often spending an hour in a car for a fabled ledge behind “a green building, about a block or two after you pass a big gas station on the left that looks like it’d have tons of snacks.” We ended up making a video 2010’s ‘Aight Chill,’ (https://vimeo.com/185356426) one that I look back on and shake my head at today. I had no idea what I was doing, and the premiere was a fiasco – I forgot my own section in the video, the computer kept crashing and wouldn’t export to DVD, and we had to hook up a PC tower to a big monitor and have the crowd of about 50 skaters huddle around it – it was terrible.
I met one of my best friends, Reed Morris, through one of the aforementioned skaters I had connected with. He was obsessed with skating in Detroit, and I hadn’t been bit by that particular bug yet, often arguing with him about skating in the suburbs versus The City. Eventually I too became enamored with it, and he had started a blog, WhiteBread Skateboarding – because in his eyes our skating wasn’t anything too technically difficult, but what we made up for that by skating in cool areas (mainly Detroit). He eventually brought me on to the blog, and it became my de facto blog as he stopped posting.
That blog went the way 99% of blogs do and sits collecting dust in a corner of the internet few dare to tread, but I have continued to use the White Bread Skateboarding moniker as a one man production house, often with tongue firmly in cheek – in my latest video, I referred to it in the opening as the ‘WhiteBread Multimedia Empire.’
Under the WBS name, I have made nine full length skate videos – 2012’s Secret Society, filmed almost entirely in downtown Detroit with a lo-fi aesthetic (https://youtu.be/K1XLJG3peMg?si=TiIFeSRCVHlNL-IW), 2014’s Babanga (https://youtu.be/GMb0tC_BHiw?si=HjO57FukErXIWCAW), 2015’s MK-Ultra, which had a video game aesthetic (https://youtu.be/AxDqajM6ML8?si=aKu0PV5aj412Cssz), a 2017 sequel, MK-Ultra 2 (https://vimeo.com/249546792), 2018’s Base Layer, a video filmed entirely in the winter and copyright blocked by Rick James, 2019’s ‘Ope,’ an EP style video focusing on the skating of me, Scott Bankey, and Xavier Mitchell (https://youtu.be/HKfPpR08m7A?si=ph6nzzaCuNfU27zU) and 2020’s ‘Wholesome,’ another EP style video focused on the skating of Ryan Schendel and Reed Morris (https://youtu.be/ltjcg617Sbs?si=_IqtTZAADkhajLmq).
In 2021 me and my now ex moved to Toledo Ohio while I was in the middle of filming my most recent video, then unnamed. I was spending a lot of time driving up to Detroit to film and begging some of my friends to come down to Toledo and film. The result was a half Detroit, half Toledo full length skate video that premiered in December of 2024 at The State Theatre in Ann Arbor and at River East Gallery in Toledo the following February. During that time I had reached out to Cleveland’s own Kristian Svitak, a pro skater, with the prospect of filming a few clips for a friends section in the video. This blossomed into filming a solo part with Kristian, due to premiere May 17 2025, and Kristian also filming a part for my video, now titled ‘Inter/State,’ for obvious reasons. (https://youtu.be/au-2CQzCF34?si=z1GjXa5Pk_yLS4DF)
Inter/State was supposed to be my last skate video, but with the reception it has gotten so far (the Toledo premiere ended up being covered in The Toledo Blade! [https://www.toledoblade.com/a-e/movies/2025/02/06/regionally-produced-skateboarding-film-make-toledo-debut-at-river-east-gallery/stories/20250206004] and with the deadline for the first project I’ve ever worked on with a pro skateboarder just around the corner, I feel like I’m only getting started.
I moved back to Detroit at the beginning of 2025 with my boyfriend, and life has been a dream since.
I love everything about skateboarding, every process. Setting up a new board, finding spots, making spots, filming tricks, editing the results, throwing the premieres… everything. It’s given me so much – my music taste and outlook on life, amongst other things. It’s given me a reason to travel and make friends all across the United States and internationally. With my skate videos, I try in vain to give to the skateboard world what skateboarding gave to me, and I get to show how cool my friends are. The only thing I ever wanted out of making these skate videos is for at least one person like me to see them and think “this is sick.” If I’ve accomplished that, it’s worth it all.
As far as 2024’s Inter/State is concerned, the promo for it is linked above, and I just recently uploaded two parts from it, Mike Morey (now shoe designer for eS, Etnies, and Emerica) and Ryan Schendel. (https://youtu.be/Rf690LPhD6s?si=OiY2YSkmhmo5tjrP) I am planning on uploading more parts in the future, so, subscribe for more, or if you can’t wait (or would like to support the arts), you can purchase Inter/State on DVD or VHS at interstatevideo.bigcartel.com!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s definitely not been a smooth road – injuries, lost clips, arguments with partners due to two hours of “one more try,” from myself and other skaters, stolen cameras, broken cameras, malfunctioning cameras, the onslaught of aging, conflicting schedules and distance have made everything difficult, especially when using Sony VX1000s, which have not been made since 2000 – a year before I even started skateboarding. I’m convinced my knee pain is from filming for over a decade, and when editing Inter/State, I developed carpel tunnel syndrome.
But it’s all worth it. I genuinely do not know what else I would do if I were to stop.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
In 2012’s Secret Society, I used found footage of Detroit, filmed on 16mm film from the 1960’s and used an old VHS tape aesthetic – which, to be fair, was heavily in vogue at the time in skate videos. However, it got favorably reviewed on Quartersnacks.com (https://quartersnacks.com/2012/11/fall-indie-video-round-up-stop-fakin-volume-2-lo-fi-outdated-secret-society/) and it has been one of the highlights of my career.
I’m proud of the video game aesthetic editing I used in the making of MK-Ultra/MK-Ultra 2 – as far as I know, nobody else has made entire videos like that.
With Inter/State, I had to film clips of myself skating by myself if I wanted to get anything done. I’m proud of my work ethic in that regard, and I’m also proud of the fact that nestled between tricks there are little love letters to people and places that mean a lot to us – i dug into the archives for clips I had long forgotten of friends that I haven’t seen in almost ten years, and filmed a lot of beautiful buildings that resonate with the skating/skaters. The last shot in the video is of the window of my boyfriend’s apartment before we moved to Detroit in early 2025. There’s a few shots and references to our old job that we used to work at together in Toledo, an ugly sculpture a stones throw from the Starbucks we worked at in the WestGate shopping center, where we met and fell in love. It was to co-workers and friends there that I first came out as Bi in late 2023. Because of that job, I truly am now more myself than I ever was before – I met family there, and I had to include a few love notes to that place, because it gave me everything – far more than a job should. Those clips themselves might just look cool to most people, and that is completely fine with me, but to the people involved, there is a lot of meaning behind some of these inclusions.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love Detroit. It’s got a great community and I vibe with it well – Detroiters have a great playful shit-talking attitude that you only get in a city like ours. It’s a true underdog city, and so much art and culture has come from here. I love to represent Detroit as much as I can. It’s a beautiful city with beautiful people.
I can’t think of a thing I don’t like about it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Interstatevideo.bigcartel.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allenwdillard?igsh=NTQzZ2ZqMmRscHE5&utm_source=qr
