Have You Seen Their Hard Drive? An Interview With Noah Coville

Noah on the video that was…and then wasn’t

Do you want to say what the original plan for last winter was? What did you guys do?

Yea so, last winter, Micah and I… well I guess before the winter Travis from Splinters hit me and Micah up—and we had been filming with Sean, obviously, and Emma who are both on Splinters—and he talked to us and said he wanted to support a video and put me and Micah on the Splinters team which was dope because it was something that Micah and I had been dreaming of, forever. So, he said he would support the video. We had already been planning on making a video but then the plan was to make a video presented by Splinters. I guess we had set out to do that. We were going to aim for like, a fifteen-minute video or something around there, some short video with those three people and then Yoni and Josiah. That was the plan, just go wherever the snow is but pretty much just stick around on the east coast.

How did it go? 

It went pretty good honestly. We spent a good amount of time in Canada and around Vermont of course. I was pretty stoked on how it was coming together honestly. Before everything happened, I had started the process of editing the video and it was looking sick. Like, Micah had some fucking insane clips, had a lot of clips. Yoni, Yoni was killing it. I mean everybody honestly. Everybody had stuff that we were stoked about.

Yoni quite literally about to kill it. Shot by Matt Pellatt

So, what did happen? 

So… this was in June. I had just moved into Walnut, the house that Micah lives at. I was going to live there for two months. I did live there for two months. It was actually the first night I moved in, and it was dollar beer night in Burlington which is on Thursdays. Dollar beers at Finnegans, everyone pulls up. Me and my friend Jamie were having the best night ever. We were playing doubles in pool and just fucking killing it for some reason. We were super hyped about that, and we came back from the bar around two in the morning. We were like, “fuck it, let’s watch a movie.” Both of us just fell asleep on the couch. I guess around five in the morning I moved, like I woke back up and moved to my room and I didn’t notice anything at all, but it must have been in that time frame that somebody had snuck through the window and broken into the house. I didn’t realize until Jamie woke up. Jamie was moving out, he was about to move to New York City and I was moving in so both of us just had all our shit in that one room. All my stuff was in bags, so I just had a backpack with my Xbox, my computer, my hard drive like, all my shit just packed up and ready for someone to take. But Jamie came in and he was looking for his wallet and then realized it was gone. He had changed out of his pants into shorts to sleep and he was like, “dude I think someone took my pants,” and I was like, “dude what are you talking about someone took your pants.” He was like, “dude, I took them off, right here in the bathroom and they’re gone.” I was like, “what the fuck.” We started looking around and I realized some shit was missing. He’s freaking out because he was just about to move to New York City, and he just lost his wallet and his passport. We realized that the window in the bathroom was unlocked, and somebody had cut the screen with like a razorblade or something and then slid the window open, climbed through, grabbed like… like they took my two favorite pairs of pants that were just lying there. And, they must have just grabbed my backpack that had all my shit. I didn’t really realize the situation but then Micah came downstairs and was just like, where’s your computer and all that shit and I was like, “dude no fucking way.”

Micah and I were immediately like, what the fuck. We jumped in the car. I don’t know what the fuck our plan was but just to go downtown and start asking people. We hopped in the car and pretty much just went to City Hall and started asking homeless people. I mean, I don’t really want to just assume it was someone like that, but we didn’t know what else to try so we just went to City Hall Park and just started asking people. Pretty much immediately we put a reward on it, it was Micah’s idea. We were just telling people we’d give them a couple hundred bucks if they could get any of the stuff back or find the backpack. I think at one point we were offering people like, a thousand dollars.

A photo from the digi cam cause…well…you’ll see. Yoni Herskowitz shot by Matt Pellatt

Damn, I didn’t know about the window. They actually cut through the screen?

 Yea it’s crazy because we were asleep on the couch while they were there. We were listening to a movie pretty loud and we were obviously hammered so, we didn’t hear anything but we were home, Micah was home, there was probably like five people home. Lights were on in the house. So, I guess that room is just, on the sidewalk. You could walk up to the window and look into the room which I’m guessing is what someone did. I guess someone just looked in and saw a bunch of shit.

What happened after that initial shock? Any leads on where things were? Any recoveries?

Not too much. I think the biggest lead we had was that within like three or four days, somebody had found Jamie’s passport ripped up on the ground on this street that’s on the way towards downtown. So, we knew it was somebody on foot, probably, or I guess they could have just thrown it out of a car. But I’m guessing it was somebody on foot. Like, I don’t know why you would rip up a passport and throw it but…they had just thrown it. When we found that I started looking in trash cans and everything in the area. I mean, if they’re just throwing stuff out, they could’ve just thrown the hard drive in a dumpster or into a bush or something. But we didn’t really get too much else besides that. We put up posters everywhere. We talked to a bar down the road to see if they had cameras aiming out at the street and nothing really came of that.

What’s the deal with this new video then? Where did those clips come from?

We had one trip that we went on to Quebec City right at the end of the winter and all of those clips were just still on the camera. That was me, Micah and Quinn, just the three of us went down and got a couple clips. There are some other clips that either someone else filmed or like, we have a lot of clips that we filmed of the camera. I was able to edit it in a way where I think it looks pretty good. Like honestly, I think it looks pretty sick. I didn’t know what else to do because I feel like if I didn’t make it into something, it would just never be used. We’re not going to just sit on the footage. Micah and I were talking, we just want to start fresh and not necessarily redo the things we did. That just doesn’t feel right. I’d rather just try new stuff than get bodied on something we already laced.

So you’re not going back to any of the same spots?

Personally, I think I have like…one or two spots that I would go back to. They’re just spots that look cool. I guess it’s up to everybody. If someone has something they were really hyped on, of course I’m down to go and do it again. We’re just not going to try and put too much pressure on that.

What clip were you most bummed to lose?

I mean… the cover photo of Derek, that one sucks. Oh yea, shout out Derek. I don’t know if I mentioned him but he’s in the video. Derek has fucking clips.

The lost cover. Derek Conti shot by Matt Pellatt

There is a lore though behind it now. Just the cover no more clip, it makes it mysterious.

Yea for sure. And it was so sick the Matt Pellatt was there and able to capture it. But I would say that clip and then Micah hit this, I guess some people would call it a quad kink. But it’s this kinked rail. Actually, maybe it was a down flat down flat down flat down that like, ends on a creeper ledge and there’s like a close out. I don’t know it’s kind of hard to explain. He had a super gnarly bail and then he made it. I think that probably would have been the ender to the video. Either that or Derek’s ollie.

I heard Matt lost a bunch of his photos too, like his SD card got corrupted or something. Are you guys just cursed?

I actually didn’t know about that, but I guess so dude. I don’t know I’m…I’m…I guess it’s kind of a sign that maybe it’s time for me to move out of Burlington. It’s one of those things. I’ve heard stories of people having their cars broken into and losing whole skate videos but, it’s just one of those things that you just never even consider it as something that would happen. I mean, obviously now I’m going to be backing stuff up periodically throughout the winter.

Is that the biggest takeaway? Just back your shit up.

Yea that’s the biggest takeaway. For anyone that reads this stuff, which I’m sure is a lot of homies who are filming videos, back your shit up and store it in multiple locations. I’m sure a lot of people are already doing that, but we had to learn the hard way which fucking sucks. But yea. Honestly, shout out Josiah. I think Josiah is the only person who I fully lost all of his footage. He had some sick shit and he’s the fucking man.

Interview by Norm

Photos by Matt Pellatt