Welcome to Cherry World! Born from the mind of Josh Levine, who spent his formative years carving up LA’s makeshift T Bowls, Cherry World is a lifestyle brand (in the broadest sense) orbiting skate, apparel and cannabis. It’s trippy graphics that float and pop. It’s bugs, pre-rolls and skate decks. It’s young skaters Chucky Woodard and Reese Salken nailing tricks alongside Rob Gonzalez. It’s a big furry honey monster-like mascot and a walking, talking cherry fella named Dodge E. Cherry created by Frank Lebon. It’s a collective of friends and collaborators chilling, creating experimenting. Founded with support from creative visionaries such as Glen Luchford and Fran Burns alongside design-minded talents Marly Phillips and Dolly Dilkes, Cherry World draws on the skate-smoke spirit if the late 90s early 00s, replicating its sense of independence and community as a launchpad of unfiltered expression. In their DIY skatepark in Signal Hill, Long Beach, we meet the crew.

Ella Joyce: Can you take us through how Cherry World was first thought up?
Josh LeVine: I’m born and raised here [in LA]. I grew up skateboarding, surfing, and I snowboarded professionally after high school for a few years. I’m in my early forties, so I grew up in the 90s and 2000s era of skateboarding. It’s something that has always been super important to me, I love brands, action sports and the subcultures that come along with those. I snowboarded professionally until I injured my knee, so I went back to college, into the real world. I was always an entrepreneur, and before Cherry World I started the clothing company FRAME and ran that business as the CEO for about seven years.

After I stepped down from running the day-to-day, I was talking to a friend of mine Glen Luchford, our kids go to school together and we’re buddies. It felt like everything that was really important to me twenty years ago was in trend now, and I saw an opportunity to do something unique. That’s how Cherry World came to be. As I went about putting this thing together I started pulling friends and collaborators into the mix. Glen’s an amazing photographer so I was like, “Hey, can you work with me on the imagery side of things?” Then Glen pulled in a big creative director friend of ours Chris Simmonds and when the time came to do apparel we pulled in a friend of ours Fran Burns, who’s a stylist in London. So it’s creating this collaborative environment of people who are into the same thing and want to have a fun time building something cool.

“Skateboarding was the one that led the trends, it’s the one everybody looked to in fashion. It’s rooted in authenticity, I don’t think there’s anything more authentic than real skateboarding.”

EJ: And that’s how you came to Cherry World, Marly and Dolly? What attracted you to the brand?
Dolly Dilkes: I’ve always been really interested in the surf and skate worlds and it’s nice to go into this being super LA. There has always been a lot of creative freedom, which was appealing from the start.
Marly Phillips: I grew up skating in New York and [when Cherry World came] it literally felt like that moment when you’re in school and a teacher asks you what you want to do when you grow up and you’re like, “Well I’d love to do something with skating, and I love weed, so that’d be dope.” It was the perfect storm with all the places I’d grown up, all the things I did growing up and all the things I was hoping to be a part of in the future. Some of the skaters we work with will pull up and I’ll be like, “No fucking way, I literally watched your videos over and over and over again.” Then suddenly we’re in conversations with them and it’s dope. [all laugh]

EJ: Josh, having grown up in California’s skate culture, what do you think it is that continues to draw people towards that scene?
JL: You can talk about surfing, snowboarding, you can talk about all those subcultures, but I’ve always thought skateboarding was the spearhead of it all. Skateboarding was the one that led the trends, it’s the one everybody looked to in fashion. It’s rooted in authenticity, I don’t think there’s anything more authentic than real skateboarding, and that’s the world I grew up in. You lived it, you breathed it, it was everything. You’d go to school, go skateboarding, go to bed and just repeat, repeat, repeat. You’d build communities of friends and that’s what drew everybody in. The community aspect really pulled people together when I was younger and it’s very much the same today. It’s important to be authentic if you’re going to be involved in this community, that’s what we’re trying to do, and support it as well. We’re working with skaters, and athletes, I believe you really have to take care of the people you’re working with.

EJ: And forming a diverse team with a broad range of interests and talents only builds on this.
JL: It feels like everybody we’re working with is similar but different, everybody is into similar stuff but with their own unique opinions and point of view. This collaborative environment is what makes it really cool. I’m older than these guys, Glen’s a little older than me, but we’re all into the same stuff. It’s really interesting to speak to people like Marly and Dolly and be like, “What are you liking? What do you think? What’s your take on this?” It’s cool because I can be like, “This is what I was into when I was younger, you should check this out,” or I’m asking, “How can I support you in your initiatives?” It’s this little family vibe of wanting to make cool products, wanting to market them in a cool way and having fun along the way. You get to a point in life where you’re like, “If it’s not going to be fun, what’s the point?”
DD: There is a strong community side to skate brands – when it’s connected to the skate world, you automatically have a community who want to wear it.
MP: Obviously you want to express yourself through what you’re wearing when you’re out skating, everyone feels better going out on the streets when you’ve got a good fit on. You feel more confident, and you feel like you’re going to land more tricks, but at the end of the day, there’s a chance you’re going to fuck the clothes up because you’re going to get wrecked skating around. It does tap into the element of community Dolly was talking about, if your homie is wearing it or your homie is producing something, then you want to rep it and support what your friends are doing.

“When you create a narrative and you create something which is enjoyable to watch and let your mind race with, then the clothes, the skating and the videos all come together to form a piece of art.”

EJ: The Cherry World visuals are so good – I love the furry Cherry World monster. There’s a really playful world emerging there.
MP: The world we aimed to create with Cherry World has become a universe in itself. The first video we dropped with the Cherry World monster set us off in the right sphere – we used that as a launch pad into different worlds. In a way, sometimes the skate and fashion world can seem alien to those who don’t know it. It’s such a farfetched thing, people’s expression and self-expression can kind of go off the rails, and I think that’s what makes it so fun. The recent collaboration with Frank Lebon was how we introduced Dodge E. Cherry, another character within the Cherry World universe. When you create a narrative and you create something which is enjoyable to watch and let your mind race with, then the clothes, the skating and the videos all come together to form a piece of art. Rather than just a company, or just a t-shirt, with narrative, you’re able to create something more than just a physical thing. Josh: It’s cool to see people put their own spin on it. The Frank video was all him, he was like, “I’m really into what you’re doing, I’d love to work with you,” and I was like, “Alright cool let’s give you a budget and that’s it – no guidance. What do you want to do?” It’s really cool to have creative, interesting people put their minds to something.

EJ: You’re also building a new skate spot in LA, how’s that going?
MP: It’s a DIY spot that’s appearing and we’re encouraging people to throw some tricks down on it. The idea is that we’re going to have a competition and whoever is able to do the best trick gets a prize: some Cherry World apparel and some money to go along with it. It’s the same way skate shops have been throwing street contests for years. One of our homies, Shawn [Hale], is going to throw something down this weekend and we’ll film it. It’s really nice, especially among the skaters we skate with because there are different generations. Rob Gonzalez has been around, he was a pro in the late-90s early-2000s, and we have great connections with a lot of the OG’s. The idea is to get those skaters together, put something down on this DIY spot, show it off to the world and then see who can top it.

EJ: Thinking long term, what are your hopes for Cherry World?
JL: I see it as a global lifestyle brand, it’s a more modern way of doing things. As we move forward we really want to build out the apparel side and turn it into a full collection, and cannabis is super interesting in the United States, it’s growing as states are deregulating and legalising. More than anything it’s just a platform to be creative, to do fun projects, to collaborate, to create content, create media. I really think brands need to behave like little media companies, constantly creating newness, working with people and remaining interesting rather than just selling products. It’s about building something engaging and bringing everyone into it. Cannabis was the start, clothing is next and we’ll see where it goes from there.
MP: As Josh was saying earlier, skating is the spearhead of everything, and our interest in its subcultures takes us into different fields. We’re asking, “Who do we know near us who’s surfing? Who do we know in England who is making a five- hour trek to the North Sea to surf?” We want to make sure every step is made with intention and made with people we want to collaborate with.
JL: That’s a big part of it – everybody says authenticity, but I’m going to call it integrity. It’s about doing the right thing, doing right by people and supporting the communities you’re engaging with. We want to find the people at the forefront of these cultures and bring them into the fold, letting them do things their way – keeping it real.

EJ: Is there anything on your radar you’re really keen to explore?
MP: Space travel. [all laugh]
DD: Music would be amazing.
JL: Music plays such a big part in everything, it’s a subculture within a subculture. You’ve got the skate community, then you’ve got the hip-hop skate community, the punk rock skate community. I think you’ll start to see more of that showing up. What Frank did, it’s art, people who are working at that level creating and using us as a platform to craft projects is amazing. Thanks to Chris, Glen, Dolly, Fran and Marly we’ve created a hyper-visual world and people are really leaning into it. It’s somewhere people can be super creative, express themselves and have fun – it’s intoxicating.

Interview originally published in The HERO Summer Zine.