It’s not everyday you meet somebody who can slip a Morrissey lyric into an interview without sounding contrived. But Alex Seyet – the man (not-so-) formally known as “The Minister” – is that guy.
Seven years ago, Alex founded Ministry of Concrete, one of very few downtown Athens skate stores. Specialising in sneakers, skate hardware, and figure-headed by their infamous Death Cruiser decks, Ministry became a hub for Athenian skate culture…perhaps even more than Alex truly understood. Because just months ago, he was ready to call time on the store. “We silently announced the end of Ministry. It was over.” explains Alex. “We set all the processes in motion. Then I started noticing the reactions, I saw the failure in the gromits’ eyes. They were losing something big. It was similar to how I had felt when I was a kid and a favourite record store or skate shop was closing down. Something very important was about to be taken from my community. A point of cultivation, of growing myself.” Alex grins, his face pixelated by a dodgy Skype connection. Behind him a guitar is balanced precariously on a desk, drifting in and out of resolution. “And it changed the way I looked at things. It reminded me of being young again.”
What was it like for you when you were that age?
I was born and raised in Athens. I got into skateboarding when I was 13 years old. That was back in 1997. The scene back then was a junkyard. It was a notorious subculture to get involved in. I was influenced by my older cousin and his crew, which I always saw as urban heroes.
“I was looking for a job and then I found a job…and heaven knows I’m miserable now.”
They were outlaws. Sadly most of them died from drugs, but that whole outlaw thing was quite thrilling for me. For everybody else, including the family, it was a dead-end in my future. I would end up as a junkie.
So skateboarding and drug use went hand-in-hand?
It was the era. It was the parties, the companies. It was Pedion (the spot), that was a massive junkyard back then. Downtown Athens was a wild place. You could get influenced by others as easy as that. The majority went that way, so it was more than likely that if you started skate-boarding you would end up a junkie too.
What stopped you?
Why didn’t I become one? [Laughs] We were a young generation, I think actually too young to be a part of all this. Some friends had already got into the gutter but I think I wasn’t able to buy into the story. Some of us, we weren’t smarter, but we were looking at it and making fun of it as a useless way of evolving. It was the absolute 90s cliché.
Did you clash with the older generation?
Clash? No. No, we were quite welcome and well-respect-ed. We respected the older guys as well, and we were learning from their bright sides instead of, you know, just being exact copies of them. We were individuals, or at least more individual than typical 13-year-old kids. These past generations were coming to their end with the so-called sport, moving themselves into other interests. We were looking like the future of the scene. Not that we were talking about an industry back then. It was a tribe. The tribe was continuing, with a new generation of…non-morons.
How did you build up your personal reputation in the scene?
When I finished school I went to university, it wasn’t in Athens, it was on an isolated island: Kefalonia. And during the summertime of my first year I came back to Athens, and I was looking for a job, and then I found a job…and heaven knows I’m miserable now. [Laughs] I got a job in a streetwear store in Glyfada, Athens. For some reason they saw I was good at it. I became buyer then I got involved in another company, in wholesale, and I got skate brands involved in our distribution – Adio, Thrasher, Supra, Krew – it seemed like, accidentally, my career had begun. When the crisis started in 2010 my employer and I decided to open a retailer so we would be less dependant on wholesale and third party retailers who weren’t capable of paying their dues. This was how Ministry started. I was the director of the project. I wanted to do it my way so I was trying to think out of the box. Here in Greece, the “action sports industry” was at its peak and it was the dominating style for the country’s youth.
So loads of people were skating by then?
Yeah, and even more were consuming skate-oriented brands. But we didn’t want to do this. We didn’t want to be another store serving that industry. I got all my interests and influences from my upbringing, and I put them in a shell that was skater-driven, skater-owned, but wasn’t clearly just skate-oriented brands of the time. There was a new wave of streetwear back then, and a new generation was coming that were tired of skateboarding having become massive as an industry, in malls and huge e-shops like Zumiez and all that. It was going, let’s say, corporate. And we didn’t want to be part of that. We wanted to be what we are.
What was this new wave?
I guess it was inspired by HUF. Before Keith Hufnagel turned it into a brand, he had HUF sneaker stores. These were looking fresh at the time and they were alien to the rest of the industry. I wanted to do something like that, something for the people, so we could represent skate culture as something closer to the people. Something familiar, not isolated from the crowd.
Something more personal?
Something more cultural.
But the crisis must have hit the skate industry pretty hard?
Oh it absolutely collapsed it. Back then, everyone in the industry was living upon a cloud…a pink cloud of success and career opportunities and plastic wealth that didn’t actually exist. When the crisis began, and the first issues of bankruptcy and cheque cancellation started showing up, the clouds started to collapse. You know, there used to be more than 30 skate shops in Athens. Not just general action sports stores, skate shops. And now there are only four or five, if I’m not mistaken. Two in downtown Athens.
But you had decided to open Ministry just as the crisis was closing all these stores?
It was a tough thing to be doing, sure. But on the other hand, people wanted something new that wasn’t actually present at the time. We saw there was a chance, and I believed it would be more profitable, more successful if I did it the way that was more enjoyable, both for me and for the people.
So you opened your store in Gazi, where I first met you four years later…
Yeah, in Gazi, that was the first place. It wasn’t a marketplace, it was a nightlife area. It was in its peak back in 2010 when we opened it, next to one of the most recognised clubs in the city: K44. It was where everybody in our community was hanging around, so I saw an opportunity to keep in touch with the people.
But by the time I got there people were telling me Gazi was the worst nightlife district?
Yeah that was 2014, things changed quickly. It’s sad, that area got very commercialised in a matter of years. But it happened. That’s why in 2014 we started thinking about moving to other places and continuing our business in a more…ordinary way.
I remember how welcome I felt by every-body I met around that time, people were so willing to show me around. I wonder, do you think the Athens scene is open?
As long as skateboarding is limited and restricted and different from the rest, people will be welcoming. Generally skateboarding is not that ordinary and not that warmly accepted by the overall crowd of the city, and that makes the people that are involved in this community warmer than other big cities in the world. Like you go to London, and you’re not that welcomed. I mean: It’s one more guy! One more guy on a four-wheeled deck! That’s all!
Athens is experiencing more economic turmoil than anywhere else in Europe, yet it’s such a welcoming scene. Richer countries are often more cliquey. It’s strange, many would think it would be the other way around.
Yeah, well one element is the Greek culture of…
Hospitality?
Of pride, of exposing your good character and what you have to offer. Let’s accept the fact that it’s a characteristic rooted in the Ancient era.
“Zeus was the god of hospitality. Accepting and welcoming a stranger into your place was something recognised by the father of all gods! That habit and characteristic was seeded in people’s attitudes, into their hearts. It will never change as long as this nation exists.”
It’s something very, very, very ancient and sacred. I don’t know if people understand this, but it’s passed down from generation to generation, and it’s not pretentious.
So when did you move downtown?
Well, before we moved downtown we did an experiment, we decided to open a second store in Xalandri so we could be present and provide our services to the southern side of the city. Unfortunately, that happened five months before the capital control incident.
That was when the troika enforced a control on the amount of money people could take out of their bank accounts, to €50 per day?
Yeah, that. And also, I was proposed a project in Brooklyn, New York. I saw this as a big step up for my career and my life. Running a business in Athens, aside from maybe being romantic, is a pain in the ass – the legal system, the financial system, the restriction on potential. I got really into the idea of going on that trip and was preparing to move there. If the store was going to continue it would have to go into autopilot mode and keep working without me.
This was 2016?
We closed first Gazi, then Xalandri, and concentrate them both to the centre of the city. That happened in May 2016. I kept working on the NYC project, but by the time we opened the downtown store that wasn’t going to happen anymore.
Why?
An elaborate reason that’s not very interesting. But anyway, it didn’t happen. But I still felt I couldn’t continue with what I had been doing all these years. I tried to force myself to change my way of life and do something more profitable for my future so I could have more time being what I am, being a skateboarder, being a musician.
So Ministry of Concrete was set to close?
Yeah, we decided to close the store. We silently announced the end of Ministry, it as over. We set all the processes in motion. Then I started noticing the reactions of the people who had been supporting us all these years, I saw the sadness and the failure they had in their faces, I saw the failure in the gromits’ eyes, in the youngsters’ eyes. They were losing something big. They were losing a place to meet up, where they were developing their personalities, a place where they were actually cultivating themselves. That feedback actually encouraged me to change my decision. My co-partner left and I decided to keep it all and carry on. But it would be a new era. I would use the heritage that Ministry had developed over the last six years as a tool for change in the city. As a new beginning for my life but still keeping the label.
What does that mean for the future?
Ministry is entering a new era of interacting with critical issues, not just retail selling, but a human-centred approach and sensitivity towards supporting people’s voices and exposing the secret urban treasures of this city. There are going to be a series of exhibitions by skate artists and photographers, collaborations with local brands, tattoo studios, start-ups, non-profits like Free Movement Skateboarding, refugee camps. There are going to be a lot of happenings.
So Ministry of Concrete grows from a shop to, what? A cultural body?
A representative of the concrete! It’s exactly what I’ve wanted to do all these years.
With this evolution for Ministry, it seems you have real faith in your city, real hope.
Oh hope is right there on the corner, mate. We’re talking about a place which has been suffering for the last 5 or 6 years, it’s faced a huge turnover of the typical way of life. It has become a melting point for many cultures, geographically it is a hub. After the immigration wave that took place in recent years, combined with the financial crisis, you can see there’s a lot of tension around this city which needs to be broken. You can see it on people’s faces, on the walls, you can see it on the new type of tourism that is visiting the city, it’s more urban than it was in “the comfortable years”. This is way more than just promising, it’s like a new post-wall Berlin. And all of these things that have sunk into the city’s structure will someday soon reveal themselves to the world. Hope is already here. It is upon Athens residents’ shoulders to realise: We have to prove ourselves as a metropolis, because culturally we are one. For me, it’s the most interesting era that has taken place within the last century for Athens. I have so much faith.
Check out Ministry of Concrete at the following places:
www.ministryofconcrete.com
instagram: @ministryofconcrete
