ground zero

I've had a couple of really fun trips to London recently, feeling like a country bumpkin off to the big smoke. It reminded me how much fun living in a city can be. There's a real buzz of energy and a feel of excitement and possibilities. I'd never move but it's good to get some exposure to culture more vibrant than the backwater that Devon can be. We definately ought to do it more often..........

No trip can be complete without a sojurn along the South Bank and a trip to Slam City Skates both British skateboarding institutions and two places i looked forward more to visiting than any of the official sights when i first went to the capital.

Incidentally, if you or your kids have anything more than a passing interest in Harry Potter, i'd heartily advise a trip to the Harry Potter studio tour at Leavesden where you can wander amongst the sets from the films, drink butter beer and try out greenscreen broomstick flying.

intersection....

Plenty of you will have come across the names Tommy Guerrero and Ray Barbee on the music credits of Thomas Campbells surf movies, fewer of you will have recognised their names as two of the most influential street skaters ever. I was listening to one of Tommy's albums the other day and it struck me that they are the point where most of my interests collide, surfing, guitar, skating, music...

The Video part above is from "Future Primitive" and it was the first section of  american skateboarding i ever saw, it opened my eyes to what skateboarding was about, not long after getting my first board, sometime in 1988 i think. (although the film is from much earlier) It's actually held to be one of the first catalysts that kick started street skating as a "thing" distinct from ramp skating which was the dominant force within skateboarding at the time and it was massively influential, not only to skaters. If you think about it, the way good snowboarders (like nico mueller for example) ride the mountain, using natural hits as they flow top to bottom, it connects in a straight line back to Tommy ruling the hills of San Francisco. TG was my first favorite skater.

Fast forward a year or two and Powell Peralta released their "public domain" video. In this age of readily available web content it's difficult to explain just how exciting waiting to see the new powell video was, they were almost the only company making films then and virtually the only chance to moving pictures of skateboarding! Not far into the film was the black and white "rubber boys " section set to a classic skate punk track and featuring a young ray barbee. watch it here. One of the coolest things about this section was the flatland tricks (no comply's etc) that didn't need classic american urban architecture for us to emulate. I actually snapped the tape in the badly copied video of this film i had from rewinding and watching it too many times. Barbee is also significant in being one of the first african american skaters to become widely known.

So neither TG or Ray Barbee surf but they do know Thomas Cambell, part of the "beautiful losers" art scene and who originally worked as a skate photographer before becoming widely known for his art and surf film making. Through releases on his galaxia label and his use of their music in his movies,  both have begun to become known for their music as much as their contribution to skating.

Of the two, it's probably Barbee's clean bright jazz influenced noodling that i come back to more often. His tone and melody just say sunlight and mellow sunny happy days to my ears, whatever greyness my eyes can see outside the window. There's a pretty good introduction to him here or watch the clip below for a good introduction to one man, a tele, a bassman and a looper pedal!

for the daily commute

Reissue not original but very sweet all the same, stacey peralta warp tail, trackers and cambria wheels. Loose as a goose and oh so much fun.

Mega thanks to Gavin at surrey skateboards for taking so much pleasure in sorting me out, it was greatly appreciated!

speed freaks

By the power of youtube, the aforementioned Mike Vallely segment from the 1989 santa cruz video, speed freaks. I remember watching it over and over at a friends and being blown away, then skating SO hard the hours following, amped on this section.

At the time, Vallely had just done the unthinkable and left the bones brigade, the biggest team in skateboarding, joining punk upstarts World industries, which seemed incomprehensible to us. He followed it by releasing the first "double ended" pro model featuring the iconic barnyard graphic. This shape was revoloutionary and it, and the decks that emulated it, had an effect on street skating which cannot be underestimated. The "pill shape" deck is still the industry standard today.

If you want to follow me down memory lane have a look at Mike's website here.

There's a documentary in the works about the Bones Brigade, with Stacy Peralta behind the lens, the man largely responsible for the team originally and one of the originators of the skate video itself, it should be something to look forward to.

gnarl

So with my rekindled interest in sidewalk surfing :-) i have been catching up on what's been happening in skateboarding since i stopped paying attention. 

The impressively illustrated Kris Markovich is still dropping hammers. One of the skaters that i always looked out for in the mags, his balls out speed and eye for a big line (along with contemporaries like john cardiel) helped move skating away from the super tech tiny wheel doldrums of the early 90's. I think i wore out my vhs of the element video watching his section. Having ridden for probably more companies than anyone, he now has his own brand "given" a truly skater owned start up.

If you fancy reminiscing with me check this from Slap. Sick stalefish photo borrowed from a very talented Atlanta based photographer, Mr A Smith, check him out!

who was mr smith anyway?

 answers on a postcard please............

One of the most stylish lip tricks around & high on the list of stuff i wish i could do!

the wishthound.........

skates better than you!

what's old is new again

The wishthound gave me a new skateboard a month or so ago, much to my wife's disgust i might add.Since then i've spent an enjoyable number of hours (in upstanding member of the community fashion not like a ne'er do well abusing council property or anything :-)) rolling around Barnstaple's new-ish skatepark. I have discovered a few things:

Firstly i'd forgotten how much fun skating is, not having ridden anything other than a big long skateboard for 5 years. I can actually remember how to do some tricks though i've forgotten more. Each time i leave for home, i remember something else that i should have tried, a trick that used to languish in the bottom of the trick bag. all those years ago. There is still that same satisfaction from landing something (however simple now) and rolling away clean that never changes.

Secondly, i don't bounce like i did ten years ago. I have a fraction of the bottle i used to have, gone are the days of throwing myself down sets of stairs with abandon. The threat of broken limbs & their consequences loom ever larger and well, concrete is hard and it hurts, for a lot longer as well at my advanced age. In the wishthounds words, the ability curve for surfing is gradual but with an overall upward trend for most of your life, with skating it peaks early and it's pretty much all downhill from there, but if you're having fun, who cares right?

Thirdly, like surfing, it never truly leaves. Skateboarding was a big part of my growing up, becoming a man, it shaped my future path in life in a way that i only recently understand. It changes how you look at the physical world we interact with on a daily basis and i don't think you ever fully forget that or ever lose the desire to skate, it's just your body that lets you down. Even though there are a couple of long periods when i haven't rolled around, it's always in there bubbling away under the surface.

Finally kids today have it easy! The park in the pictures is one of at least five small skate facilities (off the top of my head) within a 30 minute drive, in a relatively rural area, all well built and good to skate. Back in the early nineties, my friend's mum fought for years for our midland council to build some ramps and when they did it was virtually unusable. Skateboarding is acceptable now in a way that it never was when i started (though there is still a punk ethos like there used to be once you dig beneath the shiny veneer of tony hawk & the x games)

Kids today learn tricks in their first year that were beyond the imagination of the pros of the eighties and it's easy to learn them because the boards are light and you can see things to inspire you in magazines, dvd's, on youtube and in your local town. Things never used to be like that (please excuse the monty python style "it were hard in my day" monologue but..)

Take learning to ollie for example, essential basic skating building block. That took us ages to learn, we had heard reference to it & seen stills of people in the air but never actually seen a video or much less anyone do it in real life. Our town had no older skaters to copy and it wasn't until a friend of a friend managed to get a photocopy of a "how to" from an old mag that we managed to see how it was done, before that it might as well have been magic. In fact i can still remember the afternoon my friend and i first managed to properly leave the ground.

Steve Pezman has a great quote in Andrew Kidman's Glass Love where he talks about surfing as you get older being just as challenging and rewarding even though your actual ability level might be decreasing as your body ages. His point is that as even the simpler things become harder, the satisfaction in still achieving them increases and the sum total of joy (or stoke if you like) in that is the same as it ever was. I think he's right and the same applies to skating, surfing, pretty much any physical activity

So here's to my fellow old skaters with a peter pan complex! It's a shame i have a princess obsessed daughter, a son might have given me the perfect, spouse approved, excuse to keep going!

Incidentally i just saw the latest Flip movie (Extremely Sorry) The level of skating is fully RIDICULOUS!  I always have a soft spot for Flip, being the phoenix from the ashes of Classic Brit brand Deathbox & sponsors of two of my favorite ever skaters Tom Penny & Geoff Rowley. Their new dvd is well worth a watch if you get the chance, just not with any young impressionable children in attendance!

seeds of the revoloution

June 1988, a chance visit to Smiths revealed a whole new world beyond bombing hills in the local park. The rest as they say, is history!

a tale to tell...

I've always thought there was something cool about a used and abused pair of skate shoes, the shape moulded to the skaters foot by the miles on tarmac and griptape, the sole worn in a way as individual as the skater's style itself, each scratch, abrasion or hole in the upper telling a tale of triumph and defeat, tricks learnt, gaps made, shins & hips bruised.

When i started skating, skate shoes were all really expensive, i spent ages gazing at pairs of Van's and Airwalks in RAD magazine, dreaming of owning whichever pair was "in" this month and, just like we had to with skateboards themselves, we tried to eke every last session out them. I have very distinct memories of ripped up converse all stars with cardboard covering the hole in the sole over the ball of my foot, buying replacement soles to glue on from Woolworths (always way too slippy compared to Vans waffle sole!)and going through several tubes of shoe goo trying to rehabilitate wrecked pairs of Airwalks.

Back then a friend getting a new pair of skate shoes was as much an event as someone getting a new deck or the latest Powell video coming out. I remember a friend getting the first ever model of Etnies, back when they were based in France, seeing the first Van's Cab shoe for the first time, back then the first ever signature model shoe and something that seemed a weird idea at the time!

Skateboarding is very different now, it's everywhere, the brands are well known, the fashion is integrated with the mainstream, it's an accepted sport not the fringe activity it was for us, populated with the kids your mum would rather you didn't hang out with.

ps i know those shoes don't look properly griptape abused but I haven't been out for more than a cruise around for ages so they'll have to do like that!