SHEM BRAGG

Skate

TONY: Where did you grow up and when did you start skating?

SHEM: So I was born on the Gold Coast, Queensland and grew up around Tweed Heads. I moved to Ballina when I was about 14 and that’s when I started skating for the rst time. I still remember the rst time I tried to drop in the Ballina mini bowl, I body slammed the concrete so fucken hard, haha. I’ll never forget that feeling.

TONY: Where do you reside at the moment and which spots / parks do you skate?

I live just outside of Bangalow at the moment. I moved here with my partner basically for the local skate park, haha. It has an 8-foot classic kidney shape bowl with concrete coping, you can’t beat a classic shape. It’s so bullshit all the new parks getting built with 4-foot transitions and steel coping, just put some pool coping on that shit for fuck sake!

JOSH: Is moving to Melbourne still on the agenda?

SHEM: De nitely not o the cards, I’d like to move to Melbs for the skate scene and constant DIY action, plus the Smoke Beer crew. Still, some life discussions to make on my behalf before I dive in. De nitely pros and cons about living right near Byron Bay.

JOSH: When it comes to skate trip accommodation, where’s the best place to get some shut-eye?

SHEM: Ideally away from everyone else, I’m pretty good at smoke booming, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

CAM: You’re a well-rounded chap when it comes to trick selection, if you could only go frontside or backside for the rest of your life which would it be?

SHEM: Can’t deny that a high-speed front 5-0 is one of the greatest feeling tricks, but I’m going to go backside because I’m a end for a back smith.

CAM: What’s the scariest transition you’ve ever set wheels to?

SHEM: Well, I usually say the weirder the better. The scariest would have to be this quarter I skated on the roof of a little hardware store in Lismore, the eave was made out of concrete and had a perfect little quarter at the end. The run-up was alright but there were bolts hanging out of the concrete all over the place, possibly to stop people from skating it, haha. I did a blunt to fakie on the two-foot wide quarter with around eight-foot drop directly onto the gutter, if you fall o that shit, fuuuck that’s game over.

CAM: You work in a trade, right? Have the skills you’ve learnt from that job been useful for your love of DIY?

SHEM: I’m a pool builder by trade so yeah I’ve picked up a thing or two about concrete and laying tiles but these days all I’m doing is throwing in berglass pools which are great for swimming but that’s it, haha.

NELLO: Tell me quickly about Grimaces and your role in the project. How often do you skate it these days?

SHEM: Grimaces! Man oh man, that place is a masterpiece if I don’t mind saying. Me and my good mate Tony went halves in the cost and labor of getting that little beauty the way it is now. It took some back-breaking labor jackhammering up a shit ton of crete and then formed it up with some steel and sprayed that shit like any other pool. Worth every cent, sweat, blood and tears. We try and have a session once a month but it’s hard to organise sometimes.

JOSH: Barber or backyard cut?

SHEM: Backyard for sure! Either by myself rst thing in the morning or by the half-cut barber himself Kotterz, haha.

CAM: Are you an advocate for the liquid warm-up? If so how many milliliters is the perfect amount?

SHEM: Well, I actually try and stay clear of the booze before the warm-up, after I’m warm I don’t mind having a few tinnies at the local, sometimes quite a few and that’s when shit gets weird or I fall on my face, haha.

TONY: Have you been impacted by covid at all? How did it impact your local scene and your skateboarding?

SHEM: Covid didn’t really a ect my job, in fact, we had more work than last year. The thing that a ected me the most was not being able to skate the parks and hang with the crew at the pub. All in all, I think not being able to skate the parks was a blessing in disguise. Me and a few mates would go and skate slappy kerbs for hours and when we got sick of that we would go skate some other weird shit that we usually wouldn’t go skate. I feel like the DIY scene boomed as well, it was sick! I helped my mate Tom and the other boys build a barrier spot in Byron and we skated that shit almost every day! Shout out to GPC!

CAM: Dream DIY sk8 location?

SHEM: As far as traveling I’d really like to go to SheepSide in Hawaii. It looks so weird and hard to skate, but I’m keen for the challenge.

JOSH: Favorite skater?

SHEM: Daan Van Der Linden for street or Ronny Sandoval for transition. Sooo many good dudes out there though.

NELLO: How do you see yourself if you weren’t a skater?

SHEM: Fuck never thought of that haha. I guess if I didn’t end up loving skating I would probably smoke weed and surf like everyone else around here.