NORTH SKATEBOARD MAGAZINE
ISSUE 14
WWW.CARHARTT-WIP.COM FELIPE BARTOLOMÉ – BACKSIDE WALLRIDE MELON • PHOTO: ESTEBAN VELARDE
KARL SALAH | TRE FLIP
EFFORTLESSLY EGALITARIAN THE 505 BY NEW BALANCE NUMERIC
Still Shooting On Film
Contents
Ross Zajac Vans Gallery Mike Blabac Cover: Rory Muirhead - FS Wallride Photographer : Graham Tait
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Ross Zajac
Photography by Graham Tait Interview by Adam Toddhunter
I remember growing up skating at comps and we’d hear some poor MC try to pronounce your name. Let’s set it straight, how do you pronounce it? Ha, yeah, they’d always mess it up or just use Ross. It’s Ukrainian and pronounced kinda like ‘zyack’. Are you of Ukrainian descent? Yeah. My grandad came from Ukraine and my grandma came from Austria. They met in Manchester during the war and settled there. Coming from a small town in Cumbria, how did you first get into skating? My older cousin used to skate at the time. He used to bring the first Tony Hawk game round to mine and that’s probably what got me started. I got my mam to buy me a Stone Cold Steve Austin board from some sport shop and started rolling down hills with it. There was always a pretty decent scene growing up. There was loads of skaters in all the towns nearby, so there was always a good session to be had. I remember it could be pretty sketchy being a skater growing up in the area, before I started I would hear stories of groups of scallies coming up to the newly built skatepark with an assortment of weapons after a good old fashioned goth smashing. Oh yeah, that was a crazy one. All the older skaters spent years doing petitions and meeting with the council to try and get a skatepark built. We finally got it and for the first month or so after it opened all the local scumbags decided they’d show up, maybe once a week with baseball bats and stuff to beat up some ‘goths’. We had a few sessions cut short having to run through the trees and hide in pubs until it chilled out. That was a wild time but luckily they got bored of it after FS 50-50
a while.
I think that’s always the case when a skatepark gets built in a small town. Did you or any of your mates ever get caught? We usually got away. There was this weird goth guy that used to tag along with us called Morbid Carl. He used to tell everyone about how hard he was because he broke his arm in a crazy Pantera mosh pit, but apparently he actually fell out of a tree. Think he got caught once and then we never seen him again! Haha! Not from a bat-wielding kid, but can you tell us a bit about the slam that made you lose your sense of smell? Well I think I was in Newcastle after Christmas helping you move back in. We were a little hungover and trying to get warmed up for a skate at Five Bridges. I stuck on a back lip and tried to step off and tripped over the block, landed on my back and whipped my head into the floor. I remember you asking if I was okay and I was like, “Yeah... No”. Blood came out of my ear and you called an ambulance. I don’t really remember getting to the hospital or anything but they kept me overnight as I’d actually fractured my skull! I was off work with a concussion for a month or two. My mam and my girlfriend came to pick me up from the hospital and said I was saying sentences that didn’t make any sense. It was pretty scary and I still can’t really smell. Yeah, definitely one the gnarliest things I’ve seen. Have you lost it completely or is there anything left that sets it off? It was gone completely for a while but I smell the odd thing now. All the doctors said it would come back after about a year but I think it’s been five or six and it’s still not back. I remember after I’d done it I smelled a Greggs and that’s what made me realise I hadn’t been able to smell! Haha!
Ollie up FS Tailslide
Hip to halfpipe BS Transfer
Not being able to smell would be horrible. What do you miss the smell of the most? Ahh, it’s not all that bad. It affected the taste of food a little. That’s the worst part. You never notice smells unless they’re bad anyway. So you stayed around in Cumbria after finishing school to train in joinery? I heard Olly Todd’s brother taught you all there is to know about timber, so who’s got the better style? Ha, yeah kind of. Olly’s brother started teaching there in my last year. All my tutors knew I skated and when he started teaching at the college they made a point of introducing me because his brother was a professional. I didn’t expect it to be anyone legit so I guess I was fairly impressed. Haha! What interested you in joinery? When I was finishing school I knew I liked art and woodwork and they basically told me at careers meetings that there is no such thing as a job in art which is stupid but that’s why I was wanting to do woodwork. I was at the skatepark and told my older mate Kev I wanted to do woodwork and he was like, “I’m a joiner, you can be my apprentice”, so I showed up at his house just before I was starting college to sort it. I don’t think he actually expected anything to come of his comment but here I am. Did you actually manage to put in a full day’s work? It must be hard not to call it a day early and go skating all the time! Every now and then on a sunny day he’d be like, “Should we go for a skate?” And then pay me for the day because it wasn’t my fault I wasn’t at work. Then there was that day we had off and he took me and you to the Flip demo at Stoke. It’s not easy to find a boss like that! Ride on FS Smith Grind
Did you guys make any obstacles?
Previous page: FS Tailslide Flip Fakie
Surprisingly we made nothing. Before I worked for him he’d made a kicker to get onto some handrails near his house. We would just get a job finished then skate locally or check out new parks if they were close enough. After a while you decided to move to Glasgow, how was the move? My girlfriend was at the Art School up here and most of the lads back home either quit skating or moved away for Uni so I was spending every weekend travelling to cities to skate or see my girlfriend so it made sense for me to move away. It’s hard to move away from family and I had a good job but Glasgow’s close enough for me to visit home. Did you know much about Scottish skateboarding before moving up? I didn’t really know much about the Scottish scene before I moved. I’d been to Kelvingrove a few times on my own but I was too scared to talk to anyone! Haha! Everyone here is super friendly too! Did you find it hard to get a job? It wasn’t too bad. At first I just wanted to enjoy being in the city. I managed to pay off my car and live off savings for nearly a year just hanging out and skating. That was the best. We’ve had some pretty skint times but something has always come up when we needed it.
FS Crook
Was the Glasgow scene any different to what you were used to? It’s a big city, was it intimidating? Well when we were younger we’d always travel south or east for trips and mainly skate Lancashire or Newcastle. A lot of the spots and even the skatepark are rougher than I’d usually skate but I suppose that kinda adds to it. I suppose it was a little intimidating at first. It wasn’t long after I moved that Paul VX hit me up on Facebook or something so I met him at KG and he introduced me to everyone. That made it easier to get talking to people. You got in with filmers Paul VX and Simie quite quickly when you moved up right? Yeah, they’re both top guys. Paul was one of the first guys I met here. He introduced me to everyone and showed me all the spots and stuff so it was great for me to skate all these new spots. I didn’t know Simie too well until he asked me to film some stuff for his Street Snacks edit, but he’s one of the easiest guys to hang/film with. You have a full part in Paul’s upcoming video, how has filming for that been? Filming with Paul has been good. He was one of the first guys I met here. He introduced me to everyone and showed me all the spots and stuff so it was great for me to skate all these new spots. He can be pretty militant on the standard of footage. I’ve probably redone every trick i’ve filmed with him, but I’m sure it’ll be worth it when it comes out. Hopefully...
FS Noseblunt
Previous page: BS Wallride 180 out
When can we expect it? It’ll be out this summer. I think we’re just waiting on Tom [Shimmin] to finish his part so everyone reading this, hassle him on social media! Haha! I’m just about to start filming something with Simie too so I’m looking forward to that. Haha! Get him hassled! Who else is in Paul’s new video that we should be looking out for? Everyone! I think full parts will be me, Graham Anderson, Tom Shimmin, Daniel Nicholas and then some montages. I think it’s Graham’s first full length part and he’s gone in hard! So get hyped for that! There’s too many rad skaters up here, I’m well excited to see it! How is it for someone from south of Hadrian’s Wall living with Scottish independence potentially on the horizon? One of the lads I work with actually told me he voted for independence because he watched Braveheart the night before! Haha! It’s not so bad though. I guess it’s a crazy time for politics full stop. All the people I hang with are pretty chilled and open to opinion so I don’t need to wear a disguise. I’m Northern too which probably helps. Any shout outs? My mam and dad, Kate, you, Lloyd, Hot Dog, Big Dan, All the skaters from Cumbria, Team Extreme, Kev Robinson, Adam Wood, Joe Park, Paul and Dyl from S4 and all the other skaters that have made us welcome everywhere else!
Nollie Heelflip
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Vans Film Gallery
I’m always surprised when someone gets in touch saying they want to plan a trip to Scotland. It’s even more of a surprise when I meet skaters for the first time and they’ve never even been here. Manhead has recently taken over T.M. duties at Vans U.K. and was keen for a visit. He hired a van, packed it with eight rippers and a filmer, then headed north.
Photography by Graham Tait
Manhead BS Noseblunt
Ben Broyd Stalefish
Chris Oliver Kickflip
Ben Broyd & Saul Crumlish Doubles
Aaron Wilmot BS Air
Photography by Kazuhiro Terauchi Interview by Graham Tait
Ross McGouran Kickflip
Chris Oliver FS Nosegrind
Paul Watson FS Pivot pull in
Saul Crumlish FS Nosegrind Tailgrab
Head over to northskatemag.com to watch the full edit.
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Mike Blabac
Skateboarding is more advanced than ever right now, but you’re here for a shoe reissue and a photo retrospective. Does skateboarding finally have a real heritage now? Does it have it’s Beatles and Stones? People coming into skateboarding now can pick and choose the bits they like from the last 40 years, and it’s totally acceptable to be looking back - is that a good thing? I think it’s a good thing. Anything that you can look back on, and pull from a history or a heritage is definitely a good thing. I feel lucky to be a part of skateboarding that is now looked back on as such. I’m very good friends with Grant Brittain, and so I look at all the stuff that he shot when I was a kid - photos of Natas, the Bones Brigade, Tommy and Cab - so it’s been a thing for a while. Skateboarding is relatively young, but I feel really lucky to have people look at stuff that I’ve been lucky enough to create in the same way that I looked at the things that Spike [Jonze] and Grant and Luke Ogden made when I was growing up skating, so I do think that it’s a good thing, and it’s an awesome thing to be a part of. Just as long as we do actually keep moving forwards? Haha! For sure. All of this is great, and I really like it, and I feel really lucky to have made a book and done all that, but I’m still lucky enough to be able to go out and make things and work with kids who are just coming up, and still hopefully be able to create the photos that kids want to stare at now, whether it’s on their phone or if they get to rip it out a magazine and put it on their wall the same way that I did when I was a kid, and it’s rad.
Portrait by Aaron Meza Interview by Neil Macdonald @scienceversuslife
That’s cool that you don’t have a preference to how it’s seen, but Phelps said in your book that any kid with a digital camera could be the next big shot nowadays. I guess you must have agreed somewhat to let that go in your book, but is that not a bit dismissive of the artistry involved in shooting photos? I don’t know if it’s that so much. But then again it’s Jake... Ha! The learning curve of photography today is much shorter than it once was. The same goes for skateboarding - it’s exposed to ten, or a hundred, or a million times more people than it was back then, but still there are skaters who are special, and they have a certain style, and I feel like any kind of art or photography is the same. If you have a certain style, then regardless of what the medium is, if that sets you apart from other people then it doesn’t matter if it’s digital or film or whatever. And that was the same back in the day. You could have shot with a pinhole camera, or whatever it may have been, and that’s what would set you apart. The same goes for today - it’s just what you do with that digital camera is what will set you apart from other people that have the same exact camera. I was going to ask if you had a preference, whether digital or film... I love the look and feel of film and that’s what I grew up with, learning how to process and print, and it was tough for me to make the transition. But again, it’s just how you use what you use. I mean, today DC needed something socially, so I can just shoot it and instantly it has to be uploaded, and placed in a certain way, and that goes for everything. So I don’t really have a choice. Using film is very romantic, but professionally, it’s difficult for me to do.
Jason Dill - 1998
Was Mad Circle the best SF company ever? Plenty of people would say that it definitely was. I mean... I can’t say that it wasn’t the best but I couldn’t not say that it was because I was involved a small bit. Again, I was really lucky to be a part of it when I first moved to San Francisco and met Scott Johnston and Karl Watson and all of those guys. I actually ended up moving in with Justin Girard and working with them. I can’t say it’s the best, because there’s Real, and Jim [Thiebaud] and all those guys are still killing it and doing an amazing thing. I love those guys. So I wouldn’t say it was the best, but it was a rad thing to be a part of for sure. Back to your point of people being retrospective or looking back - it has a good history for being such a short-lived company. The ‘athletic’ look - if that’s the word you want to use - was a big inspiration behind Mad Circle. They looked at baseball pennants and stuff like that for graphics, and that was so sick... That Mike Cao baseball card graphic... Yeah yeah, the baseball cards. And just the artists they worked with, like Gorm Boberg from Sweden and Barry McGee - Twist - did a lot of the first Mad Circle graphics. It was insane. It has such a good history.
Bobby Puleo - 1995
I just heard right there that Tampa Pro is pay-per-view just now. What do you think of that becoming the standard? I think that less people are going to be watching it. Hahaha! That’s what I think! I’m not going to say whether it’s good or bad, because I’m friends with those dudes. But I do think that as a kid skating, if I had the choice, I would be like, “Well, I’m not going to pay ten dollars to watch this”. Or hook up with nine of my friends and we all pitch in a dollar, like any other pay-per-view thing. Maybe that’s a natural progression, and the way things are going, but I don’t know if the amount of people that are going to watch Tampa are the same amount of people that are going to watch a Floyd Mayweather fight. So what was your first cover, and your first ad? First ad was a Pure Wheels ad, for Scott Johnston... For Big Brother, where they ran the Simon Evans photo for Pure Wheels and the Scott photo for Experience by mistake? Yep. Ha! You’re good. First cover was Koston’s noseblunt slide on the photo issue of Transworld [1998] Was the noseblunt photo that ran the make? It was film, and I believe it was, as a matter of fact. With the Simon Evans and Scott Johnston thing in mind, have you ever sent a photo off to an editor and just been appalled at how it got laid out? Absolutely! All the time. Hahaha! But, you know, that’s the same with anything. I do work outside of skateboarding as well as inside of skateboarding, and that’s something I’ve learned to accept as I’ve grown older. Don’t get me wrong, it still annoys me, but I’m not going to complain about it in the Lee Smith -1997
same way that I once may have. Haha!
Do you listen to certain music to get hyped to take a photo? Do you listen to Slayer when you’re shooting Danny Way and East Coast hip-hop when you shoot Kalis? Haha! No. But certain music reminds me of things that I’ve shot from that time. Slayer will definitely remind me of being at the ramp for countless hours with Danny, and certain music will definitely remind me of being with Kalis at Love Park. You shoot some pretty big-deal stuff, some proper stunts, so what’s it like shooting one of ‘your’ guys when there are other photographers around? Don’t you just want to tell those dudes to fuck off? No, not at all. It is what it is. As long as I can go and be in the place where I want to capture it the way I see it in my head, I’m cool with that. Something that’s a spectacle, like the Great Wall, I’m just really lucky to be there and witness it. I mean at that time he [Danny Way] was already crooked grinding a rail across a gap that was almost as big but in hindsight, looking back on it, it was just such an amazing thing to be a part of. But I prefer being in a schoolyard or something. With shooting the Mega Ramp, no-one even knew we were doing that; it was before social media. Sometimes it was just Greg Hunt, myself and Danny. It was just the three of us in the middle of nowhere shooting something. Being able to witness and capture something that no-one’s ever done is more special to me than being in a press box with people, or being there with several hundred other people, or millions or billions of people watching on TV. As a skater, I would prefer to be in a schoolyard with a dude and see something that no-one’s ever done before. That to me is more special.
Justin Girard - 1996
Morgan Campbell asked me to find out what the most dangerous street photo you’ve shot is. Haha! That’s a really good question. Oh man. I can remember slams, gnarly slams where I’ve seen some really bad stuff happen, but I don’t know if those are the most dangerous thing, or the most scared I’ve been for someone. To me, big rail skating spooks me as a skater - just thinking about doing something enormous. That’s what’s gnarly. As a skateboarder I was never really good at back tails, so seeing someone back tail a giant Hubba would spook me. For the general population, that wouldn’t necessarily scare the shit out of them, but that’s how I see things as a skater. But handrail skating has gotten pushed to the point where it’s so gnarly now, and people are skating such massive things. It’s difficult for me to think of one specific thing, but the Mega Ramp stuff was the most scared I’ve ever felt for someone, because we were literally in the middle of nowhere where we were filming all that stuff. There was no ambulance, there was no cellphone service, there was no nothing. You know what I mean? If something happened, we were in the middle of nowhere. That was by far the most dangerous thing ever for sure.
Stevie Williams - 1998
Tell me about the 1996 Scott Johnston photo with the parking meter. It’s in the foreground, in focus, Scott’s in the background, all out of focus, Smith grinding a ledge. Did you go there to get that shot, or just decide at the time? I’d finally saved up enough money for a Nikon 80-200mm f2.8 lens, and I was literally just testing out the lens. That’s the full story behind it. That photo was shot zoomed all the way out at 200mm, and I think I shot that photo at f4 - a thousandth of a second - on slide film. I remember Scott skating the ledge and being like, “Dude, why are you shooting photos of me doing a back Smith?!”, and I was all, “Dude, don’t worry about what I’m doing. You do what you’re doing and I’ll do what I’m doing”. We never talked about it until the photo came out in Transworld a couple of months after. I remember the parking meter had just got hit, and there was a Deluxe sticker on it, so I think that’s why I focussed on that particular parking meter. Who did DC always want on the team that they never got? Who should have been on there? I think we’ve always been lucky to have who we wanted. I mean, there’s always been certain dudes who have left or just didn’t stick around for whatever reason. Like Stevie [Williams] for example, who just fit everything in the short period that we got to work together. The stuff with him in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s is stuff that people still refer to. There’s obviously people who have almost ridden for DC that now ride for other companies. I just feel lucky to have been able to shoot a lot of those dudes. Now even the younger guys that are on the team - guys like Wes [Kremer] - are timeless skaters. I feel lucky to be able to shoot dudes that in 20 years people will still want to see photos of and still want to see them skate. That’s the ultimate thing.
Scott Johnston - 1996
What’s your favourite city to shoot in, for whatever reason? For me, I think San Francisco is my favourite. Just ‘cause I love The City so much. I didn’t grow up there, but I moved there when I was very young, and that’s where I kinda got my start into photography so I have a lot of really fond memories of San Francisco. Any big city - like New York - is a lot of fun to shoot in. I kind of took San Francisco for granted because I lived there and that’s where I shot photos, but now, in hindsight, when you shoot a photo in Southern California where it’s stucco and blue skies and palm trees it just doesn’t have the same vibe as an alleyway in San Francisco, or in London, or in New York City or wherever it may be. Photographs in big cities always look so sick, it’s just so rad. Another Morgan question; he wants to know who that you’ve shot has focussed the most boards. Hahahaha! AVE. Filming for the DC Video, he went through quite a few of them. That was a quick answer. Well it stands out, let’s just say that. There’s the footage of him slamming his board into a sign in the DC Video, and that’s just what he is, and that’s one of the reasons he looks the way he does on a skateboard - because he’s just charging and he’s really intense - and it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Now that he’s older, maybe he doesn’t focus as many boards, I don’t know. Unfortunately I don’t get to be out with him so much these days, or at all really. But he went through quite a few boards. Haha!
Girl & Chocolate
Is it more frustrating for you, lying in the gutter with a camera trying to get the shot, or for the dude you’re shooting who is slowly killing himself over and over and over? Oh not for me. It’s definitely more frustrating for the dude. I mean I’m just sitting there! I grew up skating; I know how it is, sometimes you’re not feeling it or sometimes things aren’t working out. As long as someone tries, it doesn’t bother me at all. If I go to the spot and someone focusses their board, or their cat is sick, or something happens where they don’t want to skate then I’m like, “Alright, fuck this dude”, but if someone’s honestly trying then it doesn’t bother me at all. Have you ever had your gear jacked? Yes. When I was, I think, 20, I had it stolen out of a car. And now I never leave it in the car! Haha! Someone tried to take it from me on a bus in San Francisco, but I fought back a little bit... Haha! Got a busted eye but I made it out with all my gear. I’m obliged to ask - what’s your preferred camera? Nikon. That’s the camera that I first picked up when I was a kid and I’ve always been into the way - as a tool - it feels, and that’s what I still use today. My first camera was an F3 and I think I got it in... 1987? When I was a kid in 7th Grade and my parents got one for me at a swap meet. I had that and a darkroom, and it kind of just went from there. I still use Nikon DSLRs today. I don’t know if this was just Slap making a big deal of it or what, but did you hear about Kalis having a problem with Mark Sucui shooting that adidas ad at Love? Haha! I do know that Josh is a big fan of Mark. It was just a comment. Josh likes to talk shit and that’s all that was. There was nothing to it. He’s a good dude.
Mike Carroll - 1998
What’s your all-time best DC shoe? The DC shoe that comes into my head the most would be the Lynx. There are ones that just stick out in my mind; there’s Kalis’s first shoe as well as the Lynx. Probably Josh’s. I wore that one a lot, and just that era - it was around that time I started working for DC - so for me that would be a favourite. So there’s a massive marketplace for OG ‘90s skateboard stuff just now, and with good reason. Do you have a garage full of boxfresh DCs, by any chance? No. I always kinda took everything for granted, so I never really saved a lot of stuff. Now, I’m more of a hoarder of things than I ever was. But unfortunately no! Haha! I don’t have a garage full of anything. The only thing I ever really held on to, was when Danny gave me a Mega Ramp complete from filming the DC video, I knew that was something I’d want to keep. I do remember him giving me boards, and just throwing them in the bushes. Boards from that video that people would probably kill for today. When you’re younger it’s like that stuff’s gonna be around for ever, so y’know... Unfortunately I never had the foresight. Yeah, nobody ever thought, “I’m gonna buy two pairs of the first Rick Howard shoe and only skate one”. How are you with people uploading scans of your photographs on Instagram? People like Koolmoeleo and those guys... Haha! I think it’s amazing. Sometimes I see stuff that I had completely forgotten about. I think it’s rad. I actually know Dave [Ruta, aka Koolmoeleo), I know him a little from skating a little bit in Chicago with Kalis, but I think it’s just amazing.
Karl Watson - 1995
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P R O T E C B R A N D . C O M
Thanks Mike @ Keen Dist Josh @ Theories Ryan @ Quasi A&M Imaging Neil Macdonald Mike Blabac Ross Zajac Manhead Adam Toddhunter All the contributing photographers. adidas Skateboarding Carhartt
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