SKATEISM #1

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SKATEISM JANUARY 2018 Issue 1 biannual publication for the underground and overlooked in skateboarding.

Publisher: Yorgos Kelefis Art Director: Christos Simos (Moch) Editor-in-Chief: Oisin Tammas Music Editor: Sean Lewis Photographers: Sam McGuire Evan Maragkoudakis Contributors: Ruby Mateja

Cover Shot Lacey Baker

by Sam McGuire

Yorgos Kelefis Contempo Publications Agiou Markou 29, 10560, Athens Ε: info@skateism.com skateism.com facebook.com/skateism Instagram: @skateism The Magazine cannot be republished or reproduced without the permission of the publisher.

WWW.BRIGHTTRADESHOW.COM #26LETTERS #26REDCARDS #26BLACKCARDS #26SHOWS #26ALWAYSNOW

16.-18. JANUARY 2018

CONTENTS 8

ED ITORIAL

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MAKE LIF E S KA TE L I F E

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A CRIS IS OF F A I TH : THE M IN IS TE R’ S A DDRE SS

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THE S EARCH F O R THE GN ARTH E NO N

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D OIN ’ IT YOURSE LF : BYRRRH AN D SKA TE

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LUCAS BEAUF O RT TA L KS THE F UTURE O F S K ATEBOARD ME DI A

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N ICK ZORLA C ON D EATH, DI Y A ND DI STRO

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ELOIS E D OR R

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THE TIME HA S C O ME TO PUS H THE BUTTO N: LACEY BAK E R

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S OMEWHER E I N SKA TE B O A RDI NG : AN OPEN LE TTE R

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S AM M CGUIR E : “HOW D O I B E G A Y NO W? ” +PHOTO EDITORIAL

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AN ES CAPE F RO M B O RE DO M: THEYAWN CH O KE R

t h e y a w n c h o k e r. c o m

ALRIGHT? I don’t know about you, but I really enjoy falling down; tripping down stairs, primo stalling my ankles, slamming hard into the pavement, tearing off my skin and going home stinking of sweat. This is all integral to skateboarding for me, as I assume it is with everybody...or have I just taken too many ledges to the skull?

In October I moved to Athens for the second time in five years, and now find myself once more amidst a gently revolting smog of pissy dust, tear gas and coffee grinds in the front room of a flat in Exarchia. Civil unrest finds this street well since the police occupation is at one end, and the unofficial anarcho territory begins at the other. I sit equidistant between the two, just trying to keep my schedule up to date.

In the past half-decade love affair with Athens I’ve watched a culture which has lost many of its corporate-interests and capital become a culture left to grow organically, forced to evolve itself in order to survive. In this case, it has had to survive the financial crisis of 2008 and the more recent European refugee crisis, both genuine threats to human life, make no mistake.

In the last ten years Athens has taken it upon itself, led by the young population, to cultivate subcultures which are driven by artists, creatives and communitarians. Whatever the reason - be it “Greek Hospitality”, a “freelance-generation”, or the lack

of reward for bureaucracy in this country - the result is a city of dedication, innovation and...another word ending in ‘-ation’ that really doesn’t clarify anything. No, what’s happened is the city has fallen, and now it’s taking it upon itself to pick itself up and dust itself off.

I so rarely skate alone. Why? Because hitting the ground, getting dirty, sweaty, bloody, and doing it all over again only works when your crew’s with you, taking hits with you, eating shit with you, and laughing, swearing and screaming with you. Without them there’s no “Alright?” “Yeah, cheers.” It’s no fun to fall alone. Now, Greece ate shit, and Europe bailed. Worse, in fact. But let’s not get into that.

What’s beautiful is to see the sub-cultures in Athens grow from the ashes, because they have each other and help each other.

They take the hits, and they smile, scream and keep pushing together.

The lesson I learned from my friends in Athens was that if you are blessed to have a platform, a skill or just enough compassion to give a toss, using it to push your culture forward, to egg it on, get stuck in, and take the hits together yields the most life-changing, soul-fulfilling and tear-jerking results. In my case, my culture is skateboarding, and I’ve got this little magazine. In it you’ll find the lesser known rejects and bestkept secrets of that culture, those I want to help push. Alright?

Yeah, cheers.

MAKE LIFE S K AT E L I F E Their goal is simple: make skateboarding more accessible to the world. Make Life Skate Life are a community skatepark constructor and foundation, geared towards building spaces to skate for those that would not otherwise have them. So far they’ve built parks in Bolivia, Ethiopia, Nepal, Myanmar, and many more. We got talking to Arne, one of the board of directors for Make Life Skate Life, about what a project like this really requires.

Where did this all start for you?

Make Life Skate Life started in 2013 with our first project in India. While traveling in India my friends and I met local skaters who wanted to build their own skatepark.

They had land available but no experience in building skateparks so we came up with the idea to organize a workshop and teach them about concrete construction. A year later India’s first public skatepark was built with the help of volunteers from all over the world.

And it snowballed from there?

Well, after the project in India, it became clear that there were opportunities to work together with more skateboarders around to realise similar projects, so we created Make Life Skate Life.

But how were you able find the money and resources back then?

We’d built in India and then Bolivia with Levi’s Skateboarding on board. 7Hills in Jordan in 2014 was entirely crowdfunded which was definitely a turning point in our organization and set the direction for the following projects. That was also the time that Jon (Chaconas) got on board who did an amazing job in establishing the organization and developing new projects.

“The skatepark’s neighbor, a high-up lawyer, did not want the poor kids to play next to his house. He did everything in his power to close down the park.“

Who are the key players in Make Life Skate Life?

Today the main people involved in the organization are Jon, who is taking the build lead on every project, Samantha who has her own NGO called aptART but luckily also has the energy to do content related work for us, and myself. I do a little bit of everything. And then there is of course the crew of volunteers and the countless individuals and organizations that have supported us over the past four years.

What do you want from all this?

We want to provide the infrastructure that enables people who are not yet familiar with skateboarding to use the parks. I would say that our projects revolve around concepts such as community building, capacity building, and participation.

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Conceptually that’s massive, but how do you know where to actually begin with a project?

The starting point for every project is a crew of motivated skateboarders who want to make a difference in their community. Our projects are collaborations with communities which have an inherent energy. We combine our resources and make a common effort towards a common goal - to make skateboarding accessible to the local community by building a public skatepark.

When did you realise what you’re doing is working?

From our experience these projects set sparks in the communities we work with and so far all of our projects have inspired the locals to continue with their own projects. Holystoked is the best example - they build skateparks all over India after we worked with them on our first project.

The sad fact there though is that our skatepark doesn’t exist anymore. The park was built on private property and the neighbor, a high-up lawyer, did not want the poor kids to play next to his house. He did everything in his power to shut down the place and despite Holystoked’s efforts to keep the park alive it was eventually closed.

Let’s get into the dirt of all this.

What is the concrete reality of what goes into your parks?

Before building a park we make sure that we have the support of community leaders and permission to build. The actual construction of one of our parks is kind of like a three-week festival where like-minded people get together to create. It’s very inspiring for everyone involved. The process of constructing our skateparks has always been very deliberative where everybody gives their input to figure out the best lines and ways to make the best use of the available space.

Doesn’t that end up being a little bit chaotic?

There is a lot of logistics involved which at times can be somewhat nerve-wracking, but in the end the challenges that come up force you to be creative. In Ethiopia for example we couldn’t get our hands on wheelbarrows. They only had overpriced imports from Turkey or China that broke down instantly. As we were many volunteers we created a bunch of selfmade “handbarrows” to move materials. The projects have definitely taught us to think local and adapt to the local way of doing things.

It sounds like it must be really fun though?

Yeah! I have to say that my favorite project was Myanmar. I’d worked on the project for two and a half years before the actual build and really wanted to see it happen. The outcome was amazing and there wasn’t much support needed from our side after the park was finished. The locals have a lot of discipline, are incredibly organized and had everything under control from day one. It’s unreal to see how much the kids have progressed since the park was built.

“We had the roughest weather, were living in tents in the woods, there was the lowest level of hygiene, and every second person turned blue because of the lack of oxygen.”

What other projects are you especially proud of?

The project that is sticking out the most is definitely Bolivia. It was by far the largest scale project with more than 100 volunteers who built a 1200m² park at 3600m above sea level.

We had the roughest weather, were living in tents in the woods, there was the lowest level of hygiene, and every second person turned blue because of the lack of oxygen. We even had a permanent ambulance at the build site because of the number of people that went down. There was so much shit happening and so many legendary moments stuck with me.

We were such a big crew that we could go to any place and start our own party. Overall, it was crazy experience and I remember that I slept for a week straight after I got back home.

Where would you like to see MLSL go next?

Our next project will be in Morocco in December this year, then we will get a crowdfunding campaign going to do a project in Iraq where we plan to build in March or April 2018. We receive a lot of demands from communities from all over the world and we want to connect with all of them. Our next challenge is to grow the capacity of our organization to be able to do more projects. There are a lot of different directions that Make Life Skate Life could go and I’m really interested to explore new ways to support skateboarding around the world. I don’t think Make Life Skate Life will limit itself to just building skateparks and organizing skate classes, there are just way too many possibilities. makelifeskatelife.com

Photos courtesy of Arne Hillerns

That’s terrible!

Yes, but Holystoked now build parks all over the country. And in La Paz they continue to work with the city and built a bowl in the city center. Or take 7Hills in Jordan - the locals run a successful skate program for refugees. And Ethiopia Skate are building their next skatepark in Hawassa. These are success stories that development agencies can only dream of.

A CRISIS OF FAITH: THE MINISTER’S ADDRESS “I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now.”

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.”

Shots by Evan Maragkoudakis

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.

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 handin-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 skateboarding 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-respected. 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 socalled 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.

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Art by Christos Simos

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]*

[Alex’s laugh cuts through our pixelated Skype connection with the same authenticity I felt the first time I met him - grinning, arms outstretched, palms on the counter of Ministry of Concrete, all befuddled hair and a crucifix hanging from one ear. He both owned the place and welcomed you in with that one stance. I’m always filled with an all-too-rare kind of respect when I chill with Alex, the kind you get when you meet somebody who seems to have the perfect combination of dedicated passion and calculated cynicism - all the irony where it’s needed and none where it isn’t. It’s not a respect that’s demanded, but one that you give willingly.]

So loads of people were skating by now?

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.

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.

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 everybody 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 coming months?

At this point, 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 postwall 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. ministryofconcrete.com

THE SEARCH FOR THE GNARTHENON: FREE MOVEMENT S K AT E B OA R D I N G From the suburban hedgerows, and 2.5-car, 3.8-TV, 0.5-aga households of St Albans, to tear-gassed bedrooms and molotov salads of Exarchia; I’ve known Will Ascott since we were but wee-nippers saving up our pocket money for trips to council-funded home-counties skateparks. Since then, our paths have winded wearily and coincidentally in the same direction, occasionally crossing to our surprise when we found we’d both be attending the same university, or in 2016 when we both found ourselves in Athens at the same time. Will was volunteering at refugee community centre Khora, having just returned from a period in Palestine where he met future Free Movement co-founder Ruby Mateja. If you’d had told us then, while we sipped Alpha lager at Homesick Bar and Will regaled me of his dream to teach refugees in Athens to shred, that in exactly one year we’d be on the brink of building a charity skatepark out here, we’d have called you a damn fool. But here we are, you were right. What do you want, a medal?

Osh: What did you think of Athens when you first came here?

Will: I thought it was just like a really dirty European city.

It was covered in graffiti, which surprised me in honesty. I think in hindsight I hadn’t seen enough of the beautiful bits, but damn, it had soul. I was here for two or three days before I went to Palestine, a year ago almost to the day. I was hanging out with “Danish Kev”, this Antifa dude, in some sketchy hostel in Omonia. So that was my first impression: kinda’ horrible, but pretty fun. I saw some shit…

Osh: Like what?

Will: Well, Danish Kev got mugged in Exarchia. Somebody shouted “Goodnight White Pride” at him, which was sort of confusing, considering he’s Antifa in Denmark.

Maybe it was just because he was blonde… What did you think of the place?

Osh: Man, I first came to Athens in early 2014, which seems an age away now. I was living in Exarchia too. It’s a startling first impression if you don’t know Athens, especially considering I’d been warned by a load of rich Athenian kids on the bus from Patras never to go there. One girl said “Daddy told me if I ever went there he would stop giving me my allowance.” It scared me in honesty, but I’d already paid the rent on my flat. [Laughs] One of my first memories was seeing a guy do a shit in the middle of the street. But, yeah, obviously that is absolutely not representative of Exarchia. It really grew on me, and now I do love it.

Will: Yeah, aside from the tear gas and molotovs.

Osh: I think in some sense I’ll even miss that. But yeah, the community, the DIY attitude, Homesick and “Veggie Cafe”.

Will: It’s all incredible. And the skate scene is unrivalled.

Osh: When I first came I couldn’t believe the kindness, how willing everyone was to include me in every little meetup or session. It actually reinvented how I looked at skateboarding. You could spend a whole night playing skate on a step, from 8pm to 3am, sipping on beers and joking around. When I went back to the UK it was like “Yeah I might go skate the park for an hour on Sunday.”

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Will: If it’s dry.

Osh: Yeah, thank god for the Greek climate. Weather, I mean, not political.

Will: Talk through the political climate back then, was it different?

Osh: Well it was three years ago. I arrived before the General Election and it certainly felt more ardent. There were fewer small scuffles in the streets with cops, more large scale demonstrations. Then in May, when Syriza won, it seemed to all chill out a little bit. A socialist party had gone from 4% to 40% of the vote, and that’s pretty much unprecedented. It felt like a proper community in the square back then.

Will: Yeah, I feel like I got a far clearer sense of the place when I came back after Palestine. I was able to get my bearings and now I love it here, it’s rad. I remember Danish Kev put me up again, in Evangelismos. I was volunteering in Elliniko - a camp situated in the old airport. There was some tough shit going on there, man. All these kids essentially just housed in a departures lounge - it often got violent, and I don’t think the centre had the means to deal with it.

Osh: That was your first experience in a refugee camp?

Shot by Demetrios Ioannou

Will: Yes, and I walked in and just saw like fifteen kids fighting. I’d seen violence amongst young people before, having worked in youth centres in the UK, but comparatively I still didn’t feel totally comfortable there.

Osh: Why had it turned that nasty?

Will: I think at that time they’d been there for nine months, without any real youth service. They’d maybe been given an hour or so of school a week, but had otherwise been hugely neglected. Elliniko was a horrible, horrible camp.

Osh: Has that closed down now?

Will: Yeah, it doesn’t exist anymore. Also because they deported a lot of Afghans. It’s deemed “safe to return” to Afghanistan now, which is incorrect.

Osh: So where did you go after that?

Will: I volunteered at an ‘educational’ project which didn’t actually have backing from the ministry to provide education, which if you’re going to call yourself ‘educational’ is pretty dumb, if you ask me. They sent me a Location Pin to the wrong location, so I ended up two miles away from the correct place.

Osh: Did you make it?

Will: Yeah, eventually, but I turned up really late. And when I walked in it was obvious they were just totally not facilitated to deal with the things going on there. It was the sort of place that you’d sit in a two hour long board meeting, everyone would pitch their ideas, but nothing would actually change. It was sort of volunteer-centric. They’re closed now too.

Shots by Antonis CrazyCow

Osh: Well, the unfortunate truth, I suppose, is you don’t get volunteers unless you make volunteering seem attractive.

Will: I suppose that is the reality. But I think there are truly good people out there who just want to help out, as we’ve seen first hand.

Osh: Of course, plus the difference with smaller, specialised projects like Free Movement Skateboarding is that you don’t need to make skateboarding any more enjoyable to skateboarders, do you? Volunteers or not, skaters are just stoked to skate, and even more stoked to teach others to skate. It’s part of our culture.

Will: I think that’s it. I think I have this little voice in the back of my head telling me that skateboarding isn’t really going to change anything, and yet I see the smiles on the kids’ faces, I see them mobbing the van when we drive into the camps, and I feel support from Help Refugees, and then I tell that little voice to fuck off.

Osh: Kids need to play, it’s as simple as that.

Will: Exactly. And when I met Josie of Help Refugees in the kitchen at Khora - an incredible community centre in Exarchia - I was flattered that she listened, let alone asked me to get this half-baked idea down on paper. She’s the head of a huge NGO, with hundreds of things to worry

about, and my idea of a mobile skatepark for refugees caught her attention. Four months later Free Movement Skateboarding was a reality, Ruby and I had bought a van, and we’d built our own skatepark with DIY-Overlord Benji.

We even somehow managed to lower it from our first floor balcony. Voila! Were on the road heading to the camps.

Osh: Why do you think it made the cut?

Will: I can’t speak on her behalf, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I realised that when kids are going through trauma, an outlet like skateboarding - which offers both individual focus and community at the same time - is priceless. Remember when we used to go to Skate School in St Albans? That was like my religion, I waited all week for that, and I got to see local pros exhibit seriously amazing skateboarding. And nothing has ever captivated me as much as watching Rodney Clarke, Andy Willis and Chris Oliver tearing that place up.

Osh: No team sports?

Will: I’m biased because I hated team sports, but certainly with skateboarding you don’t have a responsibility to any team mates. You don’t have to be a certain skill level to skate alongside others.

Osh: Yeah, also, it’s relative. Like, I could land a fairly hard trick I’ve never landed before and be less stoked than when I see one of the kids drop-in for the first time.

Will: Exactly. I get so much pleasure seeing people progress, and you can see it in their eyes. That’s why when we build this park...

Osh: [Laughs] The Gnarthenon?

Will: [Laughs] We’ll see. Anyway, when we build it we’ve got to get that positive skatepark atmosphere going, between local and international kids, young and old, boys and girls.

Osh: I wonder how many kids keep skating because of that atmosphere?

Will: Yeah, and not to mention the stuff around the actual skating, like at The Pioneer in St Albans; we all knew the skatepark staff, we’d watch skate videos in the cafe, play gigs in the youth club. You even ended up working there, didn’t you?

Osh: Yeah, and getting that generational-chain going in skateboarding is what keeps proving to kids that you can just keep on skating forever, make it your livelihood. It shows that you can give back to the culture for what it gave to you.

Will: I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think that skateboarding was giving some ounce of mental wellbeing to these young people, even just a percentage of the peace I was able to find in skateboarding when I was a kid...growing up in middle-class England.

Osh: Sounds tough, bro.

Will: Yeah. Actually one of the kids said to me the other day that when she skated it felt like she was flying. Just on a symbolic level, that really spoke volumes. Especially seeing as most of the time at that level all you’re doing is falling down. And then I think of that thing Rodney Mullen said: “Skateboarders could make great scientists.”

Osh: How so?

Will: Because they fail, again and again, and keep trying until they get it right. That’s how science works too. You try, test, remodel, until you understand what you’re trying to do and you land the trick.

Osh: I find myself enjoying falling over more than landing things these days.

Will: Yeah, well, we’ve got to enjoy that while it lasts.

Osh: We won’t be kids forever.

Will: Yeah, we will. freemovementskateboarding.com

DOIN’ IT YOURSELF: B Y R R R H A N D S K AT E Introducing: Byrrrh and Skate, the Anderlecht (Belgium) based DIY skate park built by Youssef Abaoud, and a whole host of his friends. Their mission: to finally secure a long term space to skate. And more than that; they want to grow globally to offer facilities to everybody through their sessions, courses and workshops. But will they be able to last more than the three year lease they’ve been given?

Where did it all start, Youssef?

We started this project three years ago. I used to work in an old factory called Byrrh – an old french aperitif – as a social worker.

But when that closed, the warehouse was left empty and we had the chance to build a skate park from scratch. Using old wood and pallets we put our energy, time and a bit of money into building a skateable area.

Sadly, after almost a year we had to move out and find a new place. So find a new place we did, but again after 10 months of hard work we had to stop. Finally, after a year we were chosen for a new project in a new location. And that’s where we are now.

What was this project?

In fact, it came from the beginning! We shared a place with a dude who was building a wooden boat, and we became good friends. We liked his work and he was impressed by ours. He was working for this big company who were buying warehouses to rebuild them into something, but in the time it takes them to start the build we can get in there for at least 3 years.

“I knew a guy who knew a guy who was a gravedigger”

And you built Byrrrh and Skate yourself?

Yes! But with the help of a lot of friends. The last build had like 50 different people from all over Belgium. In the beginning, I was almost alone. I was thinking: how am I going to manage this space? But we got hooked up

by Levi’s Skateboarding, got new wood and new tools, and friends just came.

We talked about what we wanted to build, and decided to mix wooden and concrete obstacles. From the start I wanted it to be built with granite. I knew a guy who knew a guy who was a gravedigger, he built tombstones and gave us a lot of wasted rock. I cut them and stuck them all over the place.

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Shot by Thomas Marchal

Shot by StĂŠphanie Humez

Shot by Thomas Marchal

So some of your park is literally made out of gravestones? That’s rad.

Yeah! Now we are rolling six days a week, trying to find the best times to be open. Our goal is to give access to facilities for everyone who wants to skate, offering courses and a skate camp, even workshops on how to build obstacles.

And music?

Sometime we’ll throw concerts, and we are already working on a small festival with skate jams and rock bands. We want to build a concrete park in the yard. Yeah, there’s a lot still to come.

Shot by Stéphanie Humez

Would you call this DIY? From my point of view, skaters were doing this stuff long before we called it DIY. When we were kids we used to build our own spots, and we just kept going. We want to build what we want to skate, and we don’t want to skate those shit parks from companies who know nothing about skateboarding. And it’s funny how you can actually just find material in the street and other unexpected places yourself.

Is Byrrrh built to last?

We all hope so! We have a minimum of 3 years in this location, and still have a lot to do. I want to build more stuff in the park, but the big new project is the 400m2 yard we want to fill with concrete. Whatever happens, we will never stop building.

fb.com/byrrrhandskate

LUCAS BEAUFORT TALKS THE FUTURE O F S K AT E B OA R D MEDIA Like the rest of us, Lucas Beaufort started out in skating as a kid who just dug skate mags. Growing up in a small town in the south east of France, he had a tight knit crew which grew and shrunk with skateboarding’s popularity. But while skating came and went from la mode, Lucas kept his eyes fixed on the pages of Thrasher, Big Brother and Transworld, all the while scribbling away developing his unique illustration style which has since found its way onto decks, gallery walls and even the pages of the very publications that started it all. In 2017, Beaufort dropped his magnum opus: an hour-long documentary on skateboarding media.

It was a lonely project which found Lucas trekking across the USA, talking with the likes of Lance Mountain, Marc Johnson and Chad Muska. Is print media dying, dead or is it, in fact, time for a total shift in our paradigm?

Lucas, Devoted has just dropped, how’s it all going, man?

Man, I need somebody to teach me how to get bored. I’m so busy. For the last two days, it’s been crazy. I’ve received around 200-300 emails from people I’ve never met, all writing like 20 lines about the film. You know, it’s easy to say “good job.” But 20 lines! That means something, you know?

What kind of things are they saying?

A photographer from Canada said he wanted to create his own skate mag, but said it was hard because brands now seem to spend money on social media not magazines. He said he was going to use my documentary as a tool to get brands onboard!

I guess it speaks truth to power in that sense, particularly because it’s entirely based on answers.

That must have been tough to edit.

It was really hard. I did it by myself in the end. I tried to work with a partner but - I dunno man - I know exactly what I want.

When you’re with somebody and they’re telling you their opinion, it clashes. I don’t want anyone to tell me how to do it.

Even your sponsors?

Even though I had support from brands, I wasn’t going to show them shit until it was done. For me, if you believe in me, in my project, don’t tell me to change anything.

Alot of people are at the mercy of brands, but I believe we need to tell brands that they aren’t gods, even if they hold the money.

Artists are the artists, brands are brands. I explain to them respectfully that this is what I do, please respect me. I mean imagine if I called Nike and told them I didn’t like the way they designed shoes.

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Photos courtesy of Lucas Beaufort

“Even though I had support from brands, I wasn’t going to show them shit until it was done.”

They wouldn’t give a fuck.

They wouldn’t give a fuck! They know what they’re doing. I know what I’m doing. The money shouldn’t change that.

This is a major theme in your film: print magazines nowadays are at the beck and call of brands, which means they have to play it safe to not piss them off. Is this a broken system, and if so, what’s the point in doing them at all?

Pat O’Dell and Marc Johnson both reference Jenkem as an example here. I feel like Jenkem is the website, you know? I met the founder Ian in New York, that guy is super smart. Back then they didn’t have any advertisers. They didn’t give a shit, it was just a passion project. He said that now he has loads of people messaging him asking him how they can advertise on Jenkem. He told me that he tells them: “you can advertise, but never tell us what to do.” Okay, so that’s a website, not a magazine, but they print a book now, you know? It’s crazy, it shows people that you can change that dynamic.

So if the product is good, advertisers will want to be involved?

Yeah, they play hard to get. You know, I had a goal: get an interview with Jenkem. But it wasn’t easy. I told them I would make them a special Devoted teaser just for Jenkem, with an interview to complement it. He agreed, but you know how he did it? Him and two of his partners sent like 20 questions, I answered, then they sent 20 more. It was like a 2 month long interview, but at the end it was the best interview ever! Because they care. They take their time. I don’t know if that comes across in the documentary, because my goal is not to destroy print. But I hope brands understand magazines must be allowed to do what they want, and magazines in turn must create good content.

And they don’t?

Take Transworld: they want to please their brands. If you go to their website you can see that they post everything! It used to be complicated. Now anybody can get on there. You need to curate content. You need a balance.

And that’s the case with like 75% of skate magazines today, you open them and there is nothing inside.

Well, the internet takes care of the news now, so you don’t need to wait for skate magazines to find out what’s going on. How do you replace that amount of content lost to the internet?

Yeah, I think that’s true. But you can create a good online magazine, and then people will want to collect your print. Taking Jenkem as an example again - I don’t have shares in them, I’m just saying - go on Jenkem - they do like one article every three days. People think today that we have to post 10 times per day, but I think that’s a mistake. You need to do something relevant, even if it takes a week. We don’t need to feed people crap constantly.

So then people will want to buy Jenkem for their style?

Yes. But then, Thrasher, for example, is different. There’s nothing inside Thrasher either - except the crazy cover. But the website is really good. They create their own content, and so all the brands want to work with them.

When they put a video on their website they can get 20,000 views in two days. You know SKATELINE? It’s super good. It’s so funny.

Gary Rodgers is the funniest dude in the industry. We love funny stuff. Skateboarding is fun.

Yes, but then so Thrasher makes the news, as well as reports it.

They don’t need to worry like the smaller magazines. How do the rest of us cope?

When you see Marc Johnson saying “if somebody came up with a new magazine like Big Brother, it would be a success.” I think small magazines should take that to heart.

But it has to be different. I spoke to Dave Carnie, and he said it wasn’t easy for them even back then. When things got hot for Big Brother the brands bailed.

Yeah, in Dumb. he says that people ask him all the time to bring back Big Brother. He says “fuck you, you let us die.”

Exactly! We’re always nostalgic - “it was better before.” But no, we need to think about the now. We need to work to make skateboarding great right now.

So how do we do Big Brother in the 21st Century. What would be the most shocking thing a print magazine could do today?

It’s a tough question, man. First of all, to be honest I love interviews. I love reading them. A text block is cool, but a conversation is great. If it was me, it would be only interviews, but I want to know the facts. I want people to push deeper and deeper, to find the real truth.

Like that Big Brother interview with Dio from Black Sabbath, when they kicked the interviewer out like five minutes in...

When I met Marc Johnson, I had to stop recording at one point when we got to talking about Lakai and Adidas. I think it’s hard, but maybe it’s necessary to have somebody who would not have stopped. But then again, it could kill skateboarding, knowing too much. It’s business at the end of the day. We love skateboarding, sure, but behind the scenes are investors, money. Somebody like that could go too far. It could backfire.

Can a magazine ever actually affect a brand in that way?

Maybe. To be honest, I think the Gary Rodgers thing is one of the best things out there, so maybe more of that? It would be cool to see Gary Rodgers interviewing people in the industry. Like Nine Club - I love that, but they don’t rock the boat. It’s really really safe. “Tell me your story.”

“Okay, I was born in Oakland... bla bla”. I know the story of Marc Johnson, I don’t wanna hear it again. I’d love to do a show like that, which pushed the boundaries. Gary Rodgers has a recognised role, and he could get away with it if he were to come at brands with harder questions.

How do you do that in print?

Yeah, I mean with print I think one book a year is better. We don’t need stuff every month. I think a good website like Jenkem, a book a year, and a video thing with Gary Rodgers. That’s the perfect combination.

“75% of skate magazines today, you open them and there is nothing inside.”

These are all American examples.

Do you think we, in Europe, have as much chance to create that combo as they do?

Yeah! If they don’t do it, I will! I mean, in the ‘NEXT’ chapter in Devoted, all the US skaters talk about who they think will be the next big skaters. Most of them mention European names.

That’s so fucking cool. We have the best skaters in the world, and we need to shout about it.

Europe should do it, right now!

Europe needs to develop its media then. In Europe we know everything about the US scene, but the US don’t really know what’s going on over here in the same way.

Yeah! Why do we never think - at the tradeshows, for example - to have a radio station for people to talk about the new things over here.

That would be amazing. Our scene is already way up there, but there is a long way to go still for Europe to get as good as the US at reporting that scene.

What was the first skate magazine you remember owning, Lucas?

Ah man! It was just a zine. A French zine from Toulouse. It was random, cheaply made. I’m not even sure it had a name. I saw a skater way above a rail, in the air. When I started to skate, I didn’t know you were able to jump over things.

I saw this on the cover and was like “How is this possible?” So I went back home and I started to try and jump over little things. After a month I’d learned to Ollie.

It’s crazy to think that when you were coming up in skateboarding you were reading the same magazines as all of us. Seeing those same guys, the legends over in the US, the big names, and now look: you’ve interviewed them all for Devoted.

Yeah, and I’m a fan, you know? It’s not, “oh hey, I’m just interviewing Marc.” No, I was in awe. I remember when I first bought an MJ board. It was impossible to think that twenty years later I’d be in his house interviewing him.

It was a dream. But my dream changed along the way Sometimes your heroes aren’t the same in real life.

How do you mean?

The whole project was amazing, it really was a dream.

I met these amazing guys and the interviews were incredible, and every sentence was a banger. But then, when I left, it changed. It was so hard to chase them up, to get extra material, photos, clarifications - you know? I thought some of these guys might have died. But that’s the reality of something like this, I guess.

You were doing it alone...

You know, I’m never happy with everything. I want to remember the good things, and these guys gave amazing things in those interviews. But I didn’t make the best movie ever, it can always be better.

So will you do another one?

Yeah, I’m already working on a new one. The reason that last chapter was so crazy is because of one thing, it’s because I came with one question: “Why did you give your whole life to skateboarding?” And just that question hit them so hard, because it’s true. It’s their whole fucking life.

“I don’t know if skateboarding saves lives, in the end.”

How does that fit into the new film?

With this new film I want to hit those sentimental beats again, but this time not sitting on a couch. I want to do it outside, international. I want to go to Säo Paulo, Paris, New York, Melbourne, to Africa, Asia, and meet all the local kids. Kids all around the world, with different cultures, and put it all together to see what is common and what is different between their skateboarding communities.

Why? I want to understand what they want. What do you hate?

What do they love, you know?

So what about you? What do you love and what do you hate about skateboarding?

The best thing is the freedom. You know, Professor Schmitt says: “You can have all the money in the world, you could go into a shop and buy a Ferrari. But you drive out of the shop and you have all the same rules as the rest of the world. With skateboarding, you have no rules.”

I love the freedom. The feeling to just be on your board.

You’re a skater, you know what I’m talking about.

Just pushing...

Just pushing! Just cruising! I love to touch people when I skate. I high five people in the street, whatever. It’s cool to interact with people.

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It’s not all about us.

We need to interact with each other. That’s why print was so important. That’s why I touch people when I skate. Because skateboarding is open, but it should be more open. We have to love people more, whether they’re skaters or not.

And the worst thing?

The worst thing? Well, I don’t know if... I don’t know if skateboarding saves lives, in the end.

How do you mean?

I don’t think it saves the planet. I don’t think it helps poverty. I don’t know if we can change the world with it. But it’s about perspective, it’s about the small things. I’ll skate, and if I see a plastic bottle, I’ll throw it in the trash. Or help old people with their shopping. Inside skateboarding, maybe we can’t save the world, but outside skateboarding, skateboarders can change lives.

What do you want people to come away with from this interview?

That if you have a goal, a project, go for it. Anything is possible. Nobody gave me tips or good contacts.

I did this whole thing by myself. I went to America.

I went to Thrasher. I didn’t even know the address, but I knew it was next to Double Rock Skatepark.

So I Instagrammed the guy at Double Rock, I asked if I could go there. He said yes! So I got there, I waited two hours outside the building because he overslept. Then he arrived, a massive joint in his mouth, and he took me in. I asked him about Thrasher, and he gladly introduced me to them. Everything is fucking possible. Just be smart. Offer to help. Stick out your thumb. Who knows, you might meet the president.

Not sure that’s one of my goals, but I like the way you think, Lucas. instagram: @lucas_beaufort

NICK ZORLAC O N D E AT H , D I Y AND DISTRO Nick Zorlac, head of Death Skateboards and Power Distribution has been one of the most dedicated players in the UK scene, building skaters’ reputations, giving power of distribution to small brands and pushing a DIY attitude the entire time. We spoke to Nick about what goes into cultivating a truly independent enterprise in skateboarding today.

As a UK skater growing up in the 90s, Death skateboards was a huge inspiration for me, your crew always had a real DIY, anarchic attitude that I respected. Can you give us a little insight into where that came from?

[Laughs] Glad you got something out of what we do. I love the DIY ethic so it’s a reflection of that. I also like to be around people with that mindset. If something I want is not available I’ll do my best to get it one way or another, or just make it myself. I get a kick out of making stuff happen. I’m not happy sitting around watching the soaps on TV.

What was your influence?

I was influenced by my Dad who quit the 9-5 and set up a business selling stuff that he was into. It wasn’t an easy ride though, so I try to learn from the mistakes he made as well as my own. And I’m also influenced by independent clothing and skate stores. Of course independent skater owned brands. And other small businesses who make rad stuff. Punk music.

Was DIY big when you were growing up?

Yeah, growing up in the 80s there were fewer facilities so we had to make our own ramps and obstacles to skate. We also had to tart up old decks and things like that to make workable skate equipment, because they were way more expensive back then. If you link it to inflation, more than double the price. This is one reason I keep Death products top quality but also a fair price so that the kids can afford them.

Was Death your first attempt to break into skate enterprise?

No, I started Power Distribution two years earlier in 1996. My favourite smaller skate companies did not have distribution in the UK. Consolidated Skateboards started it all, they were my first brand and I still distribute them to this day 20 years later. It’s mad. Currently we also carry Heroin, Landscape, Blast Skates, Tracker Trucks. I have been distributing Heroin and Landscape since they started. I’m also Blast’s first UK distro. I feel very lucky to be working with some super cool people.

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Art by Ben Gore

How will this develop in the future?

I’m going to start distributing Servant footwear in the UK. I can’t wait for that since I’m having trouble finding animal free skate shoes here, and apparently their shoes are the dog’s bollocks... without actually harming the dog’s bollocks! Some leather shoes (and other leather products) are actually made from dogs, did you know that? If I can get some solid skate shoes that don’t contain any animals then I’m stoked.

So your mission is to give the power of distribution to smaller companies. How easy is this to do in reality?

What have you found stands in your way?

Yes, at the time Power started there were big distributors doing a good job of looking after the big brands, but in my opinion very important independent companies were neglected in the UK. I get why they may not be viable for bigger distributors, as they were not deemed profitable, and big distros have big overheads and need to sell large amounts every month to keep going. I wasn’t concerned about making money, I had low overheads. I just wanted to be surrounded by products and brands that I was hyped on! Funnily enough though Consolidated has been a really solid selling brand for me all these years, and Death, Heroin and Landscape have become three of the biggest UK brands. Blast looks set to go far too.

How has this affected the UK scene?

I wanted to allow UK skaters to have access to products from brands that I felt were healthy and important for skateboarding as a whole. It all got a bit one sided in the early 90s, which alienated a lot of good people and in my opinion harmed skateboarding. It wasn’t like today, where most things that are obviously rad are appreciated, even if they are not what is in fashion that month. That goes for tricks, products and brands.

You literally couldn’t buy big sized boards or wheels at one point in the 90s, let alone pool shapes. And it was illegal to do wallrides, inverts or bonelesses! It’s a better mix these days.

Was it easy?

Well, judging by the huge amount of skate brands and distributors that have come and gone over the years, running a skate co. can’t be as easy as many people think. It helps that money is not my main motivation. I do stuff because I’m into it. You ain’t gonna’ live forever, might as well do stuff that you like while you can.

But you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth if you are in for the long haul. The brands I carry are really strong and are ran by people that truly love and care about skateboarding

You’ve clearly put a hell of a lot of thought into this, and since you’ve been doing it so long, that makes sense. I want to talk a bit about this idea of something being unhealthy for skateboarding. What would you describe as a healthy scene?

I think it’s amazing at the moment. Kids have access to so much incredible skate footage nowadays, this helps keep everyone hyped. And it’s all for free! Skate videos used to be so expensive. I’m pretty sure we rented Thrashin’ when it came out, so we could watch the skate footage on it.

And before that, we just had mags. The mags were great but I don’t think it was enough to keep some kids going. You’d have studied it cover to cover after the first day, then have to wait what, to a 15 year old, feels like a lifetime until the next issue came out.

Now kids can feel so much more connected and part of skateboarding even if they live in the middle of nowhere. They have a whole world of radness at their fingertips, 24/7.

And the skating itself?

To me it’s a really positive thing that all kinds of skating are appreciated currently. Freedom of expression is so important, I think. It was one of the things that attracted me to skating in the first place as opposed to things like team sports. For someone to come along and tell me you can’t do this trick or that trick? Fuck that! I think the creativity overpowers the killjoys. I mean, they can moan about it not fitting in with their view of what skating is, but when tens of thousands of people like and share footage I feel that it drowns out their noise.

But is technology also drowning out the old school?

I think there are still loads of old dudes around. You definitely don’t want to alienate the older skaters them being around gives younger skaters something to aspire to - kids need role models. Also, older skaters looking out for the kids when there are muggers, townies, etc about is really cool. Good to see so many old gits around still having it!

I mean, look at how they saved South Bank. That was so sick! Hopefully the whole lot of it can be put back to how it was originally, it was so much fun to skate back in the day. To me this was a really good indicator that we have a healthy skate scene, so many people battled and worked so hard to save the past. Thank you! If we did not have a good scene it would have been crushed.

Anything not so good?

Sunday trading and CCTV everywhere has put a dampener on things, it used to be so sick to have town centres to ourselves on a Sunday. But lots of new skateparks and spots have poped up, and I think that is really positive. I love all the DIY spots that are appearing.

POWER DISTRIBUTION = DISTRIBUTION OF POWER

I think all that is totally spot on, and as you say, lots of people, including myself, started skating because it wasn’t like other sports. What do you foresee that the Olympics will do to skateboarding?

There is so much about skating that makes it interesting isn’t there? The deck graphics. The variety of characters you have got for pro riders. The massive variety of tricks and constant evolution. The insane terrain. The difficulty level and potential for injury. The photography and videography.

The culture, spirit and influence of skateboarding. If you break it down and look at it like that, no wonder so many sports seem so one dimensional if you compare them to skating. But The Olympics? I don’t really know what it will do. I suppose it will get some kids interested in skating and there may be a bit of a boom. They may struggle to find enough riders to compete in The Olympics though when they are told that they will have to give up partying! [Laughs] Do you think that skateboarding, as it will appear in The Olympics, could ever appeal to kids like it did for us?

Yes, I think so. Skateboarding got pretty mainstream for a short time in the late 70s, and it still appealed to me when I first saw it. In fact that’s probably why I first saw it. Whether it’s popular or not, has uniforms or not, it’s still unlike anything else. I’m sure kids will quickly figure out that there is so much more to it than what they see on The Olympics. These days it won’t be difficult once they have been introduced to skateboarding to find footage, riders, and companies that they can identify with.

And the format?

I’m not sure about the format, maybe slalom will be back with a vengeance! I think that big airs and inverts are easier for the public to understand, so it’s possible that the parks will be designed to encourage that kind of skating.

It’ll be interesting to say the least. Are we expecting the usual suspects from Street League or do you think we will be seeing a whole new generation of comp based skaters?

I reckon it will be half of the usual suspects battling it out with the new generation some of whom we haven’t even heard of yet. Some kids get so good so quickly at such a young age now.

I guess we can only wait and see.

NICK’S ENTREPRENEURIAL NIGHTMARES: 1. All the boring stuff like paperwork and accounting.

And there’s plenty of it.

2. People messing you around for payment.

3. Injury. If you are self employed and you get hurt it can be a big problem.

4. Questionable decisions made by others affecting you.

5. Brands looking for a bigger, better deal and switching distributors. Although I generally think this means they have problems with how much they are selling worldwide, if they were busy enough they probably wouldn’t have the time or inclination to mess about when they already have a good distro in a particular country.

6. Riders leaving after you have spent time and money building their name up.

7. Various overheads creeping up as you expand.

8. Not being organised.

9. Responsibilities outside of skateboarding.

10. Bad weather.

11. Recession.

12. High fuel prices.

13. The Pound

Instagram: @powerdistribution

ELOISE DORR Eloise Dorr’s style has become recognisable in the UK and Europe; dark silhouetted figures on boards, tearing through various fantasy landscapes. From her “Meowtain” graphic for Meow Skateboards, to her solo show last year “3rd St.: A Tribute to Skateboarding in San Francisco”, it’s been an honour to watch her grow. Get to know, it’s upcoming artists like Eloise who’ll be lining the shelves of skate shops in years to come.

What is up, Eloise?

You’ve had a busy year.

Hey! What is up? Well, I’m currently in my studio working away! And yes a busy year indeed! January kicked 2017 off with my solo show called “3rd St” in Bristol. Since then I’ve been in a handful of group shows around the UK and Europe, one of the recent ones was in Vienna which I actually made it over there for, and that was really great! This year has also seen a fair few collabs with different companies, one of my favourites ever being my collaboration with Meow Skateboards - I love them! Right now I’m working on a collaboration with Vans Customs, and that’s out in November 2017 which is really exciting!

Meow! Tell us about how that came about?

I had an idea for a while that I would love to do a collaboration with them, but I wasn’t really doing anything with this idea. Then I just thought to myself “Why don’t you just e-mail Lisa (who runs Meow) with the proposition of a collaboration and see what she says?” So, I did! And she was instantly keen and the collab just sprung up from that! I’m very happy I did something about that thought!

What’s the story behind the “Meowtain” graphic?

I wanted to do my characters dressed up as cats, I knew that from the get go. So, I was just playing around with ideas of situations I could put my characters in whilst dressed as cats, and that one was my favourite!

Meow are pushing the female skate scene massively. Have you noticed girl-driven scenes get larger from your perspective? How would you say the industry sits today in relation to the gender divide?

I’d feel bad if I started making a list of who’s doing it right and who’s doing it wrong, as I don’t think it’s as black and white as that. But there’re plenty of companies I’m stoked on at the moment! I always have big love for the local London company Lovenskate.

They’re always doing it right, run by my friend Stu who is a great person! And they just made Lucy Adams pro which is beyond well deserved! Always stoked on Meow, obviously. Also, Welcome (they’re always great but making Nora Vasconcellos pro makes you number 1 in my eyes [Laughs]) and also really stoked on Enjoi at the moment. There’s a few for you!

Word! So where would you like to see yourself in five years?

In five years I think I’d like to be doing exactly what I’m doing at the moment, but just a lot more of it. At the moment I’m just doing my art/design work as my main job, I’m busy all the time but I always want to be busier. [Laughs] I’d also love to be traveling around the world doing shows and such. I’d love for my work to take me everywhere!

Wouldn’t want to start your own company?

I don’t think I would want to start my own company, I don’t want to be a business owner. I would like to be an art director for a company, but not on my own, too much stress comes with that I think! Maybe I would start a company with someone and just be on the graphics side of things, that’s the only way I think I could do it.

Rad. Well, in all your endeavors, Eloise - Good Luck! eloisedorr.com

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THE TIME HAS COME TO PUSH THE BUTTON: LACEY BAKER Setting up to interview Lacey Baker was pretty daunting. Not only is she a tough one to get ahold of since 2017 saw her sign with Nike, win Street League and move from LA to New York City all in the same year; but she also happens to hold tight as the most influential and respected female and queer skateboarder in the world today. She is able to occupy so much space, dominating the competitive scene while spearheading moves with grassroots board co. Meow Skateboards simultaneously. It was hard to know where I could go with the interview that she wouldn’t have already gone. In the end I decided authenticity was the way forward.

Shots by Sam McGuire

How’s everything going?

I’m good, had a coffee. Regular domestic shit, you know? [Laughs] I’m sure you deserve a bit of domesticity!

You’ve been globetrotting recently, right?

Yeah, I went to Paris with Nike. We skated the streets there which was fun. Also been to Portland a bit, Minneapolis for the X-Games, LA for Street League. Typical travelling for contests, with a bit of street thrown in.

Do you find you get to actually experience these places, or is your schedule pretty heavy?

Usually it’s pretty heavy, but I try to make time. Like in Paris, I made sure I was able to see some stuff. In the past it’s been more challenging, because you’re skating every day. But I try to do my best to learn about the culture.

How did you like Paris?

Oh my god, it’s beautiful. Every moment was amazing.

Seeing all the people, the architecture, it was really inspiring. One of the best trips of my life.

“Yeah, we get it.

You’re a guy.”

You must be getting recognised a lot more?

Yeah it’s been more frequent these days, since King of the Road and the Nike stuff. People are starting to recognise me and it’s blowing my mind a little bit. I’m just a regular person like everyone else. I mean, I’m equally stoked to be skating with them, you know?

This has been a crazy year for you. It’s been one year since the ‘My World’ part on Thrasher, and so much has changed, right?

Yeah, I moved to New York and that’s when the momentum really started to pick up. The announcement in April happened, and since then it’s been non-stop. I went to the Nike campus in Portland to check out some shoe and clothing designs, shit like that. I’m starting to be way more involved with Nike, and I was in front of like 500 designers there. I also do graphic design so it was amazing to offer that and for them to really embrace it.

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“There are all these younger girls who are fucking destroying!

They’re doing shit I wouldn’t even think about doing.”

In terms of commercialised skateboarding, skating for Nike is one of the highest accolades you could receive. Then on the other side of the spectrum you’ve got the grassroots female-oriented Meow Skateboards going on - is it hard to balance those two?

Yeah, I think with a company like Nike having my back, that could be a huge opportunity to lift the smaller companies up though. They want to support that, Nike, because they want to be authentic. It’s cool to be on both ends of the spectrum, because that’s where we all come from, you know?

And if they have your back on the shoe end, you can put your effort into DIY on the deck end?

Yeah, and it means a lot to be a part of Meow. I don’t know what path my career will take, you know? I mean, people change board sponsors. But right now I just feel so at home with Meow, and Lisa Whittaker has supported me so much throughout my life and my skating.

Since I was 12 years old! It means a lot to be involved with her and what she’s doing. Plus what it does for young girls coming up in skateboarding is amazing.

That company is history in the making, I think. Years from now when there’re a million girls skating, Meow Skateboards will be seen as one of the first companies that made such a large impact on women’s skateboarding.

So does the torch get passed to you now?

Yeah, for sure. I feel like I’m in a position where I have to represent. I’m more than just a girl who skates. I’m queer. I present as more masculine. A lot more girls can relate to that than if I was just feminine. Not that there aren’t feminine skaters, but I feel I hit a broader audience, and we should all be lifted it up, not just some of us. I want to be present, I want to be there for girl skaters everywhere.

That’s fucking amazing, but it must be heavy. Do you ever find your career decisions are affected by that responsibility?

Erm...Yeah. I think so. I’m not sure I want to talk much about that. But the answer is yes. There’re are a lot of different aspects to it. On the one hand I want to be set the best example, and on the other hand I want to make the best career decisions for myself. Yeah. It’s a balance, for sure.

That’s totally natural. I mean, you’ve had huge developments in your career in 2017 - Street League, Nike, to name just two - and you’ve suddenly got to step carefully to set a good example? A male skater wouldn’t need to fucking worry about that.

Oh for sure. It’s definitely a different experience for us.

We’re still super underground, even though there’s a huge growth-spurt in the women’s skate community.

We’ve all been here the whole time, but now the bigger companies are recognising shit. It’s just one of those things. It’s going to grow, it’s going to get huge, but we have to be careful how we shape that. Because I’m at the front, Leticia is at the front, and Samarria, and Nora. There are more of us than that, but you get what I’m saying - we’re a tiny group. But there’ll be a boom very soon!

Do you think that’s closer than we realise?

You can see it coming! On social media, the new faces in Street League, there are all these younger girls who are fucking destroying! They’re doing shit I wouldn’t even think about doing. There’s this girl, she’s like 9 years old, I think Thrasher posted it…

Yeah! In the fairy dress?

Yeah, that. That is what’s coming!

And yet some guys still say girls can’t skate for some physical inhibition…

Exactly, fuck that. The only reason people feel like they can’t do something is when they’re told they can’t.

Nobody ever came and told me I couldn’t do this. I just loved skateboarding and my mum was all: “okay go ahead.”

But did you hit barriers later?

Yeah, at the skatepark every now and again you’d get those, you know, “hyper-masculine” dudes who feel threatened by a girl skating. They behave in some inappropriate way to deal with that. I experienced a lot of that growing up and skating with only guys, but it’s definitely getting better.

Does that vibe at hometown skateparks translate into massive skatepark situations, like at Street League, for instance?

No, no. 95% of the time everything’s fucking chill. Especially in a setting like Street League, where you’re just surrounded by people who fucking skate, everyone gets it. Sometimes there’s a “hyper-masculine” feel which doesn’t feel safe for me personally, but it’s just like: “Yeah, we get it. You’re a guy.” [Laughs] Is it easy to see the skateboarding you fell in love in those sorts of competitions?

You know, I decided I do like to skate contests. I mean, sure, sometimes contests aren’t as fun. But I just love skateboarding and I enjoy skateboarding, so I enjoy skateboarding in contests. I try not to let the competition aspect side-track the fact I just love skateboarding, and I try not to take for granted that I’m young, I’m able. I’m not going to be able to do this forever, and I don’t want to be jaded about skating contests.

You’re seen as having a sort of punk ethos, where do you think that came from?

Punk? Hmmm… I think It’s just me presenting in the way that I want. There was a heavy influence on me as an 11, 12, 13 year old to dress more feminine. When I was super young I’d tie my hair back, wear baggy clothes, look like a boy. But then when I was entering my teens I had pressure to keep my long blonde hair. You know what’s funny, it was at the time that guys all started wearing their mom’s skinny jeans and shit, and my mom would say: “Come on, all the boys are wearing them.”

So I’d dress like that for a little while, but then I realised I didn’t like it, so I just started doing whatever the fuck I wanted, because that’s what’s going to make me happy.

I guess that’s where the idea of punk comes from, but I don’t think I would call myself a punk exactly. I’ve done a lot of shit that’s definitely not punk, you know?

Like what?

Like get good grades, be a teachers pet, nerd out. But parts of me can relate to that, yeah.

Your identity is one of authenticity, you know? Your sexuality, your goal of setting an example for young women and queer people in skateboarding, it’s all clearly part of Lacey Baker as we know her. Can I ask, what do you feel about the idea that Brian Anderson was unable to formulate his identity as openly - is this purely a gender issue?

You know, I can’t answer for Brian, but I know there’s one factor that both him and I can relate to. Right now, there’s a huge conversation around queers and the LGBT+ community, and the success stories in those communities. The media pushes the limelight in our direction because that is what is “cool” right now. And me and Brian in skateboarding is a great story for them, so they want to keep on telling it. The thing is that we’re being asked the same questions again and again, and sometimes the media requests take up so much time that we don’t have time to skate. But I do understand that for young people coming up it’s so important to have people like us represented. It’s a double-edged sword.

Sometimes I don’t always want to answer the same questions, you know?

I’m with you. Take this interview, for instance.

We’re promoting skate diversity and culture, and so we want to talk about this with you, but for weeks before this interview I’m thinking to myself: “How the fuck do we do this authentically with Lacey, without asking the same shit?”

Yeah, but I think it’s important on my end to know when it is and isn’t authentic. I mean sometimes you get magazines who don’t identify with this stuff, or who maybe aren’t even necessarily an ally. Like we get people just ask really offensive questions. Like: “what the fuck are you doing?”

But, no. I’m into this, no worries. I want to make sure I talk about this stuff with people who can present it the right way - who give a fuck about the right things - and I feel what you guys do.

It’s about making people feel more comfortable about who they are, ultimately.

Yes, exactly. Have you heard of Unity Press?

Yes, Jeffrey Cheung, right? Love that stuff.

Yeah! I saw that in Seattle at the Wheels of Fortune competition and was like: Holy fuck! I was so stoked to see Jeffrey and my friend Gabriel doing the right thing with Unity.

So I’m interested to hear what’s going on with your announcement that you’re going to the Olympics?

Ha, yeah, but we don’t really know what’s happening there yet. I think there’ll be qualifiers in like 2019 or whatever.

But if you’re interested in how I feel about it on a personal level, I’m not mad at the Olympics, I think it’ll do great things for girls getting involved and generally skateboarding is never not going to be cool, you know what I mean?

We all skate for the same fucking reason.

Yeah, totally. I have been thinking though that while we all know what skateboarding is about now, what will the future kids think?

If the Olympics offers accessibility, will it also potentially mean skateboarding is no longer a place for outcasts?

Yeah, that’s actually a really interesting angle. I’ve not thought about it that way. I mean, I would hope that with the roots of skateboarding where they are that kids will always feel comfortable enough to start skateboarding, you know? That they will still feel that it’s for them. But I think women are going to feel it’s more acceptable, I don’t know how it will affect the men’s side.

“Years from now when there’re a million girls skating, Meow Skateboards will be seen as one of the first companies that made such a large impact on women’s skateboarding.”

There will be goods and bads to this, as with everything. That leads me neatly to ask the question, what is the best and worst thing about skateboarding today?

The best thing is the growth of women’s culture in skateboarding. That’s definitely it. The worst thing would be when inauthentic people get involved with skateboarding, like when brands come and try to appropriate the culture.

Fuck off.

Locals only!

Haha, yeah. Fucking posers!

If you had a button that would change one thing what would it be, and would you push it?

Man, the “hyper-masculinity” in the world in general, and in fucking skateboarding. And I’d definitely fucking push it.

[Laughs] I want things to be more safe and comfortable for everybody in the world, not just men.

Well, as a man let me know if there’s anything I can do…

Call out your bros. If they’re ever racist, sexist, homophobic, call those bitches out. Thanks for asking that, I appreciate it.

Consider it done.

Thanks so much Lacey, keep pushing!

Instagram: @laceybaker

SOMEWHERE IN S K AT E B OA R D I N G : AN OPEN LETTER

By Ruby Mateja, Co-Founder of Free Movement Skateboarding

As a result of this I became terribly self-conscious and shy. I have only just made this connection since beginning to write this, but it seems to make so much sense. If you feel at odds with your environment then how can you explore the boundaries and eccentricities of your personality? I began to find it hard to interact with any new people, and had no self-confidence. I believe that self-confidence

comes from many places. We frequently generalise people into two different types of personality - introverts and extroverts - proposing that extroverts rely on external stimuli for their confidence and energy, whereas for introverts the source is internal. I am certainly one of the latter, but on an individual basis things are much more complex. I realised that I needed to explore the things that made me thrive as a person, and thus stopped viewing my shyness as a boundary that I had to overcome; but rather as something that should be embraced. By returning to the things that naturally made me happy and fulfilled as a child, I am surrounding myself with like-minded people, and thus I no longer feel uncomfortable with my environment.

Sometimes you have to explore the dark in order to not be afraid of it.

Shots by Ruby Mateja

Somewhere in my late teenage years I got lost.

I stopped doing almost all the things I had most enjoyed in my life up until that point. I’m not sure whether it was an internal decision, or that I finally dissuaded myself from doing the things that most of the other girls weren’t doing. My younger years had been so filled with adventure, my brothers and I would spend every chance we could in skateparks, building dirt jumps in the woods, leaping off rope swings into rivers; just being active and filthy all the time.

Everything changed as I progressed towards my twenties though - I lost this sense of freedom and was constantly troubled by ideas and expectations of what should be occupying my time. My wonderment took on a more academic focus for a while and although I found many hidden treasures there, university education left me feeling bewildered and frustrated. I know that many people share the struggle of not being able to express oneself in such a structured and linear way; the current education system caters for one type of person only, and the rest are left at odds with it all. I knew I didn’t agree with such a system and I saw so many flaws within it, but at the time I thought it was myself that needed to adjust in order to fit in with the rhythm of things rather than discovering my own.

I can’t say I’m not annoyed at myself for letting this happen for all those years, but I haven’t had much time to linger on it because rediscovering all these things in my mid-twenties has made the hiatus somewhat insignificant, and I appreciate them now even more than before.

My shins are forever bruised again; new scars have replaced the old ones on my knees. My skateboard has taken me across the world, to places I would never have been to before. I can arrive at almost any city and know that I will meet other skaters when I get there, and see a side to that place I might not have had access to before. I see the cityscape in a different way now – the whole space has opened up into new and exciting perspectives. I can hold my board in my arms and feel powerful wherever I am, rip down roads weaving in and out of traffic and feel unstoppable.

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I believe that the world of skateboarding is transforming fast, as more people are beginning to feel the many positive impacts it can have. There are skate charities all over the world working in solidarity with vulnerable and deprived communities, and encouraging more women to take up a board than ever before. For the short amount of time I have been involved in skateboarding, I have been enlightened to so many things; the sense of community it brings us, the empowerment it provides for girls and women, and how it can gift the freedom of playfulness to those who need it most. I started skating properly about three years ago, when I heard about a women’s session that Lucy Adams was running at an indoor skatepark in Brighton.

Going along to those sessions gave me the initial boost of confidence that I needed to be able to go and skate in other parks – the atmosphere there was amazing, everybody supported each other no matter your age or ability.

I was completely hooked and started skating as much as possible at parks all around the south of England. What surprised me though, was that every skatepark I went to still upheld this air of encouragement and mutual respect.

At first I would rarely see another girl skating but this soon began to change, especially when I started skating in London. The progress that I have witnessed in women’s skateboarding, in such a brief amount of time, is testament to the fact that things are really changing for the positive, and I believe that this is a direct reaction to the creation of role models in the female scene. Finally female skaters are gaining the coverage and sponsorship that was erstwhile exclusive to men, and they are galvanising and inspiring veteran and newbie female skaters to challenge the gender gulf so predominant in the world of skateboarding.

Sick.

In October last year I travelled to Palestine to volunteer for the charity SkatePAL. They have been operating there for quite a few years now and have just finished building their second skate park. The introduction of skateboarding has had such a massive impact, not just for the kids that skate, but also for the community as a whole. The boys and girls race to the skate park every day after school and skate until it becomes dark. Their friends and families cheer them on, give them helping hands, or just sit and enjoy the evening whilst singing and dancing to music as the blistering sun finally disappears behind the mountains in the distance. I couldn’t believe that such a traditional place would welcome an activity such as skateboarding, and more than that, encourage girls and women to take part!

Girls from middle-eastern cultures are often dissuaded from taking part in physical activities as they progress into their teens, but somehow skateboarding has transgressed this due to being unknown to these cultures before. It was incredible to see so many girls ripping fearlessly around the skatepark. Skateboarding has given them a powerful confidence, which they then carry with them off of the board too.

It was in Palestine that I met Will (Ascott). Mutually inspired by our experiences there, we spoke about the many other places that would benefit from such a project, but I had no idea at the time that those ideas would materialise so fast. Just a year later and we are settled in Athens with our mobile skatepark built, transporting it most days to different refugee camps and public spaces in the city to teach skateboarding to over one hundred children a week. By introducing skateboarding as an activity that anyone can do (no matter their age or gender) we can create real gender parity from the offset. It is a joy to see so many girls skating in our sessions. Here in Athens the girl’s skate scene isn’t thriving in a way that I have seen in other cities. It certainly has a long way to come, and I hope we can inspire that through what we do.

I see Free Movement Skateboarding as an opportunity to help empower people through skateboarding – especially girls and women. Watching the girls we teach become increasingly confident and daring on and off the board is truly incredible. I’ve come to understand that it’s so much more than skateboarding; it’s about transgressing boundaries, challenging yourself, supporting each other, and feeling indestructible.

SAM MCGUIRE: “HOW DO I B E G AY N O W ? ” It’s been a couple years now since Sam McGuire, one of skateboarding’s most beloved photographers, came out publicly in an interview with Jenkem Magazine. From behind his camera he’s been keeping an eye on how skateboarding has developed, watching the highs and lows, ebbs and flows of a culture which has always been the go-to for outcasts. And yet, it wasn’t until his hand was forced that he could feel comfortable coming out among many people he called friends. Today, he’s a pioneering figure in skateboarding, encouraging others like him to live authentically in our culture. Dig in.

When did you first realise skate photography was a passion of yours?

Maybe sometime in college, when I was like 22 or so? I had started doing it years before, just photographing my friends, learning about equipment and the basics of photography. I wanted to do editorial/advertorial photography as I loved telling stories and I loved art, graphic design and the elements that go together for commercial photography.

I think skateboarding blended the two together well so I started shooting it. I got addicted to it quick, and partially because I was skateboarding a lot at the time too.

Why skateboarding specifically?

It was fun because you didn’t know how it would end up.

You didn’t know if you’d get kicked out or if it would start raining. It was a great excuse to drive five hours to try and look for something to skate and get lots of fun photos along the way. You don’t need a lot of money when you’re 22 so I would just float around and shoot things and try to get my photos looking like the magazines. It was a fun time, it felt good to obsess over something and then make it happen or fail and then rethink it and try again the next day.

You’ve spoken about your sexuality openly in skate circles, but for a long while you didn’t feel comfortable coming out in skateboarding, why was this?

This is a tough question now cause it’s been a few years since I’ve come out. Sometimes I ask myself the same question. It’s scary because skateboarding is such a tight knit little circle, and I’ve heard dudes bag on someone for the way they dress or the way they act. I just didn’t know any gay people in skateboarding, so I just had no idea how people would react. I had a few instances where I’d see gay people take something negative, and so I just sort of hid it back and honestly just thought it would go away, which was ridiculous.

How did you first decide it was time to come out?

I had broken up with a guy I’d been dating for a few years and that was pretty devastating. My life was just unraveling and I was drinking a lot and doing drugs. I was losing my mind. I’m not good at lying and it was really, really weird living this double life. On top of that, there was just this mounting fear that I was going to get caught and if I got caught there was this mounting fear that I would finally have to come out.

What changed?

I went with my ex to a football party at Davis Torgersons house and a mutual friend of ours met my ex. Only a few people knew I was gay at the time and I didn’t know that friend would be there so it was like: “uh oh, shit.” I didn’t think anything of it until that person ended up on a skate trip with a lot of skaters I’d shot with and was friends with.

He ended up getting drunk and I guess saying that I was gay, which was awkward because some of the guys we were with were close friends and they were a bit bummed I hadn’t said anything. One day Oliver Barton called me up and was dropping hints at it, then he just sort of called me out, told me that he’d heard that I was gay. We talked for an hour and I started to cry on the freeway. I mean you can’t really consider yourself a resident of LA if you haven’t cried on the freeway. At that point I figured: the jig is up. Then one night I might have accidentally taken quite a lot of a certain substance that makes you love everyone...I ended up feeling really at peace with it all. I actually thought I had overdosed but I was just content with it, it was kind of funny. I just laid on my floor waiting to happily die and just loved myself - fuck it. I think I ended up texting like 100+ people that night that I was gay.

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“Fuck it - I just laid on my floor waiting to happily die and just loved myself.”

How did you go from that to the famous Jenkem article?

A lot of people started hitting me up about it, talking to me about, say, their cousin who is gay and struggling, or their brother/sister/friend, etc. Ian at Jenkem Magazine had been bugging me to do an interview about it for a while and I used to not really be too open to talking about it. I was all: “being gay doesn’t define me,” sorta’ thing, but getting all the support made me think it over again.

One of the only reasons I decided I could come out was because I had heard B.A. [Brian Anderson] was gay. That was 100% my comfort blanket and so I thought maybe I should get over myself and my own anxieties and do this interview and hopefully pay it forward and help out another kid. We did the interview and I honestly didn’t think anything of it. I thought: ok cool, an LGTBQ+ skater somewhere is going to read this and hopefully tell someone they are gay, and they are going to be happy. I was also turning 30, and I had just figured it out. All the stars were aligning. I could come out to everyone via this one email. It turned out to be the best thing to ever happen to me.

What struggles did you face along the way?

As far as struggles go, a lot of it was me being scared.

Classic stuff. You just get wrapped up in that fear. I was lucky in the fact that my friends and family were very supportive. Maybe I had it easier, since a lot of people would tell me that I didn’t “look gay”, but that confused me more because I was like: “is there a way I should look?”

So for better or for worse I skipped out on a lot of the bullying or the name calling but it ended up being quite confusing, navigating where I felt comfortable in the gay world. Since I didn’t “look gay”, people would be really surprised that I was into Queer culture, or they would stare as I was dancing to a song at a Drag Show if, say, a favorite performer of mine was performing. Sometimes the people there would almost get upset, as if I was making fun of them, but I wasn’t. I absolutely adore the entire LGBTQ+ community, and I get so inspired when I see people living their true selves, being who they really are, being comfortable and just owning it. It took me quite a while to figure that out. That was a struggle, weirdly enough, just actually figuring out where you fit in in the gay world. Like I came out and then it’s like: “well fuck, how do I be gay now?”

Do you think skateboarding is becoming more or less conservative as it becomes increasingly mainstream?

That’s a tough one. I’m not really sure to be honest. I’d like to say it’s gotten more liberal? Seems like people are super into the rise of women in skateboarding, Unity Skateboards has really gotten some popularity and shined light and support towards the Queer skate community. Brian came out and that obviously went over quite well. I mean from where I am standing, it looks like it’s getting more liberal but, then again, no one is really getting too political, you know?

What is the best and worst thing about skate culture in your view?

I think skateboarding is pretty cool right now actually. I guess the worst thing would be that it can be a bit gossipy, or a bit negative sometimes. People are reluctant to change. I heard a few people sort of bagging on body varials, but there are always going to be haters.

As for the best... I think skating is in a really cool place right now. You’ve got all sorts of great independent brands doing their thing. You’ve got Palace blowing up - they seem like they are just loving life right now. Brands like Welcome, WKND, Passport, the Dime contest in Montreal. There’s a load of weird and funny Insta clips which are popular. I don’t know. Some people are getting rich as fuck, some people are getting weird, some people are going to the Olympics. You’ve got Lacey, Nora, Samarria, Alexis, Josie Lori, Beatrice Domond, that are pushing female skateboarding. I think that my favorite part is watching all this stuff develop. It seems like people are coming into their own. Seeing people get sober, and get healthy. Seeing Kenny Anderson go vegan. There’s just a lot of cool stuff to take in if you want to, feels like there’s a spot for everyone more than ever now.

What would you like to see change in the next ten years in skateboarding?

Good question. I think seeing some of the skate media change and develop would be cool. I hate to say this because they are the ones that hire me to do things but I would love to see magazines/online magazines develop more content that tells more stories, or tells certain stories differently. Maybe doing a bit more of the lifestyle behind skateboarding as well, getting away from the hammer centric style it can be and more into stuff that looks good, that’s just the photographer in me speaking though. samuel-mcguire.com

“A lot of people would tell me that I didn’t “look gay”, but that confused me more because I was like: “is there a way I should look?”“

Yann Horowitz - Switch Wallride

SAM MCGUIRE

by

Clint Walker

Rob Gonyon

Thaynan Costa - Wallie

Ben Raemers

Johan Stuckey - Nosegrind Pop Out

Aidan Campell - Kickflip

Al Davis - Frontside Ollie

Doogie - Frontside Flip

Nick Garcia

Aaron Chilen

Alex Halford - Frontside Feeble

Yann Horowitz - Smith Into Bench

Randy Ploesser - Backsmith

Jamie T and Shecks

Barney Page - BS Noseblunt

AN ESCAPE FROM BOREDOM: THEYAWNCHOKER Like so many subcultures, skateboarding survives first and foremost from internal support, from the dedication of those who want to keep the flame burning. Independent brands must shout to be noticed, wade through behemoths to find their niche. And when a subculture brand is born, the founder must strike a balance between profit, quality and authenticity. Too far one way, they risk becoming unsustainable, too far the other, you’ll look greedy or cheap.

This is the balance A’ram had to find this year as he took the first steps launching TheYawnchoker, an Athens-based clothing company whose mission it is to pierce homogeny, create communities and support its scene. But it came at a cost...

Tell me about where “TheYawnchoker” came from?

I had no plans whatsoever, no intentions, I hadn’t even thought about making a brand. I was just in the car, driving outside of Athens. I had this habit as a kid that whenever somebody yawns, you deep throat them with your finger.

Last time I did that to my girlfriend, it got weird so I backed it with “THEYAWNCHOKER”. I thought that was a really cool name.

Ah, so this story is a romance...

[Laughs] My girlfriend had some experience. I had none.

So she helped me with sourcing, which is really, really difficult in Greece. There was a time when people would come to Athens for fabrics and tailoring, and when you hear that, you’re confident you’ll be able to make something like this happen, but it’s not the case, at least not that easily.

It was difficult?

The start was really, really hard, and yet somehow easy.

This is the problem when you have a company in Greece.

On the one hand, when you find a factory you imagine they’ll be more committed to their customers because of the crisis, but it’s not the case. Then on the other hand, you expect customers will be less inclined to support you because they’re buying your stuff without knowing anything about you, but that’s also not the case. Take for example an average of people between 14 and 35 years old, generally speaking. Those people hardly have proper salaries in Greece, and you’re competing against big companies. My selling price has to be equal or higher than the well-established brands, and yet, despite my prejudices, people are super supportive.

Why do you think that is?

I think they can relate. When you’re not going to H&M or Zara, I think you want to spend money on a brand that reflects something real, that makes you want to be a part of something. It’s a collectivist approach here, people support each other to survive. If you focus solely on what you want, what you want to achieve, you might take one or two steps forward alone. But that’s it. You need to be open, to adapt and team up with other brands and individuals. If you can do that, you can go further together.

Do you think that’s why you’ve got support, because you’re inclusive?

I hope I am. The easy way would be to use the same people every time, because it’s much harder to choose a new photographer every season. But I want to do new things every time, reach new people, mix it up as much as I can.

And now, 9/10 of the people I’ve worked with, we hang out like once or twice a week. It’s about real friendship, not strictly business.

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Are you afraid of the future?

You know, it’s much more costly than you would expect.

Even a basic T-shirt isn’t easy. So I move slowly, trying to sustain TheYawnchoker, not getting into as many shops as possible as quickly as possible, but keeping on top of my supply. I believe if I keep going like this, I’ll stay happy.

Yeah, I’ve noticed, you take great care over quality.

The first batch we made, half were fair quality, the other half were not – the fabric wasn’t what I’d ordered. People were telling me not to worry, that people wouldn’t notice.

But it wasn’t bringing me any joy, it wasn’t what I wanted to make. I want something good, that people will wear over and over again. I changed factory, it happened again, so I changed again. I ended up throwing away around 700 T-shirts. One step forward, two steps back. It sounds stupid, but it meant alot to me at the time. Eventually I found it, and now I’m really happy with fabrics, the tailor, but yeah, it could have been easier.

Do you think you could have done this in an another country?

I’m closing on three years in Athens now, and I’ve thought about this a lot. Take Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Copenhagen. They start holding local brands in their stores much earlier that you could do in Athens, so that’s a plus. I think they provide brands with retail support, which helps them survive. The good thing In Athens, I think is that you can get acknowledgment way faster since it feels like a small city (even though its not). Going abroad? Well that’s a different story.

You grew up in Lebanon, and it couldn’t happen there?

It would definitely be way harder there. You know, even as late as 2005, Lebanon was more or less the same as Athens. The misconception people had about Lebanon with the war, was that fashion or sports or music or culture weren’t existent. But no, you had skaters, surfers, rappers, punks. You could find boards, clothing brands - subcultures were supported. But after 2005, when I was around 15/16, all of a sudden everything started heading in one direction.

Now, you can’t find boutique shops with small brands or upcoming designers anywhere. It completely disappeared.

Suddenly, everybody is wearing more or less the same thing, doing the same things, going to the same places, etc. The bars are playing the same music, you had no cultural diversity anymore! So unless you provided what was already out there, I think you would have gotten nowhere.

Things seem to be changing to how it was before for the last couple of years though. Let’s see.

How did you survive?

I was always coming back to Athens, every few years since I was born here. Whenever I came back it felt like finding my balance again. When I finally moved here permanently it was a huge wake up call. That’s how TheYawnchoker was born, I guess.

To choke the dullness...

It makes me really sad. I don’t understand why there hasn’t been a cultural revolution like in Athens, it’s not that different. I want to go back and take a step forward with the brand, but I can’t be in two places at once, man. Not just yet.

But the revolution in Athens isn’t finished yet...

The problem in Athens isn’t the people. The people are amazing, they’re supportive, talented, dedicated. When it came to finding graphic designers, photographers, everyone knew somebody who was perfect for it, and almost every time they were. As I said before, Athens feels like a small circle. You can get in contact with anybody within half an hour, and they’re always interested in working together. No, the problem is that so few of the stores actually support local brands. They back big brands, but big brands aren’t the future. I don’t know if TheYawnchoker is going to do well, or any of the other great upcoming brands in Athens, but it’s important that stores take risks to support them. Because as we’ve seen, so many customers support authentic new, local companies, so the market is there.

We have to grow together, because without the support of retailers the small brands die since so much pressure is put on you financially. I mean, I’ve been around less than a year, I walk into a bar at least twice a week and see somebody wearing one of my T-shirts, it’s incredible. But I couldn’t have done it without the support I’ve received from those who get it.

What was the mission at first?

I just had the name. So the easiest way of establishing that the name was mine was to drop some T-shirts. Then it kind of snowballed, T-shirts, crewnecks, hoodies, socks, hats, but the idea was not to make clothing. I wanted to build a creative community, to find awesome people to work with, to just sit together and make events, products, whatever.

Like with Lucas Beaufort. I had no intention of sending him an email, but when I shot him a message showing my appreciation for his work, he took the time to say thanks.

Then when I asked, he was open to work together. Now we’ve got collaboration items coming Summer ‘18. I don’t know where I’m going, I just get excited about meeting and working with new people.

theyawnchoker.com

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CHEERS Special thanks to Alex (Ministry of Concrete), A’ram (TheYawnchoker), Sam Avery (Drug Store) John (FiftyFifty), Nick Zorlac, Dominic Graveson, John Graveson, Tamara Fogarty, Sam McGuire, Lacey Baker, Yulin Oliver, Lucas Beaufort, Robin Höning, Max Beckmann. Ruby Mateja, Will Ascott, Eloise Dorr, Ben Gore, Thomas Martini, Kieran McMullan, Arne Hillerns, Youssef Abaoud, everyone at BRIGHT, and all our readers and supporters.

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14/12/17

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