Corey Bobbermien Photo: Lyddiard
Photo: Nash
Jim Turvey, FS noseslide Photo: Frost
Andrew Nash, FS board pop out Photo: Lyddiard
Zacc Connell, Ollie Photo: Frost
Photo: Lyddiard
In most crews there’s one or two people that give up their time and money (are you throwing in for tapes, batteries, lenses? Didn’t think so) to make “your part” a reality. Filmers and photographers, like most artists, love the creative process and the finished product is a reward in itself. But in the meantime, countless hours are spent at spots only to be kicked out without even getting a chance to tap their tail. Thanks to James Magin and everyone else sacrificing their time for the final product.
Magin, 180 nosegrind. Photo: Nash
Photo: Nash
I’m no stranger to witnessing amazing skateboarding first hand. I was present when Ben Cox did the backside tailside backside flip out in Loves Ugly Children. I was at Pier 7 the day Rob Welsh learnt caballerial backside noseblunts (see Fully Flared). Even after that, Simon still manages to surpass my expectations of what’s possible on a skateboard. What you see in this interview is the result of Andrew Nash taking his 35mm along with him when we’re out with Simon. Nothing planned, just some insight into what it’s like having him as one of the crew, one of our friends.
Jim: You’re just about to go overseas on a bit of a skate mission with your mate Patrick burgess. What’s the deal, what are your plans? Simon: Well I fly over Tuesday morning, land in LA and then fly to new York, spend four days there and then we’re picking up an RV and driving back to LA. J: Are you both going to have boards with you, like taking the RV across the country? S: Yeah, that’s half the plan to hit parks and stuff along the way. J: Are you going to shoot some
FS smith grind
FS Noseblunt
photos of each other and stuff as well? S: Yeah I have that camera for the trip. One of those bloody Fuji X Pro 2 things – takes some good photos. J: Being a skateboarder that is often on the other side of the lens and has a particular way that you want your own tricks to look, do you think that makes you take better skate photos? S: Yeah I’d say so. I mean, I’ve always had a bit of an idea because Dad was a photographer and I went to weddings and stuff with him but it does help. When you try a trick you already have an idea of how it’s going to look. A lot of the times a photographer will take a photo from a different angle and it will look better than you thought anyway. J: Whenever you try a trick, you imagine yourself in an out of body situation anyway. Do you do that? The third person perspective thing? S: Yeah, you think about how the footage is going to look and think about how a photo is going to look and yeah I mean that’s sort
of the whole idea of it I suppose. J: I wonder if other sports do that as much as skateboarding, because skateboarding is so heavily documented. Do you think bicycle riders do it? S: Does a tennis plyer imagine how he’s going to fuckin’ hit the ball and what the photographer’s going to do with it? Probably not. J: You got injured just before you’re about to go away. What happened? S: Yes… tore ligaments in my shoulder while warming up. The ones that hold your collarbone and your shoulder blade together. It snapped so my collar bone is sort of sitting on top of my shoulder blade. J: is it the same collarbone that you’ve broken before? S: Yeah my shoulder has had a pretty fucking rough run J: Stop falling on that it then! Is that always the way - you psych yourself out trying big stuff and you end up getting injured just warming up on the simple stuff?
S: Yeah well you know… I’ve torn ligaments in my ankle when we were skating a flat bar that time. And I was out for 5 months or something and that was in the middle of filming. I think it’s when you’re filming you’re fucking so aware and on edge and you can kind of save yourself from falling a lot. When you’re just mucking around you’re not thinking.
J: Surfing’s really good for your core and everything, do you think that surfing has helped your skating at all? S: It’s definitely helped my fitness. I kind of can’t skate more than what, twice a week with work and being sore all the time, so it helps to keep my body moving.
J: Have you had any injuries surfing?
J: Tell us about the video project that you and your friends have been working on.
S: Um… nothing too bad. I got stitches in my foot because the fin cut my foot open.
S: I don’t really know… what’s the end result of that? I think James Magin wants to put together a
BS wallride
Wallie
fifteen minute clip. We’ve been filming, everyone’s been killing it.
pressure on yourself, do things end up working out better?
J: Do you think it’s more relaxed having everybody filming for a big montage rather than filming for a solo part?
S: They do, I mean a lot of it has to do with just sort of making do with the spots that you’re given. Because we just go search for stuff constantly and we find crap a lot of the times and we just make it work and end up with some pretty good footage.
S: Absolutely. When we were filming for my Axis part it was much less relaxed. It’s heaps more positive when everyone’s having a go. A lot of what we have filmed so far has been spontaneous, which has been excellent. J: That’s one of the questions I was going to ask: without that
J: Do you think that’s why videos like Static or GX are so popular? S: Yeah, it’s just a group of dudes and they’re just going and skating what they have around them.
They’re all super talented and good friends and it just makes for a really good formula. It makes you interested. J: I was asking you about surfing before and whether or not that helps with your skating, but you’ve been making surfboards lately as well? How’d you get into all that stuff, how’d you even get into surfing? S: Just ‘cause Dad’s a surfer, he wanted to get me to do it forever and I don’t know, I just started going surfing with him. When I was injured, I can’t remember what it was but I could do everything perfectly fine but I couldn’t ollie, and it takes all the fucking fun out of skating basically… J: So you could still carve… S: yeah, yeah, so I just learnt to surf. I think it was the same injury I was talking about earlier. I started surfing with dad and it developed from there. With making surfboards, I learnt on a massive board that Dad had and then I slowly progressed down the size of surfboards until I was comfortable. It was such a rapid
learning process, I wasted soo much money trying to find the right board and downsizing and adapting and all that sort of stuff so it came about as a way to save money. J: Surfboards aren’t like buying a new skateboard where you can get a whole set up for 200 bucks, right? S: No, it’s like a thousand dollars every single time and I think in the past 3 years I’ve been through like 15 surfboards so, y’know. J: That’s a lot of fuckin’ money, like that’s a really nice car… S: Yeah, be it brand new or second hand, I didn’t buy every single one of them for a thousand dollars but still, I mean you can build one for what, like $150 or 200 bucks so you know, and then you can just fuck around with it however you want it to be, if it doesn’t work then… J: There’s definitely a renaissance happening in skateboarding where people are more willing than they were in the 90’s to experiment with board shapes. Is
Switch wallie
that happening with surfing too? S: I think so, but I think I am a bit too ignorant to comment properly on that. I mean a surfer could obviously tell you, but as far as my understanding of it is, yeah. It seems that everyone’s riding weird shapes, and smaller, fatter things. Everybody seems to be riding weird fish shaped things again instead of just your standard fuckin’ short board or your standard 8-inch skateboard. J: Everybody is wearing Passport gear if you go down to
Merewether Beach. Thrasher, Passport… S: Yeah well heaps of pro skaters surf, heaps of pro surfers skate, it’s starting to melt together and the subcultures are starting to come closer. J: You’re known for skating some big rails, do you surf big waves as well? S: Nah no way. It’s just, fucking the ocean’s terrifying! Concrete’s not going to hold you under the water for fucking five minutes or
FS 180
whatever. That’s what terrifies me, drowning or getting dragged out to sea in some crazy current, they’re the fears really, as far as like you know, wiping out or whatever on a wave that’s nothing, just getting held down. J: You’ve recently designed some graphics for Amnesia. They’re not pro models though, right?
out with that. Simply because I wanted to have a creative outlet. I probably would have still ridden for Amnesia and done that on the side. Then we sort of thought well, what the hell, might as well do it through Amnesia, I mean they’re a good company, they’ve been around forever and I want to support them as much as I can and keep it going.
S: I just wanted to draw some shit and get it printed on boards. I was talking to Chris Yeoh about making my own board company for a while and him helping me
J: Is there a reason why you didn’t want your name on a board? I know the other guys have their names on a board, is it just from you being modest?
S: Yeah I don’t know; I didn’t feel comfortable doing it. I don’t really know why. I don’t know if you want to call it modesty but it was just like, I didn’t feel like I deserved to put my name on a board. But these are boards that I’ve created and I’m happy with them. J: They’ve come out cool and it’s like everybody knows that It’s your board anyway so you’ve killed two birds with one stone: you’ve got two rad graphics, and I think both those graphics have given Amnesia more variety too. S: Yeah there’s a few more styles and I would like to keep making boards for him. J: How come you will be skating and then you have to vomit? S: Because I eat the wrong things. J: When you say the wrong thing, what do you mean? S: I don’t know. I seem to have intolerances to fucking everything. I dunno, it all started from drinking too much, and that caused pancreatitis, and then I had to stop drinking and then I
had problems just with digesting food so I went on a weird elimination diet. And now I seem to have intolerances to sort of anything wheat, any milk, any I dunno, just a lot of shit. J: The photos for this interview are all film photos that Nash has taken. You skate with him almost every time you go skating. Are there any tricks that you’ve got in this that are different to if you had have been going out with maybe Brendan Frost or Cameron Markin or someone like that? S: Well I dunno. I honestly cant remember whats in it. J: I like that you can’t really remember it because it’s going to be a surprise when you see it. S: Well that’s cool. J: I think it shows a different angle of your skating. S: There might be some more low key stuff, maybe a bit more of a variety. Every time I try to go out with a photographer, I’m thinking about the biggest or best thing I can do and then I just end up 50/50-ing everything and it just
doesn’t make for any variety. J: I think this interview, photo wise especially, really reflects the you that I know, and the you that our friends hang out with every day rather than just maybe the big hammers and stuff. S: Yeah. Well I mean there is not many big hammers these days anyway… J: It’s a more genuine representation of you going out skating S: Yeah it’s good not to feel the pressure.
Jono Power, FS nollie heelflip Photo: Frost
Justin Pountney, Wallride nollie Photo: Frost
Nick Barlow, 2017.
Justin Lanz Photo: Lyddiard
BS tailslide Photo: Nash
For stickers DM nudes to @hfoot1
Sam Fairweather, Switch no-comply wallie Photos: Frost
Jason Campbell, FS boardslide Photo: Nash
Here’s something you might not know about Marcus Dixon: He hates Hugh Jackman. He thinks he’s too wholesome. One time on a skate trip to Bathurst, we went back to a local stranger’s house to party after the pubs had shut. Not long after we got through the front door, Marcus’s clothes had disappeared and he was dancing and performing karaoke to the 8 Mile soundtrack. Have you seen The Boy From Oz? I reckon they’ve got more in common than he thinks.
Marcus Dixon, FS Olive python Photo: Ryan Littlejohns
Jason Campbell, BS Crooked grind Photo: Wojcik
Jason Campbell, Shove-it Heelflip Photo: Wojcik
Words: Mark Wojcik. It’s amazing how closely a skater’s style on a board reflects who they are as a person. Jase is no exception. His tricks are cleanly crafted and sewn together, like the way he puts together an outfit, or pieces together audio to form a music track. When I started skating as a teen, Jase was one of the older, more advanced guys we all looked up to. It’s a pleasure to skate with him now, amongst a group with a healthy atmosphere that encourages and pushes each other to do their best on a board.
Photo: Lyddiard
Jack Gray, Boardslide Photo: Ty Neilson
Photo: Lyddiard
Photo: Magin
Ricky Thompson, Boardslide Photo: Turvey
Jim, Olly, Marcus Photo: Nash
Photo: Nash
Andrew Nash Photo: Lyddiard
COVER PHOTO: Turvey BACK COVER ILLUSTRATION: Dixon Email: James_turvey@hotmail.com @sprawlers