Issue No1 2006
Dirty Sanchez Interview Horsey Quick Fire Aaron Rose Mathias Ringstrom War of the Roses Peter Cook
UK £2.95 EU €4.75
Editorial
Transcending adrenalin of joy and fear, guarding their garden’s with ritual preparations for battle. The neighbours primed for conflict in a toasted trance, devoured by the heat of the solstice with sun stroked, fiery, twisted principles. A fantasy induced, deluded feud, flailing hedge trimmers, laid to rest in the dust cracked earth. The dead dug to floral bed, painting the roses red. Hello, welcome to the blunder dome, please wipe your feet before you enter this mag, infact can you leave your shoes by the door, just want you to feel comfortable, actually I think I can smell dog shit!............Tea?.....Coffee? Where have you been?, I heard that you had a bit of a breakdown, yes those pills are good, I can see that they help, anyway….. help yourself to biscuits. Pure positivity in a sparkling crystal glass decanter, slices of negativity, top to toe on a bed of rocket salad. Crust’s of sun dried tomato bread standing at the edge of the plate, ready to step in if things get a bit messy. Posh ghetto lunches are too much like hard work, all I wanted was a well balanced meal.
It was a dark night, they always are, mummy, can you leave the landing light on? Extreme bloggers, relaxed the key tapping to reflect on a hard nights bitch. I’ve signed up for “motivational speech therapy” with some new aged, American, online cult, They are called Tongue, Drawn and Quilty. Picking the borders of a two day scab is how I relax, I really should take up knitting. When you bash your head, all your senses come together to create the sixth sense, It’s fear, it smells like burnt mahogany, don’t go into the light! How many senses does it take to eat a light bulb? Did you see the new celebrity reality game show “Smile, you are on fire?”
“Lets get emotional”, “OK! I’m free at 3pm”, ”That’s fine, what shall we be emotional about?” “ Oh!, I am what I wear and you are what you eat”, “Wow, I want to cry already”. There is not much satisfaction in a short grind, yet long grinds can grind you down, you just can’t win. You can’t buy style, you can’t buy love, but you can get two for one gnarlyness at Tesco, just look in the freezer next to micro pizza. When the dust settled, the dust mites built a dust man and had a dust ball fight. I might change my name, this one doesn’t fit any more, when I got it it was in fashion, but now I’m just a laughing stock. What’s wrong with Ermintude anyway? There was this tired lady on the tube train, yawning. As her mouth opened, seven little fish heads, eyes bulging, peeked out, a new day and the fish were ready for a busy one. “Oh No!”, said one of the fish,” we are on the wrong train!“. Later that day an empty pilchard tin was stacked on a supermarket shelf and seven little fish heads signed on the dole. I hope you like this, the first Trisickle magazine ever in the history of the world, Yes with infinity all things which are possible can come true, there may be another Trisickle magazine in a parallel Universe, but that one is probably more up market than this one. Regards, Ged Wells
Contents Editorial 2 Bulletin The Brain 4 Epic 6 Revolution 12 Tri’fool 14 Dirty Sanchez Interview 18 Mudchute 22 Terrain in the Membrane 26 Horsey Quick Fire 29 Dirty Weekend 37 Trinkets 40 Don Brider 44 Terrain in the Membrane 46 Gulliver’s travels 48 Aaron Rose 50 Stoke Jam 54 Rogue Skateboards 58 Mathias Ringstrom 61 Bugbear 70 War of the Roses 72 Publiciouse 82 Peter Cook: How Very Interesting 84 Spong 86 Bestival 88 TriSpace 90 Photo: Nice Guy Steve
Results 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Park news
“Dreamland” skatepark at Saffron Walden has postponed work until after Christmas. Central skatepark in Manchester is now open! It’s an indoor park featuring bowl, mini, etc Gravity ramps have won the contract to build Dartford’s new skatepark after a week long online pole, voted for by skaters, asking them what they wanted out of a skatepark. Dartford Borough Council is funding the £70,000 skate bowl whilst Groundwork Kent Thame-side is funding the plaza with a £50,000 grant from Barclays Spaces for Sport.
Events
Pioneer skatepark in St Albans are hosting a fund raiser skate jam on Saturday 18th November, 12pm-7pm, £6 entry. All money raised will go towards developing and expanding the park in the new year. Ramp City in Blackpool is hosting the Deathrace 2006 on Saturday 9th December, 6pm - midnight. Come in fancy dress. This year’s competition features; -around the park death race -mini ramp death match -best trick comps Caught in the crossfire’s second annual xmas jam is at bay66 on Saturday 5th December, 12pm – 6pm. It once again features UK pro jam and unsponsored competitions. Check out www.caughtinthecrossfire. com for more info! The Satori Movements latest videography offering “Mapping time in space” Premiers next year, the dates being -24th January – London - TBC -25th January – Bristol – TBC -26th January – Cast in Manchester – 6pm -27th January – The works, Leeds – 8pm -28th January – Bones park, Bolton – 8pm For more info ring Crutch on 0161 839 5639
Andy Scott, UK++ Ivan Rivado Alvarex, ES Alain Giokoetxea, ES John Magnusson, SE Anders Tellen, DE
A Third foot have kick started a new collaboration project with skater owned shops in the UK to offer good prices and high quality products, bridging the gap between Chinese boards. So keep your eyes out for them in the near future…
News New pro model trucks out now for Jamie Thomas and Erik Ellington on Thunder. Jamie’s is a ltd edition “Hallowings” truck available in electric orange and mat black, and Erik’s is a “nightvision” model coming out in metallic black. Andrew Reynolds new company, Alamont clothing hit shops back on Halloween, featuring the creativity of Fos and Bryan Herman. Plan B recently acquired Brian Wenning. His pro model is in the pipeline and has footage on the teaser DVD “live after death”. On other Plan B news, Danny Way also has a limited edition slayer deck out soon, so be sure to check it out at your local stockiest. Habitat have branched out to form a Europe chapter of their team, consisting of Mike Mcdernott from Canada, Petr Horvat from Poland, Gunez Ozdogen from Sweden, Adrian Morales from Spain and Manuel Margeitter from Austria. The Globe bowl bash went off last month in Eindhoven ‘s Area 51 skatepark, with the UK’s very own Andy Scott beating off other top euro vert riders to walk away with 1st place.
Over at the Death camp, Aussie rider Dean Palmer is recovering from two broken arms (get well soon mate!) and Zarosh is the latest addition to the death revolution. Watch out for his board artwork appearing soon. As well as those, check out the collaboration shoe with VOX, be quick to get a pair, as they are ltd editions! Fos is back in London after excursions to Lisbon and the US, and currently working on artwork for a new DVD. Watch out for some new heroin products, including sets of 59’s urethane dropping in the near future… Ennvi’s Mark Bryan is scheduled for 2 more ops on his shoulder and should be back to full health and ripping again by next summer! Marc Churchill has left Santa Cruz and bagged himself a new home on Creature skateboards, a good investment for the company if his recent performance at War of the Roses is anything to go by! John Tanner and Adam Aulaqi have recently been snapped up by Karma, joining Amir Williams who is on the mend after his major knee surgery. New brand out of Germany called Hessenmob, a collaboration of artists and skaters, are currently working on a soon to be released video “the kids are all ride” check www.hessenmob.de for more info.
Epic Epic- free session event. (Saturday 23 sept 2006) Written by Chris Johnson Photography by Chris Johnson Alex Fage
If someone mentions Birmingham within the context of skateboarding, depending upon the generation in which the individual belongs, the most common responses are The Wheels Project, Aston University, Central television, the short lived Skate Extreme and in more recent years Epic skate park. Birmingham has been the central hub for skateboarding in the Midlands throughout the generations, but a slump in mainstream popularity, the mindset of the City Council towards skateboarders in the Central Business District and the growing number of skate parks in neighbouring towns and cities has lead to a disbanding of the scene. In light of this, Epic skate park threw a free skate event which would involve the collaboration of the skater owned shops within its catchment area. Casino (Leicester), Ride (Coventry), Spine (Worcester) and Ideal (Birmingham) were sent posters and a guest list, the idea being if you signed up and turned up on the night then you could skate for free. I contacted Chris at Spine on the morning of the event to see if he’d had any interest from his customers, to my delight the shop guest list was filling up nicely. Upon my arrival at the park I was amazed by how busy the usually desolate surrounding streets were with parked cars hosting skateboard related stickers and paraphernalia. I entered the park from behind the main street course to be confronted by the endless grin and man like skills of Birmingham’s own ‘Little Jack’ hammering the life out of the flat bank. After a few ritual high fives and Solihull handshakes from ‘Gnargore’ and ‘The Party Team’ respectively, it became apparent that there was a full scale street session in progress. By the time I had chance to set up the flashes and figured out how exactly I was going to get
anywhere near what was becoming an impenetrable stream of carnage, Ideal local Ross ‘The Boss’ Mc Cabe was locking into frontside feebles down the pyramid rail. The hectic nature of any event of this scale and the skate park ethos in general granted me a split second to pounce face down onto the driveway in time to capture the effortlessness of Ross’s backside Lipslide down the aforementioned rail. The street session continued at its current pace for some time and bore witness to a host of talents including local ripper Arran Burrows who bolted a hefty flip fakie from quarter to flatbank. The dominance of the street session eased off around nine o
Phil Shore
clock as the emphasis was placed upon the three foot high vertical tombstone which appeared to have been innocently placed on the main transition of the bowls’ deep end without suggestion. Hesitation did not appear to be an option and within minutes the tombstone became a catalyst for oneupmanship as Wig and Tom from Stourbridge’s’ very own ‘Gnargore’ collective were at logger heads until Tom was successful in conquering the much sort after frontside layout. Not content with success on the street course, Arran Burrows hurled himself into a number of frontside 5-0 attempts and Ride representative and local Coventry head, Darryl gave the extension a further thrashing
with a text book frontside rock n’ roll to the delight of the growing crowd. Some understandably avoided the tombstone and any further injury that can be associated with such an obstacle, in particular Worcester bowl rider and all round nice guy Matt effortlessly cruised round finding the perfect lines to compliment his relaxed surf style. As the session drew to a close, Spine rider Alex Fage boosted a massive frontside Indy grab over the hip that sits within Epics’ undulating bowl. As the night drew on my attention was drawn towards the far end of the park as the majority of the remaining attendants swarmed around the Wembley styled step up gap. The night was no longer in its infancy and around ten o clock there was a definite feeling of ‘now or never’
in the air. Situated on the opposing side of the obstacle to myself was Newbury’s ‘CMS’ crew filmer Jon was becoming dizzy due to the constant assault upon the step up. Alex Fage’s ever growing popularity with he kids grew when he hammered home a frontside nosegrind revert along the kicker to flat bar into he arms of Birmingham’s very own ‘Party Team’. Ross Mc Cabe countered the dominant flow of the session and after a potentially session ending slam, landed a solid smith grind down Epic’s main handrail.
Although the midi and vert ramp were not a central focus for the majority, it’s not to say that they were overlooked by all. As the end of the night was drawing near, the midi ramp became a safe haven for all of those too exhausted to still power their own movement and was the furthest point from where we were being encouraged to exit the park. Most approached the midi with a cool down ideology where as Worcester local and master of the transfer. Charlie Carver took the plunge and crossed over from the vert into the recently repositioned midi ramp right on the buzzer. If the main objective of the event was to (re) unite skateboarders from Birmingham and the surrounding districts, then the evening was a complete success,
Andy F
“Everyone just bro-ed down together, everyone’s talking, picking up everyone’s’ boards regardless of where they re from… and there was just a really good vibe”
Tom Gillespie
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Ross McCabe
Revolution Skate Park, located in Kent, is shutting down and needs your support. We arrived at Revolution around 10 o’clock to see the park for the first time,
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instantly noticing the half pipe/vert which got sessioned hard by most, a nice mini/spine combo for the little ones and an amazing but slippery midi ramp. The street course was good, even though a little compact, with smooth lines and friendly locals, a good vibe was felt thought-out the park. The comp got underway with the high jump comp first most entered for a laugh but the men were separated from the boys after 3 ft, finally coming down to a 3 man battle at 4 ft with one Marcus Adams taking the win being the only one to successfully clear 4 ft and ride away. Shortly after, the highest ollie comp commenced. Twenty minutes of ollies later and Ash Gulliver came out on top ollieng an amazing 30 inches. After the fun and games were out the way it was time to get down to business with the under 16s Category, definitely pushing themselves to impress the judges. Loads of tricks went down in the ten minute jam session including 14 year old Josh P landing a Nollie Heelflip over the driveway just about as clean as possible, also landing a stylish kickflip off the box to place him in 3rd. Toby s came in second leaving Luke b. to take the win. Bob Bennett took best trick with a tasty primo slide over the full length of the driveway. After the interval, it was time for the big guns to take the stage. In the warm up it was clear that all entrants were on form, the comp format was three ten minute jams with ten people to a group, every skater with bags of smooth and consistent runs. Dave Edwards using all the course flowing round with speed, took third place. Coming up in second place was Awohd form London (repping half pipe skateshop, dc shoes) with some
• Revolution opened it’s doors for the first time in spring 1998 • Soon after, the park hosted its first ever demo by Santa Cruz, with Tim Brauch, Chet Childress and Darren Navarette all ripping the park up! • After TV interviews, petitions and newspaper articles, Thanet Community Development trust stepped in, in 2001 to stop the park from being turned into a plastics manufacturing site. • The park then undertook alterations, dividing it into a separate street course and ramp area, increasing the mini ramp width to 32ft. The park also received “skatelite” treatment throughout. • Annual skate competitions have always been a key event, bringing together the local skate communities and well supported by the industries offering prizes, the most recent being the S.O.S comp back in August • Rent negotiations currently cloud over the parks future, with survival only guaranteed until Christmas; so go down and check the park out if your in the area! If negotiations are successful, a facelift and alterations for the park is planned for the future! Check out www.revolskatepark. co.uk for more info, or
huge airs all around the park to finish off with a frontside feeble down the handrail. In first place was Aaron Sweeney (repping gleam skateboards, dvs shoes and halfpipe skateshop) busting out a massive backside 360 over the volcano, salad down the handrail, finishing off rock fakie on the 16 ft vert wall. After the Street comp, the session went on to the mini, loads of tricks went down and there were a few snakes in the grass, busting out unexpected tricks. After the results were announced and the prizes done it was time for the free give away, with independent, duffs and Etnies all
generous to donate prizes to giveaway. The results for the jam were as follows:16+ 1st Aaron.Sweeney 2nd Adwdh 3rd Dave Edwards The results for the under 16’s comp are as follows: 1st Luke.B 2nd Toby.S 3rd Josh.P
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Revolution Skatepark Ltd Oakwood Industrial Estate Dane Valley Road St. Peters Broadstairs Kent CT10 3JJ T: (01843) 866707/866706 E: info@revolutionskatepark.co.uk
How did the idea for oldskaters come about? I registered the domain way back in 2000, as a simple hub, full of links of interest to the “older” skater, such as; Surrey Skateboards, International Longboarder magazine, Skateboarder mag archives etc. I put up a page of links to different sites; the hype was beginning to build for the release of the Dogtown and Z-Boys film. At the premiere screening at The Ritzy in Brixton I saw a bunch of old faces, some I hadn’t seen in many years, they were all coming out of the woodwork for the nostalgia trip. Later, I stumbled across a bunch of wigglers in Hyde Park who were still setting up slalom courses, friends since the 70’s “grown ups” with families but they were still 100% skateboarders. There was lots of talk about “what happened to so and so, do you remember the time when, it would be cool to meet up with them again?” So I decided to change the site into more of a forum so that skaters could find out what had happened to the guys they used to skate with in the past, or find out what the pro’s and companies that hadn’t been in the limelight for a while were up to and get in touch with them. The ripples of nostalgia started as more transition based parks were being built again, Concrete Wave magazine was getting wider distribution, Jocko Weyland’s excellent “The Answer Is Never” book being published. Bigg er bellies, wider boards, softer wheels, head to toe padding were more common sight at parks around the world. A lot of people were cautiously stepping back on boards (like the ones they were riding 20 plus years ago) and in some cases skating better than they did then as well.
How big is the old skater network? The forum went live in the summer of 2002 and now, a little over 4 years later has 800 plus registered members, mainly UK and US, but with visitors, T-Shirts and free stickers sent to addresses all over the world Nowadays the retro part of the industry is huge, eBay is still seeing insane prices paid for old, Thrasher is 25 years old, Bennett trucks, Bulldog boards, YoYo, Gyro’s and Cadillac wheels are back and folks of all ages are getting misty-eyed and sentimental about old boards, tricks and spots.
How did the oldskaters logo come about? The reason behind the faux yellow pages imagery was two-fold; appropriating logos is a practice as old as skate graphics themselves, so I picked a strong one to spoof. To promote the site, I liked the idea of how Shephard Fairey was spreading the word about Obey, so I asked Chicken (Screaming Squeegees/Pocket Pistols) in Huntingdon Beach to print a load of stickers, which I send out to anyone who wants them, anywhere in the world, after all, how many old skaters are there world wide - 10 million, I figure there’s always going to be an audience for the site?
Who is the oldest skater? I’m not sure who’s the oldest visitor or how old the youngest ones are, but most people over the age of 10 have at some point been asked the question “aren’t you a little old to be riding one of those useless wooden toys?” so really we’re all old skaters.
Do you think skating is burnt into the brain and we will still be obsessed when we are 90? I can’t imagine a time when I’m not interested in skating anymore. It’s been 29 years so far and even though I find a lot of the Retro/old School vs. new school stuff very dull. I have never been a fan of reminiscing about how the good old days were better (they weren’t). Everything about skating is better now than it was before - the progression, the equipment and the terrain keep improving and are more inspiring than ever before, I’m still skating everyday and plan to until my legs fall off, at which point I’ll still be reading, watching and getting motivated by it. Cheers, Tony
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Trisickle Magazine
Media Vision Publication Ltd 30 Quay Street Newport Isle of Wight PO30 1QU T. 01983 532177
Editor: Ged Wells
ged.wells@trisickle.co.uk
Junior Sub-Editor: Marti Morris marti.morris@trisickle.co.uk Art Director: Steve Darlington Art Assistant: Jamie Geoghegan Publisher: Danny Jackson
danny.jackson@mvpublications.co.uk
Advertising and Marketing: Shaun Jones
shaun.jones@mvpublications.co.uk
Homegrown Writer: Chucky Editorial Contributors: Chris Johnson Marcus Adams Gorm Pete King Ash Gulliver Andy Holmes Jake Seal Jenna Selby Bugbear Scott Wilson Tom Hodgkinson Adam Hartly Nina Cullinane
Photography/Image Contributors: Jonas Jarmen Chris Johnson Nice Guy Steve Mark at Revolution Richard Walton Martin Allen Matt Pritchard Lee Dainton Gorm Rob Falcon Styley Jack Forester Andrew Willis Simon Wells Jake Seal Jenna Selby Bugbear Darren Tate GP Clack
Aaron Sweeney
Content of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or part without permission of the publisher, media vision publication ltd under the copywrite designs and patent act of 1988. Trisickle Magazine tries to maintain that all information contained is correct. All views expressed are opinions of the writers, interviewees or illustrators, and not the editorial staff or publishers views. Media Vision publication ltd cannot be held responsible for views shared by third parties.
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Photo: Krip
taking ages to land a trick, land it, feel proper chuffed, then wait for the reply of “that was rubbish” or “sketchy”, so fucking what, its not as if we are pro’s, or sponsored or anything, stop taking a hobbie so seriously ok, I’m off round all their russian houses to turn off their computers and give them a stern telling off. you can always trust those of the lowest inteligence possible to provide entertainment i wouldn’t be stoked if i was wearing those gloves you think that’s crazy? you should’ve seen the girl he poked in Liverpool isn’t pernod the only alchoholic drink for sale only to people UNDER the age of 18? “government warning: must only be consumed in park playground on the swings, outside closed shops, at a tomy(tm) ‘my first house party’ when the parents have gone on holiday to kos and right before lose of virginity” I’m too old to be emo I’d never get the fringe. Plus I don’t have any emotions due to being incredibly hardcore. “we’re sooooo civillised we made this massive bomb to show you how civillised we are!” “yeh well we’re gunna make a bigger bomb cause we’re well more civallised than you.” stop the world i want to get off.
Due to a recent “Grey squirrel” scare, the Isle of Wight council have decided to take necessary steps to combat the problem that looks to endanger the rare red squirrels found within the Island. The proposed idea to combat the problem is to paint existing grey squirrels red, and if the plan is successful; to introduce the plan in other areas of the country. A representative for the council also said “If the plan works, there’s nothing stopping us from introducing purple or even blue squirrels into the environment.” Internet addiction support group, avoid Internet dependency – log onto www. internetaddictionsupportgroup. com
Walking up ramps by Chucky Over the last couple of years I’ve noticed I walk up ramps quite a lot. I don’t mind but I’d prefer to walk up a ladder like a normal human being rather than take a run up and scramble up the transition like a maniac. Anyway, here are some photos of people walking up ramps. One of them is me, the other, Rob Cooper. When I looked at these photos I thought the subject matter amazing, I also noted the contrast and depth of field in each.
In photo A I like to think that I keep on walking up into the sky until I reach the hemisphere where I can see the curvature of the earth’s horizon. I’d stay for a moment but the air would become thin and I’d find it difficult to breath so eventually I’d have to come back down. I’d take exactly the same route as I walked up and step back onto the platform of the Redbull ramp. People would ask me ‘where did you go’ and I’d turn round, smile, and simply reply, ‘just for a walk’. In photo B Rob is walking up the ramp, I think this was just after he did a frontside ollie. He steps, ponders and reflects, wondering about the vagaries of life.
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M. Hi guys, so how has everything been going? P. The last few years since Sanchez first happened, has been quite nuts actually. The last few weeks we have been promoting (the new film) really, just doing interviews and that sort of stuff, and been partying like fuck haha D. Same old shit but a whole lot more people running around for us for some stupid reason.
M. Where are you off to for the premiers? P. The world premier was in Cardiff, with the general release the day after. D. Next we have to go to Australia, going to some premiers in Melbourne and Sydney in October, and a company in the states have bought the film for out there, so when they get a rating for it we will go out and do promo for it out there. Oh I don’t know, in my toilet. P. Apparently it may be getting banned in Ireland?
M. Is it that bad? D. Don’t know, I haven’t seen it yet! P. I got an email yesterday on myspace, asking if it was true, is it going to be banned in Ireland as they haven’t got a classification for it yet? I don’t know, fingers crossed, just got to wait for the censorship. But fingers crossed, if the Americans have got it, Ireland should
take it; you know what the Americans are like.
M. How did the plan for doing a Dirty Sanchez film come about? D. It was something joked about since day one really, the fact we had one series was a joke,, and then we got 3 series and like MTV offer you a movie, I think it was, just erm, subliminal, ask John cattle he should know he’s Psychic.
M. Is it along the same lines as the TV series or is there a different spin on it? D. It’s totally different to the series, well we are the same people and end up doing same thing, but there’s actually a story to it. P. Well loosely based upon the seven deadly sins, so it’s a story basically about us going around the world going to different countries doing a different sin. We all sat down and had a meeting, came up with seven deadly sins and went from there. The start of the movie… D...Nah don’t say anything. Basically, the difference between a TV series and movie, is you have a Movie budget , plus the people that govern TV, the censorship laws are so strict, compared to that where you make a film mean you can get away with fucking shit loads more. So with all that money
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a fucking aeroplane and more or less no rules, you can make hell. So we went off and pretty much got deported from every country we went to. But ended up making a fucking movie based upon the seven deadly sins!
M. Who else is involved in the film? P. Um, just us four idiots really, Howard Marks, he’s the devil. D. We had like 350 grand put in for like the opening sequence, which we needed because we had all these massive explosions, yeah that was pretty cool.
M. Is there any particular stunt that was your favourite to film/do? P. For me, my favourite stunt was I tried to beat the world record for the most hits by a paintball gun to a human body. It’s just something that came into my head, when we started doing paintballing in the first series. I just thought ah I wouldn’t mind trying to break the record for taking the most hits to my body. I found out it was done by a guy taking 102 in New South Wales in Australia. So I thought fuck it, Im going to go. So I went to Russia and erm, I took 103 and I was in absolute agony, but if you watch the film you will see what happened. D. Basically, a lot of the film is geared around the whole Pritchard Vs Dainton thing, were Dirty Sanchez came from, the whole rivalry thing. We just took it to the next level, like shit that went on in the film, I just though shit, what more can we do to each other except kill each other.
M. Anything that was even too bad for this film? P. Ah there were a lot of things that didn’t actually make it into the film, D. Like sacking shit from a rabbits ass didn’t make it on there haha. P. But they will all make the DVD, so it should have like 4 hours of extras.
speaking on behalf of Dainton here, but my favourite was Thailand. Bangkok was good for a few days but then we went to an Island called pipi, and that was just absolutely fucking amazing, the weather, the people, the food, ah it was just like paradise! It was so good that when we went to go, I nearly Cried, I just didn’t want to leave. (Laughter) D. Arizona, out of all the places we visited, Arizona was amazing for skating. The best weather, the best skateparks. We found the bowls in the desert that were in the old Santa Cruz videos, the Love bowls, and skate wise it was just amazing. Dominica was sick as well, the last place we went to, where we did greed. Our hotel had a 60ft wide mini ramp, the platform went onto the bar, and the bar onto the beach. You could surf there, drink there and skate there, ah it was amazing.
M. Who thinks up the stunts for the film? P. Well, when ever we went somewhere for the seven deadly sins, we had some stunts that were involved with the sins, but the best stuff comes from spontaneity or off the cuff. Like in Russia we were locked in a dormantry, and most of the best stuff just came off the cuff, like when Pancho would fall asleep and are we going to turn him into this, or that. Everywhere we went we had set stunts we wanted to do, but yeah just comes into head, lets turn the camera on and just fucking do it. D. Another thing that helps is, I thought we would have run out of shit to do by now, but because we keep getting put into different scenarios and situations, like alien to us, we just end up fucking with out situations, so its fucking endless you know. Not that I ever want to go back to Russia again and freeze my dick off in like minus 30. You couldn’t do fuck all in Russia because it was like too cold, except when they locked us in the Dorm and couldn’t escape each other with the Russian Vodka, Pertinko, It was gnarly man, we got the best footage in Russia, but it was all indoors in the warm, not outside in the cold!
M. Were there any stunts that even you two refused to do?
M. Any funny stories whilst you were filming? D. Pancho (Laughter) I tell you one funny story, we were up filming in the French Alps and we fucked around with him, he was asleep and woke up and freaked out and was like “right get me a taxi, I’m going home” Were in the French alps Panch, “No where not” No, we fucking are, he walked out the door and into a blizzard, he thought we were back in Cardiff!
D. There’s loads of shit I won’t do, and there is loads of things he won’t do, but between all of us someone will do it. There are things you don’t want to do because you don’t know what will happen to you, so you have to trick people into doing things. You know they aren’t going to undo. Like Pancho, when he falls asleep, he isn’t going to want to be turned into the incredible hulk is he, but we painted him green and cut his clothes up and when he woke up he looked like David Banner off the incredible hulk.
Another funny story is being chased out of Japan by the Acusa, Japanese Mafia, which was quite funny, because of something we did. Ah we also got locked up in Russia by the Presidents guards and being told that we were filming outside the Kremlin, so we has to pay our way of jail.
P. I think the worse thing for me isn’t doing the stunts but it’s jumping on fucking 14 flights in a month, I can’t stand flying and jumping on all those planes is horrible, especially different countries, dodgy fucking airports and dodgy fucking aeroplanes.
P. It actually wasn’t funny at the time, they put us into the big van to take us to the cell, we just looked at each other and neither of us was laughing, we were both proper shitting ourselves. Because you know what the Russians are like, they have got all those hidden stones and spy stuff. We just thought we were never going to see anyone again, and just get looked up forever!
D. Something we didn’t want to do, but had to do was spend 2 fucking days in the desert in the blistering heat where you die in like 3 or 4 days with no food or water. We was eating cactus for water, and you couldn’t drink it you had to munch on it to get the water out. Well anyways, on the 3rd day a guy called Myke hawk, sounds like my cock if you say it quick enough, took us to the desert and starved us and presented us with an array of
So when the Yakuza happened, we just thought, fucking hell, what next, let’s just get out here quick.
M. So you went to seven different countries, what was your favourite? P. Well my favourite location, I know Im not
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desert animals and insects to kill and eat. We had to stab tarantulas and scorpions, chickens and shit and cook it.
M. So it was a pretty low budget film, did you have to cut many corners to meet? D. $3million dollars isn’t a bad amount now is it? Im sure most of it was spent on PR cunts (laughter) as Im sure it wasn’t spent on accommodation (laughter) We spent it on plane flights, alcohol, fucking hotel rooms that we smashed up and ladyboys. P. That’s why Dainton doesn’t like Thailand.
M. So back to the start, how did the original concept of Dirty Sanchez come about? Was it simply a Hybrid of Pritchard Vs Dainton? D. Yeap that’s exactly what it is
M. How did it get onto MTV? P. We didn’t try, we just made Pritchard Vs Dainton for the skate industry. Me and him thought that we would just capture what we always did as we were known in the industry for being dickheads when we turned up anywhere. So lets capture some proper skateboarding and get some good sections from various people. And it went out to the skate industry, and then magazines like FHM and Loaded got interested in it. Then a channel four programme called Passengers phoned us up a nd spent a day or two filming what we got up to, and the next thing we know is when Im working at globe I get a phone call from MTV asking if we can come in for a meeting? Acting all cool on the phone, I rang up Dainton who thought I was winding him up, went for a meeting and here we are now. D. Originally MTV wanted us to go and find the countries most fucked up people on a show called shock idol. We laughed our cocks off, shock idol what the fuck, we were like what do you mean, we are the most fucked up people, here we are. So we showed them Pritchard vs. Dainton, then left and the next day got a call, we want you back, we want to do a series with you. We just said, you follow us around, us being us, skateboarders, fucking around and you got a TV series. Then that snowballed into the shit you got today.
M. What about the name Dirty Sanchez? Is there a hidden meaning behind the obvious? D. It came about that when we started filming the show for MTV we didn’t have a name. We were just filming and had to come up with a name, and whilst filming we were just giving each other a lot of dirty Sanchez’s and just fucking each other over. Some names we came up with were like C U Next Tuesday so it read c**t in the listings, but when it came to it, because we had been giving each other a load of dirty Sanchez’s, we thought what about Dirty Sanchez and it just stuck.
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M. What’s your favourite Sanchez memory or experience? P. Ah now that’s a hard one, there’s too many too name! D. I have got a crowning moment of glory; chilli sauce in your eyes, and as your washing it out, pouring Persil soap powder back into your hands, and washing soap power back in to get the chilli sauce out. Ah and also nailing… P…Most people always go on about those two things don’t they; the persil moment, and oh I don’t know why I trusted him, back in the day I did, today I wouldn’t but oh, lets nail your cock onto a plank of wood, ok, tap tap tap, got fucking stuck and he dragged me round the house, “Don’t Daint, you’ll ruin the tendons.” It only came out because I was sweating so much because I was shitting myself. Thank god I didn’t have to go to Hospital with a bit of wood nailed to my cock!
M. You must have been asked for or to do random things by fans, what’s been the most bizarre? P. Can I slap you in the face? No, most random…. D. Jump off the building bud; do a jackass (laughs) go on do a jackass. Ah yeah and some bird, some groupie come up to me and was like I want to lick your ring piece, I was like I got piles you don’t want to do that haha
M. What about celebrities, who really surprised you by recognising you? D. This is your forte isn’t it Pritch? P. Ah yeah, yeah we have met a few celebrities in and around Cardiff, Stuart Cable of the stereophonic, he’s a top bloke. Mark Williams, 2 times world snooker
champ, Lisa Lashes the hard house DJ, got on with her like a house on fire, I actually MC’ed for a set of hers at the Cardiff Festival a couple of weeks back. D. Johnny Vegas, big fan, um, there are tons of celebrities; I hate to use the term celebrities because it’s gay, there are just loads of famousesque you wouldn’t think of. From different TV shows and bands you wouldn’t think of. P. Howard Marks was good, we did an interview with him on radio one. The next time I met him was at the Solar Bar in Cardiff where I usually go drinking, we had a party at my house after, and we were awake partying for 3 days solid.
M. Has a prank ever been taken too far? I noticed in series 3 that Pritchard got close to loosing it after Dainton shaved his hair off? P. Looking back it’s all fucking funny, but yeah he drove me nuts on the 3rd series. You have seen
the third series haven’t you? I was almost crying at one point on a beach in Portugal, when I tried to hide Daint’s jacket, and he wasn’t even there and he knew his jacket was in the sand, and I was just like fuck! Am I ever going to get you back? When he shaved my hair, it was just the icing on the cake for me, 3 years of growing my hair… D.… He was so fucked I was even telling him I was doing it.
M. So Daint, you took part in the big push, how come there wasn’t any skating in it from you? D. If I could have got any more footage on there I would have been superman! I filmed the whole thing plus I drove the whole thing, So if I wasn’t driving, we would dive down to a spot and I would be filming six skaters, and as soon as they were done it was, lets go to the next place so I never got the chance to put anything down. If they were like, do you want to skate now; I was like I have just been driving for three hours, filmed for three hours and Im fucked! So when there was time it was like 4 in the morning!
M. Whose Idea was it to get you involved, or was it just something you wanted to do yourself? D. I’ve always wanted to go on the big push since they started it last year. So this year I got the opportunity basically, because I can drive and film, and obviously I like to skate so they had the package didn’t they. Zorlac’s cool as fuck man, they got this sick van, Ricky Oyola, and the rest of the Death team, it was sick, yeah I’d do it again man, but without the driving, because your sat around, you cant fuck around, cant get pissed, well I suppose it’s a good thing.
M. Are either of you two skating much at the moment? P. Im too busy hanging out with celebrities (laughter) D. We Just skated 200 miles from Cardiff to Newquay for Cancer research. P. That was fucking good! Hard work but really good! D. Sleeping rough on the top of cliffs and at the bottom of Skate Park bowls,
M. Who came up with the Charity skate to board masters? D. Just an idea we both wanted to do, we were going to do another route with Joyce and Pancho and make a show out of it, but fuck it boardmasters is coming up, lets skate there instead, raise some money for charity, and get fit…and have a big argument on the way down there!. P. It was the million mile argument wasn’t it. Constantly arguing, it was a competition to see who get there first and who could raise the most money for charity.
M. Did anyone else join you along for part of the journey? D. Cates came along, he was a wicked laugh! He was Mr Motivator, only like another 195 miles to go lads; come on you can do it. He lasted the whole race as well. P. Yeah and on a small board, we had long boards. An absolute laugh, you know what he’s like, constantly taking the piss!
M. Who won the competition in the end? P. I won the race, but he managed to win the money, so more or less it was a draw. We had this rule with the buckets of money, and the deal was if you leave the bucket unattended except for in the van, the other person is allowed to have a free grab out of it. We were staying in a hotel one night, and I got out to the car and thought shit, the money its in the room, and as I walked in, there it was, he had his hand in and grabbed all the notes! D. It’s not Pritchard Vs Dainton for fucking nothing!
M. Which ones of you went along for the gumball 3000, didn’t Joycey drive? P. I was supposed to be doing it with him for the full duration, but certain things happened, i.e. Pancho. I was only there for the first day, went to the party, everyone is there in their Ferraris and Joycey is there in his angry pirate car, ready to go all the way, I knew I wasn’t so I got up on the roof, drove up to the top of the road past everyone, got off and got the tube home (laughter) I was proper pissed off! D. There is no way in the world that I am going to get in a car with that fucking dick, doing an around the world journey. There is no way id get in Joyce’s car; he thinks he’s Michael Schumacher, he’s a fucking Looney! I would have done it in my own fucking car, but in with that penis, no fucking chance.
M. So what are your plans for the future? New series of Sanchez – or has it run its course? D. Well to be honest, we don’t even think about anything like that because from day one it’s always been them chasing us. So what ever comes, comes. We have got shit in the pipeline, there’s talk of a sequel.
M. Pritchard Vs Dainton 2 D. Yeap there is defiantly something bubbling there for you, Id say within the next year. So that’s something to keep your eyes peeled for. I can see us taking it back to the grass roots and evolving the whole Pritchard vs. Dainton thing to the next level which its all about.
M. Any stories to tell from doing it? D. It’s fucking Dangerous man, you can’t skate certain parts, big Lorries moving out, overtaking with Lorries coming in the other direction. It’s like we are raising money for charity and in the process might kill a ton of people in a road crash (laughter). He turned up on a skateboard in the rain at the start; I turned up on a motorised skateboard. I said it was a skate to Newquay, didn’t say what sort of skateboard. P. By the time we got to Newquay, our pushing leg Calf was actually notably bigger than the other, just from pushing.
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M. Section in deaths new video? D. The next death video, yeah, I’m going to have a better part! P. The next death video, I’m going to have…Jack shit! D. He likes Partying too much! You know what its like with skating, if your going to put something out, it has to be credible. You can’t just film us skating about having a laugh because kids want to see you breaking shit or landing gnarly shit. I’m not going to let someone film me doing a smith grind round a pool or something on a mini rump unless its something someone hasn’t done before. So you’re fucked aren’t you unless you have got like 6 months to go out and film a good video part. Ids rather have down a few credible things than a section just with the usual shit (laughter)
M. How about acting or stuntman work? P. Ah id love to be a stuntman, it’s been my lifelong dream! I guess this is the closest thing I can do to being a stuntman. I did a short film a little while ago, so yeah wouldn’t mind doing some acting. D. Me? I love filming skate videos, making skate videos and stuff, the production side of videos. So yeah, I’m going to be boring and stick to the filming and making of skate videos (laughter) and also torturing my friend for eternity
Mudchute
Skateparks at times are like buses, you wait ages for one to come then all of a sudden a load turn up at once. London at the moment is going through one of these phases. With 3 new parks opening in the big smoke this year, one of the first to feel urethane upon its surface this summer was Mudchute.
Kevin Parrot
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Photography & text by Gorm
The park is a refreshing change from the usual flatbank-funbox-quater that so many skatepark construction companies put out. Freestyle Skateparks have made use of an odd shaped area to come up with something fun and creative. The park is set up so that you can get lines real easy, or just hit up one spot. The park has something for almost every one (if you are looking for vert bowls head to Cantelows in November). Any Council that is looking to design and build a small park would do well to use this as a basis.
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Many heads have been down for sessions, rangeing from Southbank’s myskateordie crew, through to people like Chris Oliver, Brewster, Monster Network, Ross Mcgowen, Fos, and shit load more. Many a summertime sessions went down followed by beers in the pub down the road. Paul Gonnella
The Park is situated on the opposite end of Spindrift avenue (where there is free car parking). By Public transport, go to Mudchute DLR, then come out the side that is away from the park (trees and grass!), and it is a 5 minute skate down Spindrift Avenue. Enjoy! Photography & text by Gorm www.bulletclip.com
Mark Brewster
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looking at next. If we fear a big brother future where skating is banned from the streets, then we had better have adequate compensation for such a loss of freedom. Its impossible to imagine the construction of parks which will encompass the versatility, freedom of movement and menu of street terrain already discovered through skateboarding, ‘power to the people’.
Illustration: Wells & Too Good
Lets face it, fantasised skateboarding is a strange thing, but the imagination of movement through imagined terrain is a real driving force of skating’s progression. Tricks are imagined before attempted and terrain visuals actually stimulate the adrenalin creating greater need to go and skate. We use what we find, then as utilisation of a found terrain progresses we build them into our staple terrain menus. Our fantasy world grows and the limitations of environments are crushed.
New skate parks combine the bowls and banks of the 70s, the desperately homemade ramps of the 80s and the street furniture of the 90s. The realisation that we need more than traditional shapes to inspire progression has also boosted the imagination of skate park designers and is challenging the construction companies. In this decade the introduction of park features, which are inspirational, edgy and challenging to all, is becoming a new driving force. Parks are now becoming more organic, sculptural, concrete flowing from space to space creating more potential lines than previously segregated features, this also results in more skaters riding at the same time. Further challenges are introduced with the development of Plaza’s, starting as reconstructions of popular street terrain then developing into abstract landscapes with shapes more inspired by public sculpture than the restricted diet of urban furniture. In London there is a movement against cyclists using pavements, once such laws get tightened guess who the politically correct safety police will be
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Within this section of forthcoming issues of Trisickle we will focus on many areas of terrain, showing the cutting edges of park design with focus on the best park construction designers and construction companies, along with pictures of street furniture and architecture, not to provide arty pretty backgrounds but to inspire the imagination to skate. Sometimes this will be very abstract, pictures of an upside down world or your drawings from your imaginations. We will also look at public sculpture, featuring some artist’s realised works, models or drawings. Attempt to gain insight into an architects mind when designing public spaces. We will also reach back into history with pictures of dead skate parks and other much loved dead terrain. We would like to encourage you to send us terrain pictures of sculptures, parks, street furniture, natural terrain, terrain doodles and any visuals, which may inspire the imagination of skaters or park designers. We would like to encourage you to send us terrain pictures of sculptures, parks, street furniture, natural terrain, terrain doodles and any visuals, which may inspire the imagination of skaters or park designers. info@Trisickle.co.uk
Australian Skatepark Design and Construction Company Convic (www. convic.com), who designed and assisted with the construction of the worlds largest skatepark in Shanghai China (www.smpskatepark.com) is just finalizing the construction of Australia’s largest skatepark in popular Queensland tourist venue, Cairns. With around 2300 sq/m of rideable terrain, this park sits in an amazing high profile coastal location as part of the larger Cairns foreshore development. The focus of the park is two main bowled areas which include a vert corner, 3 foot high vert wall, 1 foot to 10 foot wide transfers hips and pockets and a central cradle (not shown on the design images). There are also a multitude of REAL plaza areas with hubbas, ledges, rails, banks and hips. The park has a number of grassed viewing areas for shade and watching the activity.
Adjacent to the skate space is a beach volleyball court and there is a nearby coastal beach lagoon swimming areas. This integrated park in such a high profile location sets the new standard in international competition quality skatepark provision in Australia.
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Photo: Styley
Quick Fire Horsey 29
something I’ve been doing for a long, long time and I’ve never really thought about it. I guess the answer is right now. Favorite trick/best achievement on a skateboard? Frontside stand up 5.0’s on ramp! It took me like 2 years to learn them but now I can do them it’s the best feeling
Name Horsey. Date of Birth 03/11/1984 Current Location I’m at rob falcons house waiting for a bacon sandwich Sponsors death skateboards, vans shoes, motel 6 skateshop, team goat milk Influences Kyle Green, spiced rum,
Photo: Styley
Nicholson, Boots, Hemming, Geoff Rowley, Dan Monk, Ali Boulala, Rob Falcon, Richie Jackson, Jim Greco, Fos. There’s too many people to name. Creative people who skate fast and skate everything! So where did the Name Horsey come from? I used to have a mate in Harlow who looked like boy George and his only come back was that I had hair like a horse. It never really stuck until Cates heard it; whenever I’d call him up, he’d answer by saying HORRRRRSSSSSEEEEEEYY in his high pitch voice and I guess people just picked up on it. I hated it at first but now I’m used to it When did you realize that skateboarding was for you? That’s such a hard question! I don’t think I’ve ever realized that, it’s just
Photo: Rob Falcon
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Game of “skate” specialty? Fakie Ollie late shuv it. Stinking as fuck but no one does it Who is your usual skating crew? I skate with boots and rob falcon most days. Its good skating with boots cos he’s like a machine, so pushes me to not just fuck about. At weekends I usually hook up with monk and Nicholson in Harlow or wherever and try and film for the new death video Other interests outside of skateboarding? I can’t really think of much else I do. I haven’t had a proper job all summer so I just skate everyday and do whatever I feel like. I’m pretty interested in pound a pint every Tuesday at the junction and I’ve been going to Harlow alot to try and film with monk and have sizzurp parties. Oh and it’s always good hanging out with my girl and getting fed How did you get hooked up on death? I had always wanted to get on death way before I moved into the house of doom but I didn’t want it to seem like I was a try hard so kept quiet about it. When Nicholson was editing squadrophenia I would just lurk about and one day he said he had captured all the footage he had of me and asked if he wanted to put it all together. He edited it up in 20minutes and I was planning on putting it on tapes to give to people. I think that night I went to some party with Zorlac; Fos was there so I asked him if I could send him a tape. On the way back I was telling Nick about it and he just straight up asked me who I wanted to ride for and if he put me on death would I be down? It was an easy decision, the rest is history. Funny death related story. One night on the squadrophenia tour, about 3 years ago Cates and Wag were having a bit of a drunken tussle in the streets of Ipswich. Long story short Cates pulled off one of wags new size 12 vans and threw it up on the roof of a garage. Wag climbed up but couldn’t find it cos there were loads of garbage bags, so he started throwing them off at Cates. Eventually the police came and took wags name, I think he said he was Jim Greco and they let him off. So off went wag, one shoed to a house party. Whilst there he chatted up a 36 year old mother of 2 (she thought he was 26). Gave her his number and then took her up stairs and they shared some loving on the toilet
seat (which eventually broke). He reluctantly exchanged numbers with her, but later on when she wasn’t looking, he got her phone and deleted his number from it. Although 2 weeks later he got a text simply saying, “You should have told me you were 16” Worst person to tour with and why? Without naming names there was one person who was particularly hard to deal with on last years big push. He got upset that he couldn’t drop into the big ditch thing in Hurworth so he stropped off and then told us to drop him off at the train station because he was going home and that he didn’t even want to be on the trip. That combined with alot of constant bullshit and other things made him pretty hard work.
Photo: Styley
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Fakie salad or switch krook What’s a fakie salad? Southbank or Meanwhile Neither, they’re both bollocks!!! Demo or jam Jam! Demos suck. Just send in Blackwell Pink or brown 98% pink Tight tranny bowl or monster vert Tight tranny vert. Harrow pool! Misfits or Ramones Mike Jones Wensleydale or Red Leicester Chedder Frontside feebles or backside smiths Right now, back smiths but it changes all the time Daddy or chips What does daddy mean? Chips? Rail or hubba’s I wish I could skate a lot of hubba’s but I don’t so rails are better
Photo: Styley
So, either or then Horsey? Switch or Nollie Switch bitch Late night or early morning Always a late night, I hate getting up early. Its great being unemployed Chav or Emo This is a tough one. They’re as bad as each other, but I can stand chavs a little bit more Hi tops or lo cuts Lo-cuts 32
Photo: Styley
Photo: Rob Falcon
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Dry winter’s day or wet summers day Dry winter’s day wearing 2 t-shirts, a jumper, jacket, hat and scarf. At least you can skate! Fakie 5 stair or regular 13 Fakie 13 Cates or Zorlac Ah this is easy. Zorlac Plans for the future? I just wanna skate and have fun and film for the new death video. Me and monk have been talking bout making a chop and screwed album about Harlow life but who knows.
Photo: Styley
Violets or Roses Roses Back in the day or current situation I’m always moaning about how good it was back in the day but things are probably way better now Coronation Street or Eastenders Both are pretty unbearable but eastenders I guess
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Photo: Styley
Photo: Styley
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Brighton has had a strong skate scene for as long as I can remember. There’s a lot of history down there what with it being the home of the infamous Pig City crew and further back still the country’s hot spot for slalom. Each time I’d been to Brighton good times were had, and a gathering at the decaying level skate park I went to a few years back confirmed what I knew about Brighton. Loads of unknown rippers, a friendly welcoming scene and a nice place to boot.
Brighton mascot and owner of one of the firmest digs in the business, Pasty, introduced me to a lad who was trying to piece together an event in Brighton, and he had big plans and bugger all budget. I and a good friend of mine, Andy Willis, run a company renting skateboard ramps to events. The vert ramp I have is the biggest portable vert ramp in Europe and the biggest vert ramp ever in the U.K. It’s a beast. The ramp was funded by the good people at Vauxhall, and I got Andy on board to help me handle all the logistics so I don’t spend all my life glued to the phone and computer. The idea behind our company, King Ramps, is that we can get the ramps at good time provoking events, turn up with ten of our mates to build it, get all the lads who are keen to ride vert out, and have good times as a result. The reality is it often takes an event of some sort to get everyone to go to the same place at the same time, and these gatherings are in my opinion one of the best things about the British skate scene. There’s more to be a skateboarder than just riding a skateboard. I won’t babble on about the details, but let’s just say that because the budget was so tight, we had to reduce our crew of ten for the ramp build down to five. Jack, the lad who was organizing the event had assured us he had volunteers that were happy to help make up the numbers for the build crew. It didn’t sit well with me the idea of some lads I didn’t know working like dogs for two days to help get the ramp up for free, but Jack assured me they wanted to help. We arrived in Brighton at silly o’clock in the morning and sure enough there was a crew of lads there waiting to help. One of the Lorries the ramp was on blew
Andy Scott
Photography by Jack Forester, Andrew Willis & Justin Ashby
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Andy Scott
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up which delayed our start, but we got stuck in and the Brighton boys were really helpful. Sadly, the ground the ramp was being built on was far from level so with that and only half a crew who knew what they were doing it was hard graft getting it done. It just so happened that were we were building the ramp was right next to a spot were loads of lads skate, so there was a good vibe down there and people were happy to help because they liked the idea of something going on in their town. Some seriously good people were met, and the build was anything but boring. One chap, who deserves a mention, was ‘horse face killer’. (That’s actually how he replied when I asked his name) He spent a lot of his time going off on his portable home made drum kit that he had fashioned from a stolen wheelie bin, and was at one point joined by a passer by on a trumpet, and it was some of the best live music I’ve heard in a long time. Brighton reminds me of Venice beach in the way that there’s a steady flow of spun out drug casualties passing by, and the ramp seemed to be a magnet for every lose unit in town. It turned out that most of the lads who helped us do the build didn’t actually know Jack, but were just helping out because they were there. The fact we got so much help says a lot about Brighton and I can’t thank those lads enough. One Kiwi fellow who was a big help was just skating down the road and saw the ramp so came over to help and it turned out he knew some friends of mine from New Zealand. Small world scenarios seem to happen all the time in skateboarding. Really early mornings and really late nights meant that by the time the ramp was finished we were all leaning towards the knackered side of life, so the morning the event started on the Saturday, I sneaked off to my car to sweat my hangover out whilst having a horrendously uncomfortable nap. I’d been glued to my phone for a few days before the event trying to rustle up crew to come to Brighton for a session. I phoned everyone I could think of and the turn out was brilliant. We had everyone there from the young rippers PLR, Sam Beckett and the 25 year old bloke trapped inside an 11 year olds body that is Sam Bosworth, right up to the some of the U.K’s vert legends such as Sean Goff and Jim the Skin.
The format of the event was nice and relaxed, and basically everyone could skate as much as they wanted over the two days. Jack had planed to try and get a street course and mini ramp there but couldn’t get the funding, so the whole event was my vert ramp, a trade area, a good sound system and dj’s. Each day there was a best trick comp and a high air comp which some people took more seriously than others. Jason Lunn won the high air on the Saturday and Sean Goff went highest on the Sunday. Andy Scott predictably won both best trick comps with an array of Jah inspired Jedi foot work. The nipper rippers were absolutely smashing it all weekend, and Sam Beckett blatted six foot airs while PLR seemed to get better each time he dropped in. I wonder how many 13 year olds there have been who can do Mctwists, rodeos, flip-indys and pretty much whatever else they want. These two kids are the future of vert skating, and Sam Bosworth is already skating like a man possessed at eleven. The future of vert skating is looking bright. Other hooligans who ripped that weekend include Luke from Coventry who was flying around and getting really close to Rodeos, and local ripper R.J who despite rarely getting to skate vert still has amazing natural flare. Over the few days we spent in Brighton seven of us stayed in Jacks mums out house, which despite being a good recipe for a laugh because we were all in the same place, was a brutal recipe for no sleep. The night life in Brighton was funny, plenty of dancing around like dads at weddings and it generally felt like the place doesn’t take itself too seriously which is refreshing if your used to going out in London. Hopefully the Brighton Dirty weekend will happen again next year with more going on than just my vert ramp. It’s an amazing spot for an event and there’s plenty of room for a good street course and mini ramps so there’s definitely potential for it to become a belter of an annual event. Keep your eyes out for it next year and make the trip down to Brighton for it. If you don’t you’ll be missing out.
By Peter King
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PRODUCT TESTING Truck Test Disclaimer – These opinions are only the views shared by 10 testers and are a generalisation/average of what the skaters felt. Do not necessarily let this affect your choice of purchasing trucks! A trucks test yeah? Yeah, a good idea, now how the f*ck do we go about it? Trucks are such a hard thing to competitively compare due to the varied nature in what people want from their trucks. It’s also such a close test due to the overall high quality of the majority of trucks available on the market. So in these next few pages, we did our best to try the trucks and answer the questions you guys want to know about! So here goes…
Thunder C. Kennedy A good industry standard truck, quick and easily assembly with the traditional base configuration and kingpin setup. The only real let down of these trucks was the variation of grinding surfaces, once past the outer finish, they were a little raw to grind concrete, and axle position made nose/tail slides a little awkward due to wheel contact with the grinding surface
Independent Tony Trujillo Ltd Ed Black and Blue Scored highly on durability and strength as good old independents always have done! Simply riding Indy’s means you can grind anything, and these are no exception. The limited edition colour way make a nice change to standard silvers, but they are Indy’s, not always the best looking, compared to others tested, but do the job well!
Grind King “the Low” Velvets
Fury Evo Tony Hawk
Blingability of these babies were through the roof with the velvets oozing appeal with the soft hanger just begging to be rubbed against your belly! The inverted kingpin means no ground down kingpins, so easy to achieve a desired turning response and a lifetime guarantee against axel slippage and kingpin snappage. However, after a weeks use, dirt circulated into the nooks and crannies and made grinds a little rough whilst wearing through the velvet.
High riding trucks of a fairly standard style. Easy to set up, and just as easy to grind. The white colour makes a fresh modern look to these trucks and the gloss finish makes them look the nuts. However, the hanger pivot looks like it could do with a beefing up, despite the obvious reason for this design to reduce weight. Good vert and mini trucks, not so good for a low profile ride.
Enuff Sky
Doris First Generation Lo’s
Light weight trucks with a sky blue polished gloss finish. The truck takes a pretty standardised form, but due to the innovative bottom bushing holder combined with the base plate (removing the bottom washer totally) gives a smooth turning circle, and still providing a stable ride! The only downside is the hanger not giving as much durability compared to others about. But for the price, a very good value for money truck!
Very light truck, which does not compromise weight reduction for lack of strength! Don’t let the Value for money price put you off as these can easily compete with the best of the big boys! A good fast grind and a brand proud to be British, but if your not sold by that they are also available in Pink! Only real letdown on these is a plastic pivot cup, if replaced could easily be flawless!
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Landscape decks Availible from - Power Dist. Tel - 0208 421 4224
Silver A - Class Much needed development on the first series, with durability improving. The typical features of axel covers is also a bonus to avoid having to re-tap and die the axel thread after a while, and the inverted kingpin doesn’t crush rubbers as easily as conventional trucks, just a little more tricky to replace the kingpin! Good grinding trucks, however, still not the strongest trucks on the market!
Krux Colt Cannon Typical styled krux with the standardised weight reduction hole in the hanger. The Low trucks make for a very low profile ride, and are very easy to set up. They grind as smooth as day one every time they are used and the cannon graphics diagonally over the hanger make a very visually pleasing pair to look at. The only downside is wheelbite if not set up with risers, or an alternative High pair available in the same colour way.
Real decks Availible from - Shiner dist. tel - 0117 955 6035
Creature decks availible from - Shiner dist. tel - 0117 955 6035
Venture PJ Ladd Gold trucks, what more could you want? That, and on a set of ventures and you have got some serious steez in amazingly good value for money trucks. The recent kingpins seem to be able to withstand more abuse than older ones. The combination of high strength and good grindability make these trucks really stand out, however the anodised metal could have been replaced for a gloss finish to make a truly remarkable truck.
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Emerica Felt Brown shoe
LOVENSKATE Ground Floor Studio 123-127 New Road London E1 1HJ 07793952992 02073770940 stu@lovenskate.com http://www.lovenskate.com http://www.myspace.com/lovenskate
Etnies black and white shoe
Etnies Dainton shoe
ES Black & White Burgundy
Lovenskate “Skate” chalkboard deck
Es – Rodrigo TX 2
Lovenskate “Christ lives” Lightweight T
Lovenskate “Carpark training” Lightweight T
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Emerica Skelter Jeans
WESC skyblue lightweight hoody Emerica Green EPI Lightweight T
WESC lightweight beige t-shirt Etnies Grey/blue zip top
WESC lightweight brown crewtop
WESC brown collared t-shirt Es PJ Photo lightweight T
WESC brown t-shirt
Es Camo logo lightweight T
WESC long-sleeve brown t-shirt
Gravis Lonsdale white shoes All Emerica, ES & Etnies products available from A4 distribution tel 08707 503 100
Etnies Dainton spider web Trucker
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Question Time with Don Brider Throughout the last two decades Don Briders influential pulse on skateboarding has been felt throughout the world. From the days of Brand-X to Wear & Tear declaring a victim free zone through to Blackmarket skateboards which is still going strong today. Ladies and gentlemen I present the Donz...
C: Don hows it going, what have you been up to over the last couple of months
C: How come you never ended up making the move over to California with Jeremy and all the others? D: I’ve just had other commitments really, life just gets in the way. Also its never really appealed to me and for what I do I‘ve never really needed to go over there.
C: What do you think of all the big contests and competitions supported by big sponsorship these days?
D: I went to Birmingham, with Greg and Mark to open this Gravity Park the other week, we drove through a nice area then the park ended up being right next to an off-licence, Greg said the girl had a can of special brew open and was drinking while she was serving people.
D: (shakes head) its seems like its being run by other people, people who don’t understand what skate comps are all about. Its always for bmx and skate, if you get a street course its always designed for both, plus who wants to go anywhere where there’s security guards, if I went with the people I know, they’d be entering to skate the comp and I’d probably get segregated and end up waving at them from the seating area.
C: I hate special brew, how long have you been skating now?
C: What happened with BrandX skateboards in the late 80s?
D: I started in August 1977 because my gran came back from holiday with a board, it was virtually a piece of wood with some rollerskates nailed to it, I’d never seen a skateboard before, and that was it!
D: Well, I was on the team as an amateur and its was distributed by Faze7. Actually it was Bernie ostenson who used to send packages over from America to Faze7 but for some reason we didn’t used to get all the stuff he sent? So what happened with Brand X is that Bernie needed investment so this guy who owned Toxic wheels invested and then ripped Bernie off; he trade-marked the company behind his back and it all got too complicated after that.
C: I remember when I was at Southsea in about 1990, there was a fight or something and there was a lot of commotion and I wondered why Wager was sitting on the bank looking like someone
had just hit him. Then that guy with curly hair was looking all frustrated ran off into the roller rink and everybody went out side the park and the guy with the curly hair was allowed to stay in, whats was all that about? D: Oh, that was Mark Matthews. He hit Martin because he thought he was staring at him or something, so I threw my board at him and he ran off across the rink, then we all went outside the park and he wouldn’t come out.
C: Didn’t you used to run Wear & Tear clothing?
Wear and Tear, it sort of progressed and did t-shits with it too. I’m not that good at selling things so I’d just print and do graphics for other people.
C: Where do you see skating heading in the future? D: Skateboardings kind of weird at the moment, theres no real centre, you’ve got the net which is supposed to be the great saviour of everything but that doesn’t really connect people that well, you could be speaking to someone on the net thinking that they lived hundreds of miles
D: Yeah, that’s the first thing I did. I stated doing it in October 89 on a princes trust business scheme. I did that for 4 years, again that was with help from Jeremy Fox, and so I went to Wellingborough and we printed some t-shirts up. The tax people then said I couldn’t do it, so I quit to get a proper job, but I went back and that’s when I started Blackmarket skateboards through Network distribution.
C: How long has Blackmarket being going now? D: About 9 years now, yeah to condense it, 9 years.
C: Whatever happened to Mark Abbot, the ring leader of Brand-X? D: He ran the UK team, he used to be a away when they could live next door, so refrigeration engineer which meant he you just never know for sure! had a car with free petrol so we used to go all over the place. He did sort stuff C: Yeah true, any last words? out at the time, in the end we made our own skate stickers to promote Brand-X because as I said we never used to get all D: Yeah, Go skating with your mates! our stuff through. We also ran the English skateboard association skate zine for a couple of issues so that was cool. We got it printed at Pronto Print; we took the pictures and did all the stuff that needed to go in the zine.
C: What about your sticker company, what’s the deal with that. You’ve made stickers for loads of people now. Tell me about it? D: Well that’s kind of my main thing now, I don’t really do decks anymore, I wanted to make an Andy Warwhole board with irony that he didn’t really screen things anymore either. I used to do stickers with
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Photo: Simon Wells 46
INVERTED PERVERTED When you were younger, you lay upside down on the sofa, feet in the air and hair dragging on the carpet. You squirmed in a comfortable state of boredom, your mother telling you to sit properly, read a book or tidy your room. Uninspired you daydreamed an upside down, anti gravity, clutter free world. It would be easy to ollie out of the room where you would find that the stairwell had converted to banks. You dropped in, ollied onto the bathroom ceiling, slid on the toilet contents you’d forgotten to flush, crashed out of the window then hung from the guttering for dear life as your feet dangled above the clouds. The Sumerians in the southern part of Mesopotamia invented the first upside down imaginary skate park in the 7th century BC. Large crowds gathered at arches, stood on their heads and fantasized riding chariots up and down the transitional walls. Queen Bricktoria lived in a palace of gold bricks; she ate wheatabricks for breakfast, which helped her gain regular bowel movements. A high fibre diet had been recommended as she was always shitting bricks. In the mid 19th Century, Sir Joseph Bazalgette constructed 1300 miles of imaginary skate park under the streets of London. The park utilised 318 billion bricks and was a testament to the Mayor’s commitment to providing free facilities for London skaters. Sadly skateboards hadn’t been invented but the labyrinth of tunnels was soon to be utilised by thousands of Victorian courting couples, riding two by two down the tunnels of love on penny farthing bicycles, grinding their bonnets and huge moustaches on the brick walls.
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Concrete has been used as a standard construction technique since the Roman’s used it to make imitation giant pies in the second century BC. Pies were transported to frontline troops and paraded in front of the enemy as a distraction technique. The ancient Britain’s were not easily fooled; they new their pies and fort back with mud pasties. The Romans retreated to re-think strategy, dynasties fell and piles of pies lay crumbling over Europe. Several thousand years later in 1857, Joseph Monier invented reinforced concrete pies. He constructed huge pie bases, which were stored away but never used in conflict. Some of the pie bases were stolen and relocated in Munster during the Second World War and some were utilised as ornamental fountains in French provincial town squares. Last week the government revealed plans to construct a huge imaginary skate park in East London. Construction of the park will remain in the imagination, but an imaginary consultation committee has been set up to spend the 6 million pound budget allocated. A government spokesman said ‘ The imagination of such spaces is very important to the aspiration of our youth, it also plays a big part in attracting tourism to the capitol, Our report shows that 90% of skaters spend a significant proportion of their time daydreaming about skateboarding, so we should endeavour to provide imaginary facilities which reflect this growth in active lifestyle aspiration’.
Gulliver’s Travels by Ash Gulliver
“It all started when we got off the ferry (and this being my first time driving on the mainland) having to do laps of Southampton for Martin, just to get some deck grip. After that we hit the motorway in the mighty 1.2 nova. Along the way I had to pull over and slow down to let slower cars over take like DB9’S and 911 gt3’s; I’m sure they didn’t feel too intimidated by me. We got to kingspark at around 11am to mid-dayish. It’s such a good park, the transitions are hard to get used to but its excellent there. Everyone got some really good footage down like Martin and Chris on the rail and grind box. Darren got some nifty runs and a few good grinder’s and I had a go at the hand rail and we all walked away with some good footage, which im sure you will see soon in the puzz?led or youtube videos. Anyway after kingspark we headed towards slades farm, but first off, food time! We stopped and had a good ol’ macy d’s then piled back into the car only to descover lots of traffic behind me and an empty space infront of me. So I drove forward into it to get out of the car park faster, but little did I know there was a central divide infront of me. So, after scaping the sh*t out of the bottem of the car and getting out to check what damage was done, we bombed on. About 5 minutes later on the motor way i heard a worrying ca-chink! I looked in the rear view mirror to see a part of my car flying down the motor way PIT STOP! Turned out to be a badge from one of the mud flaps (so not to worry!) When we got to slade farm, it wasn’t what we expecting, so we got a little bit of filming done, and left. We decided to head back to Southamton when we got a call from Fat Boy a.k.a Danny, saying we should check out Verwood bowl. Its an excellent park and only 20 minutes from the other ones. The footage we got there was amazing
Me
too they have the nicest bowl, well one of the nicest bowls I have ever skated! A nice kideny shaped bowl with smooth concrete transitions, definatly worth checking out! So after a session, and very tired, we decided to head back to the ferry.”
Myself
Thank’s to Chris Cade, Martin Allen, Darren Tate and Bod Grist, oh and extra extra thanks to the satnav dunno where I would be with out you (probably in Aberdeen)
..and I Photography: Martin Allen
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my mate Bod
Bournemouth is hardly one of those UK locations you would associate as an up-and-coming skate Mecca. So first thing is to do is dismiss that misconception, and the second, get a car load of your mates and head on down to checkout some of the new age decent concrete parks that are popping up all over the country.
Kings Park This is a breath of fresh air compared to most other council made parks. It was partially funded by the lottery and includes a long multi height mini pipe, ranging from 4ft up to a 6ft with vert extension in a bowled end. Hips, corner bowls and perfectly sunk coping surround the transition with several heights of blocks, banks, driveways and hubba’s within the park. Another key feature is a decent sized 8 stair with central hand rail and knee high angle ironed ledges on either side. Friendly locals and a few rippers usually about. Park rating 4.5/5 stars
Slade farm Main feature is an 80’s style concrete snake run that’s a little rough around the edges with various heights, transitions and bumps, and a deep 6ft bowl end. Would have benefited from coping or a decent lip around the bowled area. The council have added a four sided quarter piped grind box, as well as a driveway and a metal bench. Park rating 1/5 stars
The skate shop in Poole is the oldest skate store in the country. Since the seventies it has witnessed a lot of change within the industry, living through the boom and busts of skateboarding, but still going strong after 29 years. Its home to the biggest collection of 70’s and 80’s skate memorabilia anywhere in the country including rarities from Powel Peralta, Vision and Sims to name only a few! So if you’re in the area, be sure to check it out!
Verwood Bowl Small in comparison to Bournemouth’s other offerings, but still amazing. A Smooth concrete kidney bowl with shallow hip, step-up 4 to 5 foot height 4ft and 5ft corners. Perfectly set metal coping and an adventurous 2 ½ ft sub box set a foot away from the shallow corner. Good bowl for learners, and just as good for advanced. Proof that parks do not need huge budgets or large spaces to be successful. Park rating 4/5 stars
Photography: Nice Guy Steve
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Aaron Rose an interview for artists and filmmakers such as Mark Gonzales, Rita Ackermann, Harmony Korine, Spike Jonze and Mike Mills. In the past year Rose has been working as a freelance curator, organizing gallery shows in America and Europe. He curated the exhibition Beautiful Losers, currently touring museums in the US. Mr Rose also authored the seminal book “Dysfunctional: The Visual Language of Skateboarding.” Please don’t talk to me about “skate art”. Just say that a lot of underground and undiscovered talent reached an international audience largely through the work Alleged did. Rose has just released Young, Sleek and Full of Hell. Ten Years of New York’s Alleged Gallery with Drago Arts in Italy. The book documents the gallery story through the voices of the people involved and manages to avoid kissing its own arse in the process; check it. I managed to get some time with Aaron and we played questions and answers…
You have a love of print; how did the book on Alleged come about... I had actually always wanted to do a book about the gallery; I just assumed it would happen twenty years from now. In 2002 I was approached by Drago, who had recently published Ed Templeton’s “golden age of neglect” book and they asked if I wanted to do this project. I figured it was time to let the cat out of the bag.
Curating seems close to editing...you were involved in publishing zines and other books while Alleged was open...
It’s hard to write an intro about someone. Luckily, this one was done for me (thankyou mystery author)…I picked up the following copy on a press release; it explains a little about Aaron Rose: “Aaron Rose is a 34 year old artist, writer and independent curator currently living in Los Angeles. For ten years (19922002) he worked as owner/director of the highly influential Alleged Gallery in New York. The gallery was responsible for breaking the careers of many visual artists
who are now considered the leading edge of contemporary art. The gallery acted as both the incubator and hub of a network of prime movers within the street cultural scene. Rose worked as a producer for MTV on-air promotions for 2 years and produced short films
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Yes, that’s true. Curating and editing are very closely related. It’s all about relationships and making choices... looking for a visual narrative. Trying to tell a story with a bunch of (seemingly) unrelated bits can sometimes be very difficult, but when you get it right and it starts to flow it is immensely rewarding. It’s funny actually, because spending all those teenage years making zines prepared me very naturally for editing and publishing books. I just found a mod zine I did when I was 15 called Topping Up. I was obsessed with scooters then, but one thing I noticed is that some of the approaches I used back then I still apply today.
Post Dysfunctional, how many book
projects have you worked on now... Officially; Well I’ve written a bunch for different people’s books and helped edit a few. I did an issue of Zoo Magazine in 2002. I guess the most substantial project I’ve done that’s out now, is the catalog for the Beautiful Losers exhibition that is currently traveling around. I co-edited it with Christian Strike. Currently I’m working on a book with Harmony Korine of his collected fanzines that will be published by his and Agnes B’s new production company “O’Salvation”. We also just finished a beautiful hardcover book with Ari Marcopoulos called “Out and About” that is out on my new imprint, Alleged Press, in conjunction with Damiani Editore, a publisher from Italy. We’re doing ten books over the next five years. Me, Brendan Fowler and Ed Templeton also just started a new free magazine called “ANP Quarterly” which is produced with RVCA
people...was it easy to lay it down… Again, that was Laura. All I really did, in terms of visual content, was drop off a huge binder full of photos and tidbits to Laura and told her to go to town. Of course I approved the final layouts, but much of the overall design of the book is completely from her. All the interviews were done by Brendan Fowler, he’s a musician, but he was my assistant at the gallery in New York for the last few years we were there. I felt the only way we could get honest answers from people was for me to disassociate myself from that process as much as possible. That honesty was very important to me
So is there a different design team on each… Yes...I choose designers based on the project. The Beautiful Losers book was designed by Conny Purtill and the Stephen Kinder Design Partnership. They tend to work exclusively on very academic art world projects. We chose them because we wanted to re-contextualize the way people look at “street art” which is usually presented in “edgy” design formats...stencils, drips, ouch! It was a difficult process, but in the end it works perfectly. Young, Sleek and Full of Hell was designed by Laura Genninger from Studio 191 in New York. She’s done work with Terry Richardson, and was designing i-D Magazine until recently. She has a real working knowledge of the subject matter, plus a somewhat roughhewn approach to design. Choosing an art director is immensely important. I like the simplicity of approach in the Alleged book; it’s brutally honest too...it feels personal, for a bunch of
because in all the years I had the gallery I always wished there was some kind of guide book for running an independent gallery. There’s nothing! I feel like I might not have made some of the mistakes I made over the years if I had had some sort of how-to book, or at least documentation of someone else's experience. My biggest hope is that this book serves as a textbook for someone who might want to open their own space, but feels completely lost. That would be a good thing to give back I think.
Any titles or publishing houses
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out there you want to big-up? I’m super into Hamburger Eyes magazine out of San Francisco. It’s a great photo magazine. Nieves in Switzerland always keeps it right on and up to the minute. There’s an amazing zine from Philadelphia called “Stuck On The Map” that’s put out by a guy named Dan Murphy - amazing stuff! I like the books Perks and Mini have put out. They’re dedicated to the cause. Sorry there are too many good things to mention in one paragraph.
Thanks for sharing Mr Rose...can you fill me in a little on the “billboard” commissions... The Undefeated Billboard Project was proposed to me when the shop opened in 2002. I had always thought that an art billboard was the perfect venue for art in Los Angeles because everybody is in their car all the time. We met with Nike early on and they agreed to sponsor it which has been great! We ask three artists a year to do the board. We’re currently working on our 10th board with Jose Parla (EASE), and
artist from New York. Other artists we’ve We’re trying to get it finished done include Barry McGee, Kaws, Os By Autumn 2006. It will be a feature Gemeos, Dennis Hopper, Thomas Campbell, length film, and so far it is going amazing! Raymond Pettibon, Geoff McFetridge... We have interviewed over 100 people You are active on many fronts; original in the past few months. Ed Templeton and I are developing a feature film for mixed media... you’ve also been working a major studio as well, but I can’t talk with film; please tell us what you can... about that yet. I also made a little short I’m currently shooting a documentary film with Futura in Rome last year. That film based on the Beautiful Losers idea was more of a personal art film. with Tobin Yelland and Joshua Leonard.
I’d love to see that.. I’ll try to get you a copy.
I know you love stills photography too; the last pictures you took were... Some production stills on the Beautiful Losers movie… Not much more than that these days.
Do you doodle in your diary… Hmmm....just tribute pages to whichever girl I happen to have a crush on that day.
Ok, we need to know about iconoclast please... Then check out: www.iconoclastusa.com
Without the gallery, you seem to have more time for the freelance collaborations that maybe came second to running the space before... does this faze in life feel more creative for you personally…
though... I miss the almost instant and direct access to an audience that you have in that situation. On the other hand, ever since I closed the gallery I’ve had much more time to live a diversified life. My project list is all over the place, I now have the chance to work in so many mediums and with so many different people. I would not have had the freedom to do that if I had to worry about running a space. I always wanted Alleged to be a multi-media endeavor. I even thought the word “gallery” never quite fit what I was trying to do. Unfortunately when you’re busy mounting, promoting and selling exhibitions, managing artists’ careers and dealing with all the other assorted garbage that comes with it, there is never really
Oh Yeah; for sure. Having a gallery is really not much different from running a retail store. In essence you’re just a glorified shopkeeper. While that has its rewards, you’re constantly tied to that space and all the physical and psychological constraints that come with that. I miss it sometimes
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Stoke Plaza Palooza by Jake Seal
It’s Sunday morning and I reluctantly wake to my alarm going off at 5.30am. It’s become a bit of a tradition now to have a Sunday skate session, visiting different parks each week all over the country. It feels like self harming to be getting up at that time, especially on a the day of rest, but by about 7, when you’re rolling around an empty skate park, rest is the last thing on your mind.
Photo: Jake Seal
This week’s a bit of a double whammy, we’re heading down to skate Stoke plaza, and in the afternoon (weather permitting) Etnies are hosting the second part of their Plaza Palooza. Six of us drive down in two cars from Matlock, and by 7.30 everyone’s forgotten about their hangovers, as all thoughts Photo: Jake Seal
Photo: Jake Seal
are turned to what tricks to try, and what part of the plaza to use next. For almost two hours we have the place to ourselves, skating, filming and photographing. It was my first visit to Stoke, and it was amazing.
As the time reached a reasonable hour, the park slowly got busier, and the clouds that had loomed over us started to clear. Any worries of the day being rained off were now left behind us, along with the memories of the fury tongue I’d woken up with. Etnies
people came and started setting up tents and sound systems, while other swept the park of any crap that was lying around, and plastered stickers everywhere you looked. We were just waiting now, waiting to see who was gonna be there, and how they’d approach the plaza, but like most of these kind of events, a starting time of midday was never going to be kept to, so we went for food. The organisers of this event did a really good job, laying on portaloos and burger vans, but if you’re skating Stoke Plaza you have to visit the oatcake shop across the road. I didn’t even know what an oatcake was, and I still don’t understand why Stoke seems to have shops devoted to them, but they’re ace. Sausage and cheese oatcake for less than a quid! We must have had about 20 between us, and if they hadn’t shut so early, we would have had 20 more.
Daryl Knobs Photo: Jake Seal
So, bellies full, and still stoked from our skate, the Etnies Plaza Palooza kicked off
Photo: Jake Seal
the only people who managed to find a gap for a clear run, that being (once again) Craig Smedley, who pretty much ruled this one, taking first with a backside tail slide shuv out, and a noseslide big-spin shuv out. Second place was taken by a lad I’d been watching during warm up, and he looked shit hot. Landing easy nosegrinds, and flip to backside boardslide on the 5-stair rail. He was called Ryan Evans, from Exeter, and bagged second place with backside blunt down the hubba end.
about 1 o’clock. The first comp was at the manual blocks near the top of the park, Pier-7. The place was rammed, and kids, amateurs and pro’s battled it out to get a clear run at the blocks. It seemed like to good way to ease people into the comp, and it wasn’t long before we were watching some flip in flip out place was taken by local skater shit. Second Jed Coldwell, with a nollie flip to nose manual, while first place went to Icon’s Craig Smedley, who immediately started setting standards with a kickflip to one-footed manual, and a fakie bigspin manny.
By the third event, the skating, along with the weather, was heating up. The sun was shining more like San Fran than Stoke-on Trent, so I grabbed a beer and set at the edge of the bowl. People had been tearing this up during practice, so a foot away from the coping, hundreds of skaters, young and old, gathered to watch. The bowl comp not only pulled a big crowd, but some of the bigger names, as Ben Grove and Chris Oliver, also entered the proceedings. The star of this event for me was MC Bob Sanderson. He really bought together a great laid back atmosphere, pretty much by taking the piss out of everyone who entered the bowl. He forced a kid to drop in at the deep end, then got the crowd to encourage the so called ‘ginger ninja’ to boneless 360 down the 7 foot drop, which predictably ended in a snapped deck. The guy’s who took the cash for this event though, weren’t Ben Grove, or Chris Oliver, or even Nick Sharrat, but two lads I’d never seen before, Aaron Sweeney, and Daryl Nobbs. Daryl Nobbs, or ‘Coventry Sid’ (Vicious) as he was nick-named, deserved the joint first spot with multiple floating grab tricks, including backside indy, stalefish, melon and Madonna air into the hip. I could’ve watched Aaron Sweeney (from London) skate that bowl all day, as he effortlessly landed a backside indie tail slap and 540 melon to share the top prize.
Because of the size and shape of Stoke, it would be too difficult to just have a general, open, street style comp, so the day was broken up into about seven events which took place at specific sections of the park. The second of these was at the big block at the top of the park near the bowl. This one was a bit mental, with people flying in all directions, colliding and landing on each other. Prizes must have gone to some of
Craig Smedley Photo: Jake Seal
Dan Turner Photo: Martin Allen
Marvin Photo: Martin Allen
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Next up was the steep bank comp, where Craig Smedley once again showed his skills, landing kicflips, frontside flips, and 360 flips over the hip. Ben Grove was going for 360’s and came so close, but as he slammed more and more his frustration resulted in screaming, head butting his board, and a big, stringy line of snot stuck to his face. Nice. In the end it was A Third Foot’s Gary Woodward who took first place with a backside blunt to fakie on the ledge, while second went to another young lad from Exeter, Barney Page, with a nollie
heelflip over the hip. He then went on to take second in the rail competition, in between the steep banks, with a sweet backside smith 180 out. Ben Grove took first, taking more slams, but getting up and dusting himself off to land a backside lipslide, and a kickflip backside boardslide. Good effort. The penultimate event was at the ‘big gap-2’, and true to form, the skating stepped up a gear, resulting in some gnarly tricks but equally some nasty slams. Ben Grove once again pushed it hard and despite landing the gap with a frontside nollie, ended up coming off a huge backside flip and laying on the ground for an uncomfortable amount of time. His frustration and pain was released by a lot of swearing and throwing his board, but that just let the crowd know he was ok. Not so much luck for Gareth Callear who tore his knee ligaments while ollie late-shuving. Craig Smedley 360 flipped the massive gap, and Ross ‘the Boss’ caught a varial heelflip to take runners up positions. Second place went to Joe Lyskey who landed a frontside flip, and a switch flip as if the gap and drop weren’t even there. But first place, in probably the toughest of the events, went to John Fisher for a switch ollie and a fakie flip. By this time, we were knackered. We’d been at Stoke for about 10 hours and our lack of sleep, along with sunstroke had left us all a bit dazed. We watched a bit of the last event which was on the ‘double set gully’ but left mid way through, while the park was still rammed. First place was taken by Tom Lock from London, who half cabbed the first 5 set, then feeble shuv out on the 4 set rail. Overall it was a great event, well organised and fun for everyone involved. Our sun burnt faces were a lasting reminder for days afterwards, of the great standard of skating everyone had witnessed, and it was great to see the big names being challenged to the prize money by kids from all over the country. Good work by everyone involved, the council, the organisers, the spectators and skaters, and of course MC Bob Sanderson whose comment like ‘Where’s man-head? He’s got the head of a fully-grown man, but the body of a small boy.’ kept everyone amused all day. Marcus Adams Photo: Jake Seal
Jake Seal
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Craig Smedley Photo: Jake Seal
Ash Gulliver Photo: Martin Allen
The ROGUE team came together about a year and a half ago. Crew grandma Jenna had been photographing a fair few of her friends for a skate magazine and got thinking that it would be good to get some of these girls on a team. The plan being that they’d meet up in various skate spots around the country every eight weeks or so. She figured if you had a group of girls who really skated well, in one place all together, you would be more likely to get noticed and hopefully change people’s attitudes and stereotypes of a female skater and maybe even provide role models for the younger generation of girls to aspire to. The name came about after Maria said she was going to be interviewed for the Etnies Girl website and wanted to promote the team. Putting Jenna on the spot, it meant her taking one of the characters from X-Men – ROGUE- as the team name.
Photography and text by Jenna Selby
They have had a lot of positive feedback from all the places they’ve visited especially as not many people have seen a group of girls skating together before. It has helped that
Maria
Emma
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Lucy
everyone on the team has the same sort of mentality, just in it for a bit of fun, granted Emma’s just plain mental. There’s none of that rubbish competing to outdo each other, just pushing each other to get better. Plans for the future really are to meet up as much as possible, (the next date being the first weekend of November in Worcester – check out the website for more details). They are currently working on a video with a release date to coincide with the Girl Skate Jam UK07. In the long run Jenna hopes that the younger ones will get enough exposure to be able to deservedly move onto bigger and better things.
Sadie
The designs on the boards are currently of London spots that Jenna has grown up skating. She particularly liked the Chocolate style and colours, for which she formed the basis of her graphics. Emma
Maria
The current team is comprised of Lucy Adams, Laura Crane, Maria Falbo, Sadie Hollins, Exotic Emma Richardson and Grandma Selby. Jenna Selby Check out www.rogueskateboards. co.uk for more info
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Interview with
Mathias Ringstrom by Chucky
Photography by Jonas Jarman
C: What was it like growing up skat- C: So the parks were good and there was a strong skate scene? ing in Sweden? M: You know what, right after I started, probably less than a year after I started skateboarding blew up and everyone skated, it got to the point that it was like “how many boards do you have?” It was a great place especially the little town where I grew up because Tony Mag was from there and because he was from there, there was a big skateboard tradition. So we had about five different ramps within bike riding distance, actually six different ramps, so yeah it was a really good place to grow up skateboarding until skating died out a bit and became unfashionable.
I first heard of Mathias in the early to mid 90s when he used to skate for Evol Skateboards, a company owned by fellow Swedish skateboard legend Tony Magnusson. Later Mathias started appearing in World adverts and in Osiris videos. Today he lives in San Diego and is constantly travelling the globe to skate contests. I managed to distract him from his hectic schedule at Nass to find out how its all going for him.
Photo: Nice Guy Steve
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M: There was a huge scene and then it died really really quickly. There was only a few skaters left and then there was only one ramp left in Stolkholm to skate. There was still street skaters, but at first it was like you were super popular if you had a skateboard and then it got to the point where it was like “oh you still skateboard, my little brother used to do that” C: What about the weather, you know and the daylight times in Sweden, how did that effect your skating when you were growing up?
M: Sure, its pretty much the same as over here except that it doesn’t rain as much but summers are short so we always tried to find somewhere indoors to skate. We got lucky a couple of times finding parking structures, gymnasiums or gyms at schools, we got our indoor ramp in the early nineties inside a big tent and when we put the foundation down we put it down to wide so the tent was to wide so when it snowed the snow would lay on the middle and weigh the whole tent down. We had to get up and shovel all the snow off; it was a nightmare but at least we had a place to skate C: Did you ever used to skate with Ingmar Backman back in the day? M: Yeah yeah he was from Sweden,in fact in ninety two he won the Swedish championship in street and I got second ,so yeah I skated quite a few times with Ingmar
C: Wasn’t he on Plan B skateboards? M: I know he was riding for Type A snowboards, we rode for the same sponsor which of course was G-Spot which is WE now, it used to be Bam which turned into G-Spot which turned into WE and now its WESC. C: WE Clothing? M: Yeah, that’s it C: Was skateboarding your main drive that made you move to America? M: Yeah, that was the only thing, I felt like skateboarding was pretty much dead in Sweden and Europe and the only way for me to skate was to move to the US. My whole thing to move there was just go there to skate with the pros and live life a little bit, I didn’t
expect to become one of them, I just thought I would go there and hang out and get to skate with them C: What’s been going on in the vert scene at the moment, who’s pulling what? M: You know what, we’re not allowed to talk about the tricks that people just made, because they filmed it and its coming out in the videos. Its such a top secret thing, it’s the same with street skating, the tricks been done and you can’t go and shoot it there, it pretty ridicules but that’s the way it is. So the whole thing with skating vert is that all summer long we have contests and demos every weekend; so during the spring we have to get ready for contests because that’s pretty much how we make a living, and its crazy how skateboarding has become so diverse, you know you’ve got vert, street, bowls, park.
C: So there a lot of different levels of skating emerging M: Yeah not just vert but their trying to keep street so hardcore, there’s a lot of politics involved with the media, they’re not allowed to show vert except for on TV, and there’s a huge pressure from the industry to keep it that way because vert is more commercial or corporate. Whatever you want to call it, mass market. We’re on the X-Games, we’re on TV doing the tour and it’s just seen in a different way. All the skate companies are really protective of the market which is understandable, but its too bad for us because we get cut out of other stuff. Its all skateboarding, the bottom line is that its all skateboarding and we know the kids appreciate watching some of the tricks people do, like who doesn’t appreciate watching a sequence of Colin McKay on vert or Danny doing one of his super things you know, but its too bad its falling into different categories now. When I was young and started skating you could skate everything, but as you start getting good in one area of skating you have to pick and choose what you want to do; you have to sacrifice another part of it in order to make a living from it. You still do it for the same reasons but you have to add more reasons to it and it’s a lot of work. I thought when I was growing up that being a pro skater was like you get up and skate all day, but you’ve got all the travelling, contests, demos you’ve got to do all the photoshoots, filming. So it’s a lot of work, but I got off the subject.
C: That was it, I asked you the stuff you were working but you can’t talk about that? M: No, I can’t talk about what stuff people are working on, I’d be black listed at the ramps. Yeah, it’s kind of ridiculous but understandable. If I do a trick, then I want to come out with that trick, because these days its so hard to come out with new tricks. That was it, I was talking about working on the time schedules, so yeah, in the summer we’re mostly going to contests and doing demos and stuff, but obviously comps are different from filming and shooting photos, so in the fall that’s usually when most of us try to concentrate on making tricks we really want to do, and its fun go to the ramp and skate the way we want to make new stuff and learn new stuff. C: So you’re permanently on tour M: You know what since May until the end of October I’m gonna be home, I think its four weekends and the rest I’m gonna be out, so I’ve been in Europe for a month now, I went to Prague, Amsterdam, Montpellier, Stockholm, now here and then I go straight to the X-Games in LA, then I get to be home for a weekend, then I go on the next trip, then I come back to Europe for another two weeks, then go on the next trip, get a weekend off, then I come back to Europe for another… so its… C: Full on
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M: Yeah, full on C: So how does all this travelling work out, how does impact on you? M: Now with the crazy schedules we have like we pretty much travel on our own to the event and meet up with everyone and then everyone goes to different places afterwards. It’s not like before when your whole team got on the flight then got to the place, yeah its different these days. I miss those days, like it was fun like the Osiris team would go on a tour get on the flight and go up to the Vancouver contest and everyone would fly up there and hang out and have dinner; now it’s just you fly by yourself then go to the next place, you meet people here and there. It’s to hard to coordinate plus I mean its every weekend, there’s a few big trips a year so obviously then you coordinate a lot more C: So you’ve been travelling around in Europe for the last month, what have been your favourite places? M: Favourite places so far that I’ve ever travelled to? C: Yeah M: Italy’s definitely one of them, Japans another favourite because you fly in to Tokyo you go out and your jetlagged. Being jetlagged is a little bit weird but being in Tokyo its like walking around in a cartoon for a day, it’s funny, but I like Canada, I like Italy a
lot, and England of course is one of my compare to the parks in California? favourite places. M: Yeah, its amazing, definitely one of the best C: So have you been to that new park in Fryshuset? C: Ok, what do you want to achieve over the next few years? M: Yeah, its been around for years and years and they’ve just rebuilt it and M: I just want to stay healthy and made it bigger, built a wooden bowl, keep skating like I’m having as much and a mini ramp with a hip and quarfun skating now as I did when I first ter and a really really good vert ramp. started skating. I’ve definitely got a Right now there rebuilding the street second wind, like I’ve had so many course and they do that every two years, but it’s a great park. Its got four injuries throughout the years, I’ll give you the list: I broke my tilsher, I pulled thousand members, which is crazy, the ligaments in my ankles, tore my there’s quite a few places to skate in Sweden, you’ve got that park in Malmo piecer, I tore my emcier, cracked my pertiler in half, I had two knee surgerwhich was the biggest park in the ies, I tore a muscle ligament in my hip, world until Shanghai built there’s, so I had hip surgery, I broke my tail bone Sweden’s a great place for skating. twice, compressed two vertebrates, I had two bulging discs, I had a rotated C: Cool, so who are the up and cuftail, a broken wrist, I’ve had nine coming vert Swedish skaters? concussions, thirty or so whiplashes, M: Pontus Bjorn and then there’s quite punctured my lungs four times, the last time they had to cut me open and a few others staple my lung to my ribcage; I nearly died. So I’ve been healthy for a year C: What do you think of that new concrete park in Malmo, how does it now and I feel really good skating
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so that’s all I want to do is just keep healthy and keep skating because its so much fun right now, that’s my goal. C: That’s probably the worst injury list I’ve heard in a long time. Who do you skate for at the moment M: Who do I ride for? I ride for: LG, Osiris shoes, Premium Skateboards, Paul Mitchell and We Clothing C: Weren’t you on Evol skateboards for a while M: Yeah, that was a great many years ago. I was on Evol, then I went to Chatman, then I was on World Industries for a few years C: OK thanks a lot Mathias M: No problem
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Bugbear are a live music promoter who organize an immense amount of bands playing at The Dublin Castle in Camden, Hope and Anchor in Islington, The Legion and 333 clubs in Old st. For full monthly listings: www.bugbearbookings.com info@bugbearbookings.com FULL SPEED ALONE, from Plymouth, this four piece band are a big mix from calm indie like Sugar Ray to the wailing distorted guitar associated with bands like Funeral for a Friend to Blink 182 type palm muted guitars. The heavier stuff has cracking driving beats behind them. Wunderbar.
Friday 24th Nov
The witless ramblings of the jobbing music promoter in London Town…at the shitty bizniz end of the rock’n’roll stick… offering up to you ,The Trisickle Reader, a comprehensive guide to the month’s foul underground fug, as it wheezes up through the piss bleached streets of the capital city. Music, my friend, music…That’s if we’ve actually made it into November as I sit here weeing myself in October…The news that North Korea has exploded an atomic bomb will have chastened all those of you who thought you might live to see the full Take That revival including Robbie… oh sod it let’s push all the freakin’ buttons now and get it over with before I have to hear anything from either camp ….
THE DUBLIN CASTLE WEDNESDAY 15TH NOV: THE MAGIC O’s, Indie, bluesy, garagerock. Kinda like The Stooges with Libertineesque guitars and loads of spirit. Good ,God they really are magic and the letter o is the magical symbol for completeness without the void so, hey knock yourselves out. THE MARDOUS, Jack Kerouac was over wrought with love for her but Gregory Corso nicked her off him…all’s fair in love and war and beat poetry. and you get the feel for all that in these boys’ boho guitar twists. Just don’t let Allen Ginsberg sneak in with his fookin’ bells and bell end and bell bottoms… LOVE 45, Bikini Kill were one Hell of a kick ass tornado…. ultimately one of the finest punk rock experiences ever. and Love 45 are superbly redolent there of.
LUNATIC, Lupine uberfuhrers of the greasiest rocknroll imaginable…Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Motorhead and the MC5…vocalist/guitarist Tommy is actually a fully paid up member of the Outer Mongolian Royal Family…. THE VOXX, sleazy punk rock’n’roll joy is their fine fancy…but prior to that get into REV COUNTER- metal? Nah…Rob Tyner and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith hop onto Harleys and speed away from the burning remains of Detriot City… the Asheton Brothers in hot pursuit as Elvis appears in the sky intoning the last rites on Rock n Roll. The fat mama’s boy tosspot. JACKIE BREAKS first stomping punk rock with emo topping and hard rock posturing. Manics/ Buzzcocks/Lemonheads/ Blur…falsetto vocals that are quite unusual and some Artic Monks type urgency…this is growing pon me….
Wednesday 29th Nov AUDIO RUNWAY has a Buzzcocksish minor key buzzsaw guitar thing going on…with quavery indo angst vocals from the Adidas shod school…very Liam G…infact he’s called Liam…sort of beat group gone cabaret in part too… Have some Dylany harp blowing too…bit middle of the road for me but I’ll happily big them up as it’s gutsy enough and well done.
SALLYFORTH Catchy and kinetic indie bloc party via mystery jets .. We are scientists are in there too and maybe a bit of young knives! Now there’s a massacre waiting to happen....
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Bugbear Discs New vinyl specialists, Camden Town’s only indie record outlet. 96 Parkway, London NW1 7AN Open: 11.30am–8.00pm 7 days a week
PERSONAL SPACE INVADERS, spark off with some perky cod reggae replete with cowbell… jaunty pop with ‘knowing’ lyrics…picks up a decent backbeat and gets quite neat n nifty.. London band influenced by Velvets, Bright Eyes, The Killers… Has indie hit maker potential I’d say. Loads of neat ideas and a warm dreamy sound.
England, torn apart by civil wars, with two branches of the ruling families fighting over the right to wear baggy or skinny jeans. Dominance switched flipped both sides with these civil wars becoming known as the Wars of the Roses,
Q Are you Lancastrian or Yorkist? Nic Powley Sidcupist Harry Raffle Guess I’ll have to say Yorkiest Steve Monnow Yorkist Baby! Richard May Lancastrian and proud! Christopher Steven Cade You better check yourself before you rep yourself. Toby Bay Lancastrian born and bred.
Q War! What is it good for? N.P Absolutely nothing H.R Don’t know, guess we get a good skate out of it S.M Good old fashioned piss up R.M To win T.B To hang out and chill
Q Dont you think we should all join forces and fight the French? N.P Yeah; Obviously! H.R Yeah, that sounds like a better idea S.M Only if we can have Bastien R.M Id rather fight the Scottish T.B That’s not a bad idea
Q Richard the Third, King or Terd? N.P Don’t know, never met the bloke! H.R Ah defiantly terd S.M The guy rocks, backside lip down 13’s R.M Common belief has led me to believe he is a terd. T.B Terd, defiantly!
Q King Henry skates well, but is he good enough to be put to Death? N.P Nah he’s not that good at skating, guess he’s too busy fucking all his wives and I guess beheading really must take it out of you… H.R Nah, keep him alive, put him on Unabomber Marc Churchill
Photo: Martin Allen
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The White Rose, emblem of the house of York with its fields of King Edward potato’s, supported by its huge Richard III, challenging for the Lancastrian right to the throne.
Q Henry Tudor has claimed the throne, but his wife keeps complaining that he leaves the seat up. Do you think that Women should leave it up so that men don’t have to put it down? N.P It’s a man’s world, need I say any more H.R It’s quite a difficult question; I think it should be left however it was found S.M Yeah man, women should leave it up and leave it there! R.M Keep the seat up T.B Let ole’ Henry have the throne
Chris Cade
Q Are you planning a trip to Stoke? (the last war was the Battle of Stoke field). N.P Nah, went to the plaza fairly recently H.R Yeah, go and skate the plaza, battle some kevs in Tracksuits. S.M Nah going to London next week mate R.M Nah, going to the works tomorrow. T.B Yeah, try and go most weekends
Paul Reagan
Photo: Chris Johnson
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Photo: Nice Guy Steve
Richard III was killed in the battle of Bosworth Field summer fete, when a three legged race got out of hand culminating in death by flying coconuts. Q Who is the coward of the county? N.P Woody and Ollie Tyerman (laughter) H.R Erm I don’t know, me? S.M Alan Hansen R.M Were all Burly men here T.B Dave
Q Were you at the Shrewsbury bloodbath, or did you prefer to take a shower? N.P Showers all the way H.R I decided to take a shower S.M I went along to take some photos R.M Nah, I was down the pub C.C I was there doing all those virgins T.B Yeah, I was pushing against all the sweaty people trying to get involved but they all gave me dirty looks, so I sat on the side and watched.
Q Did you attend the battle of Wakefield shopping center, or did you just watch it on Sky Plus? N.P Nah, I think Ben said he was coving that one?! H.R I stayed at home and watched it on sky plus S.M Yeah yeah, I was there. R.M Yeah I made an appearance C.C Nah, I went to Interact instead T.B I had to work Photo: Nice Guy Steve
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Craig Smedley Photo: Chris Johnson
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War? What’s it good for? Not a great deal, but it separated the men from the boys at this year’s war of the roses! Saturday saw the Lancashire stop of the competition at Interact skatepark. The vert wall was ripped apart in the ams/pro division with Jake Minz pulling off a rock fakie on a good four foot of vert! Mark Churchill managed a frontside indy near the top and Andy Scott stuck a frontside tail twelve foot above ground level. The Bowl hosted some of the weekend’s best skating with Dave Allen nailing consistent runs in the deep end and Churchill once again going off with ollies out of the bowl to smith on the extension. Div and Andy Scott managed some high speed lines, that words cannot describe, ones that you truly had to be there to understand! Chris Oliver banged out a rock 360flip fakie first try and Cashman rinsed what was left way into the night! At 4am we were spectators to a drunken Scottish Wresting comp to the dismay of Interact staff, which may have contributed to the poor results for them the following day at the works.
The Red Rose of, emblem of the House of Lancashire and its King Henry IV. Henry loved to shower in cow’s blood but died in a bloodbath at Shrewsbury, the bath was deep and he couldn’t swim. Giles Brown
Photo: Chris Johnson
The New bowl was still being finished when we arrived in the morning but was given a thoroughly hard wearing in with Jed Cullen nailing blunts in the deep end and Ross Mcgouran sliding backside tails round the corners on the concrete coping. Mark Churchill once again remained consistent tearing apart everything he skated, proving to his new sponsors Creature a good investment, and eventually picking up skater of the weekend! Words can’t describe the consistency of Mike Wright, nailing pretty much everything first try and killing it all over the park, with such wonders as gap flip to 50/50. Not too sure what happened to the Lancs on Sunday, as the Yorks Pretty much walked away with it; Ave’ it dad!
Dan Turner Photo: Nice Guy Steve
Richie Mann Photo: Chris Johnson
Both families took pride in their gardens and often competed at flower shows. In 1487 at the battle of Stoke Field, there had been a mix up with some of the cuttings, the white and red roses were crossed and the war of the roses was over. 77
Seven year old Connor Hill, Backside Mute
Photos: Chris Johnson
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Henrys son, another Henry also bathed at Shrewsbury, he swam well, was a bit of a hero as he loved a good fight. Henry gave it a bit of French stick at Agincourt, but was beaten to death with a stale baguette. Craig Smedley Photo: Chris Johnson
Q Is it true that the Duke of York is a cross dresser? N.P Probably H.R Yeah, I have got pictures on my phone S.M I heard he also has had the snip? R.M He looks wrong in heels‌ C.C Yeah, I leant him some clothes T.B I think I saw him on strictly ballroom.
Gordon Dear Photo: Chris Johnson
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Burnley Unsponsored Wembley gap 1st Tom Shimmin 2nd Neil Worthington 3rd Wee Matt Rail 1st Shaun Allison 2nd Tom Shimmin 3rd Ross McCabe Manny/Hubba 1st Tom Shimmin 2nd Jack Morris 3rd Bod Grist Mini jam 1st Mat Fenton 2nd Joe Sandland 3rd Daz ‹Dad› Pearcy
Sponsored Rogie›s 1/4
Leeds Results
1st Chris Oliver
Jersey Barrier 1st Avid 2nd Manhead 3rd Alex
Vert Wall 1st Andy Scott 2nd Jacob Minz 2nd Churchill Rail 1st Paul ‹Man› Silvester 2nd Ged Cullen 2nd Smithy 4th Craig Smedley Bowl 1st Andy Scott 1st Marc Churchill
Unsponsored
Rail/Hubba 1st Richie Mann 2nd Ben Rose 3rd Harry Meadley Small driveway/block 1st James Gorman 2nd Tom Shimmin 3rd Neil Worthington Sponsored Big Hip
1st Cashman 2nd Mike Wright 3rd Neil Smith Road Gap 1st Mike Wright 2nd Danny Brady 3rd Mark Baines Big driveway/hubba 1st Mike Wright 1st Neil Smith 3rd Pete Steele 3rd Steak Egg Bowl Jam 1st Div 2nd Benson 3rd Churchill Best skater Saturday - Andy Scott Best skater Sunday - Pete Rigby Overall iPod winner and WOTR big lad - Marc Churchill Overall weekend Results. Scotland - 2 wins Lancs - 4 wins Yorks - 6 wins Wales - 1 Yorkshire crushes goons for fun.
Photo: Nice Guy Steve
Pete Rigby
Photo: Chris Johnson
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Mark Baines
Photo: Chris Johnson
Johnny Cash - American 5 (American) ALBUM
12 songs, the last ‘new’ material we will ever hear from the man in black. All are gut wrenchingly beautiful and some are so sad that you almost have to skip forward, to stop yourself from
The Horrors - Death at the Chapel (Loog) SINGLE Opening with a snarling garage riff and an ear piercing scream this hits you between the eyes. A raw mix of 50’s, punk and a stolen vox keyboard riff, it all fuses together well. Zero production and nice haircuts all score points as does video from Aphex twin master, Chris Cunningham. In and out at only 140 or so seconds. Not too shabby.
Edgar ‘Jones’ Jones & the Joneses “More than you’ve ever had” (Viper) “ 7 single. Yeah Yeah, frrr ffrr, tin tin! No you haven’t heard it all before, because you haven’t heard this! To be in this man’s suit would be great and I don’t even normally go for this type of sh*t. To summarise - this Jones dude (who used to be in The Stairs) has got it goin’ on! You better get used to it, ahh, ah, ah aha. Russ’ Branson (M.B.F.)
welling up - that good... 2 real noticeables here are the final things which he recorded just months before his passing a few years ago, the stomping on the porch blues beat of ‘God’s gonna cut you down’ and the final thing he wrote, the storytelling genius of ‘Like the 309’ ,which references one of Cash’s favourite things, train journeys, this one being about his final journey, to the grave. Just buy this record, Cash was a maverick, one which we will never see the like of again.
Catch 22 by Jospeh Heller Catch 22 by Joseph Heller was written in 1961 and later made into a film in 1970. Heller’s use of words and syntax are integral to the narrative, which is non-linear, with heavy emphasis being placed on dialogue, the language therefore being full of non-sequiters, malapropisms, sophistry and all the rest of that dimwitted stuff. Heller’s use of time is also important and can be confusing for the reader. The basic premise of
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the book goes something like this: To be excused from fighting you have to be declared crazy but no one will declare you crazy unless you ask them to. However, if you ask them to, you can’t be declared crazy because you’d be crazy if you didn’t want to fight. Messed up huh? The main protagonist of the novel is 29 year old Captain Yossarian, an antihero who at first seems somewhat like a coward, although, given his precarious indignation within the circumstances he seems like the only one that makes any sense. At first he is constantly complaining about everyone wanting to kill him and that everyone is insane, not only that but he tries as hard as he can to get discharged or grounded. Yossarian has the unique talent of being completely logical and totally illogical and at the same time and somehow can see people for who they really are much quicker than his fellow pilots. The only people who really don’t like Yossarian or his superior officers, and Yossarian hates most of the people who like him. He seems like a clown at first, he has an annoying wit and no desire to cooperate with anyone. However as the narrative progresses it’s revealed that he’s intelligent and actually does like his friends. By the end of the novel Yossarian seems more like a hero than a coward, and it seems all of his paranoia wasn’t really paranoia at all. Many factors contribute to this realization including the corrupt squadron officers, and Snowden’s death. Catch22 is considered among the greatest works of anti-war satire of the twentieth century and this is one book that satirizes the age old oxymoron, military intelligence. – Chucky
Great British Wit by Rosmarie Jarski
JAWBONE - Hauling (Loose)
Jawbone is a one man band from Detroit, USA. Detroit seems to be having a bit of a backlash against it right about now, which is a shame as some of the most interesting music from the past 5 or so years has come out of the place, and l’m sure it has much more more to give, Jawbone, certainly deserves more recognition that he will ever get l’m sure. Bob Zabor (Jawbone) is a one man harmonica machine, a living, breathing, raw, blues music machine. Nothing new musically here, but who cares when it makes you wanna dance, and shout, and sing along. ‘Dose of powder’ starts things off here, all quick distorted strumming and boot heel stomping, you can almost see the 4x4 pickups going past from your porchfront!!! Other notibles are the cover version, ‘Chug a lug’ and ‘All want Jesus Name’, which references the BBC and General Motors in a blatent put down, blues style... This new album is a fine album, but I’d have to recommend the last album ‘Dang Blues’ for its simpleness and feelgood factor over this new offering. In his own words Jawbone is ‘over driven 12 volt enhanced non oscillating six string harmonicanised slide blues of 2 headed dogs’ and if that don’t float your boat then, go buy that new Muse compilation and be done with it, ‘cause l dont wanna know you...
Great British Wit enlightens the reader as to why we British have the best sense of humour in the world and explains how humour is engrained in our subconscious. Coming in the form of quotations from some of the wittiest individuals ever to have drunk a cup of tea and played cricket, the book explores such issues as education & intelligence, politics & society and communication & literature. It further details the idiosyncrasis of our national characteristics: Manners and etiquette, the stiff upper lip, and failure and the underdog. A class book, and remember there’s truth in national characteristics, otherwise these sayings wouldn’t come about. Just ask the Germans.
Anarchy In The Uk Tom Hodgkinson 24 October 2006 When in 1977 the Sex Pistols declared that anarchy in the UK was coming some time, it’s fair to say that they were not taken seriously. The political element of the punk movement was soon forgotten amid the tabloid coverage, which attempted to make cartoon characters out of the punks. But anarchy as a serious political idea has a long and noble history. Right from the middle of the 18th centuiry, when the people started moving out of the countryside and into the new factories in the towns, and in so doing swapped their old life of self-sufficicency for a nw one of dependence on wages, poets and philosophers have proposed systems of living which do not depend on a centralsied government. There was the anarchist writer William Godwin, who was the father of Mary Shelley. There was the visionary poet William Blake, who wrote in despair of the new “dark
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satanic mills” where the people were forced to work, the early equivalent of call centres. Then in France there was the anarchist writer Proudhon, who was actually the first to write the words: “I am an anarchist”. I also love the work of Prince Peter Kropotkin. He was a Russian aristocrat who came to England to spread his radical ideas in the late 19th century. Again, he attacked the State and instead imagined a world where cooperation between individuals would replace competition. All these thinkers have influenced my new book, How To Be Free, where I try to resurrect anarchy as a practical way forward both for individuals and society as a whole. Down With Health… Down With Safety… Your Are Free… Be Merry! How To Be Free is published by Hamish Hamilton, £14.99
Excerpts: [quoting Richard Ingrams and Barry Fantoni of Private Eye] RI: One of the funniest things I ever remember him doing was in the old office at 22 Greek Street. The night before, on the telly, there had been a film of some naked African women dancers—tribal dancers—dancing around. And Cooky rang up the BBC and demanded to speak to the producer. He said he was Sydney Darlow of the Sydney Darlow Dancing Troupe and he had ladies in the Sydney Darlow Dancing Troupe who did exactly the same thing—topless ladies—and could they come on the telly? And this man from the BBC was trying to justify the appearance of topless black dancers and why it wouldn’t be all right if they had white ones. And Darlow kept on at them! That was very funny. And he also rang up the Foreign Office saying the Russians were spying on him through his drainpipes. BF: And he rang up the Director-General of the BBC to complain that there had been a nude scene on the television set at half past ten and his son was already in bed, and he hadn’t been told. And he had to wake his son up to show him. I remember that Cook used to carry a briefcase around with him with a very, very old magazine in. It was a sort of porno mag and it had a woman with her knickers down and a man—that he insisted looked like Edward Heath—spanking her. And since he only came to the office every two years it made this thing even more and more outdated every time he brought it up. I think even after Mrs Thatcher went he still insisted that we carried one of these pictures with a speech-bubble, because this man looked like the Grocer.
[John Lloyd of Private Eye] JL: Well, I don’t want to get locked in to these strange ideas of creativity and intuition. If you go to Monty Python’s infamous Parrot Sketch, the original sketch was about returning a faulty piece of electrical equipment to a shop; a very Cleesey idea of how annoying it is to try and get your money refunded while the sales assistant is claiming there’s nothing wrong with the item. That was how the sketch was until Graham Chapman gets up from under a hail of gin bottles—he’d been lying under these bottles on the floor—and says, ‘It should be about a dead parrot, you cunt!’ And Cleese, smart bloke, thinks, ‘Ah! Of course.’ Now it’s a classic whereas before it was just The Toaster Sketch and nobody would ever have heard about it again...
How Very Interesting
and get Peter to be very funny for three weeks or however long it took to writeR12;and, in fact, the one about the Single European Hen was written by Peter with Peter Fincham in about two hours and we were almost shooting the series by then. [from a 1992 interview between Peter
Cook and Miklos Galla, Hungary’s premier comedian]
His Universe And All That Surrounds It Snowbooks.com
MG: Oh yes, I read somewhere that originally your name was the other way round. You were— PC: Cookpeter. Cookpeter, Struwellpeter. MG: ...Pardon? PC: Struwellpeter. Saltpeter. MG: So your surname is Peter—?
So there are two kinds of writer. I’m like John Cleese. I write Toaster Sketches. I’m very neat, thinking logically. Then there is the Chapman or the Cook kind of person who goes, ‘No, no, no, it’s much odder than that.’ So we made a good combination. We did, of course, sit down and say, ‘Let’s start with this,’ but there was never any point, you know? It was like weather. You both sat in the room with the drinks or whatever-it-was, with Fincham or Lin bustling about in the background, and sometimes [inspiration] arrived and sometimes it didn’t. It wasn’t as though we could call up a thunderstorm or electrical discharge. The idea of him being disciplined in sitting down every day and writing funny sketches—it’s a different part of the brain, you know what I mean? It’s like the lefthand side of the brain wasn’t any use to him and he had to use only the righthand side and that required an intuitive and, er, drinking-toomuchy kind of way of working. PH: There were a few episodes of A Life In Pieces where the Christmas gift in question was barely mentioned. That aspect was often entirely peripheral to the interviews. Did you and Peter find it tough to stick to the Twelve Days Of Christmas carol format? JL: We did produce a lot and I would take home huge scads of stuff and try to think how they would relate to milkmaids and drummers and partridges in pear-trees. IR17;ve found that nearly all ideas for shows that initially look promising always turn out to be a nightmare. Like Spitting Image: R16;What a great ideaR12;a topical, political show with puppets.R17; But it was quite another thing to get it on-air. A nightmare. A Life In Pieces was the same. We had to throw the format away
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PC: Pieter. my father was a Norse. A wet Norse. I’m from Norwegian stock. In fact, that’s what the original Beatles song was: ‘Norwegian Cook’. [Hums refrain of Norwegian Wood.] MG: Great song. PC: But then I sued because of the use of the word ‘Norway’. I actually own copyright of the word ‘Norway’. So that’s why you’ll never hear Norwegians mention their country because they have to pay me three krone.
Peter Cook skateboarding, London 1975 Photo courtesy Snowbooks
MG: Did you sue Monty Python as well for the use of ‘Norwegian blue’?
money from the small ‘m’ than he did from the big ‘M’, but he’s fucking boring. You see where it got him.
PC: We settled out of court. Well, Monty Python had to pay me for use of the word ‘m’, which I also copyrighted many years ago.
MG: I see. But you had to pay Maxwell because Dudley Moore uses a capital ‘M’. PC: He uses the capital ‘M’ but his money goes to Dudley Moore... But Robert Maxwell, I always deliberately spelt him with a small ‘m’ and he had to pay me.
MG: The letter ‘m’? PC: The letter ‘m’, yes. Not the capital ‘M’, just the small one. Because Robert Maxwell had the big ‘M’. I suggested to Robert we incorporate our two ventures in Panama so all that working-out whether it’s a big ‘M’ or a little ‘m’—just send the whole thing into a holding account in Panama and split it down the middle. In fact I earned a lot more
MG: Oh, that’s a clever idea. PC: I used to call him ‘mr. maxwell’ with a small ‘m’. So it’s very intricate but that’s why business works, as I’m sure you know.
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‘Skate’ featuring Danny Way Danny Way; there is something clearly not quite right in his head. Bones Brigade at the tender age of fourteen and since those halcyon days back in the llate eighties, he’s become increasingly well known for his shocking lack of fear. Just like a trainee parrot, he does tend to forget how to land quite a lot, cross between Evel Knievel and an old school circus freak who likes to propel himself over huge open spaces, over large public structures, jump out of hovering ‘copters and bomb drop off eighty-two feet high concrete guitars. These antics get him on the telly maybe more so than any other skater ever, so for this we suppose he should be knighted or something.
We’ve yet to actually see anything playable on Skate. In fact, we’ve yet to see little more than the first bunch of screens and art you can see right here. Yet the fact that uber-games publisher, Electronic Arts is behind the title can mean one of two things. Either the game will be nearly as good as the new Tony Hawk’s Project 8 and will sell fairly well, or it will be marginally better than THP8 and sell slightly better. There, we’ve stuck our neck out and said it. It won’t be a dud, however it pans out, ‘cos EA have too much money to throw at their well-staffed development studios to make sure it’s not, and even more money to throw at their even-better-staffed marketing departments to make sure it’s MTV’d to the hilt and in all our eyeballs come next March. Yet it can’t possibly be miles better than THP8, as that game is already a good solid nine in our book. Why you ask? Just read our preview below and let us explain why.
The next stage down to a knighthood is of course, having your own videogame. And Way has made it, being the face of Electronic Art’s forthcoming, imaginatively titled ‘Skate’ (due Spring 07 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3). This could be billed as the first next generation skateboarding videogame. ‘Cos, you know, Tony Hawk’s is still available on your rubbishy old PS2 and that, innit. So what’s it about then? The game’s publisher assures us that it’s a game ‘by skaters for skaters.’ We hope this is true and not just some wazzy strapline someone in the PR department cooked up. They also namedrop Animal Chin and Thrasher a lot in the press guff we received, which simply means they are as old and haggard as we are. Haha!
For some of the most jawdroppingly ridiculous and downright silly big air stunts check out the videos on DannyWay.com Skate, from Electronic Arts, is due to drop in Spring 2007 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Trisickle will bring you more information and a full preview of the game in our next issue.
‘Skate’ is said to deliver the actual feel of skating through dual stick control, roaming cameras and a reactive city built for skaters. The skateboarding developers also promise that the game will “that sense of community, culture and satisfaction that true skaters feel when they’re landing a 360 kickflip down a 15-set staircase or just cruising down the street.” Yes, because we often do that. You can see from the first bunch of screens and artwork we’ve got here that it looks the part. This will be because, as you probably know, the PS3 is going to be the most powerful supercomputer ever devised by man, with better graphics than our actual eyes can see. You need to be a cyborg to fully appreciate its chips and lovely gadgetry innards.
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Tony Hawks Project 8
compete against some of the world’s top pros in true to life competitions to try to establish your backwater town as a premier skateboard destination.
(Xbox, PS2, Xbox 360, PS3) Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is it that time again already? As Christmas approaches, one of the greatest pleasures to be had on our made-up-Lord’s pretend birthday is sampling the latest outing in Activision’s trumpingly marvellous, fattening-the-Hawk-cow series, preferably with a healthy nip of sherry on the side. It’s become as much a festive tradition as basting up a genetically-enhanced turkey from LIDLs while getting sozzled on snowballs and playing daft party games with your gran. Which, as an extra bonus, you can now do on your new hilariously-named Nintendo Wii (*snigger* more on which, below). But before you play with your shiny white Wii (*snigger*) if you’ve already invested in Microsoft’s next generation big beige Xbox 360 battleship, then Tony Hawk’s Project 8 is of course an essential buy this Christmas. Or if you are canny enough to be American and thus have already bought an overpriced PS3 (off eBay) then the level of shiny, graphical polish in the versions of THP8 on those machines is going to blow your eyes right off. Just look at the lovely screen splurge from the game decorating this very page. Sometimes, when we look too long at these, we cry tears of techno-joy. Oh Sony! Oh Microsoft! With this new, shiny future you are spoiling us! If you’re a gamer and a skater, then the Tony Hawk’s series really needs little introduction, suffice to say that this one provides loads more of the same, but better and with plenty of interesting enough new bits and environments and mini-games and all that to make it seem worthwhile shelling out nearly forty quid for. Or you can just avoid doing that and win one in our competition (below). Another good trick is to buy a copy for a Jesus-present to give to a younger nephew or brother. In this way you get to look really generous, plus have the added bonus of having someone else to play it with on Xmas day.
The details? THP8 has been ‘re-engineered from the ground up’ (whatever the f*ck that means) with ultra-realistic graphics, enhanced physics and extremely responsive controls that simulate the feeling of skating with every trick and bail. The main difference being of course that you don’t weep blood and shatter your coccyx as you consistently fall off and embarrass yourself in front of younger girls giving you the
Maybe the most interesting new feature that’s not been seen before in the series is the ‘Filmer and Photo Goals’ where you have to trick through photo shoot locations, or follow a filmer with a video camera and complete his instructions while keeping up with him. The enhanced physics in the game also enable something called a ragdoll bail mode. You still can’t feel anything though, and thankfully the developers haven’t yet said anything about working reallife pain sensors into future versions of the game. Other cool new stuff to stop your attention span wandering off includes “Picture-in-a-Picture” where you can check the on-screen action on film in a superimposed video box; “Movable Ramps and Rails” which you can shift about as you please and an “Impress the Locals” feature where you need to build up respect from pedestrians who watch you perform the more over-the-top than ever combo tricks, then laugh at you when you fall flat on your ass. THP8 is also going to be made available on current-gen PS2 and Xbox systems for those technology-hating plebs who’ve waited six years to get a PS2 at mega-discount from Woolies. But really, if you don’t get yourself sorted with a proper Xbox 360 future-machine this Christmas then you may as well hang yourself by your rubbish old wired controller cords. Oh hang on! Don’t do that yet… it looks like we’ve got some stuff to give away on this one.
COMPETITION
Trisickle is giving away six copies of Tony Hawks Project 8 on the format of your choice (apart from PS3 of course, as we are unfortunately not American). The first prize-winner will also bag a bunch of DVS Revival shoes and other DVS goodies, including a hoody and T-shirt.
If you’re a skater who plays the odd game and bizarrely have yet to dip your toes into Hawk-world, then there is probably something wrong with you so we’ll ask you to stop reading this now please. Thank you.
should-know-better eyes. For this reason, if no other, these games are a godsend. Every game these days has to have a storyline. This is the new game law. In THP8 the background story is that you have to
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To be in with a chance of winning just answer the following brainbuster! What was the name of Tony Hawk’s original skateteam? email it to competitions@trisickle. co.uk and we’ll announce the winners in the next issue of the mag.
Since initiation in 2004 Bestival festival has headlined the greatest of popular Since its its initiation in 2004 the the Bestival festival has headlined somesome of theofgreatest acts ofacts popular music including Bassment Jaxx, Fatboy slim, Lee Scratch Perry, Royksopp, The Bees and Soulwax. The idea behind this relative carnival music including Bassment Jaxx, Fatboy slim, Lee Scratch Perry, Royksopp, The Bees and Soulwax.of absurdity is to have fun and dance to music. This years line up included: The Cuban Brothers, Mystery Jets, Devendra Banhart, The Fall, King Creosote and The idea behind this relative carnival of absurdity is to have fun and dance to music. This years line Kid Creole and The Coconuts, I went along to check it out and consume the experience for myself … up included: The Cuban Brothers, Mystery Jets, Devendra Banhart, The Fall, King Creosote and Kid Creole and The Coconuts, I went along to check it out and consume the experience for myself … We pitched our tent next to the 24 hour field, figuring that positioning ourselves next to all the late night action would be a good thing. We were right next to Ill Al’s temple (that’s a 2 man tent with living area to you and me) offering such beverages as Polish vodka and Budweiser. As it happens this was a master plan because the Big Top and the Southern Comfort tents were where it all went off: The Next Men, Rodney P, DJ Zinc, Carl Cox, Digital Mystikz, Black Dog….with the added bonus that we were all able to roll into our tents if the time ever comes to sleep. Friday night. We went straight to the Southern Comfort tent where we started dancing next to the Next Men (a funky sauce of Reggae/Dub & Hip Hop with MC Wrec). While we were dancing I was accosted by a grinning clown, painted in talcum powder and lipstick who began stroking me with a paper cut-out hand. It was also around the same time I bumped into Lily Allen, who was subsequently ushered away by a tall African security guard and when Madaline shouted, “Isn’t that Lily Allen?” but the girl with the gold ragga earrings just kept on
walking. The night rolled on and into lost vagueness, I somehow ended up in the Bollywood Bar, without my friends.
looking wrecked (say no more…)….. We carried on through the night and somehow made it to The Bees in the Rock ‘n’ Roll tent at 2.30 in the morning, and needless to say the place was Fast forward to Saturday lunch time. rocking, Minha Menina and all that The toilets smelt like five days of classic stuff…After that the 24 hour Glastonbury already, and we were field seemed to die a death, the Black hyped up for day number two, fuelled Dog in the Blue Pavilion all-nighter by Polish vodka and apple juice and whatever else we could get our hands on. The sun was beating down, so we went and checked out the main field, where people were parading around on stilts flanking other variations of fancy dress alongside ladies in corsets and feathers? It was a Liquorice Allsorts of colour: kinda like an afternoon stroll through a Disney Film set in Bollywood. Later on that evening we headed over to Lily Allen, whose little brother came on stage to introduce Alfie, the song written about his weed-induced lazy assedness. We headed to Zinc at the Big Top where we discovered all the Chavs raging to the heavy heavy bass, maaaaan. Zinc was going off, so I wanted to see the man himself behind the decks, and who should I see again but Miss Allen herself,
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Taxi / Lucky Elephant Interview While at the Bestival I was please to find out that Taxi/Lucky Elephant were performing and I managed to take in their debut set. Lucky Elephant are a bit like this magazine they change their name so often they don’t even know whos in the group and whos not? As a band that have been around for literally minutes, I thought I’d interview them. Sam Johnson - Lucky Elephant
was the only option, not that I was complaining……Rewind!! We finally make it into Sunday, and I’ll cut to the good stuff. Ignoring the fact that the Scissor Sisters were on stage, we were seduced by the Southern Comfort offerings of some Ragga-style MC and Soul Jazz’s Pete Reilly, followed by Rodney P and Barry Ashworth of Dub Pistols infamy. Mr P was on the mic, swigging his usual bottle of (neat) Jack Daniels when he proceeded to invite half the up-for-it audience onto the stage only to order them back off again when the records start jumping…The music was a cut-up blend of Dance, Hip Hop, House, old classics and everything you could imagine. After this we waited halfan-hour for drinks at the bar, talking to strangers, at this point I started feeling bit mashed up….Cut to Carl Cox’s history-of-Rave set in which he was running through literally every early nineties tune you could imagine (Everybody Is in The Place, Prodigy was just one among many of the archaic tracks). Some time later we accidentally stumbled upon a late-night comedy act in a random tent that had a bar, but the comedy sucked and the gin and juice didn’t appear to be flowing, so we ended up around a table listening to a friend’s old 45”s on a portable turntable, watching people who look like they’d just begun…..Rewind!! If only it was Friday again maybe we could take over the Big Top.
C: OK tell me a little bit about your band, what music you play and what you do? K: The band is called Lucky Elephant, the music we play is mellow at times, comforting, always melodic and has a sprinkling of French-ness (if thats a word) C: I love music, I play the guitar myself, I’m also learning the keyboard soon too, What instruments do you play? K: I hit the drums with various implements and also play percussion, sometimes I›m allowed to leave the drums and pick up a bass. And then I have been known to hit steel drums once in a while. C: So whos in the band, I mean how many people all together, who are they and what do they play K: Right, rolecall is - Paul on bass synth, piano, and also samples, Sam plays the rhodes, harmonium, guitar and synth most of which is nicely tweaked through a space echo. I play the drums and occasionally bass, and Manu floats on top of it all with his voice and also plays percussion and melodica. C: How did the band come about? K: We basically formed out of the ashes of another band called Boomclick. We had a record put out on SundayBest last year and promoted that for a while, but the general vibe was that the band was heading in two very different directions so out of that came Boomclick soundsystem who are still doing their thing (laptop based beats with live vocals), and Lucky Elephant. It’s all good cos everyone’s now making the music they want to make with no compromises. So we’re all happy! C: What are some of your (the bands) influences? K: Aaah, influences is a good one because we all have fairly different musical backgrounds so we all have kind of different tastes although we definatlely overlap on a few things, so we’re all into reggae mid 70’s roots stuff especially, people like Yabby You, Burning Spear. Then old soul stuff from Stax, Motown - Aretha Franklin, Otis Reading, Staple Singers and stuff like that. We all just love song songs as well - which is pretty much what we do - so Beatles (I’d say George Martin is quite a big
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by Chucky
influence), Neil Young, John Martyn, Beach Boys - back when the songs we›re great and the records sounded niiiice! Individually we cover quite a bit including Madlib, Gainsbourg, Nucleus, Penguin cafe orchestra, Satie and some other bits ’n bobs. C: like the name Taxi, where did it come from, I mean has it got a deeper connatation like to the film Taxi driver or to the song “Joe Le Taxi” or something? K: errrrm....yeh names with us is like socks or summat. I think we›ve had a new name every week for abut a year! So Taxi was alright and we we›re billed as Taxi at the Bestival, but just before we played we decided to go back to Lucky Elephant so that’s it. Lucky Elephant is it! No more changing. You’d never think it was that hard to get four adults to decide on a couple of words but there you go. C: What are some of the tracks you’ve done so far? K: We’re pretty close to finishing recording a four track e.p which we will probably release a 7 inch off it, this should be finished by the start of December and then the tracks will be up on myspace and available to buy through us I expect. Look out for that. C: Cool, when are you playing next and whereabouts? K: We’re gonna be doing a SundayBest night at The Bedford in Balham and thats either in October or November, check out the www. sundaybest.net for details on that one, but we’re really just concentrating on recording an amazing album at the moment, although we probably will do a few odd shows before we finish it. C: I’ve heard your in a live hip hop band too called Lazyhabits hows that going? K: I did a few shows in the summer with them. Check out myspace.com/lazyhabits if you like your hip hop live and funky with brass ‘n ting. C: Have Lucky Elephant got a myspace or website up yet? K: Yeah although its not gonna be properly up and running until late November so check back then! www.myspace.com/luckyelepantuk C: OK thats it, cheers Klack, want to go garden hoping sometime? K: Definitely.
Your letters, your pictures, your nonsense... send to trispace@trisickle .co.uk
Hi Trisickle, I hope you can get down to our neck of the woods. We have just finalised construction of our six foot Hello Trisickle, mini which is made out of recycled What’s with all the “three” stuff ?, Ikea “Floobstroobs”, we approached skateboards have four wheels you Ikea about three years ago for dumb ass bastards. sponsorship, Paul Downer’s uncle Why couldn’t you call your magazine “Foursickle” or “four Suckle” had a job as a fork lift driver and he as in four suckling Pigs, or “Pot Noodle basically racked us about twenty Floobstroobs, which were still flat Masturbation Club” or something packed but had chips out of the left skate related like “Gripped Ape”, or “Kick Philip”or “Triple Set of Dentures” bottom brackets. Sadly Paul’s uncle got the sack but we got away the Oh! no that’s “three again isn’t it? I Floobstroobs. We got the ramp plans guess I see where you are coming and the Floobstroob plans mixed up from now. Keep up the good work. but that’s OK as the ramp extension Nice ideas Mate, you forgot to sign doubles as a freestanding kitchen unit. your name, anyway thanks for not Anyway check it, Brent Cross, not really existing! Sundays as its murder! Sam Dwidg. Sam, we can not possibly endorse stealing, I suggest that you take the Floobstroobs back to Ikea and say you are sorry, our prisons are crowded enough mate.
Yes Trisickle Magazine, It’s great to see a new UK Skateboarding Mag that’s all about local inclusion. However lets drop the features about small time skate brands, shite skate spots & new faces, lets not focus too much on Skater own shops, independent brands and those trying to succeed in an over saturated deck brand market. Instead I hope you concentrate on keeping it real by getting all the celebrity gossip, big brand interviews as well as following the top US Pros and all that good shit! Safe Good luck & Peace out Jimmy Pike Dear Sir, I stumbled upon a feature in your magazine last month, it left me with two broken ribs, a bruised coccyx’s and mild concussion. Expect a letter from my solicitor. Cuthbert Dibble-Grub Hi Cuthbert, sorry to hear about your coxic’s, please remember to read the mag rather than stick it up your jacksy.
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A Letter From Gump I remember back in the day when I first started skateboarding. It wasn’t that long ago but every little virgin was skateboarding down ye old seafront. Sessioning the curbs and watching people roll their ankles off the sea wall, that was sexual. There was Jez who was oriental, he loved Kickflip’s but he knew Table Tennis would be his destiny. The lankiness of Mark Dyer who was rock and roll with his slab’s of meat for feet. Also watching Carl Austin the mentalist going off the French block roof, I’ve never forgot that day… well I did until I watched “Ticket 2 Ryde” cause I’ve been pissed since then BONKERS! We used to skate up the High School the 5 and 3 set’s were sweet, there were like 20 people up there like Matt Hill, Pete Ody, Joe Churches, Mankeye; the list is unstoppable. Matt Hill claimed he flipped the five but after watching the footage he landed in push. Jim’s grind box did us well smashing Pete’s tailbone that was funny, most people were sitting down every five minutes making shitty little roll-up’s to smoke… we were so hardcore! When we finally got our skate park it was the best thing,
better than getting three litres of cider for £2.50 and puking your guts up. Our local scene went downhill fast shortly after cause these people called Chavs and Wiggas come along and every one wanted to be one. That was a path I was never going to go down, cause you end up doing Crack in Tin Town Toilets. But in the past year Skate Boarding’s finally started to pick up around here again, thank fuck for that. Now there’s an entire hood of Rat’s out asking if you’re sponsored cause you can flip or look the part. This is some parts of my memory, bout Skate Boarding and having a great bunch of knobs to skate with, and I will never forget the history we have. Skate or die trying Gump
Yes Trisickle Magazine After successfully petitioning for 8 days me and my mate Kendel have obtained 50 signatures for a new local skate park; the council have finally buckled and they are going to sort it out!. Its going to be the biggest raddest gnarl’s skate park in the whole of the UK, you have to come and do a feature man, its gonna be cosmic Hamish Stead Isles of Skye Well done Hamish, we are def up for a visit, Isle of Skye, that’s between Northern Ireland and Liverpool right?
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