At 60, John's tale is one of enduring passion, a chronicle that zigzags the drainage ditches of Blacktown to his personal vert ramp, with detours into the realms of music, friendship, skate shops, and even the glittering world of jewellery. This episode promises a rich tapestry of stories that reveal the heart and soul of skateboarding through generations, whilst inadvertently highlighting the evolution of Australian society and culture as a whole.
John, with Ti Coleing by our side, reminisces about the makeshift ramps of yesteryear, the groundbreaking tricks that were never documented, and the unforgettable characters who left their mark on and off the board. From Curbs 'n' Copings to skateboarding's grand entrance into the Olympics, we traverse a path laden with nostalgia, innovation, and reflection on how the art-form continues to redefine itself.
With a skater's soul, John Gray's story isn't just about mastering inverts or running a skate shop—it's about the imprint left on a life well lived and the friendships that are forged for eternity . You'll hear about the joy of grandparenting and how the love for a good roll- be it on a skateboard or behind the wheel of a classic car—can keep the buzz of youth alive in the heart of a 60-year-old legend forever.
Get Rad.
Shan
THT gets by with a little help from these friends...
(Intro) Music by Def Wish Cast.
Song: Forever
Album: The Evolution Machine
www.defwishcast.com.au
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At 60, John's tale is one of enduring passion, a chronicle that zigzags the drainage ditches of Blacktown to his personal vert ramp, with detours into the realms of music, friendship, skate shops, and even the glittering world of jewellery. This episode promises a rich tapestry of stories that reveal the heart and soul of skateboarding through generations, whilst inadvertently highlighting the evolution of Australian society and culture as a whole.
John, with Ti Coleing by our side, reminisces about the makeshift ramps of yesteryear, the groundbreaking tricks that were never documented, and the unforgettable characters who left their mark on and off the board. From Curbs 'n' Copings to skateboarding's grand entrance into the Olympics, we traverse a path laden with nostalgia, innovation, and reflection on how the art-form continues to redefine itself.
With a skater's soul, John Gray's story isn't just about mastering inverts or running a skate shop—it's about the imprint left on a life well lived and the friendships that are forged for eternity . You'll hear about the joy of grandparenting and how the love for a good roll- be it on a skateboard or behind the wheel of a classic car—can keep the buzz of youth alive in the heart of a 60-year-old legend forever.
Get Rad.
Shan
THT gets by with a little help from these friends...
(Intro) Music by Def Wish Cast.
Song: Forever
Album: The Evolution Machine
www.defwishcast.com.au
https://defwishcastofficial.bandcamp.com/
INDOSOLE - Sustainable footwear
Code: THT
(15% discount shipping is WORLDWIDE and fast).
Sandals made from recycled Tyres. Timeless footwear for the conscious consumer.
BELLMOTT - Ready to drink Coffee
Code: THT
(Get 15% off your first two online purchases).
Pre-mixed cans of coffee goodness, Iced Lattes and more. Ethically sourced coffee beans, made in Australia, made my Musicians, Skateboarders and Artists. It's all about caffeinating culture, inspired conversations and shared creativity.
KRUSH ORGANICS - CBD oils and topicals
Code: THT
(Get a HUGE 40% Discount...shipping is WORLDWIDE and fast).
Purveyors of the finest CBD oils and topicals. I think long and hard about who I want to be affiliated with. Do the research yourself, the health benefits of CBD are unquestionable. It’s done so much for me, especially during times of stress and anxiety, it’s improved the quality of my sleep and sped up my recovery-time post workouts, surfs and skates... and it’s all natural.
Use code: THT
Krush Organics CBD oils (40% off)
Indosole footwear (15% off)
Become a SUBSCRIBER of THT. Only pay what you feel the show is worth to you!
Follow on Instagram: @terriblehappytalks
Checkout the website: terriblehappytalks.com
Sanghye Sex. We'll be here forever. No-transcript. We will be here forever. Do you understand Forever?
Speaker 2:Hello, it's Shan here. This week I catch up with Jim of Australian Skateboarding, someone whose history in skateboarding is deep. It's Mr John Gray. John shares about his life so far, from growing up in the greater western suburb of Sydney called Blacktown to where he is now in life, still living in the same area, has a vert ramp in his backyard, skates regularly. He's 60 years of age, he's still doing inverts. He still just gets so excited about skateboarding. Like you know, when you meet someone who smiles and their eyes kind of smile as well, like that was like John's vibe throughout the whole episode. When he smiles, his eyes smile. When he talks about skateboarding, his eyes light up. When he talks about his family and his friends, his eyes light up. When he talks about drumming and music, his eyes light up and you can just tell he's still stoked and still inspired at his age and I find that super inspiring.
Speaker 2:John shares regularly throughout the episode about his close and deep friendship with John Finlay and it was really endearing to hear some of those stories of him growing up with Finn firsthand and I felt quite honoured. Actually we're joined by mutual friend, blogger, article writer, skateboarder, vert rat and DJ. Actually he's a DJ as well. Mr Ty Kohling and the three of us just go through like a chronology of his very interesting and amazing life. John, you know his own skate shops. He was also a jeweler for many years and yeah, what a perspective. I guess his life kind of blends in, like when he talks about skating. It's a real blend of how Australian society and culture evolved over the years as well, from, you know, being quite a rural area in western Sydney to what it is now busy, multicultural. So I found that really interesting as well. Anyway, great guy, love this episode, enjoy getting to know Mr John Gray. Everyone Cheers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because the amazing thing is for the kids walk up and down the street and don't even glance. They're looking at their phone because in their eyes it's not skateboarding. A skateboard park is that big arc in the backyard. Is what is it? Yeah, you know. I've only had one bunch of kids ask me if they could ride it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And the church. People over the road would say to me what are you building? And I would say I'm building an arc In the next flood. You've got the faith, I've got the escape. And they just laughed and walked away and that was the end of the subject. Until you know, they watch us, but not one of them. They'll skateboard in the car park like Street Skate, but they won't come over here to say, can we ride, can we watch? I think they just look up and see four old guys going. What are they doing? What are they doing? They're ancient.
Speaker 3:I guess if you were completely clueless to see that transition, you could think it was the hull of a boat, right that's it Out here, you could more likely to be a hull of a boat than a skateboard ramp, you know, because people build boats out here.
Speaker 2:But I must admit it conjures this magic. I mean as a kid, if you knew someone had a ramp, you'd peek over the fence. It was so magical.
Speaker 3:Jump fence, you would do anything.
Speaker 2:Do you think that magic's gone for kids?
Speaker 3:It's just not what they envision skateboarding. They can't just get up there and do it. It's too hard, it's too big. You know, when it's not, they can't get on there and do their trick and go look how great I am because the action's at the top, yeah. So if you can't do it, you can't do it For them, it's. You know, I've had a couple of scooter. Kids can get on there, but obviously that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2:What's going to say? Are you let scooters on there?
Speaker 3:My grandkids maybe would get away with it, but I'd be struggling too how many grandkids do you have? Four, wow, man, yep, they're classics.
Speaker 2:Are they?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. We're at Lila, arizona and Roscoe Right. Yeah, you just love them. It's just a whole a world of amazing to be a grandparent.
Speaker 2:Is it?
Speaker 3:All love. Easy, huh, easy Just rock on, just do all the bad stuff. See, I bought them a little MIDI drum set there, so they all learn to play drums, because parenting's hard right. You're happy. When your time is done, you're happy.
Speaker 2:He's grandparenting the reward for their hard work.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It's a joy, it's the best thing ever. You just spoil them and be cool and you're that great person. You're always poppy, you're on poppy, you know poppy, they love you, they cuddle you and run up and out. A dream, my grandson, my son, ben's son, roscoe. He called me pop, pop, pop for the first time the other day. How old is he? One little bit, so it was just the first. And you go look at that one. And then you know they play at the back and me, benny and his son, are playing ball out in the backyard. Wow.
Speaker 3:Well, that's for me is amazing, because it would have been Benny at the skate park with me. That's a little grom at this big for years.
Speaker 2:If you reflect on John Gray, the skate rat in the 80s, did you ever envision that your life would be what it is today?
Speaker 3:No, no way, no way. Not the, not the skateboard part, the like the once 2000 come and the dog town documentary come. Then, as a 40 year old, I bypassed the whole nineties, basically so 92,. I was Ben a parent and then I couldn't adapt to whatever was happening. And then they brought back old school and all of a sudden I wasn't that corny, you know it became relevant again I could write again. I could write in public again and not feel like I wasn't doing everything that you're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 2:Well, did you feel like a period of time you couldn't be who you wanted to be on a skateboard?
Speaker 3:I don't think I wanted to be the guys that were on a skateboard. They flew forward. So the tiny wheel, baggy pants, the whole, everything, generational change. For sure I got dusted.
Speaker 2:You just like it's over for us. We're done.
Speaker 3:Well, it was over by the time, not yeah, no, that's wrong. The skateboard shop, when I had that all through it, was punishing, crushing. When it all went down and you saw, so it was basically rap, music and basketball come in and my generation of skateboarding went and then it was street riding because everyone could street ride. Then they just got better and better and better and better and better and, yeah, it just got hard. I think you're definitely too hard, too much effort to continue with the kids, you know continue with the kids, like your kids.
Speaker 3:No, no. With the new kids, with Lux, and you know that Jen Lux was just amazing. You know we go out and watch it. He just wow. You can do everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, and then they just you couldn't, I couldn't keep up with it.
Speaker 2:You know not my version of tricks and skateboarding on the did you find it hard because there was a lack of vert ramps as well.
Speaker 3:No, no, I always. That's all we did, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like the. You know, because the people who had them in their backyards, I was tearing them down and things like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but that was us, See, we had them. Okay, it was us who had them. And then of course we had man of Isle. So you rode man of Isle and that's where the scene was, and it was definitely. You know, they just the young kids just got better and it got harder for me to get a go. We're not, yeah, not hard to get a go, but you get, I think you get spiteful. Everyone got a little bit of bitter once you got the kids with Dustin here and you know, by the time, dave Bodden to come out, well, he would let you know that he was totally dusting you and there was no mercy. So it was a break.
Speaker 2:You know I was like, yeah, let you know through his actions You're off to help you suck.
Speaker 3:Look at that. Oh, what are you doing? Get off the ramp. Did he actually say those?
Speaker 4:things to you.
Speaker 3:He was ferocious for a little time. Yeah, I know it was painful, you know, but in his own little funny way. But you certainly, and by then, by the time he was good. I was just going back to have a role with Ted, you know so just for clarity.
Speaker 2:Ted who.
Speaker 3:Steve Sergeant, just go back and have a role with the boys and see what I could still do and still do the same stuff. I still do it now. There wasn't ever many, I just made good use of him.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. So I want to I guess, effectively I want to get a bit of a chronology of your life, and we'll delve into it, like can you tell us where you grew up?
Speaker 3:I grew up in Marion, which is about four stations back from where we are in Windsor. Yeah, which for those. Just a little suburban boy in Blacktown.
Speaker 2:Blacktown. I'm a Blacktown kid, if that's the so for people listening in other parts of the world. That would be the greater Western suburbs of Sydney, new South Wales, australia.
Speaker 3:Yeah, at the time it certainly was Blacktown. If you told someone you come from Blacktown, they actually. When I went to Pimble Pool, even at Manly Skate City, they called me Blacktown. They didn't refer to me as John.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 3:Because we were just trash from the birds, but we were just good, we could move. Good, you know, we built ramps and we had. We just got good. So in the end they couldn't hassle us because we just got good, you know. So we held our own and then I think I won. So the first half pipe contest in New South Wales If they don't count Aubrey as a real half pipe but the first real half pipe contest. That was the amateur thing in 79, I think. And I won that. And I was on the phone to my mum, going mum. I won, I won. And it was all exciting. And Biff walked past Biff Murdoch, biff Murdoch and said are you talking to your mum, john? And I went, mum Biff just called me by first name. It was like, well, I think that was the greater. I didn't know whether just winning that contest was the best thing in the world or Biff calling me by name, but I was someone all of a sudden.
Speaker 2:What year?
Speaker 3:79., 79., 79. So I wasn't black town anymore, so I did.
Speaker 2:So do you think that wins solidified your credibility amongst?
Speaker 3:No, it was just a little wrap. I was going to the, I used to look in the surf magazines to see if there was any skateboard pitches. You know there'd be a Sims ad or. And I looked through tracks and there was a story of the contest and you know there's a big picture of Errol winning the bowl part. And then there's this tiny little paragraph that says and the surprise of the day was Blacktown's John Gray, who come from nowhere, to win, you know, the amateur part. And I was like well, that's me, mum, mum it's me and she's like don't be silly.
Speaker 2:So how did you get good in the first place?
Speaker 3:There was a little drainage canal.
Speaker 2:In Blacktown.
Speaker 3:And in Quakers Hill, which is not far from here again. Yeah, and we used to ride our bikes there and one day I'm just sitting on the crapper and the boys are on their bikes and I'm going let's get out of the canal. We strap our skateboards on there. We've been riding the footpaths and the hills and it was like the greatest revelation in the world. So up we go and we're all trying to ride up this little embankment up onto the top and Keep talking you all right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I just I went halfway up and turned around.
Speaker 2:So wait up On thein a drainage ditch yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:You went halfway up the drainage ditch.
Speaker 3:Halfway up the little wall. We had a bank there and I went up the wall and we were trying to ride up and over the top onto the platform, like we did.
Speaker 2:Of the drain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know like we would on our push bikes.
Speaker 2:But you ran out of speed.
Speaker 3:And turned around.
Speaker 2:Like a kick turn.
Speaker 3:And was the kick turn.
Speaker 2:So what are you saying? Are you saying you invented the kick turn?
Speaker 3:I invented the kick turn before I'd ever seen anyone do it. That's it. I'd never seen anyone. I'd seen dude surf carver hill.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'd never seen anyone actually kick turn. I had this little green plastic board with a notch on the back Right. It was the greatest invention of all time, because boards then had rockers.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Which I wasn't a surf guy, so the little notch was perfect.
Speaker 2:So where wethis is what Ty and I were talking about this morning. We're having a chat on the phone like where are you getting your skate information from? What was theyou know there wasbecause there was very little documenting there.
Speaker 3:I'd seen thisyou know, you sawyou saw that whole generation of Bane Superflex. I wasn't allowed to ride a skateboard. My dad wouldn't let me ride a skateboard Right. So I know you can't have one of those things. So if I'd sneak off, I think I'd learn to stand on one at nine. And then at eleven he moved out and I went mum, can I have a skateboard and a drum set Right, classic one too. So then I was being a paper boy to get a skateboard right and there was this evil dude in our street who wouldn't let us paint road, you know football fields and stuff, and heanyway I had a drink truck and he'd always parked in our court. So one day he got out of the drink truck and he dropped his wallet and me and Greg are playing with the footy going alright, this is it, this is it, we're going to get it. So I'm kicking the footy. About two hours I finally land the football on this guy's wallet. We do a runner up to the new roads and that's where I bought my first skateboard.
Speaker 2:Insane.
Speaker 3:Terminal. From the guy's wallet. From the guy's wallet, the drink guy. Wait a minute. He shouldn't have parked on our court.
Speaker 2:So he dropped his wallet. So I thought it was going to be some really noble story of like I've never, worked every Saturday delivering papers.
Speaker 3:I did, but I didn't make enough money to buy a skateboard. It cost 42 bucks and I wasn't even getting close. 42 bucks, 42 bucks. So it was a big coin for a green plastic board.
Speaker 2:What year? 77. 76.
Speaker 3:Dude, I was born in 77.
Speaker 2:So maybe 76. We were talking 48 years ago. Yeah, brrr, yeah.
Speaker 3:I see History's deep. It was classic. So yeah, we stole our first skateboard with me and Greg and never got off, and that was it.
Speaker 2:What was the board, though Do you remember the brand?
Speaker 3:No, it was a green plastic board Like a banana board. Yeah, except it had a little notch tail. So it was flat, so it was flat, yeah, and then it had a notch on the tail to make it like a kick. A little kick tail, yeah, but kick tails weren't invented yet.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the board wasn't actually moulded with a kick. No, okay.
Speaker 3:No, mine was flat, with this little notch, you know, a green plastic notch on the back, and it was the perfect.
Speaker 3:It could sort of skid, dig your heel into it, go down the hill with a bit of wood on the back and skid all the way down the hill like a champion. Really, we just got rid of that because we were watching. When I was a paper boy I was watching this guy called Lindsay ride this another drainage ditch but he just surfed down the wall and he did coffins and tank tan. It was just so cool. You know, brown skin, long hair, all that stuff. That didn't happen in Blacktown. He just looked and watched and go, wow, check that dude. And then you'd see a picture of someone carving a skateboard. Maybe there'll be a Sims ad or a and I'd see that in the surf magazines. You just seeing this little picture and for no idea I mean the first Sims ad the guy's hanging above the wall in a snake run. I have no idea how he even gets there. No concept of that Gotcha. So what would you?
Speaker 2:study it going. Okay, how did this happen?
Speaker 3:Study that one picture, yeah see, I did probably what everyone in every other part of the world did. You know, there's me inventing a kick turn in a drain, but there would have been 50 kids in other parts of the world doing the same thing.
Speaker 2:So when you did that kick turn, were you like with your friends? Were you just like?
Speaker 3:what? What happened? Did you see that? Did you see what I did? Did you see what I did? So anyway, by the end of the day we're going up on and I was doing one wheelers and we were like you are balancing on one wheel, sitting there at night we probably brought a yeah, anyway, you know, bedeigar, or whatever. It would have been getting Rosie on as little kids, poor it. No way, that's too harsh for me. Champagne, cheap champagne from a young age, and we were just talking about that. And then you'd flex the wheel because the wheels were wide and they'd slop like they were those old wheels are just jelly and then bearings would fall out. So then I'd go up and I'd just ride this thing on my own, this little ditch, every day. I had this green plastic Cooper helmet and my mum said as long as you wear the helmet, you're allowed to go in.
Speaker 2:So at this stage your dad was cool with it.
Speaker 3:No, he's gone. Okay, yeah, everything's cool. Okay, raging, yeah he was. You know he wasn't horrible, he was just a psychness, so he's cranky, okay, and parents separated. Yeah, yeah, and then I skateboard drum set, you know, hence today Skateboard round drum set, amazing.
Speaker 4:So skating the ditch just real quick. You're not sort of rolling in from the top, you're rolling down the flat bottom to get sort of up the wall. Or were you entering in from the top, or no, we just push from the bottom, okay.
Speaker 3:So, like we'd, you know, put the board there, run up to it, push as fast as we can and go up the wall Right and eventually I was doing these little you know handplant things grab and land on the top because it was just a you know a banky bank to. So it was. You didn't hang up.
Speaker 2:If you come in, so it was like a round.
Speaker 3:Not round. It was square enough to balance a wheel, Okay, but it was, um yeah, banky enough that you couldn't really no concept of doing an aerial Hanging up, or oh, that too or jagging.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you couldn't hang up, so you could, you could roll down it if you wanted to, with and with no problem. But we just, yeah, we'd roll down it and then turn around and go back up it and work on it, and there was all parts of it everywhere. It's still out there. It's amazing. It just takes a lot of cleaning and the concrete's rough, but it's incredible, you know, interesting. Yeah, now you know I was doing little handplant things and then I gave that up because I couldn't get high enough. So then I was just doing bunny hop jumps to hang up and I sort of basically sort of just shit on my own and then Danny Van and all the Harris Park guys turned up it At my canal, which we referred to as the Far Canal the Far Canal the.
Speaker 3:Far Canal. We're all going to the Far Canal. It was just we had a little song we're all going to the Far Canal. You know We'd have contest up there for a chocolate. You know we'd all chuck in and so what best trick, best line?
Speaker 3:I just didn't know. You know something to argue about over the chocolate. So, yeah, and yeah, we just and then Danny Vanden always surf cats and they got there and they wrote it totally different to how I did. They were riding these other side walls and it's very writable if you're a surfer guy, but I didn't like those walls because they'd break my wheels on the angles if I hit them too hard. They'd wreck my wheels.
Speaker 3:I didn't have any money to get more wheels, so it was. You know, you had to save your skateboard and my upright and down on this little quarter pipe thing or bank thing was. And I was progressing. Yeah, they got there and they're like, wow, is this kid? So then I went to Harris Park. I mean, whoa, look at all these. You know I'm there with my little green plastic Coupe board and they've got, you know, real skateboards. So skateboarding was already happening. I just didn't have any grasp out here or any money. Wow, and then we went to Burwood and looked at them skateboards was Dave Mark looks like a rock star? And Wow, look at all these people. And I'd never seen outside of Mary on.
Speaker 3:Interesting. I was just a little bourbon kid, I'd never had any money to go anywhere. You know I was to go to the footy, I think, but that was just go to football, go back, you know, like Boston George play or whatever, and yeah, and that was it my only outside contact with until I got to skateboarding.
Speaker 2:I mean, look at the world, so you were just, you know, in inventing your own tricks as you went. We were just inventing.
Speaker 3:Looking at something young, I wonder how, yeah, I wonder how that gets done. Yeah, you know one of my mates. We put this tiny little quarter pipe to learn rock and roll zone Well, going for it, and we put this little bit of wood in a quarter parts probably as big as this tiny table, you know to foot, and we put a little bit of wood on so we could rock the board More, trying to do it and rather make us watch this, just went up front side and did it one go, one go. So you know, in our world, parker invented the front side rock and roll.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well it's okay, you ask Greg and we can ring my mates and go who invented the front side rock and roll? That's what he'll say Parker cross.
Speaker 2:It's so true. How do you quantify who actually Invented these things? Because everyone, like around the world, is having their own similar experiences.
Speaker 3:It is. It's, you know, it's magic. Just the magazines made what was going to be that trick, yeah. And then you started going, okay, yeah, but to actually see moving skateboarding. The first time I saw moving skateboarding was in a surf Playgrounds of paradise, okay, and all the mates went out because they had money to go to the food shop and I didn't, so I just sat through it and there was skateboarding on it. So in those I saw skater data which is so classic. It's just one old school little, you know, surface am kind of movie. The guys just rip. You know it's Danny bear and all those old school first-gen guys and they just kill it on these deadly boards and I watched that. And then they had Ray bones and Steve Olson riding the half pipe at Lakewood and there it is, gliding magical skateboarding the first time he just like that is off its head. That's what it looks like, that's. And then you know, blinded love so after the far canal.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:The first actual ramp you seen was at Pearlwood. Is that we said?
Speaker 3:no, no, that was just seeing that the humans. We built ramps, so we built a little ramp in the backyard.
Speaker 2:The little quarter pipe is like effectively the first ramp you'd ever seen in real life.
Speaker 3:And to use what in the canal was actually the first time, like, yeah, I'd use something going straight up and straight down the canal. Yeah, the canal wall was something I could push straight out, turn around what about after that, though?
Speaker 2:Well then, we just went and build our own ramps.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like a quarter pipe, yeah we built a little quarter pipe down there, my driveway, which first go, we went straight through, yeah, because it was really steep and one layer of masonite, so first go, went straight through that, that was over. Then we built a little half pipe thing. We put pool metal on it. You know, old school, imagine suburban backyard swimming pools with the blue tip. So that lasted 10 minutes with the neighbors and then we just become, you know, by the time, the whole of my, my griffer mates. You know, we were just would we just get out there in the bush and find wood and build, build, build, build. You know, so we had, we probably had the first big ramp with flat bottom. I saw that Hollywood ramp in in the magazine and that was Eight foot high and had flat bottom. So we just built that.
Speaker 3:I didn't, I never built anything. My mates would build it, you know. So, with the builders and I was probably allowed to straighten nails that was probably my job, you know and we just go up to this place called buck shots and steal wood from his house and he'd come out and shoot us with a shotgun. But it was all part of the fun, you know Scream, snake, everyone to drop this bit of wood and one day we found this 10 by 10 piece of Platform or something was actually a. That was our flat bottom and that was it from there. We had flat bottom to build all the ramps off. They were deadly. No one to come and ride them because it record wheels. Okay, so that Bradshaw and Danny and all them guys, they're like no way, mate. You know wheels are too expensive and your ramps are just death traps.
Speaker 4:What were the wheels? Oh, would have been. And you know, not brand, but Still over there getting no. No, it's just your own.
Speaker 3:Yeah, colored your own by now. Bones, you know, like maybe cubic. So they cost a fortune but they wouldn't write them on my ramps.
Speaker 4:What was what was wrong with nails sticking out?
Speaker 3:I think metal and we'd, we'd stick anything down. So if there was a sign on that street that we obviously need that, you know, metal was good, metal would last, but the corners were deadly so they were just butcher ramps. But we kept building and kept building and kept building and we just never gave up and Up down. We had a channel, a bowl, whatever was happening in the magazine, my mate beam would just go. I'm going to build it. Hmm, cool, why was it working? On Saturday mornings, when I come home to my backyard of Chaos, you've been.
Speaker 2:You've been in the area most of your life and all your life really, away from skateboarding a little bit. How, how would you compare a black town of then to a black town of now? Like what are the big changes in the society and culture?
Speaker 3:Oh, it's totally different place like.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't go there now.
Speaker 3:So it's just yeah. When in my days it was just, you just went yeah, don't go, don't go there, don't walk there. You know, you knew where to be, where not to be is how I was there, okay for what, for what reasons, sketchy, you know, they just weren't going to take to it.
Speaker 3:And then, yes, I mean Finn, were Having a bit of a magic time one night and we were in this car park in black town in this little grease thing doing you know, spinning orbital 360s like both wheels, spinning it twice Just flat, spinning ground young in Greece and it was hysterical at the time and the copper comes up to us and says, fuck off, back to manly. And because we had long shorts on, no, but yeah, you had, footy shorts was stubby's if you're from where I grew up.
Speaker 2:You know, I thought you like surf at all.
Speaker 3:We were like what are you doing here? I got back to manly. Like I'm from Marion and Finn was always a bit wise mouth, so we had to be very cautious. You know, yeah, that was pretty funny but yeah, we were considered not right for their either. Interesting because we wrote a skateboard. We just rode skateboard. You know what are you doing on that thing? Now, that was post-generation, so the whole Bane super flex thing was done, but we were the little trinkets that well, I finally was, finally was laid over skateboard. So I just got straight on, I was hanging for it. You know, I just wasn't allowed to do it back in 74, 75, whatever, when Bane super flex was out interesting, yeah, but the area now is a lot more built up, oh yeah, you know, the totally different place was bush.
Speaker 3:We'd run around like madmen by cars for 20 bucks and play paddock thrashing, yeah, but now it's just houses rather demographic Totally different culture.
Speaker 3:Yeah absolutely, absolutely. You know it's just a different place, different place completely. But it's, you know, it's not my department, that that's not wasn't. I don't go there because I don't have to anymore living out here, I Just don't have to go through. You know I go. Yes, you know I remember at all and went to school there. Yeah, you know. Yeah, it was nothing ever happened to me. You know I was wise enough for you for safe Run fast but it wasn't safe.
Speaker 3:Not to be a little odd-bod kid okay you know, you know you just didn't.
Speaker 3:You know, there was a quarter pipe in Wayland. Now drew it when that to me was scary, right Because. So they were like okay, so my auntie lived there and I'd gone ride this little quarter pipe which was a perfect eight foot section of manly half pipe, eight foot wide, eight foot high wood coping just a dream. And we'd always go and ride that. And One day the bogans come from across the road, just come over with a thing of petrol and went fuck off.
Speaker 4:Was that one of those blue fiberglass one?
Speaker 3:No, it was they were orange because they were the the blue ones with the six foot quarter pipe sections, but this was actually one of the half pipe sections. Okay so it was eight foot tranny, eight foot high, eight foot wide that they were perfect. Exactly like manly half pipe, skate City half pipe, not curl park here. No we're way before, yeah, way before curl park. Yeah, no, that probably had the. Yeah, I don't know. I don't even know when that ramp got there like the quarter pipe.
Speaker 2:How old were you in your first match on Finlay?
Speaker 3:Um, well, that was at Pimblepool, so what's? That's 79, so I? 79 is yeah, 79, so whatever that makes me.
Speaker 2:Okay, so and he lived.
Speaker 3:He lived close by at the time he just got here from Scotland and they were. They were roller skater guys and him and and then so you've all skated, he was a bow human, steve Henshaw, his mate from Manchester. They were roller disco guys because they met at the hostel where they. They got there and I was snappy dresses and fancy accents and very worldly and cool and we were just and so we were talking to them at the.
Speaker 3:It was raining at Pimblepool one morning and because all of us you know nobody's had to hack it out to get a go, so we catch the first train at a black town, which was three in the morning, and hopefully we get a go. Before they got there, you prayed the surf was perfect. If the surf was perfect, at least some of them wouldn't be there and Maybe we get a go, but maybe most of the time we just go watch, maybe get five or six little scraps and then go home and do whatever they did, because now we can see rolling and they could do wheelers and hairs and rail grabs and all this amazing Shit, you know, yeah and there's little Johnny McGarrett just killing it with these long rock star hair and we're like what the hell is that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was just a different dimension for us to go there. But then we go home to our ramp and we'd nail Lino, yeah, floor tiles on so we could get. And get the noise and get the noises yes, yeah pull tiles, we just nail them on with anything and just go yeah, that's us. Now We've got the noises Did and we do impersonations of you know, just did and that did, and you know.
Speaker 2:But even though, like Finn and his friend were roller skaters, you liked them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they were. You know they were probably scrapping to to get a bite into the scene. Okay, we were just all little rats arriving here and we wanted to be with the big cool guys, which was Errol Wedge, johnny McGarrett, tony man Biffley. You know they were the A-listers. Well, we certainly weren't. Even I didn't even have a ticket, you know, we didn't even have a ticket to stand there, we could sit on the top and but yeah, so then when Finn, they got moved out here, out to the burbs, so Finn moved out to Riverston, which is just two stations from here, and of course that was it. You know he was like, okay, I'm hanging with you guys, so he'd come and ride this half pipe section on his roller skates. So he was pretty good. You know his mate was better, but he was pretty good. You know they could do little jumps or whatever all this guy goes to. You know, right stuff back then. And and then they just got off it. You know, once in our ramps the eight wheels were so expensive, you know.
Speaker 3:I had that and then yeah, and then I remember Finn had eight bones in 131 indies on his roller skates. Yes, it's like a million dollars worth of shit there. You know, I couldn't even afford the stickers. It'll end the stuff. So then when he got it off his skateboard, he's got Like he's instantly rolling to skateboard with primo stuff, and then they could afford to wreck the wheels. You know, oh, you just got used to it, we just got used to it. You know, it was better wrecking your wheels than your body. If you fell off you were gonna come up with blood. Yeah, so, and then once Finn got here, we were just, that was us. We were inseparable. You know, we was just, we just hit a family thing. He called my mom Arne Dell, you know.
Speaker 2:Do you mind if I ask like what did you immediately like about his personality?
Speaker 3:I didn't. He's just an obnoxious little shit, but he was something you know. Yeah, it was a witty and fast and British and we weren't ready. We were just bugging kids from out here. We didn't have that sense of you got kind of like comedy's.
Speaker 3:You know sarcastic putting shit, oh yeah yeah, yeah, full on like that and we just didn't know how to take it and he taught me how to take it and I Give him he would. They were so worldly and had seen you know and been from you know, finger up in Ruffles, scotland, and and Steve was from Manchester, so they'd seen a much bigger city world than I had and they'd music influences that I would never have had and and that all leads to that you know, brought that to you as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything you playing drums. Then in that stage, like how old we are, young I was pit padding for sure.
Speaker 3:I was doing that from when I was nine. Yeah no, and I got it. I took me a while to get a drum set, but I was definitely obsessed.
Speaker 2:So is he opening your mind to some bands and well, we got a bit older, yeah, they lay.
Speaker 3:He started going out and we saw scar bands and you know Post punk bands and you know spy versus spy, cool stuff, power stuff and stuff that would just Enchant me, you know. And so I just, I always loved the idea of being. I was never not gonna play drums. That was it. I've seen this one video clip it's More than a feeling by Boston and had a sparkly drum set and he hits the symbol and it shimmers in the lights and I was in love and there was no way I was not gonna do that. That was me and so that it would be whatever Peanut butter, jar, the knife, fork, the spoon, you know endless. And Then, yeah, when Finn and Steve could hear, they just had a different. I grew up, obviously, on straight Aussie he's. I should learn to drum to a living in John. No way. Yep, she was when I loved it to death and that's what I was.
Speaker 2:She was so hot hey.
Speaker 3:Must have been something back in the day because uh yeah, but that was it, I learned to drum.
Speaker 3:I got on it and I got on the drums and Mums like no drum solos, and I just had to learn how to play. So I realized what? Why no drum solos? That just painful, I can't. Still can't do drum solos, I still. I'm hopeless and play good. But I got down to drum solos and I'm playing somewhere and people say can do drum solo again Because I suck, I don't have a lot of tricks, but I can rip around them and play them good.
Speaker 2:So you know, get rid of oh yeah. You know when you just start jamming with friends and stuff.
Speaker 3:Oh, we had our own band. We started a band, said the same boys I skateboarded with. It was pouring. So we went okay, we better start a band, because that's what's happening in the magazines.
Speaker 3:Yep so we started a band in I was gonna play drums, greg was already rocking around with his guitar. Tell, the guy had a guitar and that the guy had bass, like any kids. He just go right, I was done the band. What are we gonna play? I played Beatle, dumb stuff, you know. And then one day we're jamming, we're thinking we're all that, and Finn and Steve turn up and I go, so what do you think? And Finn goes Be negative. So we were called to be negative. I was gonna say what are you?
Speaker 3:Finn named the band Be Negative? Yeah, he always had these little classic quotes. You know he was already little. Is the other be negative? So he did that and then, yeah, he come, they'd come along and he'd play all the. Then we had a scar be involved. Yeah, yeah, they were. We know that's just what we did, what did he play?
Speaker 2:What did he sing?
Speaker 3:He'd play. Uh, I'm only in the first one, it just caused mayhem and then it be negatives him and Steve would just cause mayhem. Because I was trying to play the police. I bought this clap-trap which you could drum once and it was really, you know, for its day, and so then Finn and Steve got on it and just went and it overdubbed itself and I just couldn't ever fix it. So I was like you pricks. But anyway, then after way after that we start, we were in scar bands with, with, with Finn, you know, and yeah, it's classic Scar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the first I was gonna say. What was the genre you were going for, or did that evolve with the times I was at home?
Speaker 3:That's what they were into see. I was. We went and saw Whatever the Sex Pistols movie like every bunch of clowns, and they were coming back. I'm gonna be a punk rocker. I'm like a bunch of fucking idiots. You gotta be shit. It just gets. Gonna go back home to the bogs and just put the same old shit on. Do what we do, you know.
Speaker 3:But it was all enthusiastic on the train, you know they were. We wanted to spit. Now all of a sudden, oh, whatever punk people did. And then, but this is, you know, before we'd even grown up and hit the city. So we haven't, you know, we've got no culture yet, you know. But then when I started going out, we first we saw, yeah, sort of spy versus spy, that post punk power pop stuff. I think they called it, yeah, and I was yeah, so good, was just ferocious live. But then Steve got into scar music and then we started going to see the all-nighters or whatever the bands that were happening back then. Yeah, and then they got right into that. So then of course we started one of them kind of bands, because that's what you do. And yeah, I learned how to play that junk. You know, I start get on there now and I go. I don't even know how to play this anymore.
Speaker 3:It's so amazing, but I actually learned it because it's just what was Entering to your head, you know.
Speaker 2:so you're still playing regularly drums yeah oh.
Speaker 3:I'll be on them, probably when you guys go no way just for the sake of it. Yeah, I listen to country now, I love country. You know, modern, modern country is my favorite. Now, you know we, because it's got everything, it's still got power. It played almost exactly like disco, the same as funk would be played. It's just funk drumming.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:You know where the foot pedal placements are, is just modern groove music. So it's not really country, it's just the words the country Gotcha and the dipsies country. But I could play, you could play, basically any modern song that's out on the radio, sung by whoever will also be a country song.
Speaker 3:Okay there's country rap. They're just exactly like normal rap, except this thing about the back road. Yeah, not killing life in the city. You know the shooting deer in the country? Yeah, that's exactly the same stuff and the drum beats all the same, so I just love it. You know gangster as well? Yeah, definitely is. It's just this country gangster.
Speaker 4:Did you? Did you have actual lessons to play the drums? I had one.
Speaker 3:Had one, and being that I must have been a very, you know, humble child. The guy told me to do this thing and hold the sticks this way, and I just thought he was an idiot. Obviously, don't do that, you know. You do what they do on the TV because they know what they're doing. The guy ended up being the drummer who he played drums for the Led Zeppelin band. So imagine, if I had not been such an egotistic, a little wanker, what I would have learned now. I still can't do that Jump-on-triplet, you know. Okay, I can get close, but I don't dedicate time to it. It's not what I want to play. I'd rather play Prince.
Speaker 2:Really so do you? Even now are you still trying to get better? I progress, oh never stop, I'll just maintain what you can do.
Speaker 3:No, you never stop learning. You know, you never stop learning stuff. It's just Easy to learn tricks on that than on that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, less taxing on the body less taxing on Grilling on your head and simple stuff. You know it's just, but it's sequencing and when you can put it in and can you use all that stuff and can you do it on the roll. You know Not go, I can't got this amazing trick, but you know. I know guys got amazing tricks, but can you use it? We ever gonna play stuff like I'm never gonna play speed metal, death metal, I don't even know where the drum beat is, I never listen to it and I just don't even know how they. But I watch it and go.
Speaker 2:That's a big that's incredible.
Speaker 3:Well, you could probably be you saying bolt in a race, you know it's thunder foot and it's six billion miles and he's probably upbeat anyone in the walking race. You know should be a drummer, all stars. But yeah, it's just not my music. That stuff was never my music. So even early metal like Led Zeppelin, you know. I was the Osborne, I just never listened to that.
Speaker 3:My sisters and brother played Beatles and wings and and I learned you know my sister was a disco dance star back in the 70s. So I'll still put on Saturday night fever and think what a disco dance star. Yeah, it was a show called the zoo, I think it was called, and she was a dancer on it, which you know. Amazing, yeah, so I learned all that. You know, I learned that kind of music, not so much metal.
Speaker 2:So I don't, you know, I've always been just a funky drum, no good guy, you know, I just rather just Flipped it around and have a good time, so good if we go back to the eight, let's go into the 80s now, like where it was, a Skateboarding was starting to become a little bit more predominant, a little bit more recognized Pros were coming from America to do demos and things like that. You know what. How would you describe that period of skateboarding for you? Was it a real period of progression?
Speaker 3:There was a little blank before that part so you could get you. There's a little just haze where we all tinker to the bell around on a skateboard but there was nothing to skateboard on North ride was. You know I'll dusty dirty, no one went anymore North ride. Yeah, we were sort of a little bit more into music. We were learning that to all. My boys were learning music, yeah. And then, yeah, let's see what happened. That's wild.
Speaker 4:Just quickly, what so? The half pipe competition 79 the one, what ramp was that on? That was it's gate city.
Speaker 3:It's getting manly, manly, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 4:So did that have flat bottom, or?
Speaker 3:didn't have flat bottom, did it? No, no, flat bottom. So I was eight foot high. Eight foot thingy. That's the trophy. That's the only trophy I got. I'll see I still got that one that was worth keeping. You know, I was just looking at before. Yeah, so that that's the. That's the contest number one.
Speaker 4:So what? So then, where did you? Progress to.
Speaker 3:We just went to an own backyard, it become very expensive to go. We get more goes on on our own ramps. You know we jam on the flat bottom and then we take that off and we build a bit of ramp and then we Play skateboards all day and then drink beer on it at night and I Think we just stayed to ourselves for a long time and then North ride come along and then we all sort of remade it North ride and then you get to the yeah, so we had men, finn had girlfriends. You know we were doing our thing. I Was, I was rockabilly by then. I was a rockabilly kid, I was a rockabilly dance guy then. So Finn was too raucous to hang out with. Like Finn was for house. Look, if you want to go out at night with him like you would eat, like it wasn't gonna end.
Speaker 2:Do we talk in 18, 19?
Speaker 3:Yeah, prentice Hughes. Okay, yeah, he was a freaking hell man. Yeah, no shit, he was wild. No, I would have been just problem, probably my 20s here. Yeah, cuz, yeah, I bought, I bought. I had a jewelry shop at 19.
Speaker 2:Wait up, you okay, you started one.
Speaker 3:No, I was. Yeah, I learnt to be a jeweler, so I had a jewelry shop at 19 trade.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 3:Yes, so we had that. And then, anyway, that turns our yeah, I got stabbed and I got arm-robed and so we closed that down into the skateboard shop, so I just faded. Anyway, there's a whole lot of what?
Speaker 2:what suburb we talking?
Speaker 3:Seven Hills, which is just next to black town. But in the 80s, you know, it was a lot of heroin around town and just you know, this shit just hit the fan and if you're in one of them shops, a Jewelry shop, on your own back then you're just asking for it, you know, like, so you know I got nailed and that's what happens. So that was the end of the love of that. You know it was kind of that shattering. You know I was so hurt and yeah, then I just faded that Colin Brown started importing skateboards and all of a sudden there was this little pickle in skateboarding. You know you could see this little sparkle. You know Santa Cruz had a bullet and it was color and all of a sudden again it was like, oh, here we go and and Colin started importing. Colin Brown started importing skateboards, he started bringing Santa Cruz in and I Was totally over the jewelry thing by then. You know I was. I didn't want to be that terrified all the time and you know.
Speaker 2:Sorry to hear that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was gnarly, but you know it was on your head. You know, anyway, that and I just started filling the shop up with skateboards and all of a sudden, you know the jewelry people who come in and go I want my ring fixed. And why is there 50 kids here? I'm. What are all these pink things on the? You know like half the cupboards got Santa Cruz skateboards and you were buying him off, colin Brown. I was buying him off Colin Brown.
Speaker 2:He was like the distro.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so he started getting bigger and better and getting more other brands and shit and so you kind of had right.
Speaker 2:Rights to selling Santa Cruz.
Speaker 3:Yeah, get. No, well, everyone was. You know there was no tabing. Well, I'm not tabing. I knew Darren Burford was doing vision up in or whoever, whatever seems, or something. What did he was doing up in Queensland? You know, there's a little on shrimp, it's on some of our kids would just got it together. So they started, you know, they brought it to it. You know Colin basically brought it to Sydney and Melbourne with these stuff. If he hadn't done it, who was going to do it? We had to wait for the hills to do it. They were doing it, I think, but that wasn't our department because that was Melbourne. So, yeah, then I just started putting skateboards in and all of a sudden skateboard started out selling a jewelry and I just Lost interest in the jewelry and I could be the skateboard guy now once again and it started sustaining a living for you.
Speaker 3:Oh, we just Until it was 100% skateboarding and the jewelry was just in boxes out the back. All the good stuff got rot, got taken, so it wasn't like I had this. What do you mean? It got taken. I got robbed. You know all the jewels. Oh yeah, all the good shit. Yeah you know these guys. You knew jewelry as good as.
Speaker 2:I did, so that's a pretty heavy moment in your life, obviously.
Speaker 3:Oh brutal. Yeah, it was worst, but anyway, you know, it's just one of those. It's one of those weird things that happen.
Speaker 4:Where'd you get stabbed?
Speaker 3:in stomach, but it hit me in the belt, so bounced off my belt and then I popped me. Wow.
Speaker 2:And then Is it because you want to poison?
Speaker 3:and they're just full house. You know, you just had a house. You walk in the door, you know I'm around. You know, like, not even like I always had a fantasy of ah, this is what's going to happen.
Speaker 3:What doesn't happen like that. I got up to get my haircut. I went in to get $10 to get my haircut before work. The dude's just come straight in behind me and you know I'm like around. You know this is the first grade and you're just not even in league of that person's anger, rage, fury, dependence, whatever. But you're not even there. So it's two worlds, you know, but I just knew what that life would bring. If you're going to be in that game, it's not going to change. Hence why you rarely see roadside jewelers anymore during shopping centers, where they're safe.
Speaker 2:Oh god, you're safe in numbers.
Speaker 3:You know it's a dangerous. You got to get in and out the door. You got to get back to your car.
Speaker 2:You know it's something I'm just because my mindset so far removed from that. I've never considered that, that that would be such a dangerous Business to have Gold's gold. You know it's got Oblivious to the reality.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so just was easier selling skateboards. It was fun, people were happy. I thought it was less intense.
Speaker 2:So no one was trying to hold you up for the skateboards.
Speaker 3:No, you know, and In jewelry, when you're making something, you're trying to make what's in her head? Because she's got this fantasy in her head she's had it for 20 years of what this is going to look like. You can draw 10 pictures, but if it's not that, it's not that how'd you learn the trade?
Speaker 3:Uh well, I was going to be a famous skateboarder and, um, there's no such thing. So I had to get a job. And the first job, it said I was just working in a jewelry shop. You know, I didn't Nothing, I had no idea about working in. I could sell toilet paper, I didn't know. But uh, my boss was Yugoslavia and he said so I'm, what are you gonna do? I said, uh, I could wonder be skateboarder, idiot you know, and said sit here, I'll teach you this. So I learned watchmaking At the fur at the start. And then electronic watches come in and he goes no, I don't know enough about that. Move, sit on this bench. Now You're a jeweler. So I learned that. And then I just bought it off him at 19 for A fuck knows what reason. Interesting, absolutely no logical reason on my head, apart from to go Tell people I own a jewelry shop and I cool.
Speaker 2:But you did have a dream to be a pro skater at one stage in your life.
Speaker 3:I wanted to be the guy mate, so even then you had that dream. I just wanted to be skateboarder. I wanted to be Steve Olson and Bobby Valdez, whoever Mickey Alba, whoever the hero who?
Speaker 2:were the people you wanted to be like. You know, for me, when I my first ever movie was future primitive than, uh, public domain, um, and it was like I want to be Steve Caballero. No, I wanted to be Tommy Guerrero, see.
Speaker 3:You know, I still stand a generation after, or two after all, that that bit of Tommy Guerrero To future primitive grooving down that hill yeah, he's still some of the best skateboarding I've ever seen. Nothing makes you just want to just jump on and.
Speaker 2:Look, do you think, even after all your years of skateboarding, was it one of the most breakthrough things you'd seen for?
Speaker 3:that it was just the groovy it's like drumming. Okay, I still was, so I put that I'll put future primitive on, okay, and played drums to that.
Speaker 2:So the music, the flow of what everything?
Speaker 3:is groove, you know. And then I saw that hill when I went to San Francisco and went.
Speaker 3:Dude, you freaking joking mate no yeah, you know, do 220 there and jump off that drum. I'm not, I'm gonna walk down there. Yeah, it was amazing, you know to walk you just. But I just love that groove, I just love that motion. He just made it so gritty. You know I do a little bit exaggerated, but you know he could pull it off back then by the time he got to yabble dabble. Yeah, things were struggling, but you know before that it's totally cool.
Speaker 2:Was it animal chin? Yeah, sorry, the first. Like I've seen future primitive then animal chin not probably domain yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, like anything in the 80s. He's got so corn. He's got bracelet to get trinkets. You freaking key rings watches.
Speaker 2:So you did make a conscious decision to let go of the dream. You're like this isn't gonna happen.
Speaker 3:What for the?
Speaker 2:to be a pro skater.
Speaker 3:Well, when you're young, you just want to be. You just want to be Errol. You know Errol's the guy he's in the season. Add.
Speaker 2:Errol is Adrian Jones, adrian Jones.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so here's the guy you know. Thank, you Ty he was the guy when I was. He was. You know we could go and bullshit that we knew that guy in the Chiquito ad, even though we looked at him at Pimble Pool but which was a chocolate bar back in the 70s.
Speaker 2:I know how did they still make that.
Speaker 4:I have seen them in Sammy recent years in the last decade or so.
Speaker 3:Yeah they'd put some crap in it to make it not taste like it did.
Speaker 2:So you knew he was in the Chiquito ad. Yeah, but we could?
Speaker 3:I could bullshit at school and go. I know that guy. So one day called me all out, you know, because I had to go to the beach with them and watch them not surf. They peddle out the back but not catch a wave, and I go. What about it? What do you do? Oh, I didn't like them. You know Nice, and you carry that stupid thing. You had to pay all the fares to get it there. You don't even surf it and all we did was cop the flog it when we got off the ferry. Like you know, westie kids with the surfboard yeah, just, the Beach Boys are just waiting to give it to you. Surf culture, man, yeah, so the course, that was like a you know, one of those things when they beat you up when you're walking down the tunnel. Anyway, it's in all the old movies. You got to walk through the little tube and it run, beats the shit out of you. Oh, okay, yeah, is that a surf thing? No, it's just. I think it's a native kind of thing Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah but I forget the word, but anyway, but that's what it was like going into the course.
Speaker 3:So when you are, when you're from black town, yeah, yeah, just in in the end I like so manly would be, you go to beach or Bondi Never, never went to the beach. Yeah, I think it's a good thing to do. Bondi never, never went to Bondi.
Speaker 2:Is that because I was there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was. He had a really heavy reputation. Yeah, it was the baddest boy of all the dock workers that lived down there and Like you, like you know.
Speaker 3:No, it was just like Manly was like manly was like, okay, it's all manly. And then I remember going to maroobera one morning and I lived in coughs harbor for 10 years too, but the most I saw, this sunset at maroobera still magic. Still remember the dark brick wall, water just going, that is sunrise. Yeah, sunrise, exactly what I didn't see. Yeah, that was a classic. So even when I lived in coughs harbor I didn't even get up to ever look at one and it was only across the road, but I always just want to remember that one I went now. That was a classic. That's sweet man. I can still see that now. You know, like in my head I can still see that one morning where I went Jesus, that's, that's pretty nice. Yeah, that's a bit nicer than my front yard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we take it for granted. Here on the east coast we get to see the sun rising overseas yeah you know a lot of parts of the world. It's the sun setting overseas which is still nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it depends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was, it's an interesting one never, never felt compelled to Get into surfing.
Speaker 3:Well, when I moved to coughs harbor, I learned at 40 I sucked, did you? Yeah, I just thought yep, cool, I was only on a long board.
Speaker 3:I thought the little boards were so wobbly or I was. No, probably me lose trucks. Yeah well, there was a lot of guys balancing perfectly on them but I seemed to really struggle. But I never had any swimming ability. I don't have any he-man muscle up here to paddle, so I get out paddled. You know you go to the. So I've always figured skateboarding to surfing. Skateboarding it's always perfect, waves always good, 10 foot perfect. Yet 100 goes Surfing if it was good. Well, again, I didn't have a ticket number. You know, quick to the back, thank you, no. And 50 people just paddle in on you and because then it's all vibed out and no one's giving you a wave.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I just, you know, in my own little world out there, all I did was learn Longboard tricks. You know, hang 10, switch foot, all this stuff. I'm watching these Hawaiian longboard movies. I just go straight out and Do that, you know, I just find a little wave I could play on and walk the board, hang 10 and think I'm Joel Tudor and Just thought I was. You know, totally cool. But then as soon as I moved back here Was too far.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us about that transition to port Macquarie? Oh, no, coughs. I was why did you? What got you up there?
Speaker 3:And yeah, I think by. So my kid's mum, she got transferred on the railways and we'd been up there on holidays and it was all the beautiful fantasy. And of course you want to get out of town and yeah, house burnt down. Yeah, that's right, so that was a bit of an epic. Yeah, so the house burnt down in Marion where we moved back there, yeah, and then you know we're just like, oh, what a downer. Yeah, yeah, we had really shitted neighbors, so the whole thing was kind of awful. So we just up and out of there, you know we moved to coughs harbour and lived a fantasy. But, um, but you can't. If you're, unless you're, local, you can't raise Properly raise your kids.
Speaker 2:What do you mean?
Speaker 3:There's nothing, there's nothing for him to do, okay, and they just want out and they've seen dolphins, they've seen beautiful waves, they surf when it's perfect, because they live there and basically there's folk all to do, so they just get over it. That's why, you know, you know substance, stuff takes over small towns because there's just nothing to do and the kids have seen it all. So I, the boys, harley was building his ramp and um In his backyard here and that's why I moved back with like okay, skateboarding's taken off, it's Old school's in, I can sort of have fun in the 40s and have a good old time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We jumped a huge one then, so we jumped a far, far, far away forward, yeah, but I just uh, anyway, go time.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, yeah, because we jumped so far forward, I was thinking you're taking it back. And then I was thinking of hulley you just mentioned Andrew hulley, who's had many ramps over time. Quakers Hill. Yeah. So what's the Quakers story for you?
Speaker 3:So before Quakers, andrew had an eight foot ramp in his backyard right and me and Finn were going out and we've seen it Like you drive past, kept like there's a ramp there. It's that guy, for we know, we knew Andrew from been the punk rocker guy. You know, at the checkered pants, mo hawken, all the shit back in north right. He was the punk rock guy. He remember Matt Davis, you know that was them. I was the rockabilly guy, finn was the rude boy. We're all tosses, you know, or planned dress-ups thinking we're cool and um. So anyway, me and Finn go. Okay, I think it's time to ditch the girlfriends and take up skateboarding again. So we agree, that's it, we're around what year we're talking here?
Speaker 3:Yeah, late 80s, 83, four, maybe, okay, yeah, about then 85, probably, so, yeah, so that was it. That was gonna take up too much time, so we had to get rid of them and we're gonna be skateboarders. So then we do that. We commit. Finn was a bit better at it than me.
Speaker 2:I've been with my yeah anyway, skateboarding or ditching the girlfriend, no ditching the girlfriend.
Speaker 3:I struggled a bit because I've been together for a while, but anyway I was struggling anyway, so it didn't matter. So, yeah, you know, the rockabilly dance thing was kind of over with the girl and you know, we, we were invincible, we won every contest with on the tv, get all the shit, you know. So that one was was waning out like young people. Do you know, girls get to 21 and go for I need something new, boring, I'm out. So uh, yeah, we broke up with that.
Speaker 3:And then we, just then Andrew had his eight footer in his backyard and then, as soon as we got rid of the girlfriends, he pulls the ramp down, said I'm building a 10 footer because Colin Brown just got back from America, and said Lance just built a 10 footer and there's, he's the plans in transworld or whatever. And uh, that's it. We all have to build this ramp and steal wood. And there's the first big ramp. Yeah, so that's how that one come around. You know, andrew just started building the super ramps and once he built it and that's what we eventually, once they got closed down at his place, we took it to Quaker's Hill. So it was his ramp and we just built up out there in the paddocks, the same dimensions.
Speaker 3:Yeah same things, yeah, interesting. So then it was just there. And then by then it's you know, everything's out and things rolling and skateboarding is huge, and it's you know, we're in the whirlwind of being the Coke team and the blah blah team and whatever other tosses.
Speaker 2:So you when you became the Coke team.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we were in there. I suppose it's the second gen generation Coke team, yep. Yeah and we do the corny.
Speaker 4:Keep it stuff, yeah and who was that?
Speaker 3:I was me, errol Mick Mulholl. Probably Danny. Danny then, yeah, andrew, I think, was in it because he was the ramp gun. Yes, so he was the the builder, and the. He built both those ramps the the coke ramp and the and the bonds around.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah so he was building everything. Basically for anyone that was any good. Yeah, he had all the ramps. But then his that was it. He was done with skateboarding. His girlfriend said it's over, get off. So by the time we moved it to um Quaker's Hill, he never come and wrote it again.
Speaker 4:Oh wow.
Speaker 3:So that was the end of that and Andrew was just being a dad going to work, you know.
Speaker 2:Where was it when? Okay, I want to talk about the first 540 you ever done, danny van, to your recollection.
Speaker 3:I remember the, the flipper, that tiny ramp at Chatswood, I mean he could spin it. I remember he could spin it. I never saw anyone roll the y. I thought it was Chris Holland, wasn't it?
Speaker 4:Well, that's been brought up a couple of times. Conjecture between Chris Danny and Johnny McGraw.
Speaker 3:Well, I heard Johnny McGraw made it. I know Danny could spin it all day long, but I don't know if he ever committed to the the rollout. He definitely made a few. Yeah, I didn't some stage, maybe not in the first.
Speaker 4:Realm. But he obviously made. He must have made some, he must have made some.
Speaker 3:He never saw any, never. Never saw a make Don't know.
Speaker 4:I'm controversy.
Speaker 3:I'm not giving you a hard time out there. Then I'm just saying I never saw a make. I mean I'm not saying no doesn't mean it didn't happen. That's right, but I didn't See it. It's pretty glorious moment, like if you had that you'd be. He'd be rattling that one to the doggies. Dolly could stop listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean tell us about how you felt when you actually seen someone like Danny spinning him anyway. Was it just so like progressive and amazing? You're like no way.
Speaker 3:We saw the sequence in Transworld.
Speaker 2:McTwist.
Speaker 3:Well, that's the thing, the 540s, like that's a wording from the next gen, when everything changes in the world. You know there was all McTwist back then. Right, there was no such. You know there was McTwist. You could do a five in in 1987. I'm gonna do a five. Nobody did that. You know the get a McTwist, okay, it was the only one word for it. You know it wasn't till they started defining how Tony would spin that they had to break down and go. Okay, well, you, you know it wasn't like Christians, so they had to go. This is not like this, but McGill's first one, like the sequence is so gnarly lands like a millimeter off the top On concrete, in order to learn that I went for one once at Quakers Hill, got upside down and went yeah, no, and they're slapped and went. Okay, that's probably not for me. My maze Finn never did it because he is so gymnastic.
Speaker 3:He was it was so gymnastic, amaze me, you could do everything. You know, yeah, amazing, you never did it, okay, but it was a burly trick and it took, you know, like yeah, yeah, just probably wasn't what I thought. You know, yeah, it seemed like, yeah, I don't know how, I always looked at skateboarding as one of the power guys with the Fab five, like that was them, yeah, and then Christians there to look beautiful, and then there's all the other guys. So you sort of have more of affinity with the other guys because they were there. You know you're not going to be a power guy, yeah, and Christians, christians, so no one's going to be that. And then you know you could more identify with the people that are normal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, in the 80s, late 80s, I just thought Grosso was rad you know, yeah, he had a bit of mongrel and you know, but I was never the guy that like the Flippity-dippity, flippity-dippity stuff.
Speaker 2:You were more like the fact that you even mentioned before that you really like Tommy Guerrero, who technically wasn't the most talented skater, compared to the rest of the bones brigade, for example, like in terms of his tricks and the amount of tricks he was doing, but his whole Persona style, both of those two things. The first video where Lance cruises down the street on his skateboard.
Speaker 3:You know it throws the thing in the cornball out of the roof and rides off like that is absolutely street skating. Yeah, that's what made us go out on the road and relook at the world. Gotcha that thing. And then Tommy Guerrero put the next one is just totally different from the other guys and Tommy Guerrero put. The next one is just total groove. You know, it's just more the dance.
Speaker 2:That was attracting you just the dance.
Speaker 3:Okay, just rocking on being part of every little bit of gutter and looking cool, and you know, I mean I'm not going to get in the street and touch the ground because it's just yeah, it's not going to happen. So some people could do that kind of shit, but I'm not doing that because it's just yeah, you know so. But I appreciate. You know, if you've got your little shirt undone and you're flailing down the street and you're looking a million bucks and oh you know, look magic, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3:Yeah it just was cool, it just looked really cool, you know. So yeah, I just thought it was a different realm of who we could appreciate. You know, I was a handplant guy, so Grosso, jeff, crandall, all them guys that just do the mad ones, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, insane. So I was skating, got really like because skating started to blow up in the late 80s, right Like 88, all that in that era, you know, did you kind of feel like, you know, because you were a vert guy, the street guys weren't, didn't really exist too much then.
Speaker 3:Well, they were just a little element. But the little element was Picking up numbers. Yeah, and you know as it got harder to ride a vert ramp or the level becomes so it's it got too hard. Like everything gets too hard, someone's going to go back and start somewhere else because that shit's just straight too hard. Okay, so by the time you get to 88 and the power guys are just Like, the tricks are insane. You know, the average kid can't go and get enough goes to ever learn that shit.
Speaker 4:There is no public ramp and if there is, where they're hogging all the goes right, well, and then, obviously, you needed facility half pipe, whatever and then and then, once the videos showed the street skating, it opened that up to the rest of America and the world. Essentially, it's just walk out your front door and not have to go somewhere and deal With the big dogs like taking all the goes.
Speaker 3:That's it. We. When you we went out there and did it after you watched the power the first one we were like, yeah, we're cool skateboard guys now on the street, we're not Fucking idiots. We had this little persona because we have the video about us and we're these things in the video. See, you're raging because you think you're cool and no one knows what a boneless up the gutter is and You've got this whole world of shit that we've taken to the world with pink colors and pink shoes and Whatever other candy stuff we wore, you know. But we thought we were cool. We just thought we're the coolest cats in the world.
Speaker 2:Could you do Ollie's on flat ground and stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, no, I could jump stuff, so I could bunny hop. So before that Ollie, before the street Ollie was out, I could bunny hop. Just, you know, run up and just Just right up, grab the board and blank, I could do gutter, step off the board, no, just jump.
Speaker 4:So you hold the board and yeah, she's pretty great I could. How well are you grabbing, like probably behind the foot front side and backside pure beautiful behind the foot yeah. Behind the foot back so ugly as you could get.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it was just a bunny, a street bunny hop Like on flat ground, yeah. I could jump up on the gutters and I could jump up onto a little low seat and I could jump up onto shit. So then, some clown invented with no hands and my glory's over. I forgot to hear. Who is the clown? I don't know.
Speaker 3:Anyway, in your world, in the crazed world of us. Right Out the front of my house, we're going up the gutter and Finn just goes like and skids his tail with this lunging sort of style and he gets up the gutter you know, so not an Ollie. He's not an Ollie, but the body was basically the same. He just couldn't jump. We didn't jump. No, he jumped, he didn't have to jump on a skateboard.
Speaker 2:He popped up the gutter Just skidded, you know, because he was theory.
Speaker 3:Like a Ollie. Yeah, you know, that's even not even thought up, is it? But he just would go up and do his thing because he's very gymnastic, Get his legs in a cool spot and just zzzz and clock up the gutter. And I was like that's amazing, but I'm not going to break my skateboard doing that because it's too hard to get a skateboard. You couldn't go to the shop and buy one truck. The shop's never going to sell you one truck. And I'm like mate, you're dreaming.
Speaker 4:Then I got one truck so he didn't hit the hanger or anything on the way up.
Speaker 3:He would belt the hanger and then, yes, he'd click the hanger sometimes and it was a haymaker, it was just a. You know, I got up the gutter without having to do the John Gray bunny hop.
Speaker 2:No lapper.
Speaker 3:Or tttt. Yeah, then he'd get conduit because he was an electrician, he was an apprentice electrician, so he'd get big pieces of conduit and put them on his skateboard. So that didn't hit.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And then, like that's too easy to get up the gutter, like he put it on the hanger like a coper. No, just to the front of the truck. Like, cut it in Like a lapper. Oh, ok, just so the original lapper, before the lap was invented, was called a Clyde slide, which that's what it was. It was a bit of conduit cut over a skateboard, not until last night.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's, and so that was invented by a guy in Florida called Clyde Rogers. I didn't even know that, yeah. And then they invented steel lapper, like went under your kingpin.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Halfway up to the board. That's how you got up the gutter. So they were thinking of ways to get up the gutter already without having to hop off or do the step, step, you know. So they were already thinking of how to get up the gutter. And then you know, bonk some day, it just goes.
Speaker 2:So interesting.
Speaker 3:Olly was an amazing thing. I wish I learned it.
Speaker 2:You can do it now, though Be struggling, but you would have had like a period of time that you could Olly properly with no hands. Yeah, no.
Speaker 3:Really no, I could Olly on ramps.
Speaker 2:So I learned.
Speaker 3:Olly's. I was the first person to do it in the half pipe. You know I could do them in the half pipe at Skate City. They could do them in the quarter pipes but I had a half pipe section so I learned it. So in that contest that I won there I did a front side Olly in that. So that's 1979.
Speaker 2:No grab.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, grab in the half pipe. I could do a hand plant.
Speaker 2:And you were touching the tail and not just popping off the coping Just yeah, just going off the no it was that concept in the magazine.
Speaker 3:you went off the coping, you just lifted up your skateboard and flicked.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that's what I did.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So I could still do the flick at Montevail over the channel, but it was just a hideous flick. So and then I broke my ankle doing it in the half pipe and I broke my back truck and I had to climb. I said to Wedge my skateboard's gone over there and he just went your factor. When I was, that was my only skateboard, so there was no way. So I had to climb under Skate City on one leg to get my skateboard and I finally found that tide's coming in. But I didn't know anything about tides either because I'm from the Burbs. But anyway, I was getting wet and I only had one truck, so I was shattered, so I had to find the truck.
Speaker 2:So wait, where'd the board go exactly?
Speaker 3:I went over the wall at Skate City and down into the rocks and the only way you could get through where there was to go out onto the beach and underneath the whole complex.
Speaker 2:Oh is there? Okay, sorry, just yeah.
Speaker 3:So the board from the Burbs is in hell. You know, I'm like, oh, this is sketchy, I'm a goner down here, so you know. And then I use my skateboard to hobble home. That's it, because my mates went the ferry's coming see ya and they just jumped on the ferry no way, yeah. And then they're at the shop eating paddle pops. When I finally got there an hour later, laughing at me as I walked down the hill, I'm on one leg using my skateboard as a walking stick. But there was no way I was going to leave it there, so I stopped doing them. After that, I just didn't. I don't know, I just stopped doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I broke my ankle and went. What a bummer. That's a real downer. I broke my skateboard too. That's even more heartbreaking Because Indies didn't have a straight through pin. They had. The pin was attached into the base plate. So it was no, no change in the kingpin. No, you need a truck.
Speaker 2:Cool.
Speaker 3:Ratchet, I'm out of money.
Speaker 2:They're expensive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like I got about five bucks I think would be my maximum money for the skateboard day and that was a dollar 25 for the ticket, 250 for the session and I see I think that was like that was. My dad had to judge this. I see it was all important Make sure no one's around so you don't have to share it. You know it's just serious stuff. Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's how it would work. Yeah, and I got to go and get my skateboard, so then I stopped doing all these after that, but yeah, you know when? First I just walked as soon as I saw it in the magazine, I went out to my ramp that day and just learned Like it was Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Don't look under me Was that Alan Guilfran.
Speaker 3:Yeah it was Alan Guilfran. Yeah, yeah, you just could go. Okay, that's cool.
Speaker 2:Who was your first actual sponsor? Would you say my?
Speaker 3:cockroach probably. Okay, yeah, they still give me stuff Still on a team. That's the one good thing. But I was never sponsored. I never got anything.
Speaker 2:Or through anything. You must have had periods of time when you were getting stuff surely Shit, no.
Speaker 3:Interesting. I got that board from Alva yeah.
Speaker 2:Tony Alva gave it to you.
Speaker 3:That one actually come from Alva America. So that was when they said you're on the kiddies team.
Speaker 2:So you were on a team On.
Speaker 3:Alva yeah, so that was pretty glorious. That is pretty fucking glorious.
Speaker 2:How'd that come about.
Speaker 4:Colin Brown Okay, he was destroying Alva, wasn't he? He was about to.
Speaker 3:Who was he going to start? So that's Dave Duncan. Long before Dave Duncan was, he was still an amateur. He still, he wasn't even. Yeah, that's why it's that board, that's the real, probably the only. I got a couple from Colin, but the only real one is that one, so that's why the only one I keep. I just go okay that's pretty. That was kind of a magic day.
Speaker 2:And his magic.
Speaker 3:Do you want to ride for Alva? Well, fuck me, do I?
Speaker 2:How old were you? Do you remember?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I had the shop by then. It's only the 20s. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How long did the shop last for before it started to come to an end? Four or five years, yeah it's very exciting.
Speaker 3:And then, yeah, so I think 87, 86, 87, maybe, okay, we started it. And then, yeah, by 90, yeah, 91 it was dust. Yeah, 91 was ghost town, because then by then we were in the bad with the hills, so they wouldn't send me shit stuff. I couldn't progress. The hill brothers, the hill brothers, yeah so the hills and whoever the dude that did power were in cahoots.
Speaker 4:John Hurram.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you had to pay the piper if you wanted to play with those too. So you had to have a lot of money and they would select what you get. So surf diving ski would always get the premium shit and you'd get the lower shit, because surf diving ski were a billion dollars a month and we were, we were fuck all. So it become doggy dog and you know you couldn't sell a magazine. So if they sent you five magazines that's like no, it's big money, but there's no money. So you just ate crap. You know I can still go in there and the shed and find shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, from the skateboard shop and go.
Speaker 2:Ty, you might know, this one was Fairfield Vert Round Bill 89.
Speaker 4:89-ish yeah, they got 89-ish. I'd say yeah. Because yeah, it would have been.
Speaker 2:It was a step up from motor and that which was before that, and then you'd start skating there when that happened, when that started.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that'd become the rage. You know it'd become all the rage. Same thing you know the fly guys are killing. It Likes his flying, especially with the male holes flying. Yeah, you know, just the gen was coming along. It was good fun for a while. Who?
Speaker 2:would you consider that generation, the Fairfield sort of generation, coming up? So I didn't really see, you still don't have a boy.
Speaker 3:No, it was just obnoxious. Yeah, the whole thing was obnoxious. Basically it was good fun, but by then it was very gnarky. Yeah, everyone wasn't to be a shit at, everyone wanted to bitch about and hate this and be spiteful and there was a whole you know the Lee and Gregor influence. You know that just poisoned the fun almost.
Speaker 2:In what way, though, like?
Speaker 3:why Gnarky? Everyone was gnarky. Why do you think they Everyone was pressurising and it was just you think?
Speaker 2:they kind of.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah, you just left a little stain. Not Lee, but Gregor was good at manipulating how things were going to be played.
Speaker 2:Things as in what Like sponsorship competitions.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, like if you went through their school, you were coming out pretty damn good. You know, Jason Ellis, Gary Valentine, that Anderson guy they all got, you know, thrashed Tony Hallam, all them dudes. You know you had to be one of them. You know, yeah, OK, so that's why they're also good. Got beautiful style, got beautiful technique. It was all the key ways, Because I had to go through the School of Terror and then if you wanted to be, you couldn't just do it, you had to do it perfect, or you were. You know Gregor would just write you off. So they were so gnarky, Gnarky, yeah.
Speaker 2:And they kind of sort of poisoned it for you, considering what you'd come from earlier.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it was probably again. It's probably just me going. I'm over it, I can't keep up or something. You know, something gives you, you know, grumpy old man syndrome. You just getting. You know you know you're getting dated, you're getting dusted. There's no doubt about it and you don't want that to happen, but it happens. You can see, it's happening everywhere. It always happens. You know, one minute, your next minute, no.
Speaker 2:Do you remember when Finn had the idea to open curb and coping?
Speaker 3:Yeah, he did it, because I did it, so I had Get Rad.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So Get Rad come from a, a sticker, a stamp. Finn used to have got a rubber stamp made because he could go to the post office and for $14, let's get a rubber stamp made. So sick. And so he got one with Get Rad and we'd stamp everyone with Get Rad. It'd become drunk at night, get. Rad sticker on your head.
Speaker 2:So that's what? Have you still got that stamp?
Speaker 3:No, no, that's long gone, I said, is that it I'll never be? Yeah, so he invented the word and I rang up when I started my shop and said, oh, can I use you know, can I use that? Yeah, get Rad. Classic. That's how we started that one. So good, yeah, so he named Get Rad.
Speaker 2:Get Rad. How good, so sick.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was, that's pretty fun. And then he used to go how's it going? I go, dude, I can't even. You know you can't get in the door. I didn't make any money because there was no profit in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Which is an amazing concept, because the skateboard's not that much different than to what it is now, as opposed to a carton of milk Unbelievable.
Speaker 2:In terms of inflation.
Speaker 3:There's no value in a skateboard. You still get a gun skateboard for 300 bucks.
Speaker 2:That's I mean I always. I've talked about it before in the past.
Speaker 4:Ridiculous.
Speaker 2:How the prices have stayed the same.
Speaker 4:It's just changed now. What do you pay for a deck?
Speaker 3:So back then they wanted me to charge. Look, I used to charge $100 for a deck in the hills but barred me for selling them to cheap back then. Right, so I was making F4 and I was giving kids stickers and I was being you know, I was Mr Nice Couldn't help myself. I've come up poor and I'd see these little rat kids come in and now they've got no cash and they just want to. You know, yeah, man, have a sticker. But you know you're giving some two bucks to have a buck. Have a buck, have two bucks. Yeah, that's brand new. It was money. I wouldn't give it to anyone but because it was a token of what I loved and I wanted them to love, yeah, give them money, way like an idiot. So, yeah, you know you just, there's no, it would cost 80 bucks back then or something landed. And what does it cost?
Speaker 3:now there's no, it doesn't go up at all. Wheels were 40 bucks. I think I paid 40 bucks for Bones Cubics back in $7 or $8 a wheel, like $9 a wheel back then. It was mega bucks.
Speaker 4:Yeah, then they went down a bit, I think, for the wheels, but the Daxi pretty much going, starting at 150 now. Now it's 160, 170, 180.
Speaker 2:But is that just certain brands?
Speaker 3:So that's what you pay for one of them power sports.
Speaker 2:It's most brands. I was talking FA and Hockey.
Speaker 4:They're definitely. They're between 180 and 200. But now you've got like heaps of the brands starting at least 140, pretty much it's just basically gone up there's nothing in the shop for it.
Speaker 3:There's no money in it. What does that cost the shop, though? I can't have that question.
Speaker 2:That's not a thing on.
Speaker 3:It Ties like this no, no, it's not say that one, Otherwise there's no coin in it for the business and tell us Tie.
Speaker 2:No, Jack, it's not no.
Speaker 3:Fully imported Now. So everything we got come straight from America. The classic is right Back in the 70s when Santa Cruz had these board called the Bevel. You know the Santa Cruz Salba Bevel that got made in Gerewene, which is just up the street, and power bow knights would get made in the same factory. No way. So we could get in Australia.
Speaker 3:They were made here and sent over there and sent back to us. We could go there and buy a bow knight blank for five bucks. We'd use them to sand board because they were fast.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And then we could buy a Santa Cruz Bevel. The same blank. All the upturn knows is all the steps we put water in it. We used to laugh put water in it because it wouldn't get a whole water. Yeah, they cost five bucks.
Speaker 4:I've never heard that.
Speaker 3:RF products in Gerewene.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we could just go and get them and you go. Well, how come our boards just like that board? You know I'm not gonna buy one of them bono boards with power slicker on it, because they exploded in about three seconds.
Speaker 2:Yeah and then it turns like it's probably not just like cardboard.
Speaker 3:Well, it was just the cheapest wood in the world. With a bit of plastic sheet on it to hold together, it goes so soggy Particle boards yeah. So we didn't keep them for long. They were useless and then we could get all other kind of blanks. So we just rode these five dollar blanks for years. We made our own skateboards, had a Gediogura that I got.
Speaker 2:So you'd buy the blank and cut it out sometimes, yeah yeah, yeah, well, the boys did you know they got just with the jigsaw and make their own shapes and Maybe someone had a jigsaw. Or was it done by hand?
Speaker 3:Chances are pretty good. Chances are pretty good. They probably went like that down the street. You know, straighten the bent line. I tell you I was a guy, but you know that's just what we used to, and for five bucks. You know it's better than 100.
Speaker 2:So, you think like spin was in. Oh not spin, sorry, Finn was inspired by your shop. Oh yeah, you know, Kevin.
Speaker 3:Coping. Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, he was straight on it. We were giving him advice and stuff on it. Yeah, we just were best buddies. We just hung out every day or every day, because that was the first skate shop I ever went into. Yeah, which one the little?
Speaker 2:Kevin Coping the Canne one, yep Fairfield the Small.
Speaker 3:One On the street or the one in the canteen.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, no, no, the one on the street yeah the one on the street. Did you have one in the canteen at Fairfield Pool? Yeah, and it got rolled there too, so you got robbed and I think the same thing. Oh really, yeah, it was scary and was that first the pool and then the street?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think so, because they got splattered in the canteen.
Speaker 3:It got rolled one night. You know, oh, you know going out there.
Speaker 2:It was gnarlyed out there, I remember.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was scarier than where I lived.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was full on man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's what happened. He said the same thing. See, the new rap gangsters of the areas would line the station, and if you? Were a skateboarder, you were gone.
Speaker 2:Oh man, we used to be terrified. We'd catch the train up from Naurah and the skate from Fairfield train station to the pool. We were terrified. Yeah, you know, like the homeboys.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it was a whole new deal. Yeah See, everything was awful it was a while ago. Everything was ugly. I just went. I hate this.
Speaker 2:You know Interesting time man.
Speaker 3:Can't be bothered with it anymore at all too. Not what I thought it was.
Speaker 2:The streets are heaps safer these days, in my opinion. Yeah, for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't think you just put yourself in places. You get old. You just don't put yourself there, do you no? If you want to put yourself in somewhere sketchy, then it's not hard, but yeah.
Speaker 2:So when modern day street skating started to boom in the early 90s, they often talk about the Great Depression where, like skating sort of died but really like street skating was born, like that Modern street skating, you know, early 90s, 91, you know the blind video came out and it just sort of changed the game a bit. Like as a vert skater, you know what were you thinking? Were you like I was done now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was done. I was done, I was over it. That just wasn't going to be for me. I didn't like any of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know Tom Knox was rad Remember that was rad. Ray Barbie was rad and then it changed. So by the time, what's his? He's a dude. You know the man who killed skateboarding.
Speaker 4:Rocko, rocko yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that guy, by the time he gets there, it's all awful, everything's ugly. In my opinion, it wasn't nothing to do with.
Speaker 2:Oh, he didn't like the baggy chains and the small wheels.
Speaker 3:And the thing doesn't go. Dude, that's all I said, mate. The thing doesn't fucking go. So they stopped. Okay, they stopped because it was too hard. Right, skateboarding's just straight up too hard, vert skating's straight too hard. But if you look at, I'm going to be Tony Hawk. Well, you're not. That was the answer to the question. So hence why 50 of them fall off the rails and end up, you know, wrecked, like half of us, because it was just too brutal.
Speaker 3:You got dusted, you get left in the wind by a generation of baggy pants, tiny wheels. So they stopped the skateboard. They learned all these amazing little friend tricks, right, yeah? And then they stuck it in the wheels bigger, because you got to roll again. It's a rolling toy, it's not a stopping toy. So then you know, like the shops put this V8 supercar skateboard in target. It does not go. That thing does not roll, you know, but it's not a skateboard. Skateboard rolls and turns. So, yeah, that was just too much for me to cope with. That whole poke. I mean, amazing the stuff they learned, but I just didn't get where. Yeah, no, just left me.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I just got the difference in what I thought and where it was going Did you stop skating for a while, yeah, this was dead, just stopped, just become a dad. Okay, Moved to Coffs Harbour, thought I was a surf cat.
Speaker 2:How many kids did you have? Three, Three.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, my oldest is 30,. You know Emily's 30.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So you know Benny's a big boy now. So you know they're all grown up in parents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know what I mean, were you a young dad?
Speaker 3:No, I was 28,. Something like that. No, I had a whole lot of skateboard fun before.
Speaker 3:So I thought yeah, yeah, I didn't not, I didn't do it that way, it was just, it didn't happen that way. I just went through the whole skateboarding phase and when I knew it was my turn to, you know like they're going and I'm stopping yeah, well, they're sailing forward. I never didn't ride a skateboard, but I just didn't associate with skateboarding. Okay, so I said well, I'm going to go and visit Ted, which is Steve Sargent down at Newport, and he'd be going you can't ride that board, you know that shape board anymore. I go, why not? Nobody rides one of them. I said well, can you do any of the fucking tricks that they do on them skateboards? No, so what's the fucking difference in?
Speaker 3:You can't do that shit anyway, mate you know like you just follow in a rule book and it was like you have to wear this and you have to do that. Then we went and built this, me and Ted went and built this thing for a, a Vulcum demo, and you know peanuts there and he's the coolest cat in the world. He's always so nice and gives me the shopping try and says Gav your life, mate. You know, gav your life in the factory. Like this is gold man every pair of pants is like this fucking big.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how many people fit in these? What nine? I never get in these things, do we? I said nothing fits me, so it's 32 minutes hanging off my knees what the fuck? I couldn't get one thing. I got a couple of stained thing shirts that I had an option to get Not the Vulcum stain, vulcum stain thing. I just got two shirts. I went is there anything I wear? At least they're normal. Everything else is the weirdest shit. I've ever seen. Shirts this big and I'm skinny to start off. I'm not going to put myself in a bigger plastic bag. I'm struggling here already, so you're like I'm just dated now.
Speaker 3:Exactly that. I was just dated. You know I was just dated. No, I think I was a little bit scorned. I remember when I closed the skateboard shop yeah, that's right, I didn't wear skateboard stuff, I wouldn't wear anything skateboarding. Why Darn? It was just a must have been dirty about it. Boycotting it. Yeah, just being a little nark.
Speaker 2:Okay, you don't seem like a bit of person.
Speaker 3:No, you know, you just got. You know it was everything, and then all of a sudden it's gone and it's not. You know you're gone. So when your ego is gone nothing. Nothing's gone from skateboarding, nothing's gone from me. It's all the same stuff you could do, but your little way you put your head trip gets a little bit of a smack in the chops.
Speaker 2:And did you also feel like you dedicated so much to it that it hadn't, you know, panned out how you might have imagined it to?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but again, that's just ego, isn't it? You just have this delusion of what you think. You are in this giant thing where nothing you know, All those top places are taken by someone who's done something incredible. You just want to be in this little section where you were, but you can't be. Did you feel like an?
Speaker 2:ogre or something.
Speaker 3:Probably when you're bitter, you think that you know, but I don't think I got to that, I just think it got way beyond me. And then the next, you know, like the street direction was not me, I was not going to do that. So the first trick was hard. Then they can't kickflip it. Well, I can't do that either. Then you know, then it's this one and that one and that one. After the shove it, you know the G-turn, just as far as I go, you know, yeah, so I just didn't pursue it. Where I've got a tiny little skateboard that's got full super turning trucks, tiny little racing trucks, and I can ride that round here and do 360s in this room and it turns perfect. That's my version of street skating.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a car park just up the road. That's a forever wave and I just go and surf that.
Speaker 4:Nice.
Speaker 3:And it's just to me, is beautiful, but I couldn't tell you. The last time I put a big skateboard like a real skateboard on the road and road down the hill that hurts my bones, that rattles so hard, a hundred A wheels, and I watched them guys go through the you know the tiles. What are they starting? The only way to I slam on this little gap here in those dudes, don't they just power across you know terracotta tiles. A hundred miles an hour, no problem, yeah, why don't you slam.
Speaker 2:When the skate shop ended, then like, and you said and then the early nineties came, like, what were you doing for work? Like, what did you go back to any trade?
Speaker 3:or no, I worked in, yeah, no, I worked in pubs. Okay, yeah, we just worked in a social kind of yep without responsibility.
Speaker 2:And you were doing that to support your family as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So no, I had to get a jewellery job again. It was the last. No, it wasn't the last time I went back there, when I went back to being a jewellery again because I had to.
Speaker 2:So were they involved actually making the ring and the setting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did all that time.
Speaker 2:That's a full-on art form.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was, I liked it. I'm very trinkety. I like to draw and I like to paint and I like to do all that stuff.
Speaker 2:So you know, it's like a craftsman really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, like anything you know, there's Tony Hawks and Cabley Rose in Jewellery World.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you get to a point and you go. They're pretty good.
Speaker 2:So you had like jewellers that you looked up to.
Speaker 3:Is jewellery styles you look up to. I was working in the city, so I'm living out here, yeah, and the last one I did was in an Opel merchant in the Rocks, so it was all international people. So they're miles ahead, you know, like the world in like anything's five years ahead where it's being made. So European jewellery is five years ahead in style, technique, flash, and I wanted to make that but people didn't want it. So I just got bored, you know, and then it was easier for me to just stay working in the pub and having a good time than it was to struggle in the jewellery business.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I was happy to get out. You know, it was always the stain of, you know, the bad old days. So I just didn't want to go back to the industry.
Speaker 2:So that trauma really really stuck with you. Yeah, oh, should do.
Speaker 3:I could imagine man it's made me cautious my whole life. It made me very observant. Oh okay, you know, it made me always go yeah, right there, where am I? Why am I here? Should I be here? So it's what's that? You know where you put yourself.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That a sense of awareness. It just made me really look at what some dude's doing. It's like I analyze everything probably not me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But that's the problem, you know, I just think, think, think, think, think. Which is good if you're using it for art or using it for something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you mean? Do you feel like you've overcome it to an extent, or it's just it's lingered, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's over. As soon as you're over it, I'm able to get up the next day and go to work, or two days later to go back in the same jewelry shop. You know you can't just go well, and that's going to be today. It's not. It's like you have a car accident. You just get back in the car, Because we don't think of that as a. It's like PTSD really.
Speaker 3:Yeah you can have that, but it's, you know, it's just a moment of care. I remember looking at the guy going oh, a sketchy looking character, yeah, and then he's standing right next to me. So you know, I was there and not aware of enough to go.
Speaker 2:You're kind of kicking yourself like oh stupid, how did I not see that you?
Speaker 3:know you make two mistakes and that's everything I just made. I didn't close the door behind me. Stupidity, poeter, piper, but that's not thinking fast enough, that's being lazy, and yeah. So I just don't, you know, I'm just cautious. Yeah, it definitely made me laugh, a very cautious, you know. When I worked in the pubs I'm not, you know, definitely not built the wall, but that's pretty good at thinking and seeing who it's going to be it was dangerous, hyper aware, hyper vigilant, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, I just did that, and then I went and did warehousing.
Speaker 3:You know I probably did that Warehousing in the pub I work in, penrith Leagues or whatever Resident club was always entertaining yeah, it's going out, getting paid. So I just did that for years and and then we moved up to Cops Harbor. Then I had to go back to the jewelry business again, right, and then I really hated that Until I went to Mr Minute and worked there when I really hated that one. Now that was the bottom of the barrel. Why? Because you were that key cutting. Did it feel below your.
Speaker 2:It's just in this little box, in this little thing you can't escape. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's just horrible. I mean horrible oh bro Horrible. Yeah, I like the key cutting, but it's Mr Minute. See so everything's going to happen in five seconds. That was under pressure. Yeah, someone else is not me Interesting.
Speaker 2:I just put myself in another silly position. How'd you get out of that?
Speaker 3:I was a postman.
Speaker 2:Is that a good job?
Speaker 3:I was doing it on the Pacific Highway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was pretty scary.
Speaker 3:But then I'd have two little beach towns. I'd do Was that your run? Yeah, so you wrote a posty.
Speaker 2:No, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. You wrote a posty no.
Speaker 3:I do it in my home and I'd go whoo whoo down across the road, you know, oh dude, across the Pacific Highway, it was so sketchy. And then I'd come down these other back roads, this one part I was doing in Upper Corrindo which was on the other side of the highway, and there's this goanna there and it'd be as big as the car. Wow, you stand on the rock sometimes and I'd like to stop and go. Are we delivering mail today, mate, or not? You know if he was standing on the road going, don't even think about it. Yeah, I'm out of there. We're bigger than my car. You know, the thing is gigantic.
Speaker 2:Hey, oh, sorry. Listen, I've got a pee real bad. This happens in the podcast. Ty take it. It's all you now. I'm just going to be a minute, Can you want to?
Speaker 4:take it off. Sure, sure, sure, sure, cool.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, so yeah, I just did the posty run and you know I survived that one and then we just moved back. And then what did I do? I can't even remember.
Speaker 4:Wild one when did you get into cars? You said you've run some stuff with cars.
Speaker 3:Is that work? Yeah, that was the family mechanics business there. My sister and her ex-husband had a big mechanical workshop, so I just went and worked there for 10 years. Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah nine years, not quite 10. Didn't quite make it. That was hardyaka. But family work, you know. Sure You've got to do that, but more I just have a love of cars, you know, I've always been a little. My brother took me to the car races when I was a kid and I think I saw my first Finn car there and went, that's me, that's me. You know, like the skateboard. The cars in the drum set have always just been instant love.
Speaker 4:I've always seen you've had a bit of a thing for cars, like over time. Once I got to know you better, yeah always, Always.
Speaker 3:I think I bought my first 1950s car when I was 19 or 20. Wow yeah, so I had an old Ford back then. Then I had to hot it up things through Get Rad. Yeah, I had the HD Brawl with the big motor and the 50 gallons of petrol a minute. But that was fun. Me and Sack had blast down from Simon Reynolds would pound down from Get Rad when we closed the shop with, you know, back in black on full singing the car and, you know, blowing raw petrol out the back like an idiot because it was tuned wrong. But it was so fun, you know, and that was the beast. We'd always get around in that, Always. And I could always hear all the spittle and springer and all them guys in the back stealing money under the seat. I used to just chuck money under the seat. You know. Chuck coins under there, yeah right.
Speaker 2:Just take it Now I stopped at the shop.
Speaker 3:Tony, you know where we left motor by 11, got a cent, but they'd get out of the car halfway to Harris Park and they got four bucks each. No way I regret, that's just how it was. It was fun for the boys. Have you got?
Speaker 2:Get Rad stickers left.
Speaker 3:I think I've got one in an album or two in an album, but it's the worst sticker in the world. It was just so terrible. What do you mean? The. Chatter one. It was just so lame. I think about that artwork. What do you? Mean lame.
Speaker 3:You just like. That was exciting. You know, Chatter, I got this. Remember Dave Clancy did it for me, so he had this. I got this font. That's why it's the exact same font as on Edge. Oh, that was his clothing company back then and he used the same font and I was like, yeah, that's pretty stale, but you know, at the time that was the 80s like whatever, yeah it was the 80s and it was exciting.
Speaker 3:It was on clear plastic, so at least it you know it wasn't white, that's good, but I think I got a couple in a photo album somewhere. Yeah, and these drawers there's stuff, tons of stuff, collections of Go-Wing stickers and tons of junk.
Speaker 2:They were my first trucks Go-Wings.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh well, hey, you can go home with one of every sticker they've got. Wow, I'll take it. And an armband that comes with it. I've ever got the token little stick, An armband you get to tie on and whoo.
Speaker 2:Hey, if we fast forward through the 90s into the early 2000s, like what stage, did you say, hey, I'm going to start competing in some, some bulb comps and some, you know, master's division stuff.
Speaker 3:You know they had the old school jams. All of a sudden, you know Bradshaw was putting on old school jams and the dog, like I said, the Dogtown documentary changed everything right, so that put us, gave it that was like 2005.
Speaker 2:That's 2006.
Speaker 4:2006.
Speaker 2:Somewhere there. Yeah, it's really early, but then all of a sudden, the one that was the one that was narrated by Sean Penn.
Speaker 3:Yeah, dogtown and Z-Boy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. The documentary, not to be mistaken by the movie that came out shortly after.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I didn't even actually hate the movie. Amazing how many of my kids loved the movie, you know but I was kind of cool.
Speaker 4:They did as good a job as possible, yeah.
Speaker 3:The skateboarding was ripping in it, you know, like the.
Speaker 2:Emile Hurst yeah, I was chilling it, you know that's hard stuff on them little boards.
Speaker 3:I don't think I'd take on one of them back out pills. I saw over there on an eight inch wide board. That that gnarly, yeah, yeah. So then, when sort of the movie gave it credibility and then Brad starts doing the old school thing and then people are trading vintage skateboards and all of a sudden again you're back on the whirlwind. Okay, so I just hop back on the whirlwind. Hey, here comes the train.
Speaker 4:Well, bol started showing up a bit more too, yeah.
Speaker 3:And there's concrete to ride and there's something to ride, you know, in the skate parks. All of a sudden the world's it's a different place to be a skateboarder again. It was worth being a skateboarder again, okay, because I could do my stuff again. I'm not don't have to jump down 40 and stairs. You know my walk down 14 stairs and they jump in. There's no skidding, it's walking. That's all I did, you know. So that means I can do what I do again. So all my old junk is back in again. So I just picked up the same wheel, basically every time with the same tricks. It's been classic, yeah, great stuff I'm sure.
Speaker 3:It just keeps coming around. So I just wait for the cycle to catch me, you know, and skidding, you know, like street skating's had its it's 20, 30, it's 30, 40 years and of course it's too hard. Now, okay, so you want to be a street skater? It's not just you got to go and take on that shit and smash yourself and be broken, and it's just that's too gnarly, it's gnarly, yeah, it's way too gnarly For the potential reward.
Speaker 2:I mean, I know a lot of those guys do it because for the love, but the the consequence and the damage you can do to your body, yeah, there's no compensation for that. No, you, just, you, just not you know, 25 forever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're getting past that, you know, it's just, it's so burly. But when? How is it? Bill's wheels and that skateboard shopping centre cruise and David Gonzalez is in there. It looks like a rock star, yeah, and we walk out the door. That dude see your bill, you know rode down the little footpaths, olly the car and cruise up and I went like that, that's fucking cool. Yeah, dude, I'm like I was a maniac. You just Olly the car.
Speaker 2:Without even blinking.
Speaker 3:Well off a curb cut or something. Oh, just the whole front of this car Was in his way, like off a curb cut. Yeah, he come down the driveway out of the shop and just went, donk Wow, and then skid up to his car and the door and my mum, yeah, he's a charger, that car, that's rock star stuff.
Speaker 2:You know that is so impressive.
Speaker 3:Just those little flips for me. Yeah, where um? I appreciate the blood sport of street skating. The other part, I think, is weird. What do you mean? The other part, the Olympics. So you guys are street guys, You've experienced that Like so you've lived all through it, OK.
Speaker 3:So at the last Olympics I'd stated this clearly to Errol before I said I'd just make my state to you because you're Errol. I said I'm not Errol, I'm Errol, I'm Errol, I'd just make my state to you because you're Errol. And, like you know, I said, when they undress street skating and you take the broken beer bottle out and you take the tattoos away and the long hair and the year bros and the 20 attempts and you put it in a little outfit and put it on a two foot handrail on a stage, there's not going to be pretty Right.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I don't think it was, you know, I don't think the street skating last Olympics. I thought, wow, that's kind of dude, come on.
Speaker 2:OK, do you think it?
Speaker 3:The 100 metre guy makes 100 metres. Ok, if you can't make something, don't do it. This is the Olympics. You've got to go there with game and I, you know, it's not that it's the Olympics, it's just that's the level of that pastime, that sport, that level. If you want to go there, like the bowl guys just killed it.
Speaker 2:So you thought the bowl was OK.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, they were rad.
Speaker 2:So you think the street stuff didn't represent skateboarding?
Speaker 3:Not munger or skateboarding. I don't just think it goes in a weird, I think it can only go in a stranger direction where those little kids are going to become machines. Prrrrr, prr, prrr, prrr, prrr, prrr. Turbo flip, turbo, flip, 50,000 flips. It was like a video game. Prrrrr, prrr, prrr, prrr, prrr, prrr, prrr, because they never going to fall off Once you pre-program to learn that. You know, like the little Asian kids who would just spend 50 hours a day learning whatever technical flip in five directions, just no problem. In five years from now they'll have that so mastered. That will just be a turbo flipping contest. You know the ribbon dance and the ball dance, it's just, it can only be a little bit of artistic and they unjudge it, they won't go that was rad.
Speaker 3:They go. Well, he didn't have his finger in the right spot for that one, and if you're going to unjudge something, then it instantly stinks.
Speaker 2:Well, that's already happening, isn't it? Ty, yeah, and you get unjudged.
Speaker 3:It's the worst thing they do unjudge. You know. They take the mongrel out. Let the mongrel be in it. You know.
Speaker 4:Well, I think, though it's interesting because there was skateboarding as a demonstration sport in the 96 Olympics and they had that X-Ramp at. Danny Way and a couple others were skating, and as time progressed I sort of realized what didn't get introduced sooner, and it was exactly for the reason that street skating was still essentially developing in the super technical realm and it wasn't consistent enough. Basically, I mean the big brother magazines all the magazines at the time showed that by using video grab to show sequences of tricks and stuff, because it was a waste of film.
Speaker 3:It was too much film to get for digital To get it right.
Speaker 4:So and then, by the time, I did find the street in the Tokyo Olympics interesting because, yeah, the bowl comp, they basically mostly all made runs, except for, obviously, those who bailed. But there was a lot of runs made, but the street there was a lot of inconsistency in the street. Even, you know, I essentially had some expectations of you know, let's say, niger, of course, and others, and then he just didn't cut it. I respect that. He put it all on the line and tried to do his harder stuff because he's like it's the Olympics, I gotta do, I gotta make it hard and all that. And I think skating was at the point consistent enough to be able to do that street league has proven that and modern street comps for sure. But Niger didn't make a bunch of stuff, didn't cut it, and then a bunch of dudes didn't make a lot of stuff. There was stuff made, for sure and I think it's improved again.
Speaker 3:Since then, street league's been going crazy, but yeah, for sure, I think at the Olympics it's not us looking at it, it's the world. Exactly it's our art being displayed. So the people representing that art please have it organised. You know it's not my ego, but skateboarding is a general. If you're going to take it to that level, then take it there with you. Know, make it, make it, make sure you make it you know, yeah, that's a good point. You gotta make it like the polevolta makes it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You gotta go as hard as they can until they can't make it anymore, you know. So I'd be good. I mean, I'd love to see a mongrel contest. Aren't they bringing in the steroid Olympics, are they? That'd be so good.
Speaker 2:Is it true?
Speaker 3:And just put real full on animal house course in there for the monsters and just watch it. Is that true? Remember when Chris Russell was just hyped as a monster at Balarama, that time doing it, that was one of the best things I've ever saw.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I love a bit of mongrel, for sure, I think there's some rations, you know, but that was a big, that was a street. Competitions have fluctuated over the time between tech, and then you know Tony Trujillo, and then Chris Sand and stuff, yeah, smashing whole courses. But even one of those surf dive comps, you know, actually using transition in the course and doing all that and a bit more flow and mongrel as opposed to technicality, strictly speaking, and that's highly entertaining to watch. I think park skating evolved from all of that stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the combo pack of the best guys. The best with all the package, come and back and they can all of a sudden do all their tricks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's good the Olympics was trying to stay true to the culture, though.
Speaker 4:Definitely.
Speaker 2:They were trying, but maybe it's doing it a disservice as well, and so maybe it needs to evolve into a completely different discipline. You know and I know Darren Cainey's brought this up a few times like maybe the Olympics should be just the highest air or just the biggest dolly.
Speaker 3:It needs to be the longest, the longest, dolly. You know why they don't put slalom racing in it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean like, maybe that's what it should be. It's just a perfect thing the world could watch.
Speaker 3:That's right on skateboard down the downhill to messy. They tried downhill for all those things, but too messy Gotcha Again. People get slapped and one guy goes, five guys go to a labour. Border cross is the same classic, but visually scrappy. You know People want to watch a whole event. They said they want to watch their free program, to watch a whole event.
Speaker 2:But what are you doing, like, since it's been in the Olympics. Like, do you think it's helped skateboarding?
Speaker 4:I'm sure it must have had an undercurrent out there in in some aspects Opened it up to more. You know, family groups and stuff to be able to be like oh, yeah, you know, it's all good.
Speaker 4:Totally acceptable, all acceptable, like definitely. I honestly think there was just probably maybe nerves that everyone bail, a lot of bails in that street comp, but also it was just one of those comps where people didn't make things. And I've watched street leagues where I've been like yeah, it's pretty mad, and I've watched street leagues going my goodness, that was incredible. So much crazy stuff.
Speaker 3:Well, I just think they'll. As a past, they will progress and understand what they're there for. So it'd be really cool to watch it this time to see whether they've gone. Okay, that wasn't, that wasn't what we want to take to the world. Let's take and put the effort in to go. Okay. You know, like they build a bowl, pedro built a bowl, didn't he for that contest so we could qualify. Someone said they built a bowl, replica of this thingy so we can train. You know that.
Speaker 4:You know, I mean that's serious, it's the real world now, yeah, sure, but I feel like I said, if Niger just tried really hard tricks and didn't make him, didn't cut it. You know, relatively speaking, for that kind of to make, it need to tone it down a notch and not go full all out, but actually make it. You know, put on, put on the show as such, but make what you can make, like for sure to keep it in that, in that realm. I mean, obviously the gymnasts and the ice skaters have to do a lot of that.
Speaker 3:They got to make their runs and it's similar, it's freestyle, it is stuff that girl's doing three back somersaults on a 10 foot rail.
Speaker 2:It's 10 foot high and two inches wide she's making it, but you made a good point there like they can just train on the exact same apparatus in their home city, whereas like, yeah, like other skateboarders able to train in the exact same bowl where they're from, you know, or is it? They just have to wait till they get to the city of the Olympics is on, and then they get get to skate the park like a handful of times and yeah, yeah maybe that's the difference.
Speaker 3:Would street skating be better if they had it like as a a little right way? Would? That is that person.
Speaker 4:So you know, like you go down the street, you do this to you 50 tricks yeah, I think it'd be very entertaining from a skateboarders perspective to actually watch it like that. It'd be interpretive in a sense you know which and is that going still back too much to park?
Speaker 3:or is that still real street from what you do see? Real street to me? You roll down the street. You do all stuff like bounce down the hill. That's why I still like that, tommy Greer. I think not even one technical flipper in there, but it's grooving.
Speaker 3:He's grooving on every obstacle yeah and uh, you know for my gen, when you jump the hill, stop the skateboard, pick it up, turn it round, jump back on. That's kind of that's weird. That's going to be weird for someone from my generation because the last thing you want to do is pick it up like paradise for me is go to a skate park, jump on my skateboard and pick it up as I'm going back to the car. You know I rode those endless waves in Montana evergreen skate parks amazing that's what you do.
Speaker 3:You just walk there, you pick your jaw up because you're gonna, you're amazed, and then you put your skateboard down and you pick it up when you go home two hours later well, I did hear.
Speaker 4:I did hear that they were trying to implement into street league or some of the more recent comps that you actually did have to put the whole run together and and basically hit the quarter pipes at the end and a few guys are doing that yeah they are they they'd tricks and then, and then they'll do their tech tricks as well. Yeah, still the jump out factor, for sure yeah, it's it.
Speaker 3:That's just a strange one, probably from my gen, but not for street skating, because it was a set up thing and you're learning your tricks, so it's logical for you guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah this is where the generations change and you know the old people like me just shut up and move out. We still have an opinion. But irrelevant, like the kids have been looking at me going, I'm gonna dig it. Bob's got no idea. But you know, the way I look at it is different to how they look at it. You know, and I watch the olympic street because I can't streetscape it, I can't do one of those tricks. So I looked at it like anyone else sitting in the pub right two foot. I might fall off. What the fuck's wrong with you? I can. The girl over there just did a double back somersault in a 10 foot. I rail, get a grip, son. You know that's how a normal person would look at it yeah, yeah, it's fair enough.
Speaker 2:How, how often are you skating now? I ride Sundays with the boys okay yeah on your vert ramp in your backyard yeah, just out the back.
Speaker 3:I love it. I don't really who are the? Boys. So Adrian Jones, he's 63, he's a god. A god, I'm still on that. He was the king when I was a kid yeah like I said, he's the guy in the chiquito ad. When I went to school I could brag about knowing yeah and now 63 years old, and I ride with him in the backyard and what's like.
Speaker 2:What tricks are you guys doing? Like you still got backside airs in?
Speaker 3:I just learned them. I just learned them again, just yeah backside is then back, so it was. It was hideous, but I got it normal in the end over the coping yeah, the funniest part, lux is there.
Speaker 3:Like lux is the fly guy, as if lux can't reach your backside air and he's saying to just you know, I just do this. It's simple, but I had to. I said I know what you're saying, but my brain can't remember how to do this trick. All I can remember is doing the same stink bug bunny hop bump off the halfway and I'm doing this in front of Adrian Jones and Adam Luxford, so it's very humbling. So I'm halfway up and I had to keep bonking until I could eventually go okay, now I'm steep enough so I can grab in front of my foot and then, once I got that, I went okay, that's how it works.
Speaker 3:But I had to go back through the process of remembering actually how to do that because I had no concept the same as frontside airs when I learned them out the back. I had to learn halfway up because I had no grasp of. I can sit and bail homemakers 10 times, but I can't knee slide 10 times and walk back up the ladder. That's too much interesting. That's. My body can't take that. So the biggest pressure is a bad bail on my knees and going back up the ladder.
Speaker 3:It's so physical, like me and Errol are ragged from the from that yeah, lux round machine, man goes up and down inverts yeah, I can still do that that's my benchmark for my whole life. You see what that's? Yeah, I said to my mum when I was 40. I said when I was a kid, this is before that, the first half pipe. Contest that one the trophies for yeah.
Speaker 3:I said if, mum, if you buy me these wheels, I promise I'll still be doing this stuff at 40. So they were two, maybe Powerflex 9s, but I needed them handplant wheels because Bobby Valdez invented the handplant and he had. He rode for Powerflex. So I had to have these wheels. So I got green cryptos on the back because I could only ever buy two wheels with two poor. So I said to mum, I promise you I'll still be doing this when I'm 40, you know, and and so my 40th birthday, I was living in Cosshabra and I come down to Maruba and did a handplant in that bowl. Yeah, and right out there you go. I've done it all the way up to that, but, you know, and then I've done one every year since no deal, as I always.
Speaker 3:I just go out there and go, but it just for me. It's easier from the anvil, it's walking okay. So that's easier to do a handplant than is to do a nose grow backside wheeler, which is, you know, the trick first invented.
Speaker 2:But that's so hard, so sketchy, I can't see that's death so yeah, so when you do skate you can drop in 50, 50 yeah, yeah, yeah, rock and slide.
Speaker 3:I can basically do. I haven't done rock to fakies on this yet because I've got to go to a little place and get the psychological rock and rolls though, yeah, yeah yeah, coming forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's all normal for me, that's just walking stuff, you know. So everything I basically have taken to the last 10 Bolaramas, I still do. Yeah, I didn't change much of anything at all, I just kept surviving. You know, I'm always gonna couple of years old enough to keep that little bit of whoa. He's old he's probably the oldest here, you know, but Errol so I've always had that little bit of fudge credibility to go. He's old, you know pension and pop give him a couple of bonus points. So I didn't. I'd always try and have one trick every year for Bolarama. You know, like one new one. Well, probably an Andriac, you know it's a hand plant grabbing the other way. But my deal is to do. I haven't done eggplant since 91. I was about to ask about I'm gonna do eggplant from my 61st birthday. So that's in April.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:April, yeah, so I'm gonna do that.
Speaker 2:You gotta film that and send it to me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I again. It's another one I have no concept of how to get into. I walk past the ramp going. It's gonna be wild because the flick and the first flick is just completely stupid, but once they can put my hand in, I can. If I can see, I think I could land it. Basically that's how I look, if I can see the ground when I'm up there yeah.
Speaker 2:I can land it, it's just the same okay, what would you say to 50 year old John Gray then? Did 50 year old John Gray think he was done?
Speaker 3:no, I put in a big effort for my 50 because I wanted to have these pitches for my 50th birthday. It's always ego chasing, it's just the way I am.
Speaker 2:But look at back though. You're like 50 man, I was still fresh like a 50.
Speaker 3:I put in a lot of effort. There's a ramp, it's not over when you're 50. You're 50 year olds no, no, no, no way for my 50th. I had a yes.
Speaker 3:Ty a ramp in Blacktown that had been there for years. So I got the council to repaint that. I put all this effort into learning to write it. I was listening to Amelda May, who's a rockabilly girl and just a real zip tempo and I was just loving it and I was writing that every afternoon on my own and just learning stuff. So when I went to my 50th at Bondi N Newcastle yeah, I was, I was tuned for that one.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was gonna matter.
Speaker 3:That mattered to me, you know, yeah. So you know I know where Dave Pang's standing and I know where John Hurran and I know where Dean Turca the standing, so it's get that picture. You want that's. I always think like that for those big events. He's dressed for the occasion. Think what you want to do, think where you want to do it. You're not going to beat them, you're just going to put yourself in place there.
Speaker 2:Maybe that was cool, yes, so that's how I loved that, you know so cool.
Speaker 3:I love Bolarama. I love that. I love that whole deal was the best to ride with all my idols, like I was never going to get to ride with Steve Olson, eddie Algoura, steve Alba, pat Lester. And then there was the A-Listens you know, but just the normal people, you know.
Speaker 2:It was unbelievable to like Steve Olson dude, highlight what would you say, even at that, like that stage in your life, like one of the highlights of your skate, your skate life, oh, easily, easy, even better than like the stuff that was happening in the 80s and 90s, or just different.
Speaker 3:It was so rewarding to think far out.
Speaker 3:It took 50 years, but I got it somehow I got to share a poor contest with the guys that I dreamed about in 1978. There was never going to happen. To the boy from Blacktown there was my mum used to say one day it'll happen, johnny, one day it'll happen. I was going, mum now, it's never going to happen. And then we rode with him in the 80s. But it wasn't to me, wasn't? The ramp thing wasn't as pure, yes, as what I grew up dreaming. You know, steve Olson, eddie Algoura, steve Alba, it's like skate park pool, it's just skate park pool. You know it was as good as we were going to get. And there it was it round. And you know, like I got one picture that my mate took of you know, next to Tony Hawk, and it's just us both waiting for a go. But I love it because it's real yeah, it is just real.
Speaker 3:It's not anything, you know. I do have his DNA. Who's Tony's, how I reckon he's got his blood. So anyway, here we go. It's a classic story. I'm John Grotale, sorry.
Speaker 3:Anyway, we're at Boilorama and he's like I need a drink of water. Yeah, because Chad would always cool enough to put me in the heat with everyone. He knew who I wanted to ride with. Yeah, so they always Chad and Sasha really looked after me in that way of making sure I got to ride with. You know, they knew I was pretty pure and had a love for for the game.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, um, I'm there with Tony Hawk and he goes I need a drink of water. Is there a lot of people behind me? I said yes, about a thousand, mate. None of them are looking at me, so I guess they're looking at you. You don't. So I need some water. I said I got something you want to drink. Tony had a drink of my water and I said did you ever watch the Brady Bunch? You went yeah, this is in the heats for practicing for Boilorama. I said you remember the one where Davey Jones, kish Marsha Brady on the cheek, you know? And he went yeah, it's like looking at me like I'm from space and I went. This is my Marsha Brady moment. I'm keeping the bottle.
Speaker 2:Did you, did you no?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I still got it in the cupboard, still got the backwash in it turning the hogs backwash. Duh, duh, duh, duh. Brassless, that was so good, you know, that made me calm amongst all that madness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's just a way to just like what do you say to it? I don't know how I am, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know it looks so many people have got that. You know that photo they get with him. You know it's not real. And then you just go oh, that's a horrible one. You know the selfie I wouldn't want one with Tony's fake face on. But yeah, just yeah, it's classic. You know, just sharing those bits with him. You know just that one tiny moment in life he go. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2:That is cool.
Speaker 4:And you got the photo just with him on the platform and stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just me, and him standing there, matching clothes, matching stance, matching everything, and I got my broken arm to go with it.
Speaker 2:Gotcha.
Speaker 3:Because then I did the handplant on the broken arm. I just broke it, so I got a plastic plaster put on so I could do it. Yeah, the doctor's like you're an idiot. I go yeah, I know, but this is, I'm 50, so I was 50, whatever I was.
Speaker 3:back then I said I'm not letting the chance go by, you know, and I've only got a few tricks, and this was one of them. So was that Dougie? He was the medic, wasn't he? So his file and my hand were cut in the plaster so I can grab the top and not fall off so good. And Tony comes past and goes. You know you should have won the five grand for the handplant. You know you're crazy. And I said I was just showing off, made apparently some famous guys here. You know I haven't really get on the team. You know you just looked at me again like I'm not gonna talk to this guy again because there's something really out there. But it was. You know, it was just cool to break up all that. You know, all the love and glory, serious tension. Yeah, you know, I got to play drums in front of, in front of Steve Olson.
Speaker 2:That's so good. Well, how come?
Speaker 3:Well, again, I planned all this stuff because I'm a good planner. So I knew Selber was here and I knew Steve Olson was coming. So I learned Selber stuff you know his Powerflex five stuff. I thought, right, if my chance comes I'm gonna be ready and I'm thinking this is gonna be a chance in a lifetime, selber, olson and me. What are the chances? So, anyway, domo has a fight with Selber and he chucks a metal. Yeah, it's all over.
Speaker 3:Olson's just sitting there watching me play and then comes up and goes are you killing it? You know, and I'm like, I just wanted you to play, like I was that close, I was as that close to setting up the killer chance of a lifetime and I had all these songs dialed. You know, most of it's only 12 bars, so it's not in anything. But you know, he had a couple of slick ones and I learned them Got away from me, I had got to play. So that was fun. You know, got to play. You know play drums in front of Skateboard World, which was good fun, wow, man. Yeah, just adventures. You know, I just make adventures. I love trying to. You know, if something can happen, make it happen. You know, just see if you can put yourself there.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, yeah yeah. It's like so it sort of sees the moment, sees the opportunity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but live for that song. You know, there's a point where you go okay, I'm going to listen to that song and go okay, don't let it go, Because once you let it go, it's gone. When you get old you go I should have, should have, don't say should have.
Speaker 2:Is it? Would that be? Would that be some of your key life advice to people? Yeah, should have If you were asked. You know, If you think something, go it. What are some of your key lessons? If you think something, do it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, just be honest. You know like definitely karma, Karma, come and get, do something bad, you gotta pay. That's life. You're gonna pay the piper somehow, somehow. Don't question why it happened. That's why it happened, because you know you did something. But you know, if you got a chance, just take it, Because once it's when it's not there, it's not gonna come back. You never get a second bite, you just get lucky, you know. So like the skateboarding thing is just being a blessing, you know, like it keeps giving. It keeps giving. For all those years it gave me everything and now it still does. And then Luxe comes along with, just happens to have a ramp and I happened to have a big yard. So he builds a ramp in my backyard and at 60, I got a skateboard ramp.
Speaker 3:The skateboard ramp no back out I'm setting a lantern hot rod in the shed. My beautiful fam, my beautiful girl man, what a rage.
Speaker 2:Who'd have thought You're in a good place? Who'd have thought, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3:Who'd have thought yeah, you just thought you know there's so many options out there, but you just it's pretty good you know, looking forward, like, well, what's next?
Speaker 2:You think, like you think, this is, this is where you're at, where you wanna be and just gonna. This is you for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3:I don't know. We just well mainly Anne just started a lawn mower business.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:After I left the mechanic world.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:And that's booming. Okay, so now I'm a lawn mower Dude and that's how I work, but you know, we're just going so well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Keeps you fit. Yeah, fit is called tired, I think. Yeah, fit Monday. Yeah, fit Tuesday. Far out Wednesday, yeah, and then you get to the fuck at Friday. Oh my God, I'm actually I can't do it. Yeah, you know, I'm 60 years old, so even a lawn mower's through lawn grasses. But you're doing it for yourself and it's rewarding and it's okay.
Speaker 2:You're not working for anyone. No, you got to do something.
Speaker 3:I got to do something you know so yeah. I got to do something. Keeps you busy. Yeah, I thought retirement would be simple, but man, it's so expensive.
Speaker 2:I've heard that. Yeah, it's expensive world right.
Speaker 3:Everything's going up, double, double it's insane. Except skateboard. Life's great bargain is skateboard and petrol.
Speaker 2:It's true, and even they've gone up, unfortunately.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but who gets the coin, you know? I mean, what does a pro guy get for a board? I've no idea these days.
Speaker 2:You know the royalties yeah would you get a buck?
Speaker 3:Would you get two bucks? Probably a couple.
Speaker 2:But even then it must be so hard because there's just such a so many pros.
Speaker 3:You know? See, it's my gen that's buying all the boards. Don't let the kids don't worry, because the board lasts. I don't know how long a street board would last. Couple of weeks you'd be going. Yeah not that long. Just yeah, not that long.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I mean a couple of weeks maybe, yeah, maybe a month depends on Depends.
Speaker 2:if you're in the streets, they don't last long, but if you're skating these new skate parks all the time and that's all you're skating like they're so smooth it's like that's true your board seems to last long Like out in the road getting kicked against the gutter. Yeah, if you're in the streets. Two weeks.
Speaker 3:Oh easy, Because I've seen some dudes houses and they got piles of skateboard Like I've never seen somebody skate with him. I just you know the guy that never got rid of a skateboard. Well, that's a garden shed, yeah right, Full of skateboards. What are you gonna do at all? Oh, that's this one, this one. I said, yeah, I got one of them, sheds too.
Speaker 2:Like McMahill.
Speaker 3:Eventually, oh Okay, we're gonna go there. No, it's strange to have all that equipment when we had all that stuff, I would have just sold that worthless shit and got myself fixed up and skateboard. That's the option. I would have went with that. Fair enough, yeah, because he was rad.
Speaker 2:He's created some of like. He could create a museum out of the stuff he's got.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:No, no, but History it is. I had tons of stuff and just sold it to those guys that love it. You know, I could have had all these wheels. And then they'd bag me and go, oh, the John Gray's an idiot. He sold these wheels for 40 bucks. I go well, I didn't think that SS Radials by Schmidt Sticks from 1980 were worth anything. Costs 10 bucks a wheel. I got 10 bucks a wheel back 40 years later. I thought that was a good deal. No, I could have got 40 bucks a wheel. You know, yeah, but I didn't know that. And so then they bagged me and I says you used to write back and go well, I'm not gonna sell you anything anymore because I got all the Primo stuff. You know, my stuff's real. The stuff I kept, everything's real. If I didn't get it from someone legit, I didn't keep it.
Speaker 2:No, you know, yeah, man, it's got a story behind it.
Speaker 3:Gotta have a real one Gotta have credits. If it's not only got credits, then I don't want it. Oh for sure, that was everything. I kept, had A list of credits. You know, straight from the hand, that was my collection. I had Grosso's furry knee pads. How'd you score? Those oh.
Speaker 3:Like his pro knee pads, his pro knee pads, his own ones, the ones he wore, the black and white ones and then they got wrecked in. You had another yeah, some disaster at home, some kind of flood thing that wrecked them. They went moldy and I went, ah, I used to sell pads, you know. I got like, oh, when I was on Alva 2, I got an Alva Daggers board, this little paddle pop stick, and you only got them, if you're well, I know, like a gift and I went who's ever gonna ride that?
Speaker 4:Hmm, Oops, Oops yeah.
Speaker 3:So I got a couple of, I got a couple of crushes that I threw out and went, that I shouldn't have done, you know, and then kept some dumb stuff. You know, you just keep the dumb stuff, but you know it's hard to hide. Isn't it? We'd all be moldy, see it. I'd have a shed full of cars If that was the case. That's an expensive hobby, Damn yeah they are, but they're I love them, you know, just love them, we just love my old Dodge.
Speaker 2:Is that what you've got in the garage at the moment?
Speaker 3:Yeah, 1954 Dodge. It's at my sister's place now because it was off getting his photo taken and I was gonna go and get it back this morning. But one more cup of coffee and I'll go in a minute, and then time just got the better of me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I know, yeah, so, yeah, that's always a love. So Sunday mornings we get up and go for a drive to one of the little car events and do that kind of thing and come back and play skateboards in the other. Sounds like a good.
Speaker 2:Sunday.
Speaker 3:So yeah, when the boys come over and we have the barbie and a few beers and you've got to fight off the beer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to what. So fight off the beer, fight off the beer.
Speaker 3:It's easy, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, to drink beer. Do you drink much? I'm pretty good.
Speaker 2:What about early in your early life? Have you, were you someone that sort of gravitated Social? No, no, because I was never. No, you know.
Speaker 3:Finn was the pro Finn and my mates from Marion. That was serious.
Speaker 2:They could really he's got Scottish heritage. Oh yeah, that was why I was loving it.
Speaker 3:He had the demon, you know he had it in him so, but that was, that was that's life. You know it was a family thing and you know the whole complexity of what happened, why it happened. You know I know all the other parts of the story. So, yeah, it's a varied. You know it was a deep one, it was a tough one.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It was a tough one for people hard for sure. Yeah, you know it was. It was a big tough cut when I lost, when Finn went, that was, yeah, I wasn't ready for that one. No, a lot of people weren't no, I expected it. No, it just didn't. I knew, you know, I knew that the fight was on inside himself or what you know. We discussed.
Speaker 2:Was he communicating with you?
Speaker 3:Not as much we would talk. See, finn was running a show in Bondi. He was Finn, so he had his whole new. When we were in the Scar world Finn would have all these little young skinheads and we called him the Finn skins, right, but he could process, he could manipulate these dudes Like and that like there were, some of them were big, hunky Irish boys, you know, like real fighters, and he had the power to stick these dudes onto people. It was pretty like. You know he knew he had play. He always had play. You know so well, Tommy, at the Bondi he's had a whole generation of what I would refer to as little Finn skins that he could make, do whatever they want. You know he could. Just that was his power.
Speaker 3:You know, when we used to do the Coke demos we'd get up on the top and he'd make the kids sing ads. So we'd get someone else's bag and we'd throw their stuff out to the kids Because we usually would drink and beer in the Coke cans. So we were raging. Well, he was always drinking beer in the Coke cans, you know. But yeah, so then we'd throw someone else's stuff out to the kids and he'd make them sing ads. You know the TV ads and he'd make. You don't get anything to his sing. Everyone's got a sing. Interesting, yeah, yeah, just a crazy man. Yeah, it's completely crazy. So yeah, but you know they could just rage on him and my Mariel mates. They'd have benders. You know, day long benders, days, days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then the after, but you didn't feel inclined to get to be part of that. Those benders.
Speaker 3:Nah, not, the drinking was just too much for me, you know, I was just too wild, I just I wanted to do stuff, you know. So I had cars and I had.
Speaker 2:Would you ever discuss with him that it could be problematic? Well, it was, we knew it was. Hey, do you think he?
Speaker 3:was aware, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a deep-seated one, deep-seated one and he knew it. He knew it was what he was fighting. But it's a tough fight. It's a tough fight when it's a seed, you can't, you know. And, yeah, he knew where it come from, he knew how, to the magnitude of it. So he would go away from me, have a big bender and then we'd talk when he was cool, because he didn't, you know. Yeah, we would discuss where we were in the world. You know Both her own little worlds going on and yeah, it was just a.
Speaker 3:It was a yeah, it was a hard one when he was gone, like, wow, if you only would've rang me. But you know, that's me saying that from my point. I don't know how deep he was by the time he got to that. I just know that he must've been depressed and really depressed and struggling. But I, you know, I talked to his daughter. Yeah, you know, regular, when she's ready, I've made a contact with her. You know, I've sent her photos and told her tales and told her our little band and music stories and she sometimes rings up and says I was thinking about that, can I talk to you? Of course. So yeah, you know, I've always been there.
Speaker 2:Do you think? Has she? Have you helped her to understand him?
Speaker 3:I don't.
Speaker 2:I haven't gone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I haven't gone anywhere in here. I let her guide where she wants to talk. You know there's. Yeah, there was a lot of it with the. I didn't like the. You know the, the fine events. I liked the thought behind the fine events, but I didn't, because everyone was there pissed and then they'd get his family there. Well, that, you know that. Not a good circle, that wasn't a good thing to show. You know, 10 blinds, gay borders, mate, he was the best guy. You know, don't do that, that's not for daughters and things, that's for the boys. So they took a little bit backyard boys to a girls event, you know to Sue and April's event, and that was not. Yeah, no, I went, no, no, this is not cool anymore, so pardon.
Speaker 3:Fair call yeah you know you've got to let people grow and progress. They they're living with a real trauma. We're having a one day you know social event. So with a different, but I still see sister speak to his dad, wish the whole family happy birthday. Right yeah. Yeah, that's classic, but he was an entertainer, he was the funny character you know and Tell us a favourite Finn story.
Speaker 2:Too many.
Speaker 3:What's the bad ones? All right, we're going down to here in highway and of course, we're going to steal the bridges that they made in Mitigong to be over in a form. We need a form play for Quagga Cells. So right, we get this. Finn's got to. I think you had a panel van. We stopped there, we laid it up Like this. Going up the road, I said we need a story in case we get pulled over. So there, Parker and Finn are working at St John of God hospital in Galben, so we've got a reason for coming back. That's how they saw the bridge. So the coppers pull us over, make us unload all the wood. We stick to our story, you know. And then the next time we get pulled over they take us all apart. And it was so funny. He just stuck to his story and he's like no, no, you can come and check, we've got mud on his shoes just from all these stuff, you know. And played the coppers like a champ, you know. And we loaded up the wood and drove home.
Speaker 2:Just go. What a blind eye. Just the gift to the gatherer.
Speaker 3:Just what a scam you know. Like I made up the story but he sold it. He sold it the best you know, because he was the actor, yeah, and they just took us apart and I'm like I'm just laboring for these two guys. They work at the hospital. I'm just like man, look, I'd wreck my shoes, but we'd been under this in Cogmire. And then the other one was we were going down Victoria Road, car breaks down. You know, I'm the Westie, I'm the Petro, I've got this. Nothing's going to make this car. We've got 100 cars behind us. Finn gets up there, takes the bonnet, jumps on the motor three times, jumps back in the car and drives away. She's the brightest. Like what are you doing, mate, fixing the car? Can't go.
Speaker 3:Classy. Oh and then it just worked, it just went. You know just, I don't know why. You know who would know why? It's just one of them nutty things he'd do, that you know. But the adventures that his boys had, they were just far out. I don't know how he didn't get killed. Why then he threw a nicotine bomb into a downhill club in Oxford Street A?
Speaker 2:nicotine bomb.
Speaker 3:Like he said, he used to smoke Peter Stiverson because he liked flicking the packet getting the dirty out. It was a James Bond thing.
Speaker 2:No, like soft, because that was soft packets Soft packets.
Speaker 3:So anyway, he had his technique all down. He did like smoking, but he liked the technique. And so he walks past this club in the thing and goes Nicotine bomb, nicotine bomb, and flicks his cigarette down the stairwell. Well, anyway, the cop has grabbed him and gone, you're gone. So we go to pick him up from Darlinghurst police station and they throw him in the cell with this like whoa, dude, you're in, you're in the shit, like you're in the shit. And I'm like I just come to get my mate out, you know. And he's like, do you want to go in with him? I went, no, he said well, piss off. So yeah, that was his mystery night.
Speaker 4:Never spoke up again Never spoke up again. No, no, no.
Speaker 3:There's no answers because there's no questions. You okay, yes, good, good Over the nicotine bomb? Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, dude so good, oh this is a classic. Oh, man, listen, it's been epic, john, I mean. I don't know if we could talk all day. Really I ran on all day.
Speaker 3:It's great, never ending tale. You know there's so much fun stuff so, but I just really would like I just love it. I love the past time, I've everything about it. You know, never doesn't give you. They never think skateboarding is your penny. Just be gracious, you've got the gift to do it, the gift that I can still get on that thing at 60 and run Great. You know what's funny, dude? They can't play footy. You can talk about footy at the pub. I would have smashed him. No, you wouldn't Get up there and fucking try it, dude, it hurts, you know. Yeah, you know. But this is a gift that you can still do If you just stay tuned, stay healthy. You know, scotty Spring rides like a kid man. He's just a machine but he's wakeboarding and he's so tuned. Don't know the moves, you know, but just shows you can just do it. You know it's no different. You know, at my age the tricks here beat your head. Your body remembers, you know.
Speaker 2:Okay, beat your head.
Speaker 3:your body remembers your body will remember how to do those moves. You just got to tell this part to let it do it. Yeah, and once you can just go, I know how to do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hear that. All you young 50 year olds, all you little whippersnapper, 50 year olds, that's it.
Speaker 3:Just stay tuned and believe. You care, you know I love that man People go.
Speaker 3:Oh no, I'll get hurt. I never think that. No, I'm not going to get hurt. I will, but I'm not going to. You know I don't have a go where I'm going to fall off, you know. I mean, you know you ride some concrete stuff. It's a hairy, big, scary. Yeah, when I went to a we'll be going Montana last year or the year before. There's the Evergreen parks, which are pleasant. Then there's the, those terror parks that those guideline guys build guideline. Oh man, what's that boys? You know, haley dude, that thing's 13 foot deep and just a downhill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:Downhill, you just get in there and go. I just want to go home. Like seriously, I want to go home, you know right. That was an eye open to that stuff, that that that was good stuff, you know. But to get out of those things one day and ride a 13 foot bowl of 20 foot pipe that goes downhill yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, now it was humbling, that's it. That was humbling.
Speaker 3:Awesome Imagine, but you couldn't get back there fast enough, you know.
Speaker 4:So sick that you did that so recently. I know I was so lucky.
Speaker 3:My sister's very, very generous and she took me to Texas on a two week country music tour what? And then she was going to Georgia to see her friends and said I said I'm over there. So I went up to Idaho to my mate's place and he took me all down through Montana to skate for a week. And then I met my sister. Right, business class, business class, stop it. I got on the plane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you can never go back now. I want you to, I want you to fly business. It's so hard to go back to I went to sleep.
Speaker 3:I got watch the Elvis movie, that's it. I mean, what a bummer. That's pretty good. I think we couldn't get off the plane. I was about five minutes short of the Elvis movie. They said I will just turn them TV back on. Thanks, bargain, once you entered the movie. But yeah, what a luxury. So I was so gifted, she was so good to take me there. You know what a chance, you know.
Speaker 2:I flew to Canada once on business class and I literally didn't want the fight to end. I was like I was like bummed.
Speaker 3:when we got there I was like, oh, I'm good to stay here, just get your pajamas. Give you pajamas. I know just so you know you are bad ass here I'm rolling in business mate. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:I ask you what time you want to have dinner and stuff Like when do you want dinner? You know. Yeah, I know, the bed was amazing. I'll have a little. I'll watch a movie and then bring me some food Like it's amazing. Yeah, I'll sit with them.
Speaker 3:Hey again from the boy from Blacktown. Never would have thought that one either.
Speaker 2:There you go, man.
Speaker 3:But for how much that cost I could have bought a car over there so I could have went cattle class and come back with a 56-olds and still had change. I think it costs how much. It costs 20 grand or something, I don't know. It's phenomenal how much it cost.
Speaker 4:Up there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know Jesus, 20 grand.
Speaker 2:But anyway, good experience though, man, another one, I don't know. Anyways, is there anything else I don't want to like? Andrew, no, no, I'm cool I don't want you to like feel like half-wards, Like I wish I said this or I wish I said that.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I'll contemplate every single word I said because I have a memory. Then I'll go back to everything.
Speaker 2:And listen I've been talking about this a lot lately with people. There's three elements to a podcast or an interview. It's like what you want to say, what you actually say, and then what you wish you said. You'll go through those three. Yeah yeah, but really, man, I feel like today. Thank you so much for your time and energy. You've left us with some really good things to think about and amazing stories, and you've had an amazing life.
Speaker 3:It's been fun and what you've got to say, it's been an endless buzz, you know.
Speaker 2:But I think what's inspired me like spending some time with you this morning is like I can just still see you have this real positive energy for life and zest for life and I think, in my opinion, like that's the win in itself.
Speaker 3:So thanks, man In that box is nothing but sadness. You know the TV there, it's nothing but sadness.
Speaker 2:Oh man, you just don't have to be. What do you mean? Nothing but sadness, like the news in the world.
Speaker 3:The news is so sad and you know, just everything's like man really. Does it have to be that bad? Not the world wars. You know that's not anything I could do, but just a way of people, politics just so struggled. Why make it a struggle?
Speaker 2:I don't want to go. I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, but I mean, I mean you're older than me. Do you feel like the world has become a worse place from you know over time? Do you think it's getting worse?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't think there's ever an end to greed, and I don't know how to say this without saying it. Religion in itself is a beautiful thing. The human interpretation of religion is a very wrong thing and it's sold at a cost and I don't agree with that and that's what causes the grief Someone's opinion against it. It doesn't cost nothing. It doesn't cost nothing to love someone. It'll be nice, it'll be cool, but they sell it and that's the problem. That's a good the humans are the problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the gearing of people deciding. That's my angle and that's what I'm going to throw. Yeah, that's a weird one. My grandson's got dinosaurs right, love, dinosaurs, all dinosaurs now come with a chip? No, they don't, do they. Dinosaurs evolution, they've been to the concept mind of now, a six or seven year old child. Dinosaurs have a chip, so they've taken a whole concept of thinking out of their life. That's wrong. Love to know who made the movies.
Speaker 2:What do you mean? A chip, a chip, they've got a microchip yeah, microchip, so they work.
Speaker 3:Dinosaurs are microchipped and they can call them a people of poplosaurus Whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, okay, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but the concept of real evolution is taken away from kids. Very strange thought. Okay, don't think that's a good one. Life is life, is the dinosaur 60 million years ago. So 60 million years ago and now is an irrelevant statement to a seven year old child.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Just a strange thought.
Speaker 2:Just contemplating it, Ty. Is there anything else you want to add, Ty?
Speaker 4:No.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty good Great.
Speaker 4:That's everything I could have thought of Definitely.
Speaker 3:And more. I don't struggle to talk, I don't think.
Speaker 2:No, that's great, we might live there.
Speaker 3:Yeah cool.
Speaker 2:It's been an absolute honor. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 3:Thank you, shannon. Jim Ty, thank you very much for the opportunity. I love it. I appreciate it to the end. Wow, anything you know. Someone looks back at all those years and goes good on your mate, you did something. Then that's what a gem you know.
Speaker 2:Mr John Gray.
Speaker 4:Thank you, Johnny, Thanks Shannon.
Speaker 2:Thanks Ty, let's try calling.