.png)
Terrible. Happy. Talks.
Stories. Skateboarding. Art.
Every Sunday: Follow/Subscribe/Get Notified.
Hosted by Shannon Farrugia
Terrible. Happy. Talks.
(Audio only) #238 - Adrian "Errol" Jones: 50 Years of Australian Skateboarding with a Living Icon.
WATCH the episode HERE.
What if you could relive the golden era of skateboarding through the eyes of a legend? Join us as we sit down with the iconic Adrian "Errol" Jones, who has been at the forefront of Australian skateboarding for over fifty years. Co-host Ti Coleing lends his unique perspective, offering a rich, multifaceted discussion that spans rare archival footage, memorable spots like Hulley's Ramp and Ryde Bowl, and the influential figures who have shaped the skateboarding community. Discover the origins of Adrian's nickname "Errol," laugh along with his nostalgic tales from the early days of skateboarding in Australia, and hear about the time he was honoured with the "Spirit of Jay Adams" award from Dogtown and Z-Boys legend Pat Noho.
This episode is full of never before seen pictures and videos, so I highly recommend watching the full video production HERE.
Shoutout to the following people who helped make this episode happen:
Episode Sponsor: Cockroach Wheels
Photos: David Mock, David Pang, John Fox, Russell Jones, Tony Jones, Dean Tirkot, Blameless, Damo Kennedy, John Gray.
Archival video footage of Ryde, Hulley's Ramp and Manly Skate City: Stuart Spencer.
Co-Host: Ti Coleing
Featured Artist: Marty Baptist
Set Art Curation: Steve Tierney
Thank you Skateboarding,
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.
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.
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
Hey, it's Shan here. This week I catch up with Errol Adrian Jones. Adrian Errol Jones, do you understand? Years of Australian skateboarding. For Adrian, he may have been one of the first ever Australian professional skateboarders and he's still doing it 50 plus years later.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. Ty Colling sits in as co-host this week. So between the two of those guys, wow, there's a lot of history to unravel. And we do that, we unpack it and we get lots of video footage and photos up this episode lots of visuals. So it's definitely worth your time and energy to watch the video production over at the Terrible Happy Talks YouTube channel, but otherwise you can sit back, relax and listen to us talk about the stuff that we're watching.
Speaker 2:I think we've got some archival footage of places like Hulley's Ramp, rydalmere Bowl, and I don't know if it's ever been seen before publicly, but I know it's pretty rare footage so it's worth checking out. And we have epic photos supplied by Dave Mock, dave Pang and this week's featured artist of the week is Marty Baptist, also founder of the brand Japan National. So we've got Marty's images playing in the background on the video production episode and I love Marty's art. If you haven't seen it, I love Marty too. And also Cockroach Wheels. I know I've done an ad for them at the moment, but I still just want to give them a shout out.
Speaker 2:Luke over at Cockroach has been so supportive of the podcast and he's kindly sponsored this episode, which makes a lot of sense because Adrian was sponsored by Cockroach back in the day. Maybe he still is, I don't know. They're probably following him product because that guy deserves every single thing he gets. Man, he's a kind soul as well, I mean just a legend, but just such a oh wow, enriched human and it was an honor and a privilege. So sit back, relax and get to know Mr Adrian Jones, everyone.
Speaker 2:Cheers, I'm going to hit you hard with a hard question straight away. Where did the name Errol come from?
Speaker 3:Errol Adrian Ariel Jones, I knew it, a nickname that my sponsor gave me back when I was writing for Skateboard World. And yeah, then around about 1980, when Strand Crawler had a certain song out, oh, errol, I would give anything, give anything.
Speaker 2:You know the rest of it um a lot of my mates at skateboard at manly skate city.
Speaker 3:that was the time, uh, that that song came out, the era they would, um, I'd be riding in the half pipe and they'd be, um, sitting up there in the stands or waiting and waiting in the the vestibule for their go, and they'd be sitting up there in the stands or waiting in the vestibule for their go and they'd all be singing the song, oh Errol.
Speaker 2:But then the next part goes I would give anything just to be like him.
Speaker 3:That was it. Yeah, so it came from a stir. A stir or respect A bit of both. A bit of both, I like to think.
Speaker 2:Ty, what's your first memory of AJ skateboarding? Can you remember?
Speaker 4:To be fair, I never saw Adrian skate for like a long time since, having first seen his pro model at Skateboard World, basically him and Biff's, amongst many other skateboards as well. But those boards seem to jump off the shelf and resonate the Germ 3 and the Biff model with quite iconic imagery, which, biff's, would probably be controversial now iconic imagery which.
Speaker 4:Biff's probably controversial now, but yeah, that was my first like introduction, I guess, to Adrian and Biff. And then I couldn't say when I actually would have seen you skate for the first time, because I know you used to skate around a lot from hindsight but I don't recall ever having seen you at Curl Park or anything in my sort of earlier years. I remember having sessions with Biff, sort of in the 90s at Mona Vale, but I don't. I think maybe the first time I'd seen you. I don't know, I can't even remember. Can you remember seeing me.
Speaker 3:I do remember clearly the first time I saw you, ty, was at this rather large halfpipe in the back of a youth centre in Waverley, in Bondi Junction. Oh, you came there, wow.
Speaker 3:Maybe you're talking about that. I went there with Dave Mock one day for a session and there was this tiny little blonde kid doing rock to fakies on this enormous half pipe and I couldn't do Rob to fakies. At that stage I thought, wow, this guy, this kid's hot and that's yeah. That was my first. I'm not sure if we spoke or whatever on that day, but certainly I remember clearly seeing you there. Wow classic, I think. Dave and I had a bit of a short session on the ramp.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We were just dropping by. I think we might have been delivering boards to someone Sure In the neighbourhood, but yeah, that's. I can't remember what year that would have been 89 or something.
Speaker 4:88, 89. Yeah, yeah, yep, for sure, yeah, wild Okay. Yeah. And then it would have been years, and then I definitely I mean, what Maroubra? Was done and think of those old school jams that Fox started to put together when bowls sort of started to come about a bit more, and then that's when I first started seeing you sort of more regularly out amongst it.
Speaker 3:That's right. I was living in the eastern suburbs in those days too, so we would have been bumping into each other at all those skate parks and what have you. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Man. The history's deep. I love it. Now, you know, today, aj, I really do want to go through a chronology of your amazing life and I know there's a lot of people really keen to hear it.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, like I was saying to you earlier, I was skating at this uh, I guess a bit of a bowl jam in newcastle the other night and chaos chaos, bowl jam and, uh, a few guys were like, when are you gonna get AJ on, you know, and there's a bit of hype around it, so, but what I'd like to do today is like start with some recent events. So, australian Keegan Palmer yeah he's just won the Olympics and you know someone such as yourself who's so legendary in Australian skateboarding. I just want to watch the clip with you and just like see what you think of it. Is that all right?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:I guess more of just to see just where skateboarding has come. That's right, yes, that's a big alley-oop indie over the huge hip Backside. Smith, look at that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just unbelievable. He is so rad. Yeah, it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 3:He is so rad.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He gets technical stuff in there. He goes really fast.
Speaker 2:Does he, he goes?
Speaker 3:high. He's got great control. He always has had.
Speaker 2:See, I love the frontside rocking slide.
Speaker 4:I love the frontside rocking slide.
Speaker 2:Oh, and the frontside, lean over that pyramid. Look at that. That's it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 2:There it is Right to the end. Look at that so you know, did you ever in your lifetime think you'd see that combination of tricks strung together in one single run?
Speaker 3:Oh no never, never yeah, um, I can remember, uh, many years ago, probably back to the 80s, um dave mock, good old friend of mine, who was one of the better australian freestyle skaters in the in those days, he was telling me he he was predicting, you know, vert skating, adrian is going to go, they're going to be doing freestyle tricks on vert, and I was going, no, that'd be dull, that couldn't work, you know. But yeah, there you go, they're doing kickflips, they do flip tricks to rails, flip tricks to disaster.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the technical ability nowadays is just mind-boggling and I guess, like comparatively, if we cut to the hang 10 image that we have here, yes so tell us the backstory behind that. I mean, you just mentioned freestyle skateboarding I mean? Was freestyle, your first introduction to skateboarding?
Speaker 3:more or less. Yeah, yeah I, I got my first skateboard in 74, 73, 74.
Speaker 2:So that's 50 years of skateboarding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the decades add up. But yeah, in 75, after I'd had a, my first skateboard was a Weber, a Webcraft, a GT Webcraft board from Victoria. I got it from a mate swapped a table tennis bat gt webcraft board from victoria. Um, I got it from a mate swapped a table tennis bat for his, his old gt board that he'd grown bored with. Um, that sounds like an unfair sport. Yeah, I was. It was a competition table tennis bat. It wasn't just an old one any old one performance, one yes, but um, yeah no.
Speaker 3:And on that web craft, the GT, me and my brother just cruised the streets where we grew up and it was all surf style, just carving, swerving down roads. But just by complete coincidence, later that year the urethane wheels came in and in 75 there was just boom. There was a massive craze and it swept the country like like the yo-yo crazes they used to have back in the in the 60s and 70s. Every kid had a skateboard. It was similar to like when the power you know the time hawk and the power guys came out in the in the mid to late 80s. You know, 75 was just huge and and it was all based predominantly on the freestyle trick skateboarding. You know the nose wheelies, handstands, 360s, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3:Um, there were slalom events at the competitions but um, yeah, the demos. The demos would be um predominantly freestyle tricks and stunt tricks. You know barrel jumps or the Coke team. The Coke team were my initial actual local skateboarding heroes in Sydney. They would line up, chris Elliott would line up 10 sort of kids down on the ground squatting and he'd just come hurtling down a hill or through the shopping centre and jump over them from one board to the other, so he'd high jump as well in there too, you know. So that's what we were going for initially seeing Russ Howell come out from the States doing the demos. He would do demos with the Coke team and, yeah, that was what we were all into initially. So, yeah, I got quite a few freestyle tricks wired back in the day myself.
Speaker 4:So where was the knowledge and understanding of the skateboarding for it to come from America to Australia? What media or what was happening to alert everyone here of it even being a thing?
Speaker 3:well, it's basically just, you'd see, it was on the news, basically there'd be news stories. There was no escape. Media put. I mean for starters obviously, but, um, but it was at every local shopping center there'd be um posters up. You know that the coke team is here next weekend or the coke team's going to be at at the chatswood, westfield or the rose hill. You know the Coke team is here next weekend or the Coke team is going to be at the Chatswood, westfield or the Rose Hill. You know, all around Sydney, the different Westfield shopping centres to do demos, judge competitions, yeah. And skateboarding was just everywhere, on every street. It was all Bain. Super flexes, along with the advent of the urethane wheel, the fiberglass flex boards sort of, were the fashion at the time, although they weren't really the most practical. They were great for surf carving and for pumping, but for actual freestyle tricks, I mean, I observed really quickly thatuss hale rode quite a stiff deck so my first boards were, was were stiff.
Speaker 3:I sort of thought that's the way to go, um, but yeah, no, the freestyle was what it was for some couple of years like you said, it was quite popular.
Speaker 2:But how was it being received by the wider community? Was it, compared to say, a yo-yo fad?
Speaker 3:that that's a good way to put it, yeah it was. I think everyone looked at it. You know that that's a craze. You know let's look at this in six months time and it's probably fade away and and you know, to a degree it did. It sort of lasted about 18 months in full swing, um, and then, you know, it sort of quietened down. But I guess, like even professional yo-yo performers, when the craze is gone they're still doing it.
Speaker 2:There was a bunch of skaters, amongst which I was one of, who kept it up after the initial craze, I remember a yo-yo team did a demo at my school and they turned up in a van of yo-yoers. That would be right, yeah.
Speaker 3:Came and did their little yo-yo team did a demo at my school and they turned up in a van of yo-yoers. That would be right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Came and did their little yo-yo demo and bailed.
Speaker 3:Travelled the world doing it. That's right. Do you remember that time we had Russ Howell? And. Stacey.
Speaker 4:Prolder no sorry.
Speaker 3:No, keep going. Yeah, we had Russ Howell come out in the early days. He was one of the American freestyle champ at the time, ex-gymnast, you know multiple 360 guy Handstands.
Speaker 3:Handstands specialist you got at year. But on his second visit out to Australia, stacey Peralta came out too as well to do demos and he influenced a bunch of us in Australia, stacey along with. By that stage early editions of skateboarder maggot magazine had hit the news stands, and that's when we were introduced to um Greg Weaver on the cover of the first edition riding a pool. There'd be other pool shots in the mags bank bank skating. The early Dogtown articles heavily featured the local schools in LA and Venice where they're predominantly, you know, mimicking surfing on concrete banks. Yeah and yeah. We thought that's the way to go.
Speaker 2:So did you ever surf yourself?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Were you a surfer. Were you a surfer first.
Speaker 3:Yeah, probably I was surfing from about 73, um, just on family, family holidays, um, yeah, around the same time I started, but I took to skateboarding heavily because we lived in the burbs um, I wasn't a local down at the beach and um, so the skateboard was just, you know, it was at reach and and just out the front door.
Speaker 2:so so where were you born? What what's up? What suburb were you born?
Speaker 3:I was born in melbourne, actually. Um uh, where was I born I? I grew up in um doncaster in melbourne predominantly yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:And then you transitioned to sydney from there. When I was 10,.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we moved from Doncaster to North Shore of Sydney when I was 10. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Started making friends early. That's right, yeah, and how old were you exactly when you started skateboarding?
Speaker 3:Probably 13, going on 14. I remember very clearly the Christmas of 73. For the first handful of years we moved to Sydney, the family would go back to Melbourne for Christmas holidays. All of our family were mostly in Melbourne and we'd lived in this really tight-knit cul-de-sac in Doncaster where we had really close friends and we'd go back on holiday with them. And one of my close mates had got a GT for his Christmas present and I was borrowing it and I just it was a matter of going down this little driveway he had and negotiating a 90-degree turn at the bottom to make it onto the footpath and then go down this long slope and I just fell in love with it. It wasn't my board but I was borrowing my mate's Christmas present, but I just fell in love with the actual, the feel and the movement and being able to, you know, guide yourself on a moving thing.
Speaker 2:That was the first time you'd ever seen it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pretty much. I'd seen it in 1966 in that same cul-de-sac in Melbourne. I broke up the road we used to have big barbecue parties for the whole neighborhood and come and hang out and he had a pool in his front yard. He had a sweeping driveway for some reason or other, I don't know why because he had daughters. He had a handful of early 60s skateboards and all the fathers were trying to zoom down the driveway and none of them could really do it. They'd get three quarters of the way down the driveway and then run it out. But we as six-year-old kids were sitting down on our butts going down the driveway on these early skateboards. So that was the first time I'd seen skateboarding. But, um, again, that was 66, 67 was a craze of skateboarding.
Speaker 2:Um, that died out yeah, and what prompted the family move from melbourne to sydney?
Speaker 3:ah, that was my father's work. Yeah, he had a um, a great, a better opportunity in sydney and and um jumped on it and, yeah, we moved up and initially hated it I guess because we missed all our friends and change is a big one like that and um but but grew to love it, I think once. Once we sort of we moved up to um st ives and we lived by the bush and once we discovered, you know, the freedom of being able to just wander down the street and roam through the bush, the fire trails, either hiking or then early on our bikes pre-BMX era sort of thing, hitting the trails on our bikes, you know and also then taking it a year or so ahead further, discovering surf and skate culture and Sydney being obviously right by the coast was much. It was. Yeah, love sydney once. I just discovered that sort of lifestyle, yeah, yeah man sounds like such a magical era, you know yeah.
Speaker 4:So who were the? Who did you first encounter to skate with his skate buddies, and how did that sort of play out?
Speaker 3:Initially it was my brother, my younger brother, russell. He's about two and a half years younger than me and whether it was all the earlier sports we did table tennis, tennis and then skateboarding, a bit of skiing over the years. We always did it together. We sort of we had a bit of that, you know brotherly tussle here and there, but ostensibly we got on really well and being able to having a brother you can do the stuff that you love with was a boon. So yeah, we initially got into freestyle together on the streets locally, then started hitting up the banks together, you know, catching public transport around Sydney to the local hottest bank spots. Yeah, he was good too. You know he in 76, david Hill, put on a probably the last freestyle contest of that freestyle craze era at North Rocks. It was called the. He called it the skateboarding Olympics, just as a matter of interest. And my brother, my brother Russell won the actual junior.
Speaker 3:He won the junior freestyle section in that comp. I didn't even place in the seniors, but there's footage of that comp on YouTube. On youtube, an abc clip I think I've seen that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, right yeah did you meet anyone, any enduring friends there?
Speaker 3:at that comp. Um I I was the first time I'd seen rob wedge francis in in real life. He was one of the hottest Melbourne freestylers and skateboarders and he was available on a poster Australia-wide. You could buy in record shops. Record shops in those days would have a section in the corner where you could buy posters of your favourite bands and everything.
Speaker 3:I remember that, yeah, it might be a surfing one or what have you, but in the middle of the skate craze, some entrepreneur put out this beautiful color poster of Wedge doing handstands and freestyle tricks, and so you could buy a Wedge poster in every record shop across Australia. Awesome, that's how we but yeah, first saw Wedge there. There was also other guys there who I'd known and skated with at the boat ramp at Greenwich Boat Ramp John Tesorero, gary Bird, bob Hastie I think we've got photos of that Do you want me to get that up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, sure, We'll go back to these ones. Was that it? That's the boat ramp. Yeah, that's Greenwich.
Speaker 3:Boat Ramp. That's an older photo.
Speaker 2:That's a new photo.
Speaker 3:That's more recent. At one of the, we revisited the boat ramp in probably 2014-ish and also in 2008. It was part of the old Sydney old school skate jams and we also had a session there in memoriam for Tony Mann, who passed away a handful of years ago.
Speaker 2:So that one, there is that early boat ramp that is, that's 77. That's early boat ramp.
Speaker 3:That is, that's 77.
Speaker 2:That's 77 boat ramp.
Speaker 3:That was the year I was born. Is that right? Yeah, so that's me riding that.
Speaker 2:You were born around then too, weren't you?
Speaker 4:I was three years after Middle of 77.
Speaker 2:It's not off from the youngest man at the table. Anyway, let's keep going. Isn't that look at that comparison like early boat ramp? And then, what year was that roughly?
Speaker 3:2014,. I think 2014.
Speaker 2:What would you call that? Right up on the wheels, like that.
Speaker 3:I put that in those two shots in because it's me doing the same trick. It's basically I'd come up at high speed and cop a little bit of air like a frontside bunny hop air out the top of the bank and you'd land it in a lip slide and come out of it in like a bird like a bird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so which is such a surf?
Speaker 3:that's right. Yeah, so that was early. That was sort of starting to throw in early um skateboarding type moves into surf skating style yeah, because the boat ramp was initially all you'd be carving it and doing Bertelmans and so where was the boat ramp exactly on the harbour, sydney Harbour, that's at Greenwich oh, greenwich, excuse me, there's a boat club right on the water at Greenwich, near the baths. It's still there. I go back there occasionally just to reflect and meditate. It's sort of breaking apart now.
Speaker 2:The concrete's as rough as as guts, um, but to meditate, yeah, I find a really peaceful spot to sit at, to sit down at, because it's not just for sentimentality.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah as well, yeah yeah, exactly yeah, just because I've, because of friends that have passed, that I used to skate there, just if I'm, if I was feeling low, you know, and it's just a really beautiful spot to be. It's right right on the harbour um, you know, steep cliffs behind it, um, the bush has all grown around it over recent years. But yeah, I just go there, go there occasionally and reflect, um, I'm feeling a bit down deep memories but yeah speaking of deep memories, sure, sure, tell me about this photo.
Speaker 2:I found that one really interesting, like so, I mean, if that's not the most makeshift ramp you've ever seen? Yeah, so where was that?
Speaker 3:it gives the backstory that's, um, that is the bottom of our driveway. That's in the early dodgy ramp phases. Um, that's probably this. That's when they were starting to get a bit more sophisticated and larger, but we just used to get old kitchen tables and get form-plying 4x2s from all the local building sites around that area. It was a new suburb.
Speaker 4:Classic story.
Speaker 3:It was a new part of St.
Speaker 2:Ives.
Speaker 3:They were building up and there were building sites everywhere, you know.
Speaker 2:So, for those that are listening, can you describe, like, how you've actually built it up against the roof of your house, of a house?
Speaker 3:Amazingly, that ramp doesn't have a single nail in it. That is, three or four bits of long 4x2s leaning up against the gutter, the roof gutter, with the form plies all just delicately balanced up against each other, and there is a large old kitchen table, as I said, behind it, in the middle, to give the middle of the ramp some support, and on top of the kitchen table there were two stools to give the upper piece a form ply support. So that ramp was so we could just, you know, dismantle that ramp at the end of the day and tuck it in behind the house so that Dad wouldn't be upset. Was your dad supportive?
Speaker 2:of you skateboarding. Yes, he was, yeah, he was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but he liked the house to look neat and tidy. He didn't want that sort of shit to be left down the front driveway.
Speaker 2:How would you describe your early family dynamic with your parents and your siblings? Pretty?
Speaker 3:settled. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we had a very supported upbringing Coming up to Sydney. They supported us in whatever we wanted to do, and whether it was whatever sport we were into. You know, they would drive us to the table tennis club that we belonged to, and then, when I sort of started tennis, I was initially driven to the tennis courts that I played at each weekend and later on I got my own push bike and I started cycling with a mate to the tennis courts. But, yeah, they were really supportive of the things that we did, supportive of us at school as well, pushed us along, encouraged us, but encouraged us without pushing us too hard, you know.
Speaker 2:You think that's the key to parenting? Yeah, is that something you apply to your?
Speaker 3:parenting More or less yeah yeah. Yeah, you just sort of encourage your kids to. I've always encouraged my kids to. You know, follow what they enjoy doing. You know follow their passion. But as well as that, you know with, with the school worker or whatever they take on, you know to, to, to follow it through, to, to put, to give it their all, so to speak.
Speaker 3:You know, um, but yeah, without, without, without wanting ever to become the sort of pushy, you know, helicopter style parent, um, just to encourage them to do what they love and do their best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we were talking earlier about the musical success of your daughter. I mean, as the success started to trickle in, did you feel an urge to maybe push, or was it just all support, support, support.
Speaker 3:It was all support. There were times where Imogen might have gotten frustrated or jack of some of the practice or what have you. But my partner in particular, and we both, with my support too, we would encourage her to remember that she'd chosen this path and she, she, she wants to to do the violin and and if she still, you know she thinks about it, um, long term, does she still want to follow the path? And and if her answer was yes, we'd say well, then then go for it. You know, keep, keep it up. You know this is, this is just a rough patch. Or that particular teacher or at school. You know you might not be dealing with that particular teacher, but you know there are ways around it, there are ways through it and, um, yeah, we'd encourage her to just continue amazing amazing.
Speaker 4:I think they're. They're really good insights. I would say as well and you know, know now doing some more skate coaching these days myself and I think a lot of it comes back to mindset of you know how you're doing things and why you're doing things and all of that, and then so to put it out there that yeah, there's going to be challenging times but you know you push on through. And something I like to say and bring up is remember why you started. That's right.
Speaker 4:You know, and go back to that and be like why did I start? Whatever the feeling, you know, what feeling did that give you? And so with the kids that I'm working with, it's like just go and do some grinds or some simple layers, just take it back to your more basic stuff and remember that feeling and that indescribable thing which you know nothing else can give to you. Similarly, and yeah, just take it back to those sorts of things and things to point out, like that, that it's not all about fully progressing and perhaps having to be your best in any given moment.
Speaker 4:There will be times when you'll shine and other times when you've got to persevere and push through. You know and create a sort of discipline you know, and when particularly some kids don't say you like, enjoy school, I'm like there's one good thing you can get out of school is the discipline to stick to something, do it, be there, put in your best and then that that can just apply to the rest of your life yeah, it's like transferable.
Speaker 2:Hey, yeah, are you finding that with the skate? Sorry, AJ Sure. Do you find that with the skate coaching, that with the onset of more competitions and a desire for people to, I guess, achieve in that way, that kids are coming with more of a driven focus and it's less fun because they're feeling more pressure? Are they putting pressure on themselves or from their parents?
Speaker 4:Basically yes, okay, effectively.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being honest, Ty.
Speaker 4:And I think but I think a lot of that stems from you know, it's been mentioned so many times here and everywhere social media, all of that. And I said it to someone today. I was like you know, you, you're looking at these social media things all the time. This is actually quite a beginner kid too, and it's like you have all these expectations of yourself. I want to kick flip, I want to do whatever, and it's like all these people started with these simple things. They started with kick turning, basic kick turns and pushing around and getting general control of their board.
Speaker 4:But remember, the rolling thing is part of the fun of it. You know what I mean. And so this visualization, this uber visualization of everything being in front of you and so accessible it does, it creates expectations, right, and that's just a major thing to be like I'm not good enough or whatever. You know, because I've got to like jump all these steps and that's another thing I try and bring a few of few crew who sort of intermediate back to. It's like, yeah, kickflip's great or I'm a twist is great or something, but you, if you learn all these basics, all of these things will come much easier. It won't feel like such a massive hurdle to get there. If you piece it all together and chip away at it, it will come together. And that's the same sort of thing as what we just mentioned more good life lesson that you keep working at something and it will start to flow more. Come more together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember I used to do skate coaching back in the 80s the mid to late 80s for councils around Sydney in the school holidays and there was always an element of some of the kids in the class would be there for just child-minding purposes, but they were skating. They were into skating too, because it was the thing obviously.
Speaker 3:And half the class were really into it. But it was the era where everyone just wanted to learn how to ollie and I could ollie quite well in those days. But in every class there was always some kids that just couldn't get it. They were beginner status and trying hard. You can see them kicking their boards away in frustration. I used to teach, I used to show some of those guys some really early 70s tricks crab walks and end overs, things like that. That introduced them to a whole form of different type of board control. Yeah, and they would come away stoked because they actually left the lesson learning something they hadn't seen at that point, because those sorts of things weren't being shown in the mags. Obviously they were from 1976. But they'd learned something new.
Speaker 2:They'd learned oh, there's another approach to writing my board so it's always look for different avenues to try to keep the kid inspired Right Always when you started to try to keep the kid inspired Right, exactly when you started to get a taste of your ability and people started to recognise. You know, adrian Ariel Jones, like what was your motivation in that period of time? Was it more fame, more prestige, or was it driven by progression? What was what was pushing you?
Speaker 3:it was. It was definitely progression. The the fame thing was weird. You know that that sort of you don't realize it's happening at the time. It's just you know you, I started to get um most attention I guess in the pimbleble Pool era. That's when that sort of sponsors or sponsors came in before Pimble. I was first sponsored when Mark Lynch from Skateboard World, a big shop at Burwood, back in the 70s, one of Sydney's biggest retailers- the Skateboard World vert ramp Portable ramp.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah, yeah, I got knocked out cold on that when I was 12.
Speaker 3:Anyway, long story, is that right? Yeah, Anyway, keep going yeah so Skateboard World were an institution in Sydney skateboarding for decades. Mark first saw me at the Greenwich Boat Ramp and sponsored me there, but in the Pimble Pool era I started to get attention there because yeah, why exactly? Yeah, I guess Wedge and I my good friend wedge francis from melbourne. He just moved up from melbourne to sydney. Okay, and um, we were. I guess we were the.
Speaker 2:We were just ahead of the pack at pimble pool, um so had you been getting images or news from California about the Dogtown and Z-Boys? Skating pools.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that was what put you on a search for pools, or were you already just searching it out?
Speaker 3:That's an interesting story too. Growing up where I did, Pimble is the next suburb to where I lived. Is that one of the pictures from Pimble Pool, Correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:That was a poster. The glasses time, so good so gangsta See that's mimicking Tony Alva, the mirrored sunnies.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We did all that sort of thing, of course, mimicking our heroes, but go back to this.
Speaker 3:Sorry, go back to this. Sorry, go back to what you were saying. Yeah, pimble was the next suburb and the Pimble Pool Centre was an old Frank O'Neill pools display centre and retail shop, and it was across the road from an indoor swimming centre where all the local schools would go for swimming lessons in winter. And so we knew about the existence of this pool center across the road. But because we were local, we also knew I think we were there with the family there was a gardening supply shop down the road. We noticed that it was broke, it had gone broke, it was closed, and so, having seen pool skating in the early skateboarder magazines, my brother and I and some neighborhood friends sort of made the trek down to Pimble Pool and had a little look behind the fences and initially found there were two rideable pools there that earlier photo that you flicked up before the blue coloured pool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing, that one there. Yeah, with no shoes on.
Speaker 3:That would have been 76. Wow, christmas holidays of 75, 76. That's at the time when we first discovered it, and that was still during the craze. That's on a borrowed board. I was still riding in.
Speaker 2:Bedford in those days. Yeah, that was urethane. How old were you roughly in that picture? I was still riding in Bedford in those days. Yeah, they were urethane, early urethane days. How old were you roughly in that picture? I was 15. 15.
Speaker 3:15, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Look at that.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, we emptied the top pool. The top pool that one was about seven foot deep. It had pretty good curves for an Australian pool and as you can see it was pretty carvable. And as you can see it was pretty carveable and the deep, there was a bigger pool down the bottom and but it was like three quarters full of dark green sludge. And to 15 year olds and the other kids with me were my younger brother, who was 13, 12 and a half, and the other kids, so we were all quite young and we were just overwhelming, so we just stuck to that pool for a bit Amazing, but yeah.
Speaker 3:Then when Wedge first moved to Sydney, it would have been 78, mid-78. I bumped into and first actually met Wedge Francis at the Greenwich Boat Ramp where we were still going to my brother and I on weekends pretty regularly, and there was Wedge. Just Russell and I and Wedge rocked up and we sort of skated a session together, introduced ourselves and Wedge told us he was living at staying with his sister he'd just moved up or a relative in the Pimble area. And I said, oh, yeah, we used to skate a pool in Pimble and we were being a bit opportunistic. We were able to get a lift back towards the home with Wedge in his car and I said I'll show you the pool if we can get a lift with you.
Speaker 3:And we got to Pimble Pool and I expected it to be just we hadn't been there for a while full of water and crap and was keen to show Wedge the top pool that we'd skated. And when we rocked up the big pool at the bottom, there was a bunch of guys down there and they were just finishing literally finishing the last, emptying the big bowl with buckets and they were getting the towels out to dry it down. And Wedge and I rocked up and it turned out to be Bob Hastie and some of his friends.
Speaker 3:And those are some of the 75 hot freestylers from the Sydney scene and Wedge knew Bob and Bob sort of said G'day, wedge. You know, adrian, what are you guys doing here right now? You know, as we've just about just finishing up bailing the pool, and that was yeah, so we sort of stumbled upon a pool session in the big pool. It was the first time I'd ever skated the big eight foot six pool down the bottom. Yeah, it was the first time Wedge had ever seen it and literally from that day onwards that was the beginning of the so-called Pimble Pool scene.
Speaker 2:Ah, okay, so that was a significant day.
Speaker 3:That was a significant day day, yeah, because from then on, pimble, the big pool at pimble, remained pretty much empty all the time for the next two years. Um, you know, if there was rain you'd have to rock up and bail it out yourself. Um, yeah, but yeah, no, that was, although, yeah, it's got other history to it. There were other skaters. You know that's, that's my history of pimble. There were other skaters you know, that's my history of pinball. There were other skaters, other local skaters that I've since learnt, who were skating pinball at the same time as us at the top pool, the little pool, and earlier than my brother and I too, they got into it Things like unheard ofs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, local guys from Taramurra High Right. A mutual mate of mine knew them my friend, the guy I speak of, cameron. He ended up going to Tarahumara High. But I only found out about these guys recently in researching a book project that we spoke of earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell us about it. You've got it here, is that the one? Yeah, how did tell us about it.
Speaker 3:You've got it here. Is that the one? The Vertical Axis?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, how'd that come about?
Speaker 3:That's so. Epic the book there the Vertical Axis. Is that in shot?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there it is Can you see that yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah so who put that together? John McGrath, predominantly. It was started by Noel Forsyth, a skater from Melbourne of my generation. He started on the project but John took over from Noel and made it a real sort of labour of love and he was working on it for I don't know three to five years, just on and off. And yeah, what he did was contacted about 20-odd of the people that used to skate pinball through the generation, through the years and asked them to just contribute a short piece on their reflections of pinball pool and what it meant to them. And yeah, he sort of asked all of those skaters and the wider circle of skaters who might have been there, you know, can you share your photo collections with us?
Speaker 3:And yeah, from that, just put this just fantastic book together. Yeah, it's been really really well received but yeah, it's a great document because in a sense, you know, obviously there are other scenes in other cities and states around Australia, but this one, pimble, became widely known because it copped media attention in the day Like mainstream media, correct? Yeah, well, mainstream surfing media, right the Trax Mag.
Speaker 3:Trax Magazine, surfing world magazine in the in the day um a film crew came down to shoot pimble pool at one stage from current affair, or something like that amazing yeah and um yeah.
Speaker 3:so because it got that attention, skaters traveled to pimble pool from from melbourne, from, uh, canberra, theod guys from Canberra, far Out Design. There was a crew from Canberra who came up regularly. Guys travelled from Brisbane, gold Coast Crew skaters that I'd met in New Zealand when I went over there with Wedge in 78, 79. When they came to Sydney they came to Pimplepool and sessioned it with us. So yeah, it became a real focal point of early vert skating in Australia.
Speaker 2:Ty you go Ty.
Speaker 4:And then I was just going to say on that, as far as it being mainstream, it actually was in that Chiquito ad that you were in.
Speaker 3:That's right, which is.
Speaker 4:I mean that's pretty interesting for a defunct you know business spot to actually show up in a commercial advertisement. That's right, yeah. It's quite an interesting scenario. Yeah, yeah. How did that sort of come about? Why did they want to shoot there or how did they even yeah, how did that eventuate? I suspect?
Speaker 3:it probably came from um, the influence of um. I think we I touched on john tesorero earlier on um, one of the early sydney bank pioneers and advert pioneer skaters. His, his brother, worked for a, um, a promotions or advertising company. I know he got us the roles in that commercial and so perhaps he was giving ideas to the, the team putting the ad together. You know, because that was a really quiet time in skateboarding. That was between that was certainly after the, the death of the, the big 75 skateboard craze, and before, before any skate parks were built. You know, those late 70s skate parks were built. So, um, putting skateboarding in in ad combined with surfing. There's a bit of surfing in the ad as well, obviously you can see.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was a bit out there?
Speaker 4:Yeah, definitely. Did they get permission to film? Did they just come in and film? Was it that sort of open sort of space? Basically, it was that sort of open space.
Speaker 3:Pimple Pool had a really weird history actually. There were times when you'd get kicked out. Cops did come to the pool at various stages but it was kind of dormant or empty for some of the era. But then it was sold to, I think, mutual Pools for a while and Mutual Pool whoever owned it for a while. They opened up the retail shop up the top without kicking us out from skating the pools out the back. It was a really large property. There was in all about four or five pools. It was a big terraced sort of space out the back with overgrown palm trees. In its heyday it would have looked beautiful, but in 1979, 1980, it was all overground and rubble out the back with empty pools. But the actual retail shop up the top was still a presentable building. So there was a time there where they were selling pool chemicals up the top and there were pool sessions happening out the back.
Speaker 4:That's classic Wow.
Speaker 3:So I think, when the ad team came. It was that latter stage, you know, when it was cool to just walk in any time you want. Wow, that's cool so.
Speaker 2:I do remember when we were talking to John Gray about when he was skating the ditch in Quakers Hill and he did his first kick turn and he described it as like him and his friends had never seen a kick turn Like they were.
Speaker 4:like we invented this trick, you know, we just went up and then came back down instead.
Speaker 2:I mean, we're having those, those day, those moments regularly at pimple pool of like. Did we just invent that?
Speaker 3:well, that exactly right yeah right um, you know, it would be the first who could get, who'd be the first to get a frontside grind in that particular line of the pool. But it was also the area where, as old mate Biff once eloquently described that, where skateboarding was really transitioning from being surf-based or surf-influenced sort of sport into its own sort of paradigm the introduction of tricks, like you know, just dropping in, I mean, it's unthinkable nowadays, but just even doing what we used to call an elevator drop was a trick, and Skateboarding Magazine featured a sequence of someone doing an elevator drop. You know which?
Speaker 3:is dropping in, a drop in, just a drop in. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, a kick in, not just like an I'm thinking of an acid drop just a drop in, yeah, well, okay, a kick in, not just like an I'm thinking of an acid drop you know, just to flat.
Speaker 3:But you do a 50, 50 or an axle stall. It was a trick was called a kick in. You just place, place your board in the coping and kick in. And there was a sequence in skateboarder showing us how to do that. Because it was a new trick. That was, that was the introduction of that's where skateboarding moved away from surfing and inspired stuff flowing on the wall to doing things that were from vertical into the bowl and rock and roll. The rock and roll was the first trick where you sort of basically had you were up on a wall but then you all of a sudden you're up on the horizontal and then you're coming back in again. So that's, that was a new, that was a new realm altogether. You know, and that happened at Pimble Pool. Peter Aiken was the first person we saw in Sydney make a rock and roll.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So that was groundbreaking stuff for us in Australia to take. You know what we'd seen in the American magazines and do it, you know, asap. You know you'd rush down to the pool with a magazine in the back of your bag and you'd be trying to looking at the sequence carefully to see how it's done.
Speaker 2:And how was the news getting around about people doing new tricks? Was it just everyone was just talking about it like word of mouth, like oh, did you hear so-and-so did this and that?
Speaker 3:Word of mouth pretty much yeah, or and so did this and that word of mouth pretty much yeah, or just there to witness it, sort of thing um they weren't posting it on social media oh yeah, social media didn't exist, they weren't sending letters not yet, no, no you might have seen a picture in tracks like for a few years there for a few years there um david hill who who was For a few years there? David Hill, who was Dave Hill, was the state champion skateboarder in the 66 craze. Okay, in New.
Speaker 3:South Wales and he in the mid, in the late 70s and the early 80s there was Skateboard World with a team of skateboarders and David Hill had David Hill Design and he was, he had his own boards and a distributorship. Dht, dht, that's correct, yeah. And then Ozzy came along too and yeah, david Hill would write for Trax. David Hill wrote a regular column in Trax for a couple of years there and he'd sort of cover the results of the local, the latest freestyle comps or what have you. Or maybe articles on ramps going up in Mount Druid or what have you. I think Wedge Rob, wedge Francis and John McGrath did a road trip down to Adelaide and that was featured in Trax magazine articles. So yeah, kids around Australia would have seen what was going on, at least on the east coast, you know, in Australia through Trax magazine.
Speaker 2:Well, speaking of that era, let's have a look at a video clip from the Manly Skate City, new South Wales state titles in 1980. Okay, do you remember this? Can you talk us through it? The blue ramp.
Speaker 3:I do yeah, do you remember this? Can you talk us through it? The blue ramp I do yeah, that was. Manly skate city was where we all sort of went to as soon as it opened in sort of mid 79 right.
Speaker 2:So no flat bottom. No flat bottom in that half pipe, that's correct.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which, that was an old school half pipe. That whole park was fiberglass did you see that?
Speaker 2:yeah the rock and roll step off, yeah yeah yeah so who's that? That's dale helping.
Speaker 3:That's dale helping ripping there. Yeah, the guy before doing the tricky rock and roll was wedge dale skated. He was one of the early uh riders for aussie Skates. Yeah, he's a manly boy.
Speaker 2:So would you say, your first ever board sponsor was DHD, or?
Speaker 3:Skateboard World. Skateboard World was like your first sponsor. Correct, yeah.
Speaker 2:And they had boards like board sponsor.
Speaker 3:Am I right? Initially, when I was sponsored by Skateboard World, I was making my own boards at home.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:But they were flowing me wheels and trucks and safety gear, the works and then decks. When he started to import good decks from America, I got perhaps one of the earliest eight-inch Alva decks that were imported into Australia.
Speaker 2:So they were the boards you got to ride Alvas.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I thought I was on to a good thing there, skating for Skateboard World too, because you know, props to David Hill and Tim Dorr and Co for making Australian-made boards. Dhd had his boards and Aussie had their boards, but through Skateboard World I was able to write the pick of the best boards from the usa because I wasn't initially affiliated with any of those companies, so amazing let's go through a couple more clips.
Speaker 2:There's one here uh, biff murdoch um from the same video yes, yeah, is that biff?
Speaker 3:that is biff there you go. He was on the Skateboard World team too. He's riding we'll both be riding early germ-free boards in that clip, at that point in time.
Speaker 4:Wow, was germ-free, like always related to yourself.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, that was my brand name.
Speaker 2:How's the inbred Far out?
Speaker 3:So yeah, germ-free was. I think in 79 Mark Lynch, my sponsor, sort of said to me hey, Adrian, we can press boards in Australia and I want to put out a model for you. And so you know, I spent a few months basically looking at blanks, trying out different blanks and trying out different shapes, and late 79, just heading in towards, I think, the Christmas of 79, the first germ freeze came out.
Speaker 4:Wow, 79.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was stoked because it was just in the era of in America, the Sims boards, the bowmans and the andrex right that had routes. They were putting routes on the decks it's a grab rail feature sort of thing and um uh, so I put routes down the germ free and my the route. The way I designed my routes was so that they doubled as wheel wells as well yeah, I remember down like. So there were wheel wells at the front and the back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um so purely for grabbing any, so you didn't have to use.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but then rails came in anyway. Then we had the rails as well. Rails weren't invented there, no, no, they weren't when you had those. No, wow, interesting. The first rails that came in were these. They were more rubbery put out by Zed Products, zed Flex, zed Grabbers they were called, and there's no way you could slide them. They stopped there, but then they sort of came out with a white sort of chalky sort of plastic ones, and then the real plastic rails developed on from there so.
Speaker 2:And let's look at some footage of you skating that ramp here. Here it comes. Is that that's still Biff? That's still.
Speaker 3:Biff, that's Biff. Rock and slide there.
Speaker 2:Oh nice, that's cool. So this would be like 1980.
Speaker 3:That was 1980,. Yeah, that was the state title. You can't see the here we go. Is that you? That's me there? Yeah, dude, that's me there.
Speaker 2:Do you feel like Frontside Airs are like your Rolling into the Frontside Air there?
Speaker 3:They yeah. Well, I was the first to do frontside airs in Sydney amongst all of our crew. Wow.
Speaker 2:At Pimble Pool.
Speaker 3:No, no, I learnt them at Balmain, actually Back before Pimble Pool, before we were skating the big pool at Pimble. I learnt them on a ramp which was leaning up against a wall, so I wasn't actually getting out, I was coming off a wall. Was that a France, hot? Ollie.
Speaker 2:No hands, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:They were early ollies In Manly Skate City. At that point in time we were getting ollies. Biff took them to another level. But yeah, I was really surprised when I saw this clip myself for the first time only a week or so ago. I'd forgotten that I was doing those ollies at that point in time too.
Speaker 4:When did Alan Gelfand first get you know, known for having done it, Do you?
Speaker 3:remember Well, that probably would have been 79, 80.
Speaker 4:Yeah, right, I think. Yeah, that's a question I was actually going to ask before. Back to the sort of getting magazines and looking at stuff and then taking it you know for yourselves. How long do you think, like how, in a sense, how far behind were you guys to what was happening in the magazines that were coming over? Then Were you pretty much on the ball of when, which is obviously months later, you know from the photo being taken and all that stuff and probably somewhat the development of the tricks, realistically, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4:But were you pretty much straight onto it when the magazine came out. And then you know getting there and adapting it and doing it.
Speaker 3:I think that's pretty fair to say. You know we're sort of mags. The lag in magazines, the time lag, was about three months yeah, the June mag would come to us three months later, sort of thing in September, october. And months yeah, the mag, the june mag would come to us three months later, sort of thing in september, october, and, and yeah, we were pretty much. If there were new tricks um being shown, we were out there trying to learn them as asap um wow yeah, I think.
Speaker 3:um, so you know, it probably put us probably six months behind you in terms of the standard at any given time. Yeah, but then the terrain, it all depends. The terrain was different too. You know, I've since realized, back in Sydney in 1978 or 1980, we were skating much smaller pools, and even Manly Skate City was a small short park with a small bowl. The bowl was a 10-footer. But you know, the parks in America were just acres. You know they were so much bigger and so much deeper and you know so we might have been learning rock and rolls in our eight-foot-high half pipe with no flat bottom, but you know the Americans were doing them in 10-foot bowls and that sort of thing too.
Speaker 3:So that probably had the obvious advantage in terms of terrain over us, you know, and Wedge and I were introduced to that too late, 78, christmas 78. We flew over to New Zealand together because we'd just heard Skatopia had opened in Auckland, new Zealand, which was a copy of the skate park, a Skatopia skate park in California. And when we got over there it just blew our minds. You know, the half pipe there was 100 metres long. The bowl at the end of it was about 13 foot deep. Wow, so the skating was just Pimble was rad in its own way a small pool bowl, deep, steep, sharp walls and tight transitions. But there's the speeds that the skaters were riding at um in new zealand were, you know, way ahead of us. And we had to, we had to catch up quick. It's like all of a sudden, you know, my god, this, this half pipe's 100 meters long and by the time you get to the bottom of it you're going 30 k's.
Speaker 3:You know, and and then you, then there's, then you're confronted by the time you get to the bottom of it you're going 30 k's, you know, and then you're confronted by the 13-foot deep bowl at the end of it, you know. So it was another level. But yeah, wedge and I in the fortnight we were over in New Zealand, you know we sort of caught on pretty quick.
Speaker 4:But yeah, that was eye-opening, that was a real experience, great experience. Yeah, wow, yeah. How was the quality of the pours, do you remember?
Speaker 3:Of the.
Speaker 4:Of the pour of the concrete and all of that.
Speaker 3:Well, skatopia in New Zealand wasn't too bad. The transitions were generally pretty good. The bowl was. To describe it as a bowl is not really correct. It was more of a big left-hand bend at the end of the half pipe with two different entry sections, but because of the bend it had one big flat wall and a curve. It wasn't a bowl as such, but it was the tragedy, of course, of a lot of skate parks in those days, that they'd brush the concrete surface to give it some sort of traction or something.
Speaker 3:I guess was the notion, but really it made them a little bit rougher.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:Speaking of rough, have a look at this clip of you skating at North Ride Bowl. Do you remember this?
Speaker 3:Is that North Ride? I sure do.
Speaker 2:That channel looks scary. That channel looks scary, that bowl looks scary.
Speaker 3:That whole bowl was pretty scary. That was pretty kinked out Look how big it is. So that was kink there. You can even see the line, the dark lines around the walls, Like cracks they're just, I guess, where they use different colored concrete to cover up various kinks or something like that. But it was relatively. You know, there were good walls in that bowl and there was a couple of walls where there would be a bit of a bump or a lump and you just sort of adjust your lines to miss those.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, I didn't know that channel.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we learned that, so I knew I could do it.
Speaker 3:There was a big channel at the bowl at Manly too as well, which we got to.
Speaker 2:Let's have a look at that. That's amazing. I got some more footage here from that clip you sent me. Okay, so North Ride had a half pipe as well. Is that North Ride?
Speaker 3:That's correct, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:That's Biff there with the black T-shirt on. That was a long halfpipe with varying depths on the way down. It started where he's there in the shallow. There was a rounded lip, yep. Then there was a section that was about 10 foot deep with coping.
Speaker 3:That stuck out about three or four inches. I didn't like flat bottom back then. Hey, no, that's right. Well, the skatopia both skatopia half pipe and the manly skate city half pipes were, as I said, modeled on that, the one from america, and they were literally. You know the term half pipe was because they were half a pipe, a pipe cut in half and ride that, those extensions, that ride.
Speaker 3:That was about 12 foot deep there wow and you'd fly down and you could do exits off the end of that we have no helmet either yeah, that's when the park would have been closed.
Speaker 3:Um, the part ride two went through different phases of being open and then closed and um, and they put at one stage they put a roller skating track all the way around the outside of it to give it a new lease of life and sort of build a pro shop. But yeah, it sort of it existed for a handful of years there and after Manly closed we all gravitated to ride on weekends.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that's what those sessions there in that clip would have been Deep question, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, watching this describe the mindset of aj on that day, on that era. Where were you at as a person, do you think? Were you in a good space? Yeah, um, in a, enjoying the best time of your life? Or were you in a transitional?
Speaker 3:phase probably. Um, we were still skating, manly Skate City had closed and with that, and with rides sort of being closed as well, it was like it was dying in the ass again. And I'd started at university. I'd previously been. I actually had a period during Manly Skate City where I was a so-called you know pro skater, because I had the board the germ-free board out and I would work at Skateboard World Shop from 8 in the morning until midday and then I'd go skating for the rest of the day. But I was getting paid a full-time wage and my sponsor was allowing me to do that so that I could keep my skating standard up, because Manly Skate City had opened and Wedge Francis and John McGrath were working and or living at Manly Skate City and so they had that advantage there at Manly every day and I'd previously been working in the shop full time. But Mark and then Peter Lynch sort of said no, no, you need to keep your standard up, so you go skating in the afternoon and we won't dock your pay.
Speaker 3:So in a sense I was a part-time pro skater, but yeah, so to get back to your question.
Speaker 2:So if you were on the dole and you were skateboarding, were you a pro skater back then? I was never on the dole. No, no, I'm not saying that. Did you say you were? If you were. Yeah, that's a pro career.
Speaker 3:Maybe you could. That's right. There was a bunch of my mates who were pro skaters. If you want to look at it that way, yeah, I'm sorry, that's right.
Speaker 2:A bit of a tangent yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. I remember there was the Johnny Howard surf team my friends used to call it down in Nowra.
Speaker 3:Well that around Australia there are a bunch of skaters. At Pimplepool there were a bunch of skaters who slept there, who would travel there from Balmain and camp out in the abandoned showroom, and so they'd be there first thing the next day to get their rides in before us. Older skaters arrived, you know, or before the scene sort of embarked, came down on it all.
Speaker 2:So, going back to you know, just getting online again with a bit of a chronology, you said you were at university around that time, which was like mid-'80s, that's right. Yeah, what were you studying exactly?
Speaker 3:I did an economics degree at Sydney University. Yeah, I sort of skating had died in the ass, as I was saying, and I was a bit lost as to what I was going to do next and I was still living at home. So there was a bit of pressure. You know you've got to do. You know you've done skateboarding. Now, adrian, you know, let's try something, get serious about life. You know. And yeah, pressure from my girlfriend's parents at the time didn't well, not pressure, just I guess I I paid heed to what what they were suggest, their suggestions. You know, listening to the voices around me and, um, yeah, thought I'd well, I may as well get an economics degree. I don't really know what I want to do. That I didn't know what I wanted to do at that point in time.
Speaker 2:So so did you complete the degree and then get a job? In that I did, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I sort of it's a weird one for me. I sort of kind of regret the decision. I never really had any interest in economics or natural affinity for it, but I did it because mostly my father sort of said you know, with accounting economics you'll always be able to get a job. You know it's, you know that'll keep you stable. And he was right. And he was right, you know.
Speaker 3:It's always helped me be able to find a good nine-to-five job throughout my working years. But yeah, so I did the degree and I battled through it. I really didn't want to be there. I was still skating, full-on, surfing every day. I'd rock up to university, lectures in my thongs with sand on my feet and um, and go surfing in between lectures down at maribor or bondi, um, and then go skating with sin in the afternoon down at manly, at curl park or ride. As you saw, um, I just scraped through my degree, um, each year, indeed, in the last year, I had to do supplementary exams, that's. That's where you get 49 out of 100 in your final exam and they give you a second chance, and but that you know. That was a real bugger, because it meant that during the what would have been the celebratory xmas holidays what have you I was bunkered down studying to do that damn exam again.
Speaker 2:Well, all your friends were skating and surfing.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and surfing, but I got through it in the end.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and so you were in like a serious relationship around that time as well.
Speaker 3:No, I was when I first started uni. Yeah, okay, yeah, my first girlfriend, gotcha. I was when I first started uni. Yeah, okay, yeah, my first girlfriend, gotcha. That was in the Manly Skate City days and into the early uni years. Yeah, skateboarding. I started surfing a hell of a lot more too. Back in the late Manly Skate City era, 1980. One of my skating mates, peter Aiken, had moved down to Avalon and so I was staying at his place a lot, or often stayed at Wedges, flat and Manly, and I always had a board, a surfboard, on the roof of my car, surfing and skating every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting. So you and Wedge were like kind of thick as thieves you would say we were for a handful of years. Yeah, that's right, yeah, and when did that kind of start to peter off?
Speaker 3:When Manly Skate City closed. When it closed okay. Yeah, wedge became a serious adult much sooner than I did and he was offered the job managing. The owners of Manly Skate City owned the restaurant above it too, on the pier where it was, and Wedge spent some years managing the restaurant there. Okay, and he was in a serious relationship then too.
Speaker 2:He was a serious adult Ty I'm just wondering.
Speaker 4:I'm still trying to work that out. Asking for a mate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, wedge will tell you he's still not a serious adult. Now he's come back from that.
Speaker 2:Oh, he realized that that doesn't actually work.
Speaker 3:Oh, no, no, no, I shouldn't sleep for a week.
Speaker 2:I'm in that phase.
Speaker 3:He came back to skateboarding again, after giving it up for a number of years.
Speaker 2:That must be a common theme. You've seen over 50 years of skateboarding people quitting coming back, quitting, coming back.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They all come back, don't they in some way?
Speaker 3:They do. I think it's really happened since the early 2000s with the. That's when skate parks started to appear more frequently and council started to put them in in larger and larger numbers. You know. It's just exponentially grown now, obviously. And also with that came the old school, the concept of old school skateboarding, you know. And there were jams. Brad Shaw organized a skate jam in 2002 at Maroubra Skate Park and that brought together skaters of my generation and subsequent generations to that bowl.
Speaker 3:From Melbourne, queensland, adelaide, skaters came from everywhere. It's like, hey, we're still doing this, you know. And look, the council's put a bowl in at. You know. Finally in australia there is a decent bowl skate park after all the other pathetic attempts, you know, kinked out ruffer's guts, you know. You know attempts at making skate parks that we, that we may do do with. Over the years we started to get some decent bowls and parks and it's like, hang on a sec, you know we may be 40 years of age but we've still got our pads. You know as dusty and crusty as they are. And if you fit enough, you know you find that you can still do it. And you know you don't go and try and do a 540 or anything. You just stick with what you know. But did you ever stop-stop?
Speaker 2:No, I was talking to Ty about that earlier on I never really stopped.
Speaker 3:I had periods where what I would describe as slowed down a bit here and there, yeah, you know, and that would have been predominantly during the 90s, early 90s when, yeah, I was working, I was sort of co-parenting my son. Our first marriage had broken up and I'd just obviously looking after Oscar on a part-time basis. My weekends weren't my own so much anymore, you know, but they were in a way, you know, I'd sort of go skating with Oscar and keep my sort of foot in the door of skateboarding in that way, going to Waterloo Skate Park, teaching him to skate there, having fun there, heffron Park, down in the southern suburbs, occasionally Mona Vale but yeah, always had a skateboard and at least once a month was out skating. If it wasn't with just small sessions with Oscar, my son, I'd go and have a session with my mates About once a month.
Speaker 3:Biff was always at me. Biff Murdoch was still skating in a pretty hungry sort of fashion out at Mona in the early 90s and through the 90s and he'd always sort of elbow me and say when are you coming out, adrian, when are you coming out? So every month or two I'd hop in the car with Biff and have a session out at Mona.
Speaker 2:As a single dad. Did you find that skateboarding really helped you find a common activity you could do with your children or your son and that bound you together? And the reason I ask that is because that's what's sort of going on with me and my son at the moment. Okay, yeah, it's like well, sometimes. Sometimes you don't know what to do. How do I entertain these kids? Yes, yeah, yeah and then you've got this thing. It's like, oh, hang on, that's right, yeah, yeah well, yeah, well, it was.
Speaker 3:You know there's. It was something that um, we could both do together. Um, you know, in amongst the soccer and the throwing the balls around or going to the beach or all the rest of it. You know it was just one of the many activities that we did together. But, yeah, no, the skating was one that was. There was a common bond. He never really got into it in an obsessive way like I did. He tried his hands at a number of different sports and his passion became music in the end. Um, guitar playing, but um skating. Certainly, through the years he had two different phases when he was quite little, between about four and about eight. Then he slowed down a bit and was doing lots of soccer and and cricket, um and some other sports like that and um, but he came back to it again when he was about he was 11 ish. Um, we were living in bondi. The mini ramp down at bondi was there. He'd occasionally come and have a skate with us but um in bondi.
Speaker 3:In 2000, um, I was renting a flat. We were renting renting in Simpson Street and the flat actually the small block of old apartments had a pool in the backyard and the landlord announced that they were going to trash the pool and put in driveway and car parks. And, like I was thinking, the skater in me is thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the leaseholder of me is thinking, no, I can't do that. The landlord's not going to enjoy that. They'll kick us out, they'll evict us. But I told Biff about it. You know, he lived around the corner. I was a good mate, seeing him regularly. He's like no, we've got to do this, adrian, we've got to do this.
Speaker 3:One day Biff just rocked up at my place with a pump early in the morning. He'd gone and hired a pump and it's like we're doing this, adrian, we're doing this. And so we emptied the pool in our backyard. It wasn't a good pool. It was a rectangular shaped pool. It had transition in the deep end corners so you could actually go up in the corner, pull it out onto the flat wall or the side wall and you'd be coming down in a virtual wall ride. It was a minimal transition in the centre of the walls, but that was there for a couple of months. And because it was there, my son got back into skateboarding heavily. During that phase he was doing fakies from corner to corner, and so were all the other kids in the blocker units too, you know Sick. So yeah, oscar was skating with us then, with all the local boys.
Speaker 2:Sorry, go Ty. I want to get a clip up while you guys are all here.
Speaker 4:I was going to say, well, to bring up another photo and to take it back to Biff again and like to you actually having the first model. Like I said, my first memory of you was yours and Biff's models together on the wall. When did Biff's model come out and how did that whole relationship, you know, start up, because Biff was pretty influential as well.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I first met Biff through through skateboard world. Um, I sponsored their mark lynch. He'd travel around the suburbs and in in distributing equipment to various shops and stuff and he and people would write to him too. You know, with me and my mates are hot skaters, come and see our local scene and and he discovered Biff down in the Rose Bay, bondi area and told me about this guy down at Bondi who's really quite hot, and you know I invited him to a session.
Speaker 3:We were going to skate these pipes near Mascot and Biff came along with Barney Biff's close skating mate at that era, um biff's uh, close skating mate at that era. And um biff, he came to the. He skated with us at the pipeset day and it was obviously he was, he was a ripper. Um, we invited him to the pool, uh, pimple pool. That was right in the middle of the pimple pool era and biff came out there and he pimple pool era was in full swing and biff was a bit late to it. So he was six months behind us in standard initially there. But he quickly caught up.
Speaker 3:But then when Manly Skate City opened in late 79, early 80, biff's natural ability just started to really show and he was just learning tricks, bang, bang, bang. Each week. He would learn the latest trick faster than anyone else and with, with, you know, just beautiful style. And I really pressured Mark Lynch to get Biff on the Skateboard World team. You know I said, you know, if we don't sponsor him now, he's got offers from, you know, dhd and Aussie. You know they're all after him, you know. So Biff was on the team and I was just totally stoked with that because we started skating together, a real lot going down to comps in Victoria together. And yeah, once the germ-free deck came out in 79, 80, mark Lynch sort of thought well, this is selling, well, I can give Biff a model too.
Speaker 2:Is that the model?
Speaker 3:That's correct. Yeah, wow, thanks, ty for getting that one up. Yeah, that was a…. It's wow, thanks to. I forget that one. Yeah, that's, that was a it's a classic, it is. Yeah, I'd love to have that now, yeah yeah, that's right, he's sort of I don't know, a little bit controversial around the nose yeah, well, they're sort of a bit controversial because they copied a little bit of the sort of the German sort of style of graphic art, but nonetheless it looked really cool at the time, you know.
Speaker 4:Why did you know? Did Biff choose that himself, or you know?
Speaker 3:Yeah, as far as I know, yeah, biff, he was like that sort of imagery. I think he got John Tez, who was a great graphic artist, helped him with some of the design of that as well from memory too, yeah, um while we got there's. There's the image of the that's the bottom of the deck. You can see it had routes as well they're the routes, that's right, yeah, so he's. He's had a different configuration of routes so it looks like a bit of a measure smith or something there yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:With a Maltese cross on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say it looks like a Maltese cross.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Look at those wheel wells there. They seem too high.
Speaker 3:Well, we only had three and a half inch noses in those days Of course, and nowadays we've probably had a shorter nose than I did on his deck. His deck was 29 and a half inches long, mine was 30. He designed his a half an inch shorter because he figured that if you start with a 30-inch deck, after three weeks it's going to be knocked down to 29 and a half inches anyway. Oh it's like practicalities.
Speaker 2:Board running into gutters Economics not function I don't know. Look at these classic boards here.
Speaker 3:Hey, yeah, there's a collection of germ frees there.
Speaker 2:Germ frees. So there's an.
Speaker 3:Agent.
Speaker 2:Jones pro model there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the ones with the routes sort of sitting on the bed more or less there, the yellow one and the white one there the original germ frees Get out and they had, as well as the routes, they had an early layer of P-TEX on the bottom, the stuff that Powell originally called Bonite so before. So I had Bonite on my pro model before. Okay, the cardboard Before it. Yeah, the cardboard stuff. Yeah, you got it. Yeah, so that was another feature of those decks, but yeah, so there's the original ones there, the black one at the back was the germ-free.
Speaker 3:The original one sold for about four years or something, to about 84 or something, and that black one was the next model. No, it wasn't, actually, there was one in between that. That black one was the third one, there were three germ-free shapes put out by Skateboard World. So what sort?
Speaker 3:of royalties were you getting for your board sales? If any, I can't really remember. Oh yeah, no, I was getting royalties. There was royalties. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I wasn't earning a fortune, it was a dollar or something a deck from memory, a dollar thirty or something.
Speaker 2:a deck, there was income.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, Not just free stuff All those years. No, no, no, Wow.
Speaker 2:So you must be one of the I mean, you literally are the first Australian pro skateboarder.
Speaker 3:You must be, I think, in a sense In terms of getting paid. In terms of having a model I was. You know it wasn't a model manufactured in America by one of the big corporations, but it was. There was a midget Farrelly bought in the 60s. He had a signature model but he wasn't a skater, obviously. But yeah, I had the first actual sort of like model with my name on it, so legendary Came in 79, 80 and was earning royalties from it from the get-go.
Speaker 4:So legendary. And then Biff was the second and Biff was the second yeah, well, wedge was a pro skater.
Speaker 3:Wedge Francis was the Manly Skate City when that opened. He was the so-called pro skater at the park and he would come and do lessons and teach kids, but it quickly evolved into basically just being the manager of the park, you know, on the day. Yeah, so he actually couldn't skate. He had to stay in the shop, sell the tickets, stop skaters from sneaking in, sort of thing. Yeah right. Manage the pin. There was a huge pinball parlor there as well, too.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, I just got an image up there, aj, by david mock yes, yes yeah, and that is on one of the ones with the routed that front side area that's right yeah okay, and where's that exactly?
Speaker 3:that's. That's at port mcquarry. That's a peppermint park.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know it um, I know of it, yeah right, never skated it yeah peppermint park was a great place.
Speaker 3:That was 84 years.
Speaker 2:Just on a side note.
Speaker 3:Sure, sure mate.
Speaker 2:Just shout out to this week's featured artist, marty Baptist. We had the skull image of this board up and then that one came up. I don't know if we can go back to that. He's got a black skull up there. That's great, yeah. Just amazing it is yeah.
Speaker 3:Anyway, sorry, go back to what I was saying. Beautiful work, yeah, yeah, yeah. Peppermint Park, port Macquarie, yeah, that was really significant for me. The trips to Port Macquarie. It ran about between 83 to 84.
Speaker 3:Yeah, bunches of us from Sydney on the long weekends and what have you, would pile into cars and because the parks in Sydney were pretty crap and limited and we remembered that Peppermint Park was up there and it actually had a really well-made half-pipe, capsule-ended half-pipe run. And I can't remember how it began, maybe through Sin Sin Eglia. He knew some of the skaters up in the Gold Coast but we started signalling to skaters up in the gold coast but, um, we started signaling to skaters up north that we're going to be there this long weekend. You guys come down, and so we, we'd all head up from sydney and guys from brisbane and and lismore, gary, nolan from lismore and, uh, gold coast crew would come down too.
Speaker 3:I know some of the Newcastle skaters, cos, and them came up to Newcastle as well at that time. The Black Towners came out too, johnny Gray and crew, you know, andrew Hully, bunches and bunches of us. So in that sense the Victorians weren't there, but all the Queenslanders and the Sydney skate scenes would converge on Peppermint Park for these riotous long weekends or Easter holidays, skateboarding and partying so good. And that was when I first ever met Gary Nolan and Darren Burford and Toby Maloney and Robbie Brash as some of those Queensland skaters but Gary Nolan was mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:I guess Port Macquarie is kind of like a bit more in the middle right.
Speaker 3:Well, it's pretty much a midway point for us all. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so great place to meet. You know the Rivermouth? Yeah right, I wrote a song about that one once. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You wrote a song about it. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Penman Park. Yeah, yeah, yeah, meet in the middle at the Rivermouth. Yeah, who did you sing it with? We Go North, they Come South, was that in? I sing that by myself. Yeah, and I don't know if I played that with Johnny.
Speaker 2:I probably have. I was going to say is that in the John Gray Superman I?
Speaker 3:jam with Johnny Gray occasionally. We haven't for a while now. Yeah, but yeah no, we go occasionally. We get together and bash out some of the many songs that I write over the years just at home. It's a pastime that I've enjoyed for a long, long, long time. Another creative outlet Bill Schaefer, one of my oldest friends, has come along to a few of those jams too. He's another skater from right back to the boat ramp days, pimple pool days.
Speaker 3:He's a great guitarist comes along too, greg Ambler, who sadly just passed. He would come along. He's another skater from Blacktown known from the Pimble Pool Days. He's a great bass player, guitarist production. You know keyboards. Greg played anything and everything.
Speaker 2:He was great. So in terms of really significant skate spots you know it's the boat ramp yeah, would you say pimple pool yes and I know, is it holly's ramp? That's right yeah so, from what I've gathered, that was quite a very significant you know, uh, I guess ramp in the history of australian skateboarding. From what I hear. So is that an image from holly's ramp?
Speaker 3:that's an image. I whack that in there because there, because that's the first halfpipe Andrew built in his backyard.
Speaker 2:So that is a.
Speaker 3:That's not the big one, that became famous.
Speaker 2:That's not the Holly's Ramp.
Speaker 3:No, that's actually an eight-footer that he had for about six months, okay as an experiment, you know, just to see if he could build a halfpipe, but then we rode that for a while and then then he built the 11 footer which is in the footage that that you've got there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I've got that up. Yeah, that's a big air for an eight foot ramp. I was gonna say yeah that was the port.
Speaker 3:That was the same era we were going to port macquarie, so this is this the one my friend yes, it is yep, so how big was it?
Speaker 3:13 foot no, that's 11 foot, 11 foot. Good, solid 10, maybe 11 and a half. It had a solid 10 foot tranny and then you got a foot to a foot and a half of it on the top no way. Yeah, there was a defunct nursery in the block behind his house and that nursery happened to be falling apart and it just slowly disappeared over the months and a ramp over the fence appeared.
Speaker 2:And it had a roll in. It had a roll in yeah. Who's?
Speaker 3:that.
Speaker 2:That's John Gray right there Is that John Gray. Yeah, that's Johnny.
Speaker 3:Gray. Locked that hand plant beautifully. Yeah, wow, this footage is from a competition that Fox put on in spring of 1985. He called it the Spring Ramp Jam. That's Mick Mulhall.
Speaker 2:Is that Mick Mulhall?
Speaker 3:That's Johnny Gray doing an Invert Channel thing. I had the channel. Yeah, that's Sin Egolia Going high. Who's this? That's yours truly. There he is. Oh the bail shots gosh, come on man, there's a few good runs in there. I'm sure that's Sin.
Speaker 2:There's the sound system.
Speaker 3:There's the sound system.
Speaker 2:Just hang the ghetto blaster. There's Mick. Mulhall, there he was still the kid at that stage Nicknamed the kid.
Speaker 3:The kid Mick was a fellow Skateboard World team member with me too in the mid-80s. Mind-blowing. I travelled with Mick down to a Moomba ramp jam, probably 85 or 86. Mick, there's Sin again. Sin had just come back from the. States. That's Matt Davis. Wow, mavis, they're doing a boneless.
Speaker 2:So you said Sin had just come back from the States.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a big thing when, like an Australian skater, and they come back from the States and they're just different all of a sudden, that's exactly. Is that what happened to you?
Speaker 3:That's what happened with us all. Sin came back from America and his pump had just sort of improved exponentially. All of a sudden he was blasting huge Indy airs, big lean airs, and he was introducing us to lean to tails and big, long, lengthy nose, lean grinds and stuff like that. Yeah, he introduced us. He just developed a whole lot of power when he came back from the States, and I think that was his second trip there too by that stage, and just stories probably, of just what's happening over there.
Speaker 2:He was establishing roots.
Speaker 3:He was establishing roots in the States, because he eventually moved over there a year or so after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when was your first trip to the?
Speaker 3:States. I didn't actually go to the States until 2011 for the first time. Okay, yeah, yeah, so as a 51-year-old. And what was the trip for? Just to experience it.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd never been. I'd regretted that I'd never been to the states in my younger years. It sort of goes back to those regrets I mentioned before about going to uni. You know kind of one point for many years I kind of torture myself thinking, you know, I should have gone to the states. At that point in time skateboarding might have died in the ass in sydney and australia. Um, if I was true to my passion, I perhaps should have gone to the states and seen what I could have made of it there, but didn't get around to that.
Speaker 2:Um, whatever, I'd sort of you know I love that you're reflecting like this, like things you would have done differently, yeah, yeah, I think it's. It's quite interesting to hear, as someone who's younger and people even younger, younger, yeah, you know, I'm starting to really appreciate my elderly parents more and trying to tap into, you know, their life experiences and, uh, asking them, like, what would you have done differently in this experience, in this life?
Speaker 2:you know, and you're saying the couple, of things you've said now is like doing a job or a university degree that you didn't really want to do. Yeah, yeah, but you don't regret it regret it.
Speaker 1:No, I say they're regrets you don't say all experiences and you can torture yourself with them, but you make do with the decisions you make.
Speaker 3:Okay, and you go with that and you make the most of that. You know, and I don't regret you know that through the years I've been able to hold down a good job that kept my support of my family and what have you through the years, okay, and that's really important too, and although I was doing that job, I still as I was talking with Ty earlier on I still skated all the time.
Speaker 2:I still had my friends through the years that I connected with uh through skateboarding and still do through to this day. You know well, you seem quite healthy. You look healthy and fit. I mean, did you? I mean that year you grew up in was just synonymous with heavy partying and drug use I mean, did you, were you able to avoid that, or did you get sucked into it for periods?
Speaker 3:Look, during my early skateboarding competitive years I didn't get sucked into that at all. I mean, you would go to the pub on Friday nights with the crew and stuff like that, but I didn't really try and experiment or party with anything else. But later on I did, but always in kind of moderation, you know sort of kept it under control to a degree you know, and never let it sort of take over or rule my life sort of thing.
Speaker 3:But yeah, you've got to. You know I'd say that spring ramp jam we were watching there at Hullies. You know I'd say that spring ramp jam we were watching there at Hullies. You know I was probably high then, so were probably half the other skaters, you know. But that's just the way it was.
Speaker 2:You know, let's keep watching a bit more of it because it's so epic.
Speaker 3:Sin wouldn't have been, but certainly many others of us would have been. That's me there with the red.
Speaker 2:Going high. Look at that.
Speaker 4:Is that sort of where the aerial moniker came from?
Speaker 3:It was yeah, yeah, that was my four-day back-to-back airs back in the 70s, and even in the 80s too, I don't know if it was Ty that told me that it evolved from aerial.
Speaker 4:Aerial to aerial I aerial to aerial.
Speaker 2:I didn't, that's right, I didn't know. I was talking to luke from cockroach wheels and he said that. He said, I guess I think it evolved from, you know, being aerial adrian, aerial jones, and the backstory is awesome that's linked to such a awesome like aussie song that's right.
Speaker 3:And then and then the germ-free moniker is when Mark Lynch was putting out my board he said what do you want to call it? You know you can have your own brand sort of thing and settled on germ-free designs. And the reason for that was back in the Manly Skate City era there was X-Ray Specs were. A punk band around that time had a song called Germ Free Adolescence and one of the local skaters, adam Dotts nickname was Germ and he was someone who lived the total party lifestyle to excess. And him and some of the other guys started to call me Germ Free because I was, as I said before, I was pretty clean living in those days. And so I just sort of thought, yeah, germ free, I'll call it germ free designs. But it tied into the punk music. You know ethos that was central to skateboarding at that time too. You know that it was. It was a well-known sort of punk pop song from that era too.
Speaker 2:Amazing how these things evolve, hey.
Speaker 4:Was there like you sort of sang that how you did? Was there a straight edge ethos going through the punk scene then, because I know there has been eras of that and guys that get like a black X tattooed, I think, on their wrists and stuff. I know a few American guys who did Okay. And they were like straight edge and sticking to that. That was a thing, I think that did evolve a little later.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, that wasn't. I'm sure there might have been, I don't know, I'm not sure who. There might have been some totally clean living guys in that 70s generation of skaters that I'm from, but most of us were like any other teenager. You know, when you reach the age of being able to legally go into a pub or a club or whatever you know, you sort of jump on it for a little while and you give it your best shot, or even beforehand. You know various parties. You know you're sort of there with the older guys who might you know, pass a few on sort of thing, but yeah no.
Speaker 2:Amazing, amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hey, look at that image of the Coke ramp.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, and the Coke skateboard.
Speaker 2:That's right. Were. Coke paying you money. Come on, just for the demos.
Speaker 3:Just for the demos, just for the occasional demos. I didn't do many with Coke in that mid-'80s Coke era.
Speaker 2:Who's that on the flat bottom you reckon, can you see?
Speaker 3:a bit hard to see. I can't quite see from here. No, might have been mick mulhall was there that day. Fox, john fox was there. I know john fox was behind the lens actually.
Speaker 2:Thanks, john for that photo, um classic that's uh, yeah and this one in skate and, speaking of John Fox, I whacked that one.
Speaker 3:Editor of Skating Life. I had to. I had to put that in there. That was For two reasons. Firstly, that was a pull out poster In the Skating Life magazine and that was Sorry for those listening.
Speaker 2:It's a front side grind In a bowl Dover Heights pool, dover Heights.
Speaker 3:Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2:It was one of the better pools In a bowl.
Speaker 3:Dover Heights pool Dover Heights yeah yeah, it was one of the better pools that Sydney's ever produced. Okay, and I put it in there too because I'm riding an ATS board. Yeah, classic ATS is a huge, significant part of my skating life too, with Dave Mock. Dave Mock started A andrew hulley in about about 86 or 87 and um and andrew pulled. Andrew pulled out um, I think he was keen to get into. He became a shop fitter, um and dave. Dave was looking for we.
Speaker 3:I lived with dave from the mid 80s. We were best mates for a long time, really close, and he knew I was unhappy in my job. By that stage I'd finished uni. I'd worked in a chartered accounting firm, then worked for another investment firm doing accounting work, saving lots of money but not being very happy. And he sort of said do you want to jump in with me into ATS? And so I invested. And he sort of said do you want to jump in with me into ATS? And so I invested. And from 87 through to about 1990, dave and I did ATS as a partnership together. It was predominantly a backyard operation out of Dave's mum's place at Strathfield. There you go, getting the boards pressed at a couple of different places out in the western suburb of Sydney. But yeah, we gave it our best shot there for a handful of years.
Speaker 2:So you only had a board sponsor and like over the years it's predominantly been board sponsors. Like, did you have trucks and wheel sponsors? Like, what were your go-tos there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for a while there, the Escape the Wheel, were putting out a germ-free wheel, which was not a great wheel, I can admit to that. And, peter Lynch, they started putting them out without really conferring with me about it. It just all of a sudden appeared. But I was getting the royalties from them and at that stage I thought bugger it, it's too late. Now it's already on the shelves. But then, from the very, very early days, even from the late 70s, I met Tim Dorr at Balmain Wave, a skate spot across the harbour, from the boat ramp we spoke of earlier, and Tim Dorr would come down. There were other Aussie skaters in the Pimble Pool era and yeah, tim Dorr, of course, as many skaters would know, began with Aussie, then went on to Cockroach, then went to Cortec. So yeah, through those years, whatever wheels Tim was producing, he'd give me samples to try going right back to the early Aussie wheels and then the early Cockroach wheels as well. But yeah, I didn't really start. I was sponsored by Cockroach in the mid 80s. You know, he, I was.
Speaker 3:I think I might have been featured in ads and he was flowing me wheels all the time then, um, but in the in the aussie era I wasn't really sponsored by them as such, because the skating scene was so competitive in those days and because I skated for Skateboard World, I wasn't allowed to cross boundaries and be co-sponsored by Aussie sort of thing. Ah, that's funny, or it just didn't. There was a lot of kind of paranoia between the various manufacturers or what have you, which was crazy, because my best mates were riding for David Hill's team, you know, and then Dwayne Heckerter and other good mates and Sin were skating for Aussie, you know. So it was like the manufacturers and the businesses themselves might have had their little beefs and paranoias and competitive battles, but the skaters, we were just all in it together, you know.
Speaker 2:That's so amazing, dude. I love this photo.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was going to bring this one up.
Speaker 2:Oh, you've got to yeah, yeah. Have you seen this one before? Ty no, yeah.
Speaker 4:I picked that one.
Speaker 2:You picked that one out too.
Speaker 4:To point out. Obviously it shows Biff and everyone's old mate, finn, in there, and it just spoke to me as a classic. I mean, it would be evident that it's at a backyard pool. Probably Correct, correct? Yeah and yeah, so obviously, yeah, you know, biff and John are also no longer with us and it just spoke as just a classic skate photo, basically. And yeah, I was keen to hear the story with this one. Obviously the police, but they're looking pretty fast and who took the photo?
Speaker 3:I think it's Dave Mock photo. Dave and I would have headed over there with Biff. That was a pool in Mona Vale, just across the road and down the road from where the ramp is nowadays or the park is nowadays. It was in a sort of a closed down dental facility, a home that obviously had a pool that had become a dentist office. It was there for a while. It was a pretty good pool and we sessioned it quite a few times, but on that occasion, as you can see, we were rudely interrupted by the boys and girls in blue. Um, yeah, so that's biff and we probably would have met finn over there. I'm not sure he might have come over in the car with us. I can't remember. I wonder what.
Speaker 3:Finn was saying there oh, he was giving them cheek, no doubt, because I think one of the cops even looks like she's, or one of them looks like they're smiling a bit, you know, but Biff's got a grin on his face, so I think Finn would have been joking around in some way. For sure, yeah, for sure. Is that how you remember Finn? Mostly for being a bit of a joker, of course, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, he could make light of tense situations. Biff could too. Biff did too as well. But Finn, certainly, Finn certainly. He could read people really well, you know, and he knew the situation. We knew we weren't going to be handcuffed or anything like that. We weren't going to be taken down the station. They were just telling us to get out of there. Don't do this again, guys, you know, um, so yeah, we were joking around a bit, I think, and and this photo.
Speaker 4:This is a great, oh sorry, just before I move on from that, what's the ask? Johnny, this, uh, before as in, johnny, yeah. What's a classic Finn moment for you? A particularly memorable one.
Speaker 3:Oh, I think probably goes back to the Port Macquarie trips that we spoke of earlier on. Mm-hmm, finn was just starting to come. Skating level was just starting to really sort of come on then or in the ride, especially at Rydalmere Andrew Hully's ramp, johnny Gray and Finn started to catch up very quickly. And at Port Macquarie I remember one particular trip we rocked up to the skate park. The Blacktown Boys were known, finn and Bim and some of the other guys were known to party pretty hard and they just rocked up with cases of beer like at 10 o'clock in the morning at Pittman Park or in their cars. I don't think you could take them into Pittman Park but I can just remember Finn sort of rocking up enthusiastically, keen to skate Pittman Park but just being so trashed from the beginning of the session that you know it made for some really interesting trick attempts and you know curly slams that he kind of bounced back up from with a big grin and laugh on his face.
Speaker 4:Probably some amusing commentary, no doubt.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, so that was Finn in his wilder days, you know. Yeah sure I think once he got onto Rydalmere and Quakers Hill and early Fairfield in those days when he was a total shredder, he was able to moderate himself a lot more, you know, in a lot more practical way.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3:So that he was able to perform.
Speaker 4:Where did you?
Speaker 3:meet Finn up. Finn was part of the Blacktown crew that used to rock up to Pimblepool at 7 or 8 in the morning before Wedge and I and Peter Aiken and our crew rocked up. They got there early to get their rides in before us, Right, and yeah, Finn, John Gray, Greg Ambler, Steve Henshaw they were the Blacktown boys. So I've known Finn since 1978, yeah, wow. Yeah, and John Gray, so Interesting yeah.
Speaker 2:This photo we've got up classic. Can you? Talk us through it for those who are listening, and not watching the visual just from left to right.
Speaker 3:Left. You've got that's David Hill, the guy who I mentioned DHD, DHD skateboards.
Speaker 2:Not to be confused with the surfboard brand. That's right it currently exists.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yeah, yeah, he was DHD in the late 70s. My brother had a DHT board.
Speaker 4:Good on him. It was one of the first boards.
Speaker 3:I ever wrote Really, there you go, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:For sure. What are?
Speaker 4:you talking like in the 80s, sort of in mid-80s, mid-80s, in the early 80s, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he distributed DHT boards around Australia and into New Zealand. He formed a partnership with Edwards in New Zealand, that's right.
Speaker 4:DHT.
Speaker 3:Edwards. They produced the Power Pivot which went on to sell millions across the world. But yeah, as I said, he was a skater from the 60s, a champion skater from the 60s, who saw the opportunity in the late 70s 80s to have a go in creating an Australian skate industry.
Speaker 2:So good.
Speaker 3:David's in that shot for that reason, next to David is Dale Halpin old friend again. I've known Dale since the Pimble Pool era and skating at Manly Skate City. He was one of the earliest sponsored riders for Aussie Gotcha Of the younger generation. Aussie Gotcha Of the younger generation the earliest skaters Aussie sponsored were some of the guys Matt Thomas who made the boards with Tim and the Geraghty brothers. They were from Dale's neighbourhood down Balgala, manly. So yeah, dale's one of the early sponsored skaters from that era. And of course, next to Dale, of course popping his head in there, is the grinning Finn again in the background. Yeah, he's in there just because he's Finn and he was part of the 70s and 80s and into the 90s generation of skaters. Amazing.
Speaker 3:Sydney knew and everyone loved. And there's my ugly mug there, and then next to me, on my right. You're looking kind of serious actually. Yeah, I don't know why. There's a series of shots there. My partner, kathy, took these and in the next shot I'm actually grinning away because, as I say, there's a series of us clowning around. Next to me is Bill Schaefer, who is one of the original Balmain boys, who I met back in 76, 77 in the boat ramp days.
Speaker 2:Boat ramp days I'd meet them. I'm going to the boat ramp just to check it out. Guys would come across from Balmain. There was a scene in Balmain.
Speaker 3:They'd come across, skate the Boat Ramp with me and my brother. Then we'd catch the ferry back over to Balmain and skate their spots over there. They had the Balmain Wave, which was a bank in the Lever and Kitchen factory. So I've known Bill right back to then. Bill was a skater in the Pimble Pool days and he's one of my closest friends to this day. I hang out with him as much as I can. We play music together. He's a good old old friend. He introduced my partner to me 27, 28 years ago Amazing.
Speaker 2:Congratulations 28 years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So that's why Bill's in there, your good old mate, and next to Bill is Wedge Francis, rob Wedge Francis from Melbourne, amazing yeah who, as I mentioned earlier on, was one of my closest skating mates for a handful of years there back in the late 70s, 1980, 81.
Speaker 2:And do you reckon his photo is? Oh sorry, ty.
Speaker 4:Is he still the record holder of most 360s in Australia? I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 3:He probably still beat most people at the moment.
Speaker 4:I don't know.
Speaker 3:Sean Gladwell might give him a run for his money, true, but yeah, no, wedge can still do multiple 360s to this day. That's correct, yeah, and he's instrumental in running the whole Moss movement and, yeah, wedge is. That photo is also significant because it was taken at the very first sydney old school jam that I mentioned, that bradshaw put together in 2002 got you and that's I'm glad.
Speaker 2:Thanks for clarifying yeah yeah, because, yeah, that's a bit more modern times and speaking, and we are sort of getting some more modern times. Look at this one.
Speaker 3:Ah yes, Bondi.
Speaker 2:Bowl.
Speaker 3:That's me riding in a. Bowlerama comp on my old man army manufactured germ-free board.
Speaker 2:How wide is that? I mean compared to your old boards that you grew up on? I mean it looks so narrow, it's probably still like a nine-inch board. No, it was a nine-incher.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the original germ frees were 10 and three-quarters, so you know they were quite the pig 10 and three-quarters.
Speaker 4:My goodness.
Speaker 3:That's right, yeah, so yeah, significantly narrower, but still, you know, it's still wider than most paddle pops at nine inches. Less kinky than the pinball pool uh, pimple pool most certainly, most certainly a lot more generous transition both in the shallow and deep ends. That was great bond. I lived, you know, a two-minute bike ride from bondi bowl for many years in in its early existence, so it was my local for a long time and and the bowler armor contests were just uh, were significant, uh for me in in my skating days. In that why? Just because it gave me and my friends Johnny Gray and I used to passionately love the Balarama comps, because we were skating with our heroes from the 70s and 80s. That was just unthinkable to us back in the day. You know we weren't fortunate enough to get over to the States to skate with the Eddie Algiras and the Steve Olsons and the Caballeros, and you know all the 80s heroes as well Lester Kasai, pat Noho, the list goes on and on and on.
Speaker 2:But to have the opportunity to skate with them. Was that from a boulderama that's me and johnny gray? Yes, I love that photo I love that photo too.
Speaker 3:you know, johnny gray and I, we just a lot of people, you know heaped, heaped um shit on boulderama and the comps and that sort of stuff. But it, it, you know it. They they really were. They gave skaters in Sydney the opportunity to come down to a local bowl and see the cream of the world's best skaters current generation as well as past legends skate at Bondi and there was all sorts of nitpicking about who got in within the boundaries on the comp day or what have you. But if people were really interested you could go there for the entire fortnight before the comp at five in the afternoon or after work and watch all these pros practicing. They were the magic sessions, bondi, you know, in the weeks leading up to the comp Ty Colling as well. Yeah, ty Colling would have been there ripping as well. You got it, that's right. He was, oh yeah, all the local rippers, you know. And Keegan Palmer was there as an 11-year-old, just totally shredding it, you know.
Speaker 3:Getting back to Bondi Bowl, I skated with Keegan one time. It was a lonely weekday that I had off work. Keegan was practicing for some contest somewhere or other, whatever, but he was about 11 or 12. It was a really onshore windy day the day you just don't want to go skateboarding, but I had the day off so I made the most of it. And keegan was doing four foot high frontside ollies in this hounding wind and it just you could, just I just knew then this guy was special because, um, he's a metre high in the air on an ollie and he could see the wind just trying to push the board away from him. He's just adjusting his feet to bring it back in, you know, and I just thought, man, how do you do that?
Speaker 4:He would have been a total of seven kilos or something. That's right. That's exactly right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, just you could really see that he had extraordinary ability and control at a young age.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, and you know, because um just watching the olympics with kieran woolley as well yeah close to my heart because he's from woollongong, which is absolutely south coast and watch those guys skate and they do just. There's a certain x factor about them. There's a lot of really good skateboarders about there, but yeah, like you said, in situations like that you can just see that one, two percent difference.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yeah, adjusting your feet midair on a windy day, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's the kind of stuff Kieran does.
Speaker 3:With Kieran from a really early stage. I remember seeing him at I was most impressed by him at um bar beach at one of the australian ball running comps up there, when he was a really little tacker. Um, the thing that kieran had going which goes back to that surfskate style was the ability to really flow and just put in loads of tricks and he had consistency down like like a pro from a little kid and um, that'll get you somewhere in the world of competitions. You know consistency like that. I know sadly he sort of fell on the last trick in the recent Olympics but he's got it. You know. You look at any of Kieran's clips from the parks that he's skated around the world and you can just see his ability and imagination. The lines of his jaws are amazing. The combinations of tricks that he does in awkward and unusual places is just mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:It's exciting, it's engaging.
Speaker 4:His free skating is definitely really enjoyable to watch. Exactly he just does stuff. That's right.
Speaker 2:It's cool. Maybe that's why Belko Bojam really is something he's always been a standout at.
Speaker 4:Yeah, definitely, but I think even I mean, yeah, definitely he's the flowing style for that, but just, obviously Belko is limited in lines and so just watching him at weird parks and you know, putting stuff together is really cool seeing all that, yeah special, Really impressive yeah.
Speaker 2:Pretty special. I love this photo at john gray's vert ramp yeah, that's. That's really special to my heart, that one that's can I ask how old do you think you were there roughly oh, that's march of this year.
Speaker 3:So 63 years of age, 63, yeah, tail tapping on. Have you been getting?
Speaker 4:the pads out tie and skating vert lately not recently, but it is in my not-too-distant future.
Speaker 2:Because there's just no excuses for you. That's right. Come on, ty, come out to Windsor one of these Sundays. Zero excuses.
Speaker 3:Me and Johnny Gray and Scott Spring are sessioning out there as many Sundays as we can, when it's dry, yeah, and we would welcome more crew, ty. And we would welcome more crew, ty. Just only having three skaters, you get pretty damn buggered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no doubt I'm going to pad up again. I was saying to Ty, like I can drop in on a veramp and I've got a rock to fake you and me.
Speaker 3:That's it Do it.
Speaker 2:I need to get some motivation, ty, you need to come here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, come and get involved. Sunday beer and barbecue. Get some Rector knee pads. Maybe not some Rectors? Maybe there's nothing better. Thankfully, that's right yeah that's really special.
Speaker 3:But you know, johnny, actually having one of your closest skating mates having a ramp in their backyard, and Johnny just shakes his head and he says every morning when he walks out there, you know, it's just this big structure, it's blue, it's blue in honor of Manly skate city. Um, you know, and um, yeah, just it's, it's just magic, you know, to have those just quiet sessions. There's no scooter kids. There's no, yeah, no, um, parents who try to go. You go skate any any of the fantastic parks that are around city now on a weekend and it's just whoa, it's full on the amount of skaters, the amount of scooters.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Meadow Bank's just like peak hour traffic on a Sunday nowadays. That's one of my favourite parks, close to where I live.
Speaker 2:I know we're going to play that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just to hit it up, on a weekend You've got to have a crew with you, otherwise you're battling eight kids in the bowl on their scooters and or sliding down on their butts with their parents standing up around the top having a picnic.
Speaker 2:It's quite the effort to get a role in you know, let's take the opportunity to say that if you're a parent that skate parks require active supervision, you do, they do. I see two-year-olds on those little scooters, or three-year-olds just yeah it can be not enjoyable. It can be a recipe for disaster. It's for their safety too, though right, it's for their safety.
Speaker 4:Realistically, people are going faster to the skate park. That's right. So you know you're putting your child at risk, just letting them roam free. In that circumstance. All good to have a timely go in there, but just to let them roam free. Where's your parental responsibility?
Speaker 2:it's not set and forget like other playgrounds. Yeah, yeah and it's on your phone, yeah, get off your phone and and just keep an eye. But also, it's ironic that there's this, like there's a new emergence of more DIY spots, and I think it's precisely for what the reason you're saying is that because, yeah, it is a bit of a place of solitude where you don't have to battle for you know, and be just aware of not getting, you know, wiped out by a kid on a scooter or someone who's just learning.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, so there's a place for it, but I want to get up you know fast forwarding. I want to get up this, maybe one of the last clips of you skating meadow bank recently, um, and it's just really inspiring because I think it was in 2019,. If I can get that down and the computer's not working, there we go and I just want you to talk us through this line of you at Meadowbank.
Speaker 3:Oh, yes, have you seen this clip so that one is a front side here. Clearly, tuck need that's right. Walking slide tricks back to back. That's what I always pride myself on tail slide little bit of a grind there.
Speaker 2:Hands in a kiwi slide, it cuts off so looking at that you know comparatively like that bowl is near perfect with granite coping, yeah, just beautiful did you ever think in your lifetime you'd get to skate something?
Speaker 3:like that. I don't know, no, no, never thought, never imagined it, and it is just, it's just, it is just, it's just amazing. It's wonderful to have it. You know, it's not. It's a half an hour down the road from where I live and it's a perfect bowl. Wedge and I were just talking just before the Chaos Jam we spoke of earlier on. A couple of weeks ago I skated with the Melbourne guys, came up and had a session at Meadowbank with us and Wedge was. He reminded me of a conversation we'd had back when we were 18-year-olds at Pimble Pool and he remembers me actually saying you know, just imagine if it would be possible for us to see skating at the age of 40, you know, we'd probably be riddled with arthritis and or with walking sticks, you know and that was an 18-year-old talking, you know about being a 40-year-old. But yeah, as you've just pointed out, that clip, how old were you in that clip?
Speaker 2:That clip was 59. You're 59. Just before I was 60.
Speaker 3:And so Wedge was talking about exactly that. The reality that has actually eventuated was beyond our wildest dreams and even, in so many ways, the status of skateboarding today, the point it's at, is beyond our wildest dreams. As 15, 16, 18-year-olds you know to have the amount of parks that exist around the country, the variety of terrain, the quality of it, you know, and to be in the Olympics. Not that that's the be all and end all or measurement standard, you know. Skateboarding being in the Olympics, you know. But just the fact that it is there as an iconic sort of sport that the world can now kind of embrace and recognise.
Speaker 4:Did you ever Talk about that? Speculate about it? Say what, if like, back when you were teenagers, Not when we were teenagers. No, Never even a thought.
Speaker 3:No, no, it didn't even enter our heads that it would ever become an Olympic sport. You know, I think it's before the Olympics started opening up their minds to things like snowboarding and that sort of stuff. The first I ever heard of it was when people were talking. You know, the 90s generation might have started talking about skateboarding, maybe one day being in the Olympics, you know.
Speaker 4:Well, it had that demo demonstration. Sport deal in the 96 Atlanta Olympics had that X ramp. That's right, Danny was there and a few others.
Speaker 3:Okay, yes, yeah, yeah. So yeah, the talk goes back to then, doesn't it? Yeah, but that's the beauty of skateboarding. You know it can be a peak, mainstream, recognized sport now, but it can also be someone's lifestyle. You know it can be someone's self-expression. You know some people call it an art form. You know skateboarding, that's the beauty of skateboarding. To me, it can be whatever the individual chooses it to be and wants to put into it.
Speaker 3:You know how they fit it into their lives. You know Skateboarding. People are sort of saying skateboarding doesn't belong in the Olympics or what have you. But but I don't necessarily agree. You know, it's sort of I like the saying that the Olympics needs skateboarding more than skateboarding needs the Olympics. There's a truth to that, I think.
Speaker 3:But competitiveness has existed in skateboarding right back to day one to the 60s. There were you look at clips of non-American competitions from 1966 and and same in in skateboarding in in australia in the 60s, with david hill becoming a champion, competitive skater. And then you had, you know, the competitive era in the mid 70s. Here too there's always been competition skating. But then you know, perhaps the dog town skaters, perhaps they began that lifestyle, I don't know that they introduced that, that ethos of like it's not so much the competitions, it's it's how you do it, it's how, how you treat the terrain. You know that the pools, the banks, that you're seeking out, the stuff that's not made for skateboarding, the stuff that's natural terrain, and you know you can, you can make a go of that and and push it hard there as much as you like and and get your joy and and you know, find your passion in that, and so I've had the good luck to be able to do both.
Speaker 3:You know, I've spent my years, younger years searching out pools and bank spots with my brother and what have you, and tried to get down as low as I can on my Bertlemans and pull my 540 slides off a Greenwich boat ramp as fast and hard as I could, you know, and then get air. You know, what have you back in the early pimple pool days. But I've also enjoyed competitions too, you know. So that's why I love the Bola Arma comps. Johnny Gray and I would sort of prepare for them for a week or two before you know, and then arrange to stay in hotels just down the road from Bondi, you know, and just be laughing the whole time. You know, we were skating there in those heats with our friends and our mates Just gold, yeah.
Speaker 4:The interesting thing about like to go back to what you just said like the Dogtown guys and that showing that other side, yeah, but they still competed as well, you know. So it wasn't just we're hardcore and doing this.
Speaker 4:They also got into the competitive side and so, like you say, and had this discussion a lot of times, it has that competitive side and a lot of you know I think you've got to accept that the progression came a lot of you know you've got to, I think you've got to accept that the progression came a lot from competitions and you know, and the progression is, as I've said before, what's kept me hooked and interested in it. You know I still get stoked on sang skating now. I'm not jaded or bored with it. You know, nearly 40 years later myself you know of doing it. It's still exciting, yeah, to watch, and and a lot of that you'd have to say comes from a competitive standpoint. Basically, yeah, you know, not strictly by any means, but definitely, but on saying that pretty much strictly speaking by personally, competitive. I want to do that.
Speaker 4:You know what I mean not in a formal competition sort of set up. I think we have that basically ingrained in us as human beings some sort of competitive nature, you know. You could say the stay alive sort of you know form of nature, and part of that, you know, part of that is sort of competition. But that's how we've evolved. It can be friendly competition.
Speaker 4:That's right, you know, and just be like yeah, and that has been commented on in the Olympics and we've talked about it before they're all supporting each other in the skating and many people say, man, it's the only sport Like you see them. They're all supporting each other in the skating and many people say, man, it's the only sport Like you see them, they're all like you know. You see, arisa, go come on Hayley, you know, and everyone's hugging each other and everyone's like super stoked and it looks legitimate, you know, it comes across as legitimate and I think that's an awesome thing that the two worlds can coalesce and coexist yeah, yeah, no, that that's right.
Speaker 3:I agree that, yeah, yeah totally.
Speaker 4:They're not. It doesn't have to be. You're that and you're this, like what it can be. So many things precisely, like the lifestyle and artistic and that's right there's so much there's so much depth to it. It's so non-delineated, undefined. It can be anything that you make of it.
Speaker 3:That's right? Oh, absolutely. You see skaters the Grant Taylors and the Chris Russells of the world. They're not necessarily big comp skaters, but they're groundbreaking skaters.
Speaker 4:So inspiring.
Speaker 3:So inspiring in lots of many other ways, yeah, and, and you know that, but they sort of like outside, removed from the world of competition, to it but they still have so much reverence absolutely. Oh they're. They're like gods. You know, they're up there amongst you the people are looking up to in terms of skateboarding Absolutely, definitely.
Speaker 4:Speaking of it being an art form as well we have, obviously, skateboard graphics have been artistic forever, sure, and incorporated so many different forms of art on them stylised art. What have we got on the table here, speaking of art?
Speaker 3:I've got two relics or two little significant things here for me. I guess this one should I hold it up, yeah man go for it.
Speaker 3:That may look like a mini Mark Richards surfboard but that's a fiberglass flex board. And I was awarded awarded the very first competition I ever went in at stonives shopping center in january 1976. I came runner up, I was second in the senior freestyle and that was the prize. Wow. And it's got on the back there. I'm not sure the camera will ever be able to read it, but it it's made by Bent yeah, post Office Box, palm Beach, new South Wales, 2108. Now that might have been a surfboard manufacturer or not, or what, I'm not sure, but I've kept that over the years because it's just always just blew me away. I set it up.
Speaker 3:I drilled it and set it up. Did you actually skate it, though? I did ride it once or twice at home, but, as I said earlier, I'd never really liked flex decks. Right, it's got a couple of scratches just from being mishandled at home, but yeah, that's that one.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 3:That was some.
Speaker 2:It really is shaped like a single fin. That's like a single fin surfboard shape. That's right Narrow tail, pin tail.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. You can imagine a chihuahua riding that at Pipeline.
Speaker 2:Yeah, classic, it's actually quite heavy, yeah, the old fiberglass boards were.
Speaker 3:That's right, yeah.
Speaker 4:So that's somewhat, relatively speaking, pre-artwork. Being prolific on skateboards.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 4:I mean it was stylized with the colors, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so what's this graphic?
Speaker 3:one we have here. This one is I brought this one along not so much for the graphic, but just it's actually got a plaque on it. Yeah, I noticed. That was a real surprise to me at the 2014 Australian Bowl Riding Championships. There you go. All of a sudden, pat Noho announced over the thing that they were going to be presenting an award for the Spirit of Jay Adams Award.
Speaker 3:No way For the skater who best demonstrates the spirit of Jay through raw, aggressive and expressive skateboarding, and he awarded it to me, and it was a bit of a mind-blowing moment Pat Noho. Pat Noho, who is a second generation Dogtown Z skater who I'd skated with, every year. He was here for Bola Rama. Wow, yeah, just to have that nod from Pat. That's amazing, dude, it blew me away. Yeah, so it's one of it's sort of one of jay adams uh, the last boards that I think that came out before he tragically passed away yeah, so yeah so do you know who did the artwork?
Speaker 3:I don't know who did the artwork, but yeah, it's um, yeah, I've just. That's a, that's a keepsake, that one for sure. Um, just because back, I think you know, initially I might have, I might have been inspired by the early freestyle, competitive freestyle skaters shane, iran and the coke team, and, and then um, russ howell and stacy prolter. But then, as soon as the skateboarder mags hit the stands and we discovered the dog town as it was all, it was all jay adams and tony alva and stacy prolter and and and and the other skaters across the the spectrum, across the usa as well.
Speaker 3:But I think you you I've spoken about this with people of my generation the Dogtown scene was really, it was so regarded. You know, everyone from Ian Mackay and Henry Rollins right across the popular culture, will say the Dogtown articles in skateboarder influenced them the most. And the same thing happened here in Australia. It's kind of like every little scene in the world, I think in skateboarding in 1977 thought that they had their own dog towns. You know they were the closest thing to dog town out of out of venice, california. So I've met skaters from all all around the world who kind of will tell you that oh yeah, we were mimicking those guys and we thought we were just like them and what have you?
Speaker 3:And yeah, I think their style you know, and skating at Greenwich Boat Ramp in those early 70s days with John Tessarero and Gary Bird and John Tessarero actually was good friends with Stacey Peralta John's brother, older brother, was instrumental in bringing Russ Howell and Stacey Peralta out to Australia and Stacey left John with one of his early Zephyr boards and John was just his style was and his ability at the bow round was just so fast, hard and smooth.
Speaker 3:It just sort of had dogtown written across, cross it all the way. And um, yeah, as soon, as soon as my brother and I sort of started skating the boat ramp and seeing john and gary bird skate, there we were just we were mimicking that same, that same hard, fast, get down as low as you can to the wall, sort of sliding style. And yeah, so I used to actually that photo, the early photo we had up of the boat ramp of me doing that aerial bird type slide thing on a red little red board. That was a homemade board where I'd painted the graphics on it, a copy of a red and white z-flex board. So I was making my own Z-Flex boards copies in 1977 and then to be awarded this sort of thing by Pat Noho, second generation Z-skater. You know, all those years later, when I was 54 years of age was yeah a bit of a big one.
Speaker 4:So yeah, Full circle, kind of Full circle, exactly, which is pretty cool. That sort of acknowledgement, yeah, yeah, of a big one. So yeah, full circle, kind of Full circle, exactly, which is pretty cool, that sort of acknowledgement, yeah, yeah, it was yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know whether I would have described my own skating as being aggressive. I was always more of a smooth, controlled skater. I suppose you could say there's a bit of aggro in some of the technical edge tricks and stuff that I might do occasionally, you know. But smooth and trying to keep it as flowing and feeling as good as possible when I'm riding, that's what I've always aimed for. Yeah, dude.
Speaker 4:I think any form of skateboarding, like kind of hard skating, difficult skating, there's elements of aggression in it anyway, like realistically, you need to put it out there.
Speaker 3:I did just recently, actually in April of this year skated that pool that I told you about, Ty, a deep pool, probably about a 10-foot deep pool, probably one of the best pools I've skated in Australia, and to master a pool again at my age was quite a big thing. It was quite a complicated pool to skate. It had a strange trough-like transition at the bottom. It had a good amount of transition, but just the way it was designed kind of made it complicated and there was also a bend in the wall and that took some aggression.
Speaker 3:As a 63-year-old to get anywhere near the tiles in that pool.
Speaker 2:you can't just be taking it easy, so sick, so inspiring Really is yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 3:It was hell of fun. That pool Came away with a bit of a torn meniscus in my right knee, but that was 12 or so weeks ago. It's healed. I've had one skate back on my board since then. Yeah, we're back at it again as soon as I can. Next, opportunity.
Speaker 4:That's amazing. Just another one to keep on going. I've got a little something going on at the moment and it's getting better, but it's like man, how many of these things you know, can you just keep taking, but obviously it's sort of as long as it sort of comes back and you're like that drive can still be there, right?
Speaker 4:And it is inspiring to see you and Johnny and obviously many others you know holding that torch and making it happen and showing that it can be done, because obviously the older people obviously you were a bit older than us growing up and older than Tony and those guys you know what I mean. But realistically the generation gap has widened so massively. But it was pretty close then. Like I've said in previous ones, you know, guys five years older were like older yeah.
Speaker 4:And now it's like massive and I remember at our skate riders comps and you and johnny would come down yeah you know, and you would have been in your 50s then and I was like, wow, there's like four year olds here skating, like jackson danini, I think, and then, yes, 54-year-old, like proper 50-year gap, and it's still widening and people are still doing it and holding it down.
Speaker 2:And what other activity does that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, not many, Not many if any, and particularly to all come together in the one scenario like that and just be like whew like loving it.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, Totally totally.
Speaker 2:The stoke is there and, like on the back of what you just said about the Olympics man, for skaters, it's just another reason to get together and have a session, even though there is competition. Right, that's right. I love that you said that.
Speaker 4:And to add to that, like Andy Mack and old mate from South Africa too, like sure he wasn't at Andy Mac, but Andy Mac smashed it there. Like realistically, I was like wow, that's pretty also inspiring at 51 to be able to whack out decent tricks, absolutely Still, and put whole lines together was really like wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, big Japan air across that hip and the whole lines he was putting, the line he was putting together and you can just see the joy on his face. You know he was pumped. He was just having such a fun time. You know, obviously he was probably stoked, you know, as a skater and sports person, to have made it to that point.
Speaker 3:But along with it all you know you could just see he was just having a blast, you know he was having the time of his life shouting out to his kids at home and the rest of it when the camera spun around to him and it's like his dad at the Olympics. You know, can you believe it? Can I believe it? You know, I'm sure that's what he was thinking, but yeah, it is. It's the same thing. Same thing's happening with surfing too, you know it's. It's been a recent phenomenon in sports, in world sports, to see how far, um, uh, people can do it at a top competitive level.
Speaker 3:You know kelly slater being the obvious example. You know, and, and I think, um, that's skateboarding with tony hawk, um, and, and any any of the other skaters who are still still um skating, you know, well, into their 50s and 60s. And alva himself is, I think, tony alva. He was born in 57, he's three years older than me and he's still skating. You know, he's still skating regularly within his limits. You know, you, as you get older, you know you kind of your bag of tricks sort of diminishes a little bit, but, um, you stick with what you know and with what you're comfortable with, yeah, and you can still have a blast.
Speaker 3:You know, and, and, and, and scotty, scotty spring and john gray and I talk about this a lot. You know, it's kind of like out at windsor when we're skating on Sundays. You're relearning your old tricks a lot of the time. You know, you think, oh, you challenge yourself. You know I'm going to. Johnny wants to get an eggplant in before his next birthday. You know I want to get a frontside invert back, wow. You know it's sort of.
Speaker 3:But you can do these things if you're fit enough and you work at it. You know, as long as you know, these are things that you know you might have done in the past. So your muscle memory, if you've got the ability, the flexibility, the strength to put yourself in the position, you can actually feel that, oh yeah, I can do that, I can bring that down, you know. But it's you know, if you're unfit you're not going to be able to get yourself in that position to the foot in the first point. But it depends on how much you want to do. You know you might be an older, a 50 or 60 year old skater who just wants to go and carve and grind, and that's fun too.
Speaker 3:You know, my first session back after this meniscus 12 weeks ago was only at meadowbank, some 10 days ago or so, and I only did calves and grinds and just totally had a blast. Actually I lied, I did a front side error too. In the end I couldn't arm myself back, excellent. But yeah, it's all fun, it's all relative, you know, if you want to. And these parks, these parks we have, they're not harsh pimble pools or Greenwich boat ramps, they're beautiful transition bowls and flow parks, yeah, flow parks with gentle curves and what have you.
Speaker 3:And if you're lucky enough to get there midweek when there's not 100 scooters and 50 kids in the bowl, you can get yourself some nice lines and have a blast.
Speaker 2:It's magic. Yes, yeah, what's next for you, aj? You know what's next. Well, actually, let me rephrase the question Like where are you at now in life, not just with skateboard, skateboarding, but in general? You know, like, what do you what's? What's the plans for the next chapter?
Speaker 3:next chapter, um to keep skateboarding, keep, keep playing, keep playing music. Um, spend more time. I'm semi-retired these days. Spend more time with the family. My son has a two-year-old daughter. I've been heading over there once a week to hang out with my granddaughter and that's just a blast, you know, to spend quality time with family. My mum is 87 and she's a bit crook. I go down and spend time with her looking after her, but my partner and I, cathy, we talk about wanting to do some travel together in the future. So that's a plan.
Speaker 3:It's a vague plan. At the moment she's about to do some travel on her own. I've got some stuff to do at home, but we'll work it together soon in the near future. We'll work it together soon in the near future. But you know I still I aim to keep skating as my main sort of fitness activity as well, as you know, something that I've loved and have a passion for for 50 years now. So I aim to do that as long as I can, as long as it's practical and as long as I can, I'll keep doing it. Um, you have to work at it a bit, you know I do. I do cycle a bit to keep my aerobic fitness and legs a bit leg strength going do you surf still.
Speaker 2:Did I ask you that already?
Speaker 3:I still have a couple of boards, but I don't surf all that regularly these days. Um the spare time that I've got, I dedicate to skating and family. Family Skating and family A bit of music here and there, yeah, Skating, family and music.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah, still going to go to some Looper J shows.
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure yeah, yeah, yeah, Definitely yeah. She's next gig up in Sydney. I've travelled down to a few gigs in Melbourne to see her down there too, awesome.
Speaker 2:Let's go to her next Sydney one. Ty yeah, Nine hours yeah.
Speaker 3:I'll let you know. She does a bit of DJing too. Awesome Comes up and DJs a few Sydney parties occasionally as well too.
Speaker 4:Does she DJ under Looper J as well?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah she does yeah yeah, cool so yeah, I'll keep you posted yeah, please do, for sure I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's like I feel like there's such a deep box to unpack with you. I mean it's time to wrap it up a little bit, but is there anything else? We something we've missed? Hi, aj, are we feeling pretty good about this? Because I don don't know. I just you know you're a gem, aj.
Speaker 4:Thank you and I'm so grateful to have you on the show, so thank you, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2:But yeah, anything else for us, do you think?
Speaker 3:we it'll come. I can't really think of anything, to be honest, right now. Is there anything you want to say?
Speaker 4:I have one question.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:Oh, I have one question. Okay, tell me, all good, all good, it's pretty, whatever, but flyaway helmets, right, right, right. Do they actually work? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I've had a few head bumps.
Speaker 3:I'm still standing.
Speaker 4:Indeed definitely.
Speaker 3:But I do admit to one time at West Melton halfpipe, coming off a rock and slide there and hanging up somehow, or slamming and going down face first and the helmet being knocked up because they have a peak on them going up, and so I get massive greys right across above my eyebrow and on my forehead. Yeah, right Wow, helmet damage. But yeah, hit the back of your head and you're all right, that's nice.
Speaker 4:Were they just a skate helmet? Yes, or was it just a skate helmet?
Speaker 3:They were initially called the J Adams Flyaway. It was a J Adams design Right Put out by Kanoa. Kanoa Surf was a surf shop at the back of Skateboard Magazine. In Kanoa Surf they were mail order surf shops. I think they might have had premises, shops in California itself, la itself, but Kanoa Surf put out the Jay Adams flyaway helmet. Yeah, right Back in goodness knows when that was, I don't know 78 or something, 79. But yeah, Magic.
Speaker 4:No Do they Magic. No, do they still exist? Is it still a thing? Yeah, wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't. Whoever owns them and makes them in California now they're kind of like a custom-made type thing. I think he does make a few. If you go to SoCal Skate Shop in LA they sell them behind the counter, but you can get them custom made too as well, they're pretty expensive. They cost you a couple of hundred US dollars. Yeah right. But you get all those pretty colors. So you know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure, definitely.
Speaker 3:I got mine from Pat Noho.
Speaker 4:Oh, my car.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my orange and yellow and green one, yeah.
Speaker 2:Amazing One of his old ones yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, all right, let's leave it there. Mr Adrian Ariel Jones, thanks for being on the show.
