Do you think that you've progressed a lot in the last
couple of years.
Yeah. I definitely improved the second I came to
America. You can't help but improve when you're
skating every day people like Stevie, Todd Prince and
Kendall at the warehouse.
My first real boost of improvement was when I
worked as a counselor at skate camp in San Luis
Obispo. That was the first time I ever skated every
day. Every morning I would wake up and there
was a ramp sitting there for me to ride. I didn't
about getting a ride or sit on the
bus for two hours, it was right there. I could just
relax and skate as much as I wanted.
It tal
takes a as a ramp s
certain
kind of
person to
Tell me about the early London scene.
missed the original phase at Crystal Palace.
I was just a tiny little kid who never left my area.
I got heavily into skating when it was at its lowest
of low points. We'd go to Crystal Palace and there
were probably about twenty or twenty-five
throw skaters in London. Maybe fifteen would skate
all the time. We'd meet on the train because he'd
himself go right by my house on the way to Crystal
Palace. I'd stand on the platform and wait for
him, then we'd go to Crystal Palace and skate.
Those days were fun. It's a lot different now.
I went back to England this past summer and
around
and risk
it didn't seem right without Crystal Palace. It
was so tight knit then, we knew everyone. If you
you would run up to him and say, "Where do
destroying saw a skater and you had never seen him before,
himself you skate? Who are you? Where do you l
42
every day.
live?
Give me your phone number. Now they look
at you funny. It's different now, but it's not bad.
Because there's skateboarding.
Yeah, everyone is skating.
So there are more spots. I hear they're talking
about re-paving Meanwhile One.
I just saw a thing about that. Meanwhile One was
one of the first skateparks. My dad gave me and my
friend Brenko from junior school a ride down there
and we skated about. That was the first concrete thing
I ever skated. After that I pretty much phased out and
didn't really skate for a few years. In '82 I got heavily
into it. At first I would only skate banks, I wouldn't
skate vert at all. I was just like everyone else, I was
too scared to go down. I thought, I can't do that, it's
too difficult. All I would do is skate old street spots
and the banks around London. Steve, Lucian and other
people who were ripping back then would say, 'Come
and skate vert. Don't be a wimp, you can do it. If you
can do everything on a bank, you can do it. It's just
a matter of time. So one day me and Dean Bennet,
this guy I used to skate with all the time, went down
there. From then on, I went to Crystal Palace every
chance I had. We even neglected all of the rad con-
crete skate parks. I didn't really go to them much until
this summer. I didn't realize how good they were. That
was because we could only get two days a week to skate
and we'd want to make the most of it. We'd skate Crystal
Palace until after dark, when the only light came from
the sports center, and you could only see one wall.
You'd ride into darkness and then ride the lit wall. We'd
learn tricks in the dark. Steve learned lipslides and
frontside roll-ins in the dark. I didn't even know that
he'd made it until I heard him rolling down the wall.
In England, if you've only got two days to skate,
chances are it's going to rain. Crystal Palace was par-
tially covered, but if it was windy, it would get wet.
It was under a walkway overpass, a big entrance to
the sports center. Phil Burgoyne would get up early,
run down there, hang tarps from the walkway and tie
them to the back of the ramp to create a wall. But if
was windy, the rain would blow around those and
get in. We'd get down there sometimes and only have
twelve feet of ramp to ride because the other four were
wet. Sometimes, it would be soaking wet. We'd spend
hours laying down layers of newspaper, burning it and
pushing hot ashes around to dry the ramp.
it
If you work to skate, you appreciate the session.
Those days were a lot of fun. Everyone was so into
it. All week we'd be dying to get there. It wouldn't
matter, on Sunday night we had to learn a trick before
we went back to school on Monday. We'd slam and
die, and we'd know that it didn't matter because we
had five days with no skating to heal up.
Did any skaters from those days influence you?
Definitely Steve Douglas. If it wasn't for Steve
Douglas, I wouldn't be riding vertical today. I would
probably still be at home, cruising around. He got me
into it. The other people I skated with heavily
influenced me too-Lucian Hendricks, Danny.
Webster, Phil Bergoyne, Dean Bennett, Dan Adams,
Shane O'Brien, all of the South Bank boys, Dobie and
Floyd. I was just a little kid hanging out with these
guys who were way better than me and they would
push me and help me. I was just a little grommet, but
people were so stoked on more skaters in those days
they'd accept anyone.
I remember Webster ripping before I could even do
a frontside grind. They were shouting at me. 'Do a
frontside grind!, but I was scared. Dobie was up on
the ramp saying. 'If you don't do a frontside grind,
I'm going to beat you up right now. I had to do a front-
side grind, so I did a frontside grind. Barry and Mark
Abrook once put me on top of the ramp and said,
You're not coming down off the ramp until you roll
in. My only way down was to roll in, so I had to roll
in. Even if I slammed, I had to try. They had a thing
called Scroteam, a little group of skaters at Gilford
Skatepark in Scotland. The only way you could become
a member of the Scroteam was to do something that
you couldn't do.
Crispin Robinson was another influence. He's a good
friend of mine. He gave me my first good skateboard.
Back in '82 he told me about these American pros who
were coming to skate Crystal Palace. It seemed like
On a recent visit to London, Bod skated many of the old coment
parks for the first time. Here he gravitated back to the metal ramp
at Stevenage for a helmetless Invert. Photo: Kevin Thatcher.