Bike of Burden

The problem of carrying my skateboard on my bicycle has exercised me for a while. I like riding to the skatepark or between street spots, but I hate to carry my board on my back. Last year I made this skateboard carrier for my bike pannier, which has been working fine, but which I wanted to upgrade with some pockets and a shoulder strap so that it functions as a piece of luggage independent of the bike. Above is the finished item, and it was made thus:

BLUEPRINTS!

denim cut to size, folds marked

pockets cut in denim

pockets sewn and lined

there is a rigid board sewn into the carrier so that it holds its shape. Jez (Jeremy Granville Smith) is a master furniture restorer and totally overqualified to do this, but he did it anyway because he is a lovely geezer with a workshop

it attaches to the bike with either/both velcro and leather straps

bike + board

high-vis strips are sewn onto the edges

elastic straps across the top can carry some additional luggage, such as a comic book

the shoulder strap folds away into one of the pockets, and attaches with these big buttons

Alas, I am not happy with it. With the sewing machine as with skateboarding, my ambitions outstrip my abilities. It doesn't work as well as it ought - I don't trust the shoulder strap to hold, there's not enough volume in the pockets when the thing is closed, I didn't make the velcro straps as long as I should have, and the leather straps are a hassle to fasten. I find myself returning to the carrier that I made last year.

Fairdale Bikes and Roger Skateboards have collaborated on a bike/board set that is way more desirable.

Summer Hill

Yesterday marked 2 years since we moved to Summer Hill. Apparently it was also Go Skateboarding Day, so I went skating at Summer Hill. Witness the devastation: 

 

I filmed and edited this on my iPhone using a free application called VidEditorFree. It's a bit glitchy, but it works fine.

The Ron Chatman Experience of Skateboard Decks

I love skateboards, probably because they were so rare when I first started skating. My pre-teenage life in the small Scottish town of Carnoustie didn't offer much opportunity to visit skate shops, but I could get skate magazines and would spend hours intensely scrutinizing the products, particularly the decks. I would ascribe them characteristics relative to my own skateboarding ability, and convince myself that a certain board would help me skate in a certain way. This is true, but in my mind the link between my board and my own capability remains ridiculously exaggerated.

I was obsessed with the boards of other skaters. I was fascinated by the inscrutable griptape graffiti on the decks of the older guys I'd see in Dundee: Factory Sensibles; DEVO; ELVIS LIVES arranged in a Dogtown-style cross. What did it all mean? My 12-year-old mind did not know, but I loved it all anyway.

Cease and Desist (C&D) is a company that reproduces classic skateboard decks from the late 1980s/early 90s in limited runs. They've reissued a lot of the SMA World Industries and Blind decks from around this time, many of which have graphics by Marc McKee. These decks are so evocative of that era and all that was exciting about it: the move towards double-kick boards as street skating started to realise its potential; the unique shape of every professional skateboarder's pro-model deck, redolent of their skating style; the exclusivity of skating, which was then an entirely niche subculture far removed from the sportified athletic activity it has been wrenched into today. Most of all, it reminds me of a time I was completely wrapped up in skating, when I could learn a new trick every day and ollie so high that my knees would smash into my face.

Some of Marc McKee's graphics for Blind and World Industries in the early 90s

* * * 

I recently bought a C&D reissue of the 1990 SMA World Industries Ron Chatman 'Ron Chatman Experience' deck. I will not skate it; it is to hang upon my wall. The graphic is a pastiche of the Jimi Hendrix Experience 'Axis Bold as Love' album art. I remember boards of this era being coated in a heavy gloss lacquer-varnish that is absent here, but it's otherwise an accurate reproduction. Importantly the hue of the woodstain seems authentic to the era. There is something potent in the contrast of the fluorescent screen-printed cartoonish graphic screaming off the stained wood background. I love this effect, and wish it was more prevalent in skateboards today. I hated it when boards went to full-cover graphics - there must be an economic or practical reason for this, as it is aesthetically inferior.

Cease & Desist 2011 Reissue of the 1990 SMA Ron Chatman 'Ron Chatman Experience' deck

Ron Chatman came to Scotland with John Cardiel, Alan Peterson, The Gonz and Salman Agah in 1992. I went to see them skate at Livingston skatepark. I got so hyped watching the skating that I wanted to skate as well, so I left the crowded skatepark to go roll around a nearby carpark. Some of the visiting pros wanted to escape the park as well, because Alan Peterson and Salman Agah showed up and skated with me. I had an H-Street Dan Peterka deck. Salman Agah skated it and said it felt weird, which was a bit of a diss, but I was stoked anyway.

 * * * 

I still love skateboard decks, and have only just gotten over leaning boards against my bedroom wall in sight of my bed so that they are the last thing I see before I go to sleep (sentimental in my middle years, I now prefer to see my wife). I remain very particular about the decks I skate and I bloody love a nice graphic, which is why I bought one of Alien Workshop's recent Andy Warhol series of decks, a Tyler Bledsoe pro model. I sat it by my fireplace until I was ready to set it up and skate it, but when that time came I decided that I like looking at it so much that I'm now loath to skate it. So I bought another board and it remains by my fireplace, unskated, where I think it will stay. It looks nice, yes?

Alien Workshop Tyler Bledsoe from Andy Warhol series

Briscoe.

It is a new(ish) year, and I have decided to start a new blog under a new name, which is Big Wow. There were a few other blogs called Terminal Moraine (the name of my previous blog), so I opted to remove myself from that crowded marketplace, and Big Wow reflects the diminished expectations I have about creating and sustaining a readership."Big Wow" was a sarcastic phrase used to shatter enthusiasm in the playgrounds of my youth, and it may articulate the sentiment that forms in the mind of the reader as they alight upon another fucking blog.

***

My friend Bart Denaro has a band. They are called Briscoe, and they are great. They have recorded an album, which is not yet released, but my wife's in the band so I have heard it, and I will let you in on a secret - it's brilliant. I love them so much I wrote their name on the griptape of my new board.

Briscoe played their first gig at the Lansdowne Hotel in January, and they smashed it. I was all a-tingle with goosebumps. My objectivity is out of the window with this band, and I can't help but feel excited about them. Early reviews on Triple J Unearthed and some blogs have been very positive, which reassures me that my critical faculties have not been entirely clouded by the affection I have for these guys.

My impartiality is further compromised by my involvement with the music video clip for Briscoe's debut single, Animal. Bart directed Dee, who is the star, and me, who held the camera, and the result should be playable below:

I think it turned out well, and we had a good time making it. Here is an outtake featuring Briscoe bass boss Dave Anderson and Bonnie, who is a dog and a very good girl.

Briscoe are playing Sydney, Canberra and Newcastle to launch the single - the details are here.

Bike Expedition To Gladesville Skatepark

I work rostered shifts covering various news programmes at the ABC. This week I'm on Lateline (if you live in Britain, you can understand this as Australia's Newsnight). The shift starts at 2pm and ends at 10.36pm. There are of course bad things about this, but one good thing is the big chunk of daytime to play in before work. Sometimes I indulge in lengthy peregrinations on my bicycle, like yesterday, when I rode out to the Gladesville/Henley area of northwest Sydney to visit a skateboard park there. 

The journey was around 13kms, which I extended a kilometer by taking a wrong turn, as you can see on this map:

I strapped my board to my bike and was soon on the peaceful canalside paths of Haberfield, but it wasn't long to busy Lyons Road and the grim multi-lane Victoria Road, where a ute-load of passing bogans leaned from their windows to deliver a doppler-distorted roar of abuse. I crossed the Parramatta River by the Gladesville Bridge, where I tried to follow a presumed bike/foot path on the left-hand side as I rode northwards, but had to stop and lift my bike over the barrier onto the treacherous 4-lane road when the path became too narrow to continue. What the hell, Sydney. A lovely blast of salty harbour air punched through the vehicle fumes as I reached the apex of the bridge, and it was not far from there to the skatepark. 

The small park has a V formation that makes good use of the limited space, you can see that on the plans:

There's a couple of interesting obstacles: a jersey barrier:

 ...and a weird origami-style folded metal flatbank:

Then there's the usual - a transitioned quarterpipe, rails, some manny pads and ledges.

It was the first time I'd skated a jersey barrier, and I managed a few wallridey kickturns on it. The metal flatbank was clangy fun. Here I am doing a pop shove-it body varial (sex change?) on it. Yes, I'm wearing a cycling jersey and jeans. You saw it here first.

My New Skateboard Trick

I have invented a rad skateboarding maneuver, which is basically a one-footed ollie (or 'ollie north' if you were born after 1985) with a hand-clap below my extended leg. I predict it will herald a new era of joyous percussive skateboard tricks and I will be accorded the status of a maester gnarchemist (which is an alchemist of gnar). I have naming rights over this banger because I made it up, but I'm not certain what to call it. 

It ought to be a word with 'oly' at the end - "melanchollie" is the best-named trick of skateboarding. Top of my list just now is "Holy Mollie!". The exclamation mark is part of the name. Other suggestions are welcome.

***UPDATE - it is now called the Gosh Gollie!***

Here is a Gosh Gollie! filmed in super slow-motion:

Cammeray Skatepark

I rode my bike to skate at Cammeray a few days ago. I found a good route across Darling Harbour to cut through the CBD, and onto the Kent Street bicycle lanes, before traversing the Harbour Bridge.

wind blows flags on a mast by Sydney Observatory

bike lane across the harbour bridge

Once over the bridge into North Sydney the streets are far less bike-friendly, particularly on the approach to the skatepark, where a triple-carriageway road overpasses a multi-lane highway. The skatepark is bordered by the off-limits grey and green wastelands of the aforementioned roads and a gold course; there is a tennis club on another side. It's the worst kind of austere urban landscape, windswept and unsympathetic. The only people on foot are golfers scowling at the half-acre of fairway the skatepark has deprived them of.

Cammeray skatepark is a plaza-style 'street' park; it has no transition, just flat banks, ledges and rails, which is fine by me. The surface is amazing and the obstacles are fun - the 'whale' thing is a hoot. I would skate there more, but it's further than Waterloo, which is also a nice wee street plaza park.  I stuck some Cammeray footage into this shocking little video of Sydney skateparks that I have cobbled together from iPhone footage. I used Prefab Sprout's King of Rock 'n' Roll because, like my skating, it is the opposite of hardcore. Switch-epic. The music and terrible editing amplify an atmosphere of lameness. I am 34.

 

Three Sydney Skateparks

Skateboards on Bicycles

I like to ride my bike to where I'm skating. Public transport can be a toil, and when driving I tend to become zoned-out (what we would call 'glaikit' in Scotland) or frustrated; on my bike I tend to arrive warmed-up, alert and ready for some FUCKING ACTION. 

But there is the problem of carrying a board on a bike. I have a backpack that I can strap a board to, but backpacks lead to a sweaty back, and my saddle was getting torn up by my griptape scraping aganist it. Bungee pannier straps leave your board flopping around behind ye. So I got my sewing machine, some velcro and denim, and stitched up this thing to strap my skateboard to my pannier rack. It is a fabric wallet that enfolds the deck, with velcro straps attached to hold the board firm across the top of my pannier rack. It works really well.

Skateboard pannier carrier. The central panel is reinforced with a piece of heavyweight cardboard

Skateboard in pannier carrier

Skateboard strapped to bike pannier, like a sexy skateboard spoiler

I only ride short distances to go skate - 20 kms is about as much as I can take before I burn through so much energy that the skate becomes pointless. But here is a great wee film of a human-powered bicycle/skate tour of the length of New Zealand from John Rattray's excellent blog.

Matt Hensley Krooked Deck

If skateboarding starts to get tiresome, two things that can help revitalise it are a new board, and skateboarding more. I got a new deck - a Krooked Matt Hensley guest board. Krooked is Mark Gonzales' company - they make short runs of boards with Gonz graphics - it's naive art, baby! I really like this company, and I am happy to skate on a board bearing Gonz artwork. He is one of my all-time favourite dudes, let alone all-time favourite skaters. I like that this board is not a full-cover base print; the graphic screams off the sweet pink woodstain background.

This deck is a bit bigger than I normally ride (8.25") , and I've paired it with softer wheels (92A Pink P-52 wheels) for rough streets, ditches and parks. But the wheels are still only 52mm, the board isn't so big that you can't flip or ollie it, and the wheels still have a bit of slide to them. It feels different and it's fun to skate - 92A wheels induce a curiously nostalgic muscle-memory of set-ups from the late 1980s. I've been skating a lot since I got it a week or so ago, and am back in love with skating again.

Krooked ad

new wave wheels

Top Graphic - note limited edition numbering

grip it and rip it

gripped it and ripped it

Bondi Skatepark

Bondi is an eastern suburb of Sydney with an extremely popular surf beach. The area was named after the surf community was deeply affected by the death of beloved AC/DC singer Bon Scott in February of 1980. For weeks, traumatised surfers aimlessly wandered the length of their beach lamenting the loss of the talismanic singer, repeating, "Bon die, Bon die, Bon die." These words became associated with the place, and the place became associated with the mighty surfers of Australia courageously staring melanoma in the face and saying "bring it on!"

Bondi is also celebrated as one of the planet's number one places for scoping on hot babes, but as my visit coincides with a biting autumn wind, the beach is very quiet. I have lived in Sydney for over 2 years but this is the first time I have ever been here - my Scottish skin is vampirically susceptible to sunlight, and I prefer quieter beaches, like Vaucluse. I do not like the Baywatch vibe, and I find myself becoming fixated with male body hair when I go to places like this. When did chest-waxing become so prevalent and acceptable? Is it acceptable, or is it every bare-chested beach bunny's dirty little shame, carried out in secret in a locked bathroom with watering eyes and suppressed yelps of pain? I mock their hairless Bieber tits.

I ride my bike there, and it's a fine ride apart from briefly finding myself in the midst of 60km-per-hour traffic in a multi-lane road. The ride is just under 19km. The skatepark overlooks the beach, and it's a bit of a fishbowl - passersby stand and gawp as they lick ice cream and shout the names of tricks learned from playing Tony Hawk Playstation games.

The park is dominated by the bowl. It is a deep scary thing, famously the venue of the annual Bowl-A-Rama contest. I lower myself into the shallow end and do a couple of kickturns, but I will never be a bowl skater. The 'street' course is very tight; there's some ledges and stuff that I can't figure out how to get at. The section with the flat bank hips and bowled-out corners is fun.

Bondi skatepark

Bondi bowl - handrail bg gives scale

I'm dehydrated and have a sore tummy stomach ache, so I ride south to see my beloved wife and the band Dusker recording in Coogee. As I ride, I notice a pile of books at the roadside and find this lovely Faber paperback. It includes a fantastic MR James chiller, and a story by Saki, who I have never read before, but whose former home, marked by a plaque, I used to pass as I walked to a previous job in London.

a spook-takular find

Dusker are recording in Studio Zapata. I rock out to some Bart-beats as I lock my bike to a tree outside. Apparently Sleepy Jackson recorded their album Lovers in here. Have you listened to that lately? What a great record. I'm listening to it now.

Dusker in the studio

On my way home I do not get lost - Sydney, I own you now - and stop for wedding-flavoured blueberry cheesecake and coffee at Chocoreve patisserie in Stanmore, where our wedding cake was made. What the hell, here's a picture of our wedding cake. It was baked blueberry cheesecake on the bottom, alcohol and chocolate cake on the top. Birds made by tha D-double-E. The wee bird me's even got a wee skateboard.

Cake is important

Shoe Review! Emerica "The Situation", Kevin 'Spanky' Long Signature Mid-top

FASHION! Turn to the left! There's Karl Lagerfeld's intern using a shoehorn to poke his neck wrinkles into his shirt collar! And there's Alex Perry superglueing sunglasses to his bald head! Turn to the right! And there's Coco Chanel, Hugo Boss and John Galliano kicking a jew to death! And Dov Charney getting rapey with his employees! Oh, there's Jean-Paul Gaultier, he's really funny and I love that guy. But he's the exception.

Perry - permanently wears sunglasses on head

Lagerfeld - no visible neck wrinkles

Fashion, like skateboarding, is pointless and inhabited by deplorable people. Skateboarding has its trends, and I have followed many of them. During the 'big jeans' years of the early 1990s I would buy 40" jeans and belt them around my 28" waist. Loops of denim would hang from the belt hoops, and the cut-off cuffs would engulf my shoes and trail on the ground, using science's capillary action to suck up dirty, salty water from the Scottish streets. Once I made the mistake of wearing such attire on the sticky wall ride at the funfair. While I was stuck to the wall I slipped down within my voluminous clothing, so that my skinny legs protruded as far as my knees, and my waistband was around my armpits. Centrifugal forces pushed tears into my earholes as I wept with shame. But I love skateboard shoes. I always covet the next pair. Here follows a review of my most recent purchase.


Emerica 'the Situation' shoes are Kevin 'Spanky' Long's pro-model gutties. They are a suede/canvas mid-top with a vulcanised sole and very clean lines - no stitching on the suede toe-cap. And they were just $65 (on offer from an online shop).

The shoes are produced by Emerica. I used to pronounce this 'Ee-merica' but I now understand that it is 'eh-merica'. Think a New Yorker - the kind of New Yorker who pronounces 'coffee' as 'cwaffee' and bangs taxi bonnets while shouting 'I'm walking here!" Imagine that guy saying saying 'America' - that is the pronunciation you wish to achieve. The company was not established by patriotic Americans who like taking E.

the shoes after 1 week

just 3 lace holes, you casual bastards. the toe cap is a bit ripply now

It says 'KSL' down the heel.

They're very light, and run a touch small and narrow. My perfect size is a Supra 8; these 8s are a bit smaller than that, and tight around my toes. I need to wear them laced loose or they pinch at the sides. They're nice to wear without socks, probably because there's not a lot of stitching to chafe your feet. They wore in quickly while skating, and the sole is nice and grippy. The unstitched single-piece toecap makes them excellent to slip in and out of the toe-clips on my bike .

In conclusion, I like them.

Four Wheels In The Ditch

I generally like my work, but there are occasions when spending 37.5 hours a week with TV news can feel like drowning in a dark pond of depressing world affairs into which political animals dump septic bullshit. You try to get out, but a heavy foot holds your head under. Above you, a water-skiing squirrel disturbs the surface, but it is soon obscured by the murk of natural and man-made disasters, ignorance, poverty, and low-minded celebrities, pundits and sportspeople. Gah. This is why it's nice to get away, and where better to spend a weekend than Canberra, AKA Canberrrad, "home of the Australian Story."

Last weekend I went there to visit friends and attend a party. On Saturday, in an alternative universe, the optimal party-version of myself danced the funky charleston as a whooping crowd looked on, and then they all laughed at my stories. In this universe I was not so crass as to pull focus from the lovely people who were celebrating their imminent marriage.

I partied (left)

On previous visits to Canberra I had noticed some drainage ditches that looked very skateable, so on Sunday morning skipped breakfast at Tilly's (and an actual sighting of Peter Garrett devouring nourishment), borrowed Tobi's bike, strapped my board to my bag, and set out in search of the Spence Drains.

I followed a bike path beside a ditch in which a dispiriting trickle of water flowed.  I hoped the Spence ditch would be dry. Canberra is crosshatched by bike paths, and it's refreshing to ride on these after Sydney streets, but there's a feeling of desolation to the place. It's so empty and open, and the landscape is so managed. 





Further on, I found a wider section of drain with sketchy skater-built additions to existing structures . I stopped to skate, but the small stream in the ditch and some broken glass made a run-up difficult. I had no water and the heat was becoming a problem, so I didn't stay long.

sketchy concrete transition

storm drains at Lawson

I pushed on to Spence, making a lengthy diversion to the kind of liquor store normally seen through police cordon tape after an armed robbery, where I bought and consumed nature's finest Pepsi Cola before continuing through the midday heat haze. By the time I arrived at the drains I had rode about 16 kilometers. It was around 35 celsius. There was no shade. The ditch was dry, but the main skating area was covered by a layer of dirt that rendered the benches, quarterpipes and (amazing-looking) hip unskateable.

Spence quarterpipe, hip and dirt

Spence ditch, quarterpipe and dirt

 I'd never skated a drainage ditch before, but had wanted to ever since I saw the Wallows section from Animal Chin. I had visions of long fast downhill runs of multiple tricks and carving, with the possible accompaniment of a funky bongo jam. But the gradient at Spence is minimal, its surface too rough, and my wheels too small and hard to sustain speed. It had also become scorching and was without shade, and I barely had energy to hoist a boneless, which is the least this place deserved. I shot some video before I left, and I can't wait to come back with some bigger wheels and more energy: