Innehållsförteckning för 216 från Slam Skateboarding

Skate photography is a savage beast. Any fool can press a shutter, but capturing a top quality image takes ages to learn and yonks to master. As Slam’s most senior photographer Andrew Mapstone puts it, “The reader and the editor can’t fully appreciate what you have to go through to get the shot.” His point, I think, is that skate photographers put countless hours, resources and effort into the craft. They base their whole lives around it. A lot can prevent a trick – and a good skate photo – from happening at all. There’s the triple threat of irate pedestrians, security guards and cops. Or the possibility of a hardware error – in this issue Wade McLaughlin explains how a mysteriously misfiring flash meant he had to convince Joey…

THE FLARE LAKAI The Lakai team has changed a lot over the past few years. After losing big dogs like Koston, Mariano, Biebel and Johnson, Lakai’s founders, Mike Carroll and Rick Howard, have managed to build up a solid posse of fresh shredders. The film begins with what you might expect from a Lakai production: real trippy camera work that challenges you to try to imagine how they might have filmed it (is the camera mounted inside a basketball?). But The Flare, directed by Federico Vitetta (The Italian One), certainly feels like a new chapter for the company. The hip-hop and slow-mo and humour are still there, but the skateboarding is notably different. Rather than mind-bending ledge skating, Simon Bannerot, Sebo Walker and Jon Sciano kick things off with high-speed…

In the final days of filming for Neihana Tonkin’s Bread & Butter video, James Hall, Scotty Standley and the buttery lensman came up to the Gold Coast for a long weekend to stay with Red [Jesse] and try to get some last minute footage. On the last evening of their stay, we went for a few bevvies at Beach Burrito in Coolangatta. It was starting to look like a big night until our mate Bruv [Kyle Dodd] showed up with photos on his phone of a half-built kidney-shaped concrete house he’d discovered just a few hundred metres away, right on top of Duranbah Headland. It could only be described as a skateboarder’s/photographer’s dream. The remainder of bevvies were skulled and we headed up the hill to see the promised lands…

If you know Beacho, you know how he rolls: at a hundred miles an hour, 24/7. His energy is contagious and he does things when he wants to. On this day, he had just finished work and mentioned that he wanted to go and do this slappy 50-50. My response was, “Who’s filming?” to which he responded with, “No one’s out skating so let’s just film it on your iPhone.” So, we set up the iPhone angle and I started shooting the trick on my Xpan. After a few hairball attempts, he was rolling away, only to find that the iPhone had run out of space. He shrugged his shoulders and said he would do it again. I was thankful to shoot a few more frames.…

On a 40-degree scorching summer’s day, someone had the bright idea of going deep into the California Valley to check out a ledge spot. Lacking any better ideas, Cody Green, Spanky [Kevin Long], Andrew Allen, Josh Pall and I reluctantly piled into my shitty old burnt-out Hyundai Elantra and headed for the desert. People love it out there, but I’ve never understood the appeal of the flat, hot hole of industrial wasteland. I try not to end up out there too often. I did not move to LA to hang out in the Valley. We got to the spot, which was in the carpark of the Social Security Administration, and it was packed. The spot looked pretty good, but as soon as we got out of the car, a security…

Ray sent me some footage earlier in the year of him skating around Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. It was about four minutes long and contained some of the sickest skating I’ve seen an Australian do in a long time. I noticed that in almost all of the footage nobody appeared to be shooting photos, so I asked Ray if he’d be down to reshoot a couple of the tricks that he’d done in Sydney. He drove up from Gerringong soon after and redid this frontside boardslide in a handful of tries. When I quizzed him more about the footage and what he was going to do with it, he told me that his friend from The States had flown out and they went on a road trip together – turns…

This was the start of a perfect day rolling through Sydney city. We had a big crew, no cars and no exact plan, which is almost always a recipe for a bunch of wins and good times. Knowing that Noah Moon is loaded with the perfect amount of ADHD, I pointed this roll-on grind out to him. Without a moment’s hesitation or a thought of warm-up tricks, he was up there risking an incredibly moist board. This was the hype that kicked things off and the boys moved on to kill it all day.…

The first time we saw this set of stairs we were like, Wow, such a perfect looking set of stairs. This is too good to be true. Yes, it was, because the security at this spot is a nightmare. We knew we didn’t have much time before the angry guards would come and swarm, so Ben and the other guys started hitting the set right away. With a completely fresh list of tricks yet to be done, Ben chose to go with a half-Cab flip. He was catching the flip straight away and, sure enough, the security rocked up one by one. We tried to negotiate with them, but these guys were so angry they would never take it. While everyone tried to distract them, Ben kept at it. They…

There was plenty of excitement when this double-set was being built and people were scoping it out through the construction site fence. It just looked so perfect. Then, when the fence came down, we saw the blind bumps at the top and bottom of the set, which obviously made it even bigger than it already was. It went unskated for some time. That was until one weekend when I heard that Dylan had kickflipped it easily and was still in the city. We met up and he said he was keen to do it again for a photo. Back at the double-set, he started launching down the set but took longer to do it the second time around. Dylan was pretty frustrated by the time he landed it again. “Might…

It’s always a treat when you stumble across new spots that you weren’t looking for. This ‘Hubba’ is out the back of some shops in a small town in country Victoria. We stopped for lunch on the way to a school and were moving the car when Corey yelled, “Oi, come ’ere!” We did as he requested and found this chest-high iron fence with a nasty drop on the other side. To be honest, I wasn’t confident anyone could skate it because it was so high, but Corey likes a challenge and seemed to get up there with no worries. Before we knew it, we were back in the van on the way to the original spot with a freshly shot trick already under our belts. Keep your eyes open,…

Cade Wilson-Russ is a powerhouse from NZ – jumping off the sides of buildings by day [cleaning skyscraper windows] and... well, I’m not sure what he gets up to at night. You may recognise Cade from the packaging of the Lucky Charms breakfast cereal. He’s the guy at the end of the rainbow sitting on the pot of gold. According to the New Zealand television channels, he’s rigorously training for the Olympics, but he’s more interested in smashing Chicken Big Macs, rather than training hard on a high protein diet. Here’s Cade and Geoff filming a line in between the pedestrians and the workers from the nearby building site. The tradies were making the big bucks with the Sunday pay, but they seemed to be talking more than working. Between…

Every time I leave Melbourne, I come back and there’s some random new dude that I’ve never seen before who’s joined the crew. LP was one of these. My first sighting of him was a perfect switch flip over a picnic table. We ended up working together on a fruit and veg delivery run and he got stuck with me showing him around the city lugging boxes of limes. I showed him all the skate spots Melbourne CBD has to offer. He’s a laidback dude, but also a real hard worker. Look out for LP.…

“Riley is the most grown-up kid I’ve ever met – he’s like a 25-year-old trapped inside a 15-year-old’s body. He once managed to score backstage passes for Kendrick Lamar and invited me to go with him. It was insane being side-of-stage with him watching Kendrick – how many kids can say they’ve done that? As for his skating, he’s creative and all his tricks are so powerful. He can skate anything. He’s already grown out of kid-style, so I can’t wait to see how much he progresses in the future.” – Chase Jaeger “Riley’s the type of character that only skateboarding attracts. Street smart and comedic, he’s well beyond his years. Skate-wise he’s one of the most impressive well-rounded up-and-comers I’ve ever witnessed. I love him.” – Trent Bonham…

The Copenhagen Open is the most chaotic, unruly, entertaining and downright enjoyable skateboarding event in the world, hands down. It’s best described as a citywide festival of lawless skateboarding where fun and spontaneity prevail over structured competition. I was recently fortunate enough to attend the week of madness and shoot some photos at the CPH Open and it was an experience I’ll never forget. This is what I learned along the way. THE SESSION NEVER ENDS. Even though it has a rough schedule, the entire Open is one week of non-stop skateboarding and partying in the streets of Copenhagen. I realised this on the first night, after waking at 4am to the unmistakable sound of a giant game of SKATE outside the hotel window. You’ll hear and see skaters at…

Think about what our cities are: blocks of concrete where a thriving ecosystem of plants and animals used to exist. Skateboarding is bloody good for us because it brings life back to these concrete jungles we’ve inherited. It’s true that “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” – but at least you can skate it. Finding a carpark in Brisbane city can be a strenuous exercise at times, but after driving around for 10 minutes or so, we managed to pull up at a little spot alongside the Botanical Gardens. I didn’t even have to take two steps away from the passenger seat to see this picture, which caught my eye as I got out of the car. I can’t think of a more perfect person to be…

before I shifted my attention to James and Scotty, who were eyeing off another wall. Sleepy-eyed, the boys managed a couple of other tricks in the 10-minute jam before the police pulled up on the scene. James landed this edgy pivot nosegrab as the cops were yelling at us to get down. I couldn’t pack up my gear and climb down quick enough for the popo’s liking, which added to their vigilance upon this oh-so-heinous crime. One of the cops was like a proper sociopathic American cop that you’d see on TV. He sat us all down on the side of the road, calling us names, lying to us, contradicting himself and threatening to take us all to the station. It seemed like he was talking straight shit, but he…

Sam is an old soul in a young body. The way he holds his own and reacts to life admin on the daily is very rare to see in someone as young as him. He’s always running around doing chores or activities that aren’t related to skating, but at the same time he’s always out skating. It’s as if he lives a 40-hour day; it makes no sense. This rail was just like a skatepark to him. Cool, calm and collected, he back lipped with the breeze. It seemed like the perfect time to pull out the Xpan and capture it.…

Bernie has always been the ‘god of tech’ in New Zealand skateboarding. I remember seeing a tape of him skating in around 1995. He was so good that I was convinced he had to be American. I think the first time I saw him skate in the flesh was at Aotea Square in Auckland a few years later. He switch heelflipped up the long three-stair and my brain melted a little. It’s been the same every time I’ve skated with him since. One of the best things about moving back to Australia has been reconnecting with old friends like Bernie. He and I live close, so it’s pretty easy to skate together, hit the beach, or take our kids to the park on the weekend. Bernie is the same as…

This spot has only popped up in the last year or two, but for Sydney, that’s a relatively long time for such a unique rail to stay completely untouched. Sam isn’t about half measures, and as anyone who knows him will tell you, his skateboarding is years beyond most people his age. Sam was adamant that he had to leave within 30 minutes to get back to the Central Coast for a family dinner, so he went to work. As the half-hour period ticked over, he started to freak out – less, it seemed, over the trick and more for what his parents would think if he was late.…

This spot is hectic. There’s a constant stream of pedestrians coming from every which way, and the automatic doors at the bottom of the landing are only open for a maximum of 30 seconds. On top of all of that, the landing leads into a shopping centre so you really only get about 10 minutes, if you’re lucky, before security comes and gives you the boot. But none of this really seemed to faze Jules. We had Trent [Bonham] on standby keeping the automatic doors open, and then after two tries a nearby janitor tried to move us along. As I attempted to stall the janitor, Jules got a couple of solid attempts in. Realising we weren’t going to budge, the janitor finally managed to get onto security. But it…

Young Henry Lawson here is an interesting character. Between listening to Tee Grizzley, playing the pokies on his iPhone and handing out Brazzers logins to the boys, he’s been skating some pretty big stuff. Not bad for a bloke who’s only four-feet tall. It had been a while in between photos for Charles and me, but I’m glad we linked up for this one shot in the Blue Mountains: an 18-stair Smith grind – scumtash and all – with a glory ride all the way down the pathway.…

If you have a close look at Rob’s face, you may see it’s a little bit bloated. That’s because, two weeks before we shot this photo, Rob took a board to the cheek that sliced him open and left him looking like something out of a horror movie. He literally screamed, “I just broke my face,” which quickly led to everyone jumping in the van and speeding to hospital. After a couple of stitches and a hell of a headache, he left the hospital clutching an icepack and looking like the Elephant Man. We decided to hit another spot for the rest of the boys to skate, but then – out of nowhere – Rob’s throat started to swell up and I had to rush him back to hospital. Turns…

I’ve always wondered what percentage of architects are (or were) skateboarders. A lot of new buildings that are popping up these days have elements that appear to be built-to-skate. Or at least, they seem to be put there to tempt us. This curvy wall in Melbourne city has been eye-balled by many a skater, though it was yet to be attempted. It’s tight and has a big crack at the beginning of the transition so you need a sheet of tin to cover it. On this night, Jezza came prepared with the tin, but before even stepping on his board the security came out and told us to leave. We asked for a few goes but the stubborn, cranky bloke wouldn’t budge. A few minutes after he left, we went…

Run us through your day today. What went down? Well, I woke up at 7.30am and skated to school, which was pretty fun – I get to bomb a hill on my way to and from school every day. Then, when I got home, Billy Lukins picked me up and we drove to Waterloo, which is like an hour from home. How was your roll? We skated there for a bit, but I snapped my board. Gabbers was there and I heard some kid say to him, “You have my favourite Hall of Meat” [laughs]. That made my day. Then Gabbers, Billy, Dave Chami, Leigh Bolton and I went night skating. I tried a drop down 50-50 in Moore Park and got scorpioned. Now I’m home talking to you and…

Idon’t often get this deep into things, but now seems like the right time. The idea of art – the way people talk about it, scrutinise it and critique it – is insane. It’s usually overkill and people talk a lot of rubbish. Art chatter often sounds like made-up stuff. But in a way, I get it. People talk like this because they love it so much. Skateboarders are the same. Like artists and art critics, we examine and critique every little detail. Skateboarding is an art form. The board is the canvas, moving and changing with every trick performed on it. The style, location and performance are all just different mediums creating one piece, one image. This bullshit about categorising skateboarding as a sport is just a way of…

Slam and I go back a long way. My first interaction with the mag was as a little skate rat, religiously buying every issue to see what was going on in the world of Aussie skateboarding. Back then, there were no iPhones and no Instagram, so skate mags and VHS tapes were the most direct link to the skate world. These were what you might call ‘the good old days’. At 18, my family moved to Auckland, New Zealand, and Slam became our desperate link to what was going on back home. We had to go to a special newsagent to find the mag in Auckland city, and every time my brother Anthony and I got our hands on the latest issue we would get more and more homesick. In…

Scotty Standley is hands-down one of my favourite Aussie skaters to watch and he has been for probably the past 10 years. He’s got a mad fluent style, can skate anything and, like a fine wine, he’s only getting better and more refined with age. Having lived in the skateboarding metropolis of Melbourne for the past five years, a few people scratched their heads when Scotty decided to move back to his hometown of Ballina, a slow-paced country/coastal town in Northern NSW. I can give you a few reasons: as well as being one of Australia’s best skateboarders, Scotty is a keen angler and seeks interest and fulfilment outside of skateboarding. It’s healthy for your soul to not put all your eggs in one basket. Also, Melbourne winters suck for…

With this camera, because it’s a rangefinder, what you see isn’t what you get. The lens is shifted to the right by an inch and everything always looks different. I’ve learnt this the hard way, thinking photos were going to turn out like I saw through the viewfinder, but then they don’t. When Simon was doing this backside noseblunt slide, I was aiming the camera to the left, hoping that it was going to come out as I was picturing it in my head. It worked out, and two Simons ended up being better than one.…

I’ve been skating with Jae a lot since I became the adidas TM. It’s been a running joke from him that all he can shoot is sequences because he loves manual pads and getting tech. We’re working on an imaginary book called Jae’s Book of Sequence where we’re going to house them all. While we were on a trip to Adelaide recently, I shot a still of him and he joked that it could be the cover of Book of Sequence. The next still was to run as the back cover and then the following as the pull-out poster. All jokes and self-deprecation aside, I’ve decided that we’re giving up on Book of Sequence and it’ll now be titled Jae’s Book of Banging Stills. This heelflip won’t be in it,…

While preparing to write this caption I got stuck in a Dennis Durrant YouTube vortex. Goddamn he has a back catalogue to be proud of. From It’s Time to Part and Parcel to Away Days, he’s kept it all killer, no filler, and stayed cool, calm and collected each step of the way. I’ve been around him a few times on that journey – I watched him destroy Shenzhen before it became a thing; switch crook the Martin Place Shotgun Rail; and put the final nail in the San Francisco metal ledges on the Embarcadero. You could expect him to be slowing down a bit by now, but no, he’s just hitting his stride. Here’s a frontside flip on an unusually tall wheelchair ramp that had previously only copped an…

Where did Elijah go? Rumour has it that he left the country to raise a family. Or maybe he’s just taking a break from his skitz Melbourne lifestyle. Anyone who’s tried to skate the State Library wall during the day would probably want to leave the country as well. We knew it was going to be hectic, but not this hectic. Either way, he’ll be back. Until then, we’ll be waiting for his footage in Geoff Campbell’s next VX masterpiece.…

Rowan is the definition of motivated. When he casually mentions something he’d like to try at a spot, you can bet that if you wind up there he’ll either be rolling or crawling away. We’d been at this crusty double-set the day before and I couldn’t shake the image of a no comply. Rowan couldn’t do them so he threw me a sympathy beanplant. Next morning, he learnt no complys down the Waterloo six and asked to go straight back to the double. An hour and a broken board later, Rowan was rolling out of a no comply that looked like he’d been doing them for years.…

To shoot or not to shoot? Nah? Yeah? But the filmer is in the shot. The fact of the matter is that I wanted to shoot it so bad, but Jon [Fitzgerald] wanted to film it, too. It’s often a battle between the filmer and the photographer to see who gets the best position. This time Jon won, however I didn’t put up much of a fight. I shot it anyway and I am stoked this pic is getting run within these pages. In the end, it looked cool having Jon in the shot, and when you see the footage, the rolling angle won’t disappoint. Then again, every trick Jimmy does looks amazing because he does it all to perfection, and I am a sucker for a ‘surfer flip’. I…

I’ve been shooting with Chima for as long as I can remember. He’s one of my all-time favourite skaters and one of my favourites to shoot with, too. Chima and I have spent a lot of time together over the years. When we were in the US, we held it together for each other, both missing home a lot. We were skating, living and hanging out all the time, which brought a familiarity to back home. It was something special after being abroad for so long. Times have changed, and Chima and I have both moved back to Oz; he’s in Sydney and I’m in Melbourne. We’re still working together with Vans, which is great. I get so excited when he comes to Melbourne – I’m like a little skate…

When Harry first took me to this spot, I’ll admit it, I was sceptical. I couldn’t picture how anything on the electrical box would make a good photo. It seemed sketchy, difficult to skate and – perhaps my imagination was lacking – I just couldn’t see how a photo could do it justice. I don’t even think Harry skated it the first or second time we went there. It wasn’t until this day, after seeing his first attempt at the wallride, that I realised the best trick for it was to go right over the electrical box altogether. I still don’t think this shot captures the steepness of the hill, but at least we can see the height and power as Harry smashes into that wall, rides down it and…

Erik Cole is a bloke who doesn’t really dig a phone call while he’s working on the worksite. So, we had to catch him with an early morning FaceTime call to tell him about this backyard pool in the depths of prime Sydney real estate. As Zoolz [George Kousoulis] explained the curves of the “good tranny”, Erik’s eyes lit up and he decided to ditch work and skate it. The tiles had barely been scratched when we arrived, so a solid session went down that day and this was definitely the highlight. I’m guessing by the time you read this, this pool will be dead and buried.…

Noah is one of the most talented skateboarders to come through the Sydney scene in a while. His ability to dismantle spots in the blink of an eye is becoming well storied, although, it’s not always a walk in the park for this prodigious 15-year-old. But, Noah’s ability to remain calm and focused while throwing himself at a kinked handrail for hours on end is even more impressive to me. This particular handrail has bullied skaters for years – plenty have tried; very few have conquered – and it took Noah the better part of two hours to roll away from this Smith grind. As the daylight faded, it was a late-session Maccas run that got him over the line, with an emergency double cheeseburger delivery proving to be just…

Caeylen likes charging into any battle head on. No procrastinating; he has no time for messing around. When he wants to do something, he goes for it. Maybe this comes from his strong opinions, or his I-don’t-give-a-fuck mentality. He’ll get tricks before the camera is even out, but he doesn’t care one bit. I once saw him skate through a construction site in high vis, only to be stopped by a brick wall. Somehow he didn’t get his head knocked in. Caeylen also likes to keep it Melbourne, riding for and creating graphics for local board brand Hoddle. He first landed this Habitat grind before the cameras even came out.…

This big-pants wearing prick is taking my ‘small kicker guy’ nickname away from me. In a single clip, he popped three grates on one city block. These ‘young’ guys are always ripping off the old blokes. It’s interesting to see Corey’s quirky mind work in person. Sometimes he drives himself a little insane. This gap to lip in Dandenong was ruined by the local safe officers trying to kick us out, and a crazy long boarder that did a hit and run with a car. His board was run over and he peaced out before we knew what had happened. After we copped the blame for the so-called damage, Corey, undeterred, came through with this ollie up to gap to front lip.…