Innehållsförteckning för 219 från Slam Skateboarding

The young blood of Australian skateboarding are crushing spots all over the country. It’s probable that by now, you’ve feasted your bulging eyeballs on Medley, Nike’s latest Am flick. It’s a testament to the new gen in this country and the skateboarders featured went hell for leather! In a climate where we bore watching far too many half-arsed Insta clips, it was refreshing to see an Australian full-lengther with individual parts and minimal montages – a good ol’ fashioned skate vid. And it’s not just the mob from Medley laying it down. There’s something in the air – my inbox is loaded with quality images of fresh faces stepping it up. Young photographers and filmers are also emerging to capture their mates throwing carcass. In this edition, we welcome some…

MEDLEY NIKE SB If you had any doubts about the future of Australian skateboarding, look no further than Medley, the latest production from Nike SB, which shines a light on many of the country’s most talented up-and-coming skateboarders. Under the watchful eye of veteran videographer Chris Middlebrook, filming duties were handed largely to Brendan Gardoll and Geoff Campbell, predominately covering the Sydney and Melbourne scenes respectively. With 16 skaters featured, standouts are plenty; Rowan Davis’ powerful opening part is immediately backed up by the ever-productive Jack O’Grady; Melbourne’s Ben Lawrie and Jason Rainbird strike a chord with memorable trick and spot selections; Hayley Wilson proves she’s one of the most talented skateboarders in the country; and Jarrad Carlin adds some Kiwi flavour before Charles Robertson, Rob Pace, Sam Sutton and…

“I’m going to hate this”, Sam Sutton tells me as we sit down to conduct this interview. I’m already well aware. I’ve known Sam since he was seven or eight, having grown up one suburb from his hometown of Forresters Beach on the Central Coast of NSW. It’s a sleepy surf town. Since joining the Nike SB Australia team last August, Sam has spent two stints in the US, filmed his first proper video part, competed in the Tampa Am, been invited to Olympic skate camps, and shot the entire interview you’re about to flick through. With that in mind, it’s difficult to believe that he’s still just 17 years old. A bright future awaits, and Sam will continue to do most of his talking on a skateboard. Enjoy this…

“Hayley is an all-round super rad human! I had the pleasure of skating with her the last time she was in The States. She’s all good vibes and she rips!” – Vanessa Torres “Hayley Wilson is the real deal. She has all the qualities of a great skateboarder: A good push, a flowing style, a solid kicky and she can skate everything. She’s incredibly humble, a hard worker and super appreciative of everything that comes her way. “Over the past six months, she packed up and left her home in the small country town of Mansfield so she could be in Melbourne to skate more. In this time she got sponsored by Baker, Modus, and Indy, left school and started a scholarship at the VIS. She won the Australian Nationals…

As you’re probably well aware, Patrick O’Dell is the guy behind Epicly Later’d, which started as a humble video blog and has become arguably the best TV show about skateboarding in existence. As an interviewer and a documentarian, O’Dell’s strength is that he never shies away from the tough questions. Between asking Ali Boulala about the death of Shane Cross, telling the story of John Cardiel’s spinal injury, and bringing Ed Templeton to tears, O’Dell has managed to document a solid chunk of skateboarding’s history with glaring honesty and intimacy. O’Dell’s approach is generally to visit pro skaters in their homes, follow them ’round a bit and interview a whole score of their friends. The editing is generally pretty bare: no music, no slow mo, and no lifestyle shots. The…

For such a talented skateboarder, it’s perplexing that Sean Ryan has been cruising under the radar for this long. As the following pages attest, the dude’s got natural ability, a unique bag of tricks and a remarkably hefty pop. He’s also insanely modest, super well-spoken and more than half blind. As it happens, Sean lost one of his eyes in a horrific surfing accident at the age of 13. But, as he told me in the interview, “I’ve never skated with two eyes, so I don’t really know what it’s like.” Over a sketchy Skype call with a slight delay, Sean shared all the gory details of his eye explosion, explained his move from his hometown of Newy to the big smoke of Sydney, and educated me on the subject…

It’s half past three at the Morrison Manor on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. We sit overlooking the rolling rainforest hills of the Tallebudgera Valley in the Gold Coast Hinterland. Mitch, who’s rocking full adi attire, adorned in gold chains and sporting yellowlense glasses, hands me a beer. He walks to the beat of his own drum – that beat being rap. We soak in the scenery and discuss life on the acreage, his hotted-up Beamers, hooning, a ban from skating in short shorts, and some heavy shit like his near-death experience and a suicide at the skatepark. At only 23 years of age, Mitch has many a tale to tell. My first memories of you were when you were a little dude skating Mattocks skate park. You’d often be sipping…

Filming a full-length video is not easy on anyone involved, but I think that’s why we do them. They take a lot of hard work, lots of hours of driving, skating, planning, organising, great days, crap days, serious injuries, broken boards, security, cops, no spots, no tricks, too rainy, too hot – the list goes on but I won’t. Medley follows on from the other Nike SB Australia video projects that I had produced. Pretty much the entire team had been involved in a video project by this stage and next I wanted to make a video, not a clip, that had parts the way we used to make them. This one was to focus on the younger up-and-comers. It started initially with five guys: Jason Rainbird, Nicholas Andrewes, Jarrad…

In the United States, the period between Thanksgiving – which is in November – and Christmas is typically a slow time of year. The whole country seems to come to a grinding halt as everyone digests turkey and braces for Christmas dinner. So what better time to escape to a warmer climate, stack clips and have fun with your bros? Last December, adidas sent Miles Silvas, Diego Nájera, Felipe Gustavo, Frankie Spears and Zach Saraceno to our fair shores – with only young Zach having been here before and none of them ever to Brisbane. Brissy was selected on account of it being the less rinsed of the major cities and the stomping ground of one Mr. Dennis Durrant. Unfortunately, Dennis suffered a twisted ankle early on, so he played…

You’re a little younger than you look. Is that a common misconception? What is your birth date? I was born on the 30th of November 2001, so I’m 16 years old. Most people think I’m older than I am. Probably because I hang out with older dudes. Your diet is pretty typical for a kid your age. You’re always eating lollies, chocolate or sugary foods. Yeah, speaking of which, I’m actually devouring a box of chocolate covered Oreos at the moment. They’re pretty beast. Would you be happy to survive on confectionary and rubbish or do you need a healthy hit of fruit and veg at times? Junk food is usually my go-to meal, mostly because it’s cheap, but even if healthy food was cheap, I’d still be snackin’ on…