Innehållsförteckning för 225 Summer 2019 från Slam Skateboarding

During the making of this edition, a drought was broken. A dry spell of full-length skate films has ended. In the introduction to the previous edition of Slam, I had a bit of a whinge about the decline of full-length movies from skate companies. It is true, skateboarding videos are becoming more scarce with footage dripping into single sections, or for the goddamn ’Gram. However, following the premiere of Pass ~ Port’s Kitsch, we were treated to a handful of new flicks from established companies like Toy Machine, Zero, Primitive and Baker. Videos from board brands are what keeps them relevant in this ridiculously diluted market. Many of these companies are going to the trouble of securing music rights from some of the world’s best bands, prompting us to watch…

Zero’s newest video release delivers a familiar vibe that stays true to the roots of what made the brand an industry leader throughout the late-’90s and the noughties. It has a homespun feel – like being sucked through a skull-shaped portal to the heyday of heavy rail chomping stunts, quick-cut editing, with a classic rock and punk soundtrack, while captured on the trusty VX1000. The Zero crew are certainly not trying to reinvent the wheel of skate videos. They deliver hard-out hammers the best way they know how. Dane Burman and Gabriel Summers close the film in sweet succession and do Australia bloody proud. I caught up with the two heroes of Zero for a chat about the heavy slog and body-breaking effort they went through for Zero’s eighth full-length…

Rowan Davis is from a place called Medowie, which is a little town 40-minutes north of Newcastle that has a population of less than 10,000. It takes four-hours by public transport to commute from Medowie to Sydney – a journey that Rowan knows all too well. He’s spent a fair chunk of the past few years on buses, ferries and trains, trekking to Sydney and Newcastle to film clips that you might have seen in Medley (2018), Disc (2019) or his own VX production, Twenty Three Hundred (2019). Having recently turned 18 and gotten his license, these days, Rowan can enjoy the luxury of driving to the spots that he wants to skate. When I catch up with Rowan on the phone, he’s at his day job, painting houses, but…

Meth-Head on a Mountain Bike This guy could be anywhere between 20 and 45 years old. It’s hard to tell though, because the chemicals have taken their toll. Like Agent Smith in The Matrix, he always seems to be wearing the same thing, regardless of where in Australia you see him. Straddling his suspiciously new bike, he’s usually rocking a Ford or Holden cap, trackies and trainers from the early 2000s, and a faded Jim Beam or Jack Daniels shirt. He doesn’t stick around for long. If you’re at a park, he’ll do a few laps, taking the weirdest lines, before launching out of a flat bank but getting nowhere near as high as he thought he would. At a spot, he’ll pull a mono that disappoints everyone who sees…

Johnno ‘Spliff Cheese’ Halchenko is a bit of a mysterious character. Not too many people had heard of him until late-2018, when he dropped a solo part on YouTube that featured some pretty burly tricks. Between a late front shove down Melbourne’s William Street double set; a long 50-50 on a double kinked handrail; and a heelflip boardslide down the Flinders Street rail, it was quite an entrance. He followed it up by closing out a homie video called Loitering with a 19-stair ollie in central Melbourne that many have scoped, but none had conquered. And now you’re looking at his first print feature interview and photo spread, shot by Andrew Mapstone. Digging up info on a young dude like Johnno is always fun. His filmer, Charles Sheehan, sent through…

You live in Adelaide these days, but you’re originally from New Zealand. Where in NZ did you grow up? I come from Hastings, a small town on the North Island of New Zealand. It’s pretty sunny, clean and green. For a small town, lots of talent comes from there. Luke Browne is from there and he has run Daylight Skateboards over the past decade. I used to watch him skate as a kid, along with people like Pat Pollock and Mitchell House, who were on the Daylight team. There was a skate shop called King Pin, and Matt Circuitt used to work there. He sold me my first proper skateboard. Your most recent video part was called Do the Mahi and your Insta name has the same phrase in it.…

As far as professional skate teams go, it doesn’t get much more eclectic and inclusive than Santa Cruz. There’s the OG slash-man, Eric Dressen, frontside grinding his way through middle age and around the world. Then there’s the effortless ledge-techery and flippery of Tom Asta, silent but deadly. Fresh off the international competition circuit is Maurio McCoy, American Olympic contender and Street League superstar. Throw in Jake Wooten, a Texan tranny-shredder with ADD-levels of energy; and Henry Gartland, his van buddy who chomps rails and spoonfuls of Vegemite with naïve optimism, and you have a solid portion of the international SC team. This unlikely bunch recently found themselves in Sydney for a Lush Productions tour called, ’Til The End. Accompanying these international heavy hitters were “the Santa Cruz Oz red-headed…