http://www.volcom.com/news/article.asp?articleID=5004

Conhuir and Denis Lynn – Belfast, circa 2003

I actually think this was the end of summer 2002, but I could be wrong.

Rye from Sidewalk just put together this clip while we were editing the iPath Big Push (Conhuir was a guest on their team) from a found folder on my hard drive of old footage from a trip to Belfast with Wig Worland.

Soletech/A4/Pete Turvey sorted us both with tickets and the plan was for Conhuir to shoot an interview (Which he did). The Dennis Lynn footage was a bonus. That kid was hilarious on that trip.
Randomly, I ended up around a camp fire in Ireland a couple of years back while pitching a tent on a beach and there was this sarcastic Irish kid opposite who kept the crowd entertained - after about an hour I put two and two together and it was Dennis.
So stoked on that.

...anyway - Check it out. Bernie Rae is in a support role too as he had a rolled ankle that weekend. He was also our host, putting us up for the duration and taking us to the local drinking spots.


MPORA Action Sports >>


Oh, the Stalin stuff was an extra from a Créme (Urgh) Skateboards trip to Prague. Dirty lens and a slightly sketchy line meant it never got used.
I think that aside from this, most of the footage ended up in Unabombers "Up The Rebels" (2004). The Switch FS Muska Flip was in Puzzle back when it was VHS. That came from a random session with Raoul Williamson from Perth. He got denied trying to Nollie Cab the stairs. It would have been gnarly.

Dave Watson in New Zealand

...just found this while cruising the information superhighway.
Rad style. As ever.

Flip UK Demo footage

Here's a nice little find.
This is the Flip demo footage from the Stokeplaza Flip Demo in July 2008.

I filmed all of the long lens stuff and the last trick, with Ewan running things on the Death Lens.

Rad tour.

PS. Ewan - You still owe me a bayo ring.

Michael Sieben's Internet Shack: Season One

This show is so, so good.

Episode 1



Episode 2



Episode 3



Episode 4



Episode 5



Episode 6



Episode 7



Episode 8



Episode 9



Episode 10



Bolts!

Ground Breaking

Shredding?

Enjoi

Guess who's bloggin' now?

http://bensbadboyblog.tumblr.com/

Sporadic updates #1.

No posts for a while. Hectic times...
Moved into the new office and out of the living room. Moved boxes and boxes of work stuff and drum kits and merch to the new lock up after storing a bunch of Totimoshi's stuff after their last tour.
The house is beginning to free up. Sadly, the arm ain't quite fixed enough to skate yet.

I setup the Blues Man Rock Out! at the Volcom London store. Click the link to check the article.
Daniels voice is amazing - can't wait to see them with Karma to Burn next week.

I also got a little Aaron Sweeney 10 Tricks clip filmed for Kingpin. Sadly, his name is still spelt wrong on Mpora, so you'll have a hard time finding it.
Check it out below - each line took about three tries.


10 Tricks - Aaron Sweeny >>

We also had the SEED event in Poland Street. Tons of fun. A Volcom party unlike any other. Canoe killed it.
...as did Mark and I.

Exhibit #1

Exhibit #2

...I even found some of my artwork on the Vans site.

Scotland in a couple of weeks. I cannae wait.
See what I did there?

There Is Safety In Numbers

An exhibition exploring the idea of community, collective living and shared environments.

PRIVATE VIEW: 18^TH MARCH 6:00-9:00PM

EXHIBITION DATES: 19^TH MARCH TO 2ND APRIL

VENUE:

The Visual Arts Centre

Frances Bardsley School

Brentwood Road

Romford

Essex

RM1 2RR

TRANSPORT:

Buses from Romford Railway station 294, 193, 165

CONTACT:

Deborah Holland 01708 447368 ext 238 djh_fbs@yahoo.co.uk

Bomo Jaja. Sidewalk #1

Pierre Andre Interview - Sidewalk #128

Below is the unedited text for a Pierre Andre interview I did back in March 2007 for Sidewalk #128. Click on the images to read the proper version (I'm actually not sure if there are any differences!).

That intro is true, by the way - its not just there to please the advertisers. He seemed like a rad guy and it was a shame that I had to do it under one of those horrible 'in and out' PR interview days.
Oh - and the GVR we were talking about never happened as the people who run Prissick Plaza decided that no one will ever run events there*. Smart, eh?

*At least, that's what the deal seems to be these days.

I’ve just left this interview with thoughts racing around my head like crazy. I got myself prepared for this interview as I would for anyone. Badly. En route I started to worry. I mean, this wasn’t a First Light – This was Pierre Andre Senizergues; President and CEO of Soletech; the umbrella company for Etnies, éS, Emerica and Altamont among others. He’s business. Serious business. Right?
The strange thing is, when I got to my destination and through the cloud of PR people – I sat down with someone unexpected – someone who clearly still has his heart in skateboarding. It’s definitely not from the same angle of someone trying to sell themselves or an image of ‘still clued up’. He doesn’t need to research his market or learn his industry – He was, is and always will be firmly grounded as part of the skateboarding. I guess years of pro-skateboarding and the knowledge of the beginnings of that doesn’t just dry up - as I naively expected – when you take on a corporate role. I think this became even more apparent after the interview. Someone had cancelled their meeting with him which resulted in the Dictaphone being shut off and us talking for a good half an hour more. We talked about Street Machine skate shop in Paris, Mischief Skate shop over here as well as the good scenes, parks, spots pretty much in the same way I’d talk to my mates, mid-session whilst once again trying to re-learn some ledge trick every kid in town has on lock. The funniest thing of all is that I never actually asked him if he still skates. That doesn’t matter. He is a skateboarder.

What brings you over to the UK?
I come to the UK every year. I travel around the world and try to promote skateboarding and my company. So, I am in the UK today then on to Amsterdam then New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo. All this over the next week and a half. I try to make myself available to communicate to everyone – so that we can use my company to elevate the game with skateboarding.
The UK is very important to me. I came here a lot for competitions so I have good memories. Crystal Palace, Farnborough, Manchester and London of course. My mum was an English teacher. She was telling me about England when I was a kid and then she sent me when I was twelve years old to learn English.

To Farnborough?
Ha ha. Farnborough was the first. There was a park. The first thing I learnt was how to order a one way ticket to get to London from the suburb I was in.
I like the vibe here. It is always moving. It’s creative.

So, what are your ideas for elevating the game as you just stated, then?
Our main office is in Lake Forest, California. There were few places to skate. We tried to create a platform. A place for kids to skate. A model. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. The idea of the platform was not to just bring skaters in but to create a scene itself. I went to see the city officials with an idea to create a joint venture between the government and my company working hand in hand. The public sector and the private sector working together. This is the first time this has happened like this. The skateboarders involvement isn’t just in being at the park – They run the skatepark. They make it happen – Working together. It goes beyond the act of skateboarding, too. We organise competitions. We have movie premieres, bands, local bands primarily. It gives them a platform, too. Instead of playing in the garage we bring them into the park so that they can play there. The kids can bring this whole personal experience to the park. I needed the committee and government to understand that skateboarding is not just about skating. It is a 24 hour thing. You think about it all the time – the music, the art. Your scene. It is so creative. It defies normal ‘sport’ conventions and should be respected for that.

I think this is where London is just starting to catch up to the North. We have several parks such as Burnley, The Works, etc. who run amazing events, have bands playing and their scene is so strong. London has been park deprived and so things just seem so much more scattered here. It’s changing, though.
One thing for this is that there are always more skateboarders inside cities. London, Los Angeles, Tokyo – All the same. Always, though, you find the skateparks outside the cities. I know it is because of land value and people believe it will make all this noise, but there are still football fields, and their activity makes as much noise.
So, Lake Forest skatepark is in the city; it is free to skate. We have over 100,000 skaters visit per year. To me, this is just the way it should be everywhere. Luckily in California, because of the weather our skatepark is outside and good all year – but they all should be. I grew up skating underground garages in the winter; being a rat.
You play your part in society – you pay your taxes or if you are younger, your parents do. In the UK there are around a million skateboarders, so I don’t see why there can’t be good support here. It gets you off the couch and outside. Kids like to play Playstation. It’s cool. They also need somewhere to go outside. That why I think skateboarding is good; for the events. Kids need to defy convention. You never know what each skateboarder will do. It’s different all the time and there is just so much going on around you in a park or competition. They need to be able to run with that. That is the thing which I can see attracting young kids.

I think that is why War of the Roses or the Crossfire Jam work so well. A whole load of best trick competitions and everyone just making noise – I also guess that is why GvR works so well. I mean, one stance versus another? It’s a fun idea – Actually, it’s a stupid idea. For that reason it encompasses what skateboarding is about - for me at least. Just a riot.
Oh, I think it is good to be stupid. You have to be spontaneous. Skateboarding is constantly moving.
The idea of the GvR is just about having fun. Just to get everyone together and give them a goal for the weekend. Not like team sports such as football or basketball. Skateboarding is more individual. At the same time, skateboarders are always skating together, sessioning something. This is how the team thing works.
We use it to bring more awareness for us. For people to understand skateboarding better. We have good media support. We get a lot of TV coverage. It is good to show what we do – it then makes it harder for people to believe that we should be getting tickets for skating in the street as the can now understand skateboarding. Goofy or Regular also gives those who don’t know about skateboarding something to pick up on. They can understand stance – and this could make it a little easier for them to try it out.

I think that has always been street skating’s problem in the eyes of the general public. Vert skating is easy for people who don’t care about skateboarding to understand. Big jump after big jump. You don’t need to know the intricacies of flips or switch, or whatever, to appreciate it. Ideas like this make it more approachable.
I also think this helps bring pressure on the city to cater for street skaters. We make it like a fair – a celebration of skateboarding. People can see the companies, the pro’s – They can see what we are actually doing on the streets. We also set up a little skatepark for the kids over the weekend. Otherwise they get frustrated at seeing all of this skateboarding but not being able to skate. We bring music in. Last year the Beastie Boys played. That was cool. They have been interacting with skaters for so long. It turned into a big skateboard fiesta. Three days. We run the event so that we have a bunch of people skating at the same time, too – not just one guy. The pressure for just one person on their own – especially if they miss tricks – it’s not good. With a few people skating it just means there is so much more to watch. Like a major frenzy going on. Waah! There is so much energy. It ends up as more of a session, and people push themselves when that happens. We’ve been surprised watching over the last three years – feeling the excitement growing as the hours go by. You feel it step to the next level as the sessions get more intense.

…and now you’ve decided to ship the idea to the UK?
Yeah. The first one in Europe. Our event is being run in September at the Prissick Plaza. We just felt like giving something to the UK. It felt like it made sense and we’d like to help where you are taking skateboarding. Something major for Etnies was our roots in the UK. The first team we sponsored – Pig City – they were from Brighton. Also, where we did 20th anniversary – We did it in Paris and also Lake Forest – but we didn’t do something in the UK. That kind of sucked. I felt I had to do something in the UK.

Are the facilities we now have such as Dundee, Prissick and Stoke making the UK more noticeable?
Yeah. When we do something like this it needs to be on a certain level – Although, I do hope that GvR isn’t just limited to big events like this. I’d like to see skate shops or local contests run with this format.

Kind of like the Game of Skate?
Yeah, yeah.

So something else I want to ask you about is your environmental issues and how you felt the need to run with it.
Okay, well I remember when I was skating in Paris, growing up. I starting thinking about how I couldn’t breathe so good while I was skating as I skated by the freeway. With skating, too, I was interacting with the environment, so it made me really start to think about this all the time especially for the last ten years. So, I started to try to understand it and learn. It was then that I realised that there was things which we could do. I mean, I always felt there was nothing I could do about it before. Car use gas, burning gas pollutes. What kind of good could I do? It would create little impact. Then, I realised that through my company I can do this. I can talk about it. I can try to make people aware. I realised the company could change to do something about it as we had people there who were passionate about it. For most companies it is about money. Public companies are about investment, shareholders, how much they are making. This doesn’t help to make a more environmentally friendly approach even if the consumer is asking for it.
So, I started to think that maybe – like the skatepark in Lake Forest – we could try to create a model for other companies to do this too, to help people feel better, breathe better, skate better. This all has to really be a long term thing.
The one thing I really think is that I don’t want to really, really push it. Skateboarders don’t want to be told do this or do that. We don’t push the advertising for it. It is more an education thing and Etnies is about pushing skateboarding. Skateboarding is number one. We make an environmentally friendly product line – we do a range called the SEED project. This is how we show what we are doing – We know it doesn’t sell that much but that isn’t the point – It is to show awareness. To educate. I think there are a lot of things which people may not be aware of though. I mean, everybody needs to change the processes of everything we do as in thirty years it will be impossible to reverse this. In fifty years it will have catastrophic results. This is what Professor Stephen Hawking is talking about a lot right now. So, we are changing the processes used in making product. Right now 80% of our products use water based glues. Not petroleum based. All of the paper, the boxes – everything is recycled. We also have our headquarters which is powered by solar energy. The building itself is recycled limestone. We have to regenerate. We want to create no carbon dioxide.

So, in effect trying to leave no carbon footprint?

This is it. Skateboarding has smaller companies, though – unlike surf companies so this is harder for them to do. At the other end, the larger companies turn into public companies. As I said – They have to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. This is how they work. Whereas for me, I own the company privately. I’m passionate about skateboarding. I’m passionate about living and feeling good. I can make the decisions and the people I work with want this.

Do you see ever taking this further to take the education directly to the skateboarders?

For me, this would take a long time to set up and do. I have to run the company. I have hired the first ever environmental manager for my company. I have been doing his job for 8 years and it finally become too much. So, I found a guy – young and was into skateboarding. I got him to study Soletech – To work with the company, educate the company. Right now he is going through all of our offices and factories to figure out how we can reduce the carbon footprint for all of our processes and how long it will take for us to leave no footprint at all. It is a lot of work and it will take a lot of time as it is a big company with a lot going on. I’ve spent a lot of time in China over the last five years to educate the people in our factory as to where we need to head. It is enduring as it is a totally different level.
I don’t want to tell skateboarders what to do. I’d rather just do it and if it inspires then that is good. I’m glad skateboarders want to talk about it and I think if we can just share the information and change the way the company works – create a platform just like the park – then we can do our part.

Shit Arm

On the mend.

2nd June 2004

This little clip consists of someone I skated with most days in Oz, yet filmed very little of. Resident number one at the citypark in Melbourne.
Richard Flude, Nugget (Shane O'Niell) and Brenton were there every single day. Those three are some of the most consistent skaters I've ever seen.

Anyway - I think this little clip would have come from a visit to Globe HQ (as this hip was built in their car park) on a shoe blag mission by Brenton.
As I mentioned - he's one of those guys who can do everything on a skateboard. I tried to get him into filming stuff, but I just think he felt a bit too self concious to be pushing himself.
This would have been one of those 'break in' attempts to get him into the swing of it. A simple spot and a bunch of tricks he can fire off first shot which'll look fun thrown together.

I guess it didn't work.

Brenton Wierauch - Hardcore Offices, Melbourne from Kevin Parrott on Vimeo.

July 27th-28th 2004

The broken arm (fourteen weeks and counting) has made me slack on all things keyboard related of late. One finger typing sucks. Doing it for a laugh on a blog doesn't come in on the list of things I'm up for currently. Sort of.

Anyhow, after an operation which has seen my arm once again wrapped to the point of immobility and - just to add to the excitement - a hip which has had bone marrow removed to help said arm, I've been put in the strange position of having to take proper time off of work.

Fun, but only partially as these painkillers have a knack of leaving you staring into space for hours at a time.

Anyhow, during this time out I managed to get around to sending my damaged fisheye in for repair. No filming anyway for the above reasons - but now I have time on my hands I can finally get on with the things you only ever worry about seconds before you fall to sleep.

One of which for me is thirteen years of footage for which a good chunk only resides on DV tapes.
Under the previous regime, once the footage appeared in a video it was deleted from the hard drive if no more fun was to be had with it.

Except now, all these years later tapes are deteriorating and memories are fading.

I've begun a recapturing project which will hopefully see me regrab hundreds of random lines and ticklers from forgotten faces, child-doubles of now more well known names and those that just never went and aged at all.

First up - a little trip to Prague.
We got in on the 27th July 2004 - the night before the Mystic Cup Qualifiers. Rodney and I shared a room kinda near the park. We got straight down there for a little session and the first half of the clip below was filmed as we had arranged to meet a few Antipodean pals for a shred.

What's really amusing is that this was a Creme Skateboards trip. Rod was (is?) pro for them. I believe the rest of the team at that point was Manuel Magreitter and Dominic Dietrich. Maybe there was an Am or two. Who knows?

Notice however how only Rodney appears in the park section of the clip.
Powers that be over at Creme HQ were so clued up on skateboarding that they managed to send us out to meet up with Manu and Domi at Mystic with a plan to us useing some downtime from the contest to go and film.

Nice idea, if a little limiting.

However, Creme negated to let Manu or Domi know. They also failed in letting us know that they were at Mystic with Quiksilver who would be using downtime to look after the lads in only a way which Quik would - boat parties and other general shit that has fuck all to do with skateboarding.

So, once all three Creme bods had finished their runs, I tried to get the action underway only to find out all the above.
Rod retracted to a purely support role from there on in, pissed at the donuts who sent him there - yet excited to party and roll with old Aussie mates. He was good value on the sidelines.

I'm stoked the Aussies were there. I'd hung out with Morgan and Jake a lot. Jake would come and give us a shout when he was down in Melbourne way back when he was scared of anything even booze related. This was right around the timme Jake got on Volcom (He's wearing SMP gear here as well as Etnies) and probably not long after Blind.
We both went to grab some food one afternoon in Prague and Jake refused to let me pay as "I'd looked out for him when he was younger, so he felt he should return the favour as he's now doing okay".
That's fairly fucking rad.
That line of Jakes at the end was something he did in two part with the upmost of ease - yet come camera time, it became a nightmare.
As he says at the end (His last of probably 70 tries) - "I really don't care".
Fair play.

Morgan had asked me to film a video park with him while I was in Australia, which we'd finished a few months previous to this - so it was nice to see him post deadline in a neutral country for the good times.

Jon Lorcan was someone I'd kinda met a few times. He's a rad guy - always grinning. I think this was right around the time he became the editor for Slam magazine.
Actually, after this trip he usked me to come film a tour video for Slam. They'd be going to Lisbon with a good crew but sadly I was elsewhere over their dates.
Ciaran O' Conner ended up putting that one together for them. One of Ross' tricks from Savoir Faire ended up getting filmed on that trip by Ciaran. It's probably the oldest thing in that video!

On street only duties is Ben Gauci starring in an unfinished line. Blind in one eye. A painter and decorator who had a moment as Dark Star TM. He's fairly excited about the world.
I've not heard from him in forever.
Richard Flude, Steve Gourley and Ben were the first people to take me street skating in Australia. They just grabbed me out of the citypark, threw me in the van and took me on their mission. For that, I eternally hold them in the highest regard.

I think a bit of this ended up in Morgan's Liquid Pixel World Lap. I can see Morgan getting doubles on the final Jake line...

Prague 27-28 July 2004 from Kevin Parrott on Vimeo.

Gale Force Tactics

I've been following these for a little while now - Ex-pat Dom Henry and his pals have been creating a kind of New Zealand version of Hold Tight London and it is rad.

Check it out: