The Stainless Steel Rat

"We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society. It was easier in the old days, of course, and society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as old wooden buildings have more rats than concrete buildings. But there are rats in the building now as well. Now that society is all ferrocrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps in the joints. It takes a very smart rat indeed to find these openings. Only a stainless steel rat can be at home in this environment."

(Harry Harrison, 'The Stainless Steel Rat', 1957)

This morning I had seriously wanted to write some kind of acerbic response to Lee Coan's article in the Telegraph Online (normally for newspaper's web presences, putting 'online' after their title is passé and pointless, but for the Telegraph all this modern shit is still pretty novel, confusing and frightening).  But then I decided that a far more positive response -  that would simultaneously refute and devalue everything that article, and its writer, stands for - would be to post some stuff about my friend Ian Rees - skateboarder, adventurer, mystic and weirdo.  Dave Bukowski Bevan has already written a great qualitative piece on this dude in Sidewalk a couple of months' back - but, to my knowledge, he's never had a full interview/'haunts'/'shine on' thing in Sidewalk or Kingpin, despite racking up photos in both over the decades.

 

Its timely to shine a light on Ol' Dutty Donno, not just because he's still shredding hard on all terrains, but because his successful existence sticks a finger up at (and just up) everything that snide article in the Telegraph said about skateboarding 'after a certain age'.   Interestingly, I think if the columnist responsible were to meet Rees - he'd probably come away snorting that he seemed like a "pretty interesting chap."  This is testament to someone who hasn't compromised in living the normal life (avoiding mortgage plus job that you hate), and has maintained conviction in doing this on his own terms - travelling, skating to a ridiculous standard, reading widely, and manufacturing some of the most surreal, perverted actually-did-happen stories known to man.  Myself on the other hand - house, job I hate etc. - if I were to meet Lee Coan, he'd walk away thinking I was some hateful loser, who'd failed at life, even though, in career terms, I've done OK.  But I wouldn't go into this hypothetical meeting with 100% conviction that my path had been a good one - I'd be full on compromise and uncertainty.  And the occasional 1990s rap reference.  Rees has the capacity to charm even the most close-minded of people - to the extent that they'd fail to bat a hypothetical eyelid as he inevitably shared a graphic story about getting one's genitals stuck somewhere terrible.

 

First scan is from a copy of an August 1995 Sidewalk curated by Scotty at 42, Rees' 'First Offence' (pre First Light rename....  didn't RAD magazine used to call their equivalent 'Fresh Meat'?).  This flat bar is behind Showcase cinema in Nottingham, which Jon Weatherall had a contents page crooking - a 50-50 on this is rock hard though, as its so close to the corrugated wall. Try it... think its still there.  Me and a buddy went with the express objective of crooking it a few years ago as a mid-winter Weatherall homage mission.  I succeeded, he failed...  it rarely works that way round. 

 

 

 

 

This is from the August 1997 Sidewalk, back when they did a regular feature called 'twisted' with dudes succeeding at weird, tricky, scary stuff - which Rees excels at.

 

 

Final two photos for this post are two Icon ads - the now defunct Rollersnakes-owned brand of the late-90s-to-mid-2000s, pre-taking on the Unabomber brand.  Icon never quite found their image, but they had a diverse team of mainly midlands-based rippers - including, at various times, Scotty, Smedley, Rees, Culshaw, Derby's own (Franken-)Fletcher, Mark Vasey, Dan Leech, Brad Garner, and a few others.  The first, from May 2005 is at the old Sainsbury's hip in Beeston.  Stacey Lowery tres-flipped this on some tour or other, Joel Curtis back 5.0'd it, and Mark Baines did a tricky front-side noseslide to revert thing.  Rees' front crook is proper amazing - and at the time when the building behind was due to be demolished (sadly along with the banks, hip and bar) - so the run-up and out was even worse than it looks.  Me and my buddies lived around the corner and used to skate here almost every night - and hardly ever touched the pipe/bar.  Second photo is from Livi - in 2006, in a Nottingham bros trip to Scotland, that remains one of the best skate trips of my life - Rees on a mini bus driving, non-stop shredding, weird story telling, transcendental time-keeping tip the whole way

Smudger: The Scotty Underdown Pro Shoe

 

In order to say both "happy New Year" and "happy birthday Scotty", here's a picture saved by Non Stop - clipped from a very early copy of Sidewalk  - that didn't readily fit into any of the loose themes of previous posts.

 

I'd date it at around 1995-96 - and its an ad for the 1990s home-grown skate company STM, based within Rollersnakes, which produced boards, clothes and, more importantly, a zine ('The System') and a VHS video magazine ('VideoLog) in the mid 1990s.  I say "importantly" with reference to the contributions both the zine and video mag made to UK skate history, as 'The System' provided early jumping points for Sidewalk dons Andy Horsley (as photographer/editor/writer) and Ben Powell (who I clearly remember being pictured in one issue, ollieing over one of the benches in Broadmarsh bus station).

 

Anyway, all of the Rollersnakes/STM output of the time was in keeping with the now well-established tradition of royally ripping the piss out of beloved co-conspirators, American skateboard heroes, and cross-over attempting corporate giants alike. 

 

This STM ad combines all three elements.  Dope photo of bonafide street urchin with a long-expired nickname (does anyone still call Scotty 'smudge'?); a piss-take of American pro-shoe ads (with features including "toe venting system, infused with the power of the dark one....  authentic dog shit smell"); and a photo of wrecked pair of Reebok's abortive attempt to copy Airwalks with 'Scotty' written on them in tippex. 

 

Scott rips on a skateboard, and has far smarter trainers these days.

 

 

My first ever skateboard was a Rollersnakes complete with an STM deck (maroon, with a simple Dark Side of the Moon-style pyramid line drawn motif), purchased in the summer of 1996 during a weekend visit to Nottingham, after watching Rob Johnson fly over a full-sized road cone in Market Square.  I decided it was the dopest thing I'd ever seen, and I had to at least give it a try.

 

On the subject of dope things, check this photo of Gaz Jenkins from Sidewalk in the early 2000s conquering the National Watersports Centre steps.  Happy New Year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Non Stop Fitting Room Archive Part 3: The Westside Bar Years

This final post of photos and magazine clippings that have graced the walls of Non Stop's fitting rooms for around a decade turns to a period of particular fond memories for brothers of a certain age.  Many look back on the very late 90s-early 2000s as a God-forsaken era of swishy pants, Muska-beats and Osiris shoes, and the first burst of skateboarding's most recent era of major mainstream popularity with Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater.  In Nottingham, we accept all these things as true and awful but maybe aren't quite as able to erase the bad memories at the risk of losing some good ones. 

 

I really wish I could claim to have spent that entire period worshipping only Keenan, Gino and Kalis and respectfully dressing in the manner of a late-90s east coast rap guy.  But many skaters in Nottingham swallowed Osiris, Shorty's et al in a big way.  Myself and many of my contemporaries were swishy pants-ed to the max.  There were air-tech fabric Osiris t-shirts, Pete Smolik signature 'sag-no-drag' cargo pants, and many of the shoes that have appeared in Jenkem's two collections of the worst skate shoes of all time (nasty DCs..  check; Osiris D3s...  in multiple colourways....  check).

 

But skating in our fair city during this time was amazing, and Non Stop - with their long-time staffers' admitted fondness for all things very baggy, shiny and hip-hop - were in their heyday, with a super good team and a secret weapon just across from their St James' street premises: West Side Bar.  This grubby dive would have been unremarkable, and 6 days of the week it was: providing cheaper-than-average booze to Midlands drinkers to fuel a night's shouting and fighting.  It is no surprise that the place has since been replaced by several different Aussie themed sports-bars solely dedicated to getting meatheads drunk.  But on Thursday nights back then, Non Stop and the city's skateboarding fraternity took over.  This was also the heyday of really good, just-out-of-the-underground UK rap - and not too many years from the golden era of New York rap of skate video fame, so all us (mostly) middle class whiteboys could get our thug on to Nas, Wu Tang, Mobb Deep, Taskforce, Jehst, Roots Manuva, Mud Fam, Brain Tax, Black Star etc. etc. without a hint of irony or risk of being seen by civilians.  I believe our younger bredren do something similar at Phlebas these days... except the girl:dude ratio is significantly more favourable for them than it was for us.  Chicks prefer Clarke's shoes and 5-panel caps to bright yellow t-shirts, Argos bling and track pants every time.

 

Skating was pretty heavy in Notts at the time too - with a concentration of dudes in their prime who pretty much pulled off the hella-baggy/hella-swishy thing and looked kind-of-pretty-good with it: Gaz Jenkins, Sam Culshaw and Craig Smedley to name the obvious ones - certainly the ones who could rock the most jewellery in Westside on a Thursday and not look as ridiculous as the rest of us.  We also had some good-for-the-time spots - especially a huge warehouse with one wall ripped off, that quickly gained ledges and flat banks to accompany a natural kicker (see below), gaps and jump ramps up to huge metal-cased machinery.  The story of that place is for another time - and it got a 'bit too serious' for many, with dudes actually getting down there for 7.00am (Hardflip Lee, where you at?) to train before everyone else turned up.  So here's some photos from Non Stop's archives:

 

 

 

 

Sam Culshaw floats one of his perfect tres flips out of the warehouse natural kicker, in a not-really-too-bad-for-the-time pair of sneakers.  No wonder he's made a living out of trainers since.  This made up the contents spread in Sidewalk.

 

 

A favourite nincompoop, Unabomber's Christopher 'Bambi' Price backlipping a bench (that used to be at Clarendon) from the same kicker as above.  Appeared in Sidewalk in the news section.

 

 

Smedley switch hard-flipping the grass gap at the school just off Lenton/Radford Boulevard - for his Sidewalk interview in December 2000.

 

 

And now for the... errr... lifestyle pics.  You know who you are.

 

 



Non Stop Fitting Room Archive Part 2: The Rock City Skate 'festivals'



Posts over the summer have fallen to a level of infrequency comparable to Frozen in Carbonite, without the admirable quality control.  Too much actual skateboarding in the here-and-now has left little time to post 'owt about way-back-when.  Perhaps the only disadvantage of the amazing summer we've had in the UK.

 

 

Anyway, back to getting some of those photos that have been languishing in the gloom of Non Stop's fitting rooms back into the electronic light of day.  The next three posts relate to some particularly fond memories:  the first two relate to themes of macro importance to skating in Big Notts in the late 90s and early 200s; the third has more personal appeal to a small group of us.
 

The Rock City Skate Festivals - 1997-1999

For two/three years running (depending on whether you count the last one, which kind of got cancelled after being moved to the ice stadium) the owners of hair-metal-sticky-floor teenage drinking venue Rock City took leave of their senses and allowed Non Stop to organise a skate jam/booze-addled party inside the nightclub.  In the first one, the Panic-Blueprint team showed up to promote their first vid, Mixed Media...  and Paul Shier kickflip-50-50'd the edge of the main-stage out of a sketchy kicker.  Sidewalk have already reminisced on how mental these events were...  unlikely to ever happen again given skating is now so much more visible.  The venue literally didn't know what they were letting themselves in for - a couple of hundred nobs took over the place and used it as a massive skatepark, most of them drunk out of their minds.  The midlands were introduced to Pritchard's Welsh genitalia.  I remember learning to ollie by repeatedly jumping onto then off the stage of Disco 2, not really distracted by Feeder trying to dreary their way through middle-of-the-road indie-rock on the same stage at the time.
 

And some dude took a bunch of black-and-white pictures...  no one remembers who.  I checked with Horsley....  it wasn't him or any other Sidewalk-affiliates, so I guess its OK to post them.
[ADDENDUM TO THIS SHIZNITZ: I've just found out that the man behind these photographs is none other than my good buddy and raddest dad Ben Taylor, source of unfailing positivity and owner of a floaty, fruity flow on his plank.  Not sure how he found time to take these snaps - for a photography course, I believe - given I clearly remember him shredding hard throughout the event whilst dressed as Toymachine-era Brian Anderson).

Pics above and below: Lil' Jon Weatherall by the looks of it, performing tres flips to fakie, presumably in the first and second years - unless he went for a t-shirt change.

And the unmistakable form of Craig Smedley smashing a frontside flip - in the era in which he was in his element - white DC Syntaxes, massive jeans, white tees.  He had every flip trick correct, and still has.



The Non Stop fitting room archives: Part 1

Not so long ago, Non Stop Sports, OG Nottingham skate emporium and lunchtime lurking destination of choice, undertook a major refurb - transforming itself from the gloomy den of wonder that typified indie skateshops of  the 1990s to a modern-day airy, white-washed boutique perfect for displaying trainers and 5-panels to entrance time-served skaters and fashion bastards alike.  It is now somewhere my wife is happy to stand with me while I shoot the breeze with Robin, Ant, Elliott et al - when she previously felt a panic-inducing lack of air and sunlight.  Good work brothers.  Go there to get all the good stuff.

From the mid-1990s until the early 2000s, the walls of Non Stop's two fitting rooms were where we shared our photos of skating accomplishments, and where Non Stop staffers dutifully curated the achievements of Nottingham-based heavy-hitters - so badly composed photos of your mate from Beeston could sit comfortably alongside pictures of Gaz Jenkins conquering mighty rails and stairsets.  That the new, improved and updated Non Stop no longer has a place for possibly germ-ridden layers of incremental photo montage is probably no bad thing - both for the respiratory health of Robin and co, but also because the new generation are prolific in sharing their recent achievements via Instagram and Facebook, and through the city's excellent Varial photo magazine.

However, some heavy shit went down in those more innocent, pre-digital times, when paucity of facilities kept us on the streets in our various suburbs every week night and then together in mass in the city centre every Sunday, as comrade D-Bevs so eloquently recalled in the recent 200th edition of Sidewalk.  Although we (and I mean me in particular) photographed this stuff with a level of incompetence that younger, more skilled local photo dudes like Tom Quigley would rightly delete without hesitation - we snapped away with a lot of heart, if not any working knowledge of exposure and shutter speeds.   The walls of Non Stop's fitting rooms thus acted as an archive of our youth and a pretty significant slice of time in Nottingham's skate history.

Ant Orton, long-time Nottingham skate socialite and Non Stop brother number 2, has been kind enough to 1) keep hold of all these old photos; and 2) lend them to me to share on this terrible blog.

So, with no further ado, here is the first batch of photos from them days.  Please bear in mind that many of these have been pinned to a wall for 10-15 years, have been drawn on, stickered over, etc.- they are what they are, old photos from a changing room wall - the skateboard version of damp porn found in bushes - so they are faded, ripped and marked.  They also make me really happy.

Ally Couch - front nosegrind/over-crook on the Sneinton school rail - famed for Rushbrooke's back 5.0 Sidewalk cover.  Photo credits for this one go to Michael Wright, who did and does know how to take a decent photograph

Matt Blanchfield, big popper from a recent poppa - over road cone and curb gap/into little ramp at the close of the 90s.

Paul Langlois (AKA 'Guernsey Paul'...  Nottingham's answer to JB Gillet), 50-50 across the driveway round-rail at Derby Storm, c. 98/99.  He tried this switch as well and dislocated a couple of fingers in the process.

Ally Couch, D-Bevs (in his 101 era Jason Dill/Billy Valdes phase) and Neil Turner - some pub in Lenton, probably around 2000-2002

Norseman

Stoked on this dude's interview in the latest Dank magazine....    an OG's OG, and there's ever fewer of those left these days.

Oslo 5 (Henning Braaten) from Cyclone on Vimeo.

Your virtual imprint is hella weak, son

Between 2006 and 2012, for some unknown reason, I put together a video edit or two a year, which hardly anyone saw...  probably with good reason.  But, despite my lack of Dan Wolfe/French Fred level skills, I still reckon some pretty good, fun, relateable... mainly 'low impact' can't Ollie up 'em/don't Ollie down 'em skating went down in front of my barely competent fisheye.

Whatever.  In the hope of motivating myself and others to get out and skate, travel and film this 'summer' (the jet stream is stuck in much the same place as it was last year, so prospects of a bbq/perfect blue-drenched summer are minimal), here's a few of the 'better' edits.

Winter 2011

An edit to welcome 42 skateshop, and to pull together footage from the late summer/autumn of that wash-out of a year (but not quite the deluge of 2012).  Ignorant to the politics of local commerce, I foolishly jointly dedicated this to both 42 and Non Stop - the two legit skate emporia in Nottingham town - and the latter were royally pissed at me for doing so. Sorry...  I will make it up to y'all with my planned 'changing room photo archive' edit.   You can't deny the dope Taskforce track though.



Summer 2010

Almost three year's ago now we went on a rad expedition around south Yorkshire, north Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire - which was a lot of fun. even if it resulted in x1 broken ankle.  This edit mainly covers that trip, which only seems like yesterday, meaning we should go again...  soon.

Long Eaton Rifles and West Bridgford Daggers 2010

Outputs from a rad year of Manchester and London weekend trips and skating local streets at night and the pre-slightly dodgy refit Lady Bay park in the day.



Scotland and Barcelona 2006

In the summer of 2006, a disorganised minibus full of Nottingham half-wits worked their way up to and through Scotland, hanging with (and being terrified by) such gnarly luminaries as Div Adam and honorary Scott, Paul 'Man' Sylvester.  One of the best trips of my life, preceded by the last time I visited Barcelona un-injured.  Got married that year as well.....   2006 was a good year.  D Bevs and Ad K took some amazing photos of the Scotland mission as well, which are worth unearthing.  Some early Bambi and Golding here, for Unabomber fans.  Promise to self for 2013: edit more skating to Dalek.