A sale and a skate

That was quite a weekend. For starters, on Friday I got drunk, then on Saturday I had a jeans sale at The Good Copy shop. It looks like Tess is worried there are no customers in this shot, but it was actually quite busy. She just wanted to run outside, to her probable death.

Quite a few of the usual suspects showed, and I was ready for them with delicious Astra lagers.

Luckily, Rosie was on hand to wrangle Tess, make entertaining quips and help people with their jeans selections while I wondered around bleary-eyed, repeatedly saying hello to people.

The shop was the perfect spot for slack-peddling and we did a steady trade all day, with lots of friendly visitors including Romy, Caroline and Jared.

There's Tess again, standing on Sez's Moroccan rug, staring wistfully outside but having a good time nonetheless.

Three wise men.

Amanda and Corey. Corey started walking on Friday! He was showing off with an interesting sidestep crabwalk thing in the shop.

Jason was pointing at a squinty Andrew

A mid-anecdotal Prior

Wendy and Ben came along for the bargains and stayed for my incredible scattered banter.

Charlie giving us his classic ThreeThousand street gallery pose

Fast forward almost 24 hours and I was having a skate with a group of handsome shirtless men in a schoolyard. This is Yared.

Ivan and a well chiselled back tail. I have to exercise more.

It was the best skate I've had in perhaps years, thanks to no scooters and the fact that I finally learned this trick - the backside smith grind. Tom was so impressed he took this lovely photo.

You want another angle? Alright then. I am incredibly proud of learning this trick and I don't care what you say. It's been haunting me for decades!

Cheers Tom

Nick Yared - an incredible skateboarder and a lovely chap.

Alex is the coolest real estate agent I know. Much cooler than Blake from The Bachelor anyway.

Lachie and I skated the ledge for what seemed like hours after everyone else stopped.

It really was a great time out there.

Fitzroy bowl, you're alright.

A large proportion of my weekend skating time is taken up by organising, picking people up and driving out to skateparks in far-flung suburbs. It can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a massive pain in the ass. Sorry, arse. I prefer ass. Anyway, today was such a lovely day and I didn't even want to think about all that stuff. So I went to Fitzroy bowl.

It's a famous place that has always been just down the road from where I live, in a sweet park. But I hardly go there, and neither does anyone else I know. It's something to do with the 'bowly' vibe, which seems to involve a lot of drinking and yelling and living up to the obnoxious perception a lot of people have of skaters. But today we went there and it was just wonderful.

Dave has been skating there a bit lately and has been working on some very pleasurable lines. One of the locals - Paddy - was also there, skating the bowl in a way that was actually quite remarkable and beautiful. He told me a few tricks to the place and it helped me to enjoy it more too. At one point, all of us were skating around in a big circle, taking turns flying out of the bowl, laughing maniacally, even Sam. I should've taken a photo of Sam skating, actually, but I was too busy skating myself. 

  

Here's Riley doing a lovely frontside grind. It was such a nice vibe. Nice to be in the middle of everything for a change, rather than out somewhere weird and unfamiliar. Nice to be around other people hanging out in the park, enjoying the sunshine. It was nice that Tess could run around and do her own thing, even if she insisted on barking at people when they were in the middle of tricks. And noone was drunk or yelling stuff. It was cool! 

An interesting afternoon at Fawkner skatepark

I went to Fawkner skatepark on Saturday with Dave, Joey and Chris. We go there a lot, and sometimes I get sick of it, but it really is one of the best parks in Melbourne. It's very smooth, very well designed and very located near a lovely Turkish bakery run by a friendly man and his little boy. Plus it's rarely crowded, so yes, we go there a lot.

Joey has been on a bit of a skating jag at the moment. I'm loving it.

Chris is also back on board after a hiatus, and is also a fantastic chap to skate with. Coincidentally, both Chris and Joey are very, very beardy at the moment.

Look at them together here, happy as clams.

A few minutes after we got there, a young skater came up and introduced himself to me. Turns out he was the poor guy who sprained his ankle a month or so ago when we were at Rose Hill, who I had gone to get a bag of ice for. "I hope this doesn't mean one of us will fall over now," I said, looking around desperately for a piece of wood to touch, before remembering my board. Five minutes later, I slipped out and whacked the back of my head so hard I saw stars. After telling everyone I was alright, I sat down for a while and sipped at my can of coke, feeling glum. My friends would stop by occasionally, excited and out of breath, to ask me if I wanted to leave. But I was bound to the session, which had only just got underway. I decided to take some photos instead. 

This synchronised one was tricky because Dave had to do two laps of the park to prepare for his smith grind, while Joey just had to drop in from behind where the photo was taken. He kept on stuffing up the timing and while it was quite amusing, it made it difficult.

We moved over to the 'gimp hole' and Dave did an air over it. This was the first one he landed, and you might notice that I stuffed up the timing of the shot - but maybe that's because the air was so tiny.

That's more like it! As if by magic, a throng of admirers gathered when Dave started taking things seriously. But instead of a witty string of observations, the crowd were treated to a bail. Oh well, maybe next time.

Then it was time for the witty observations. What an afternoon I documented! My head's alright.

Riley in Richmond

We went skating today on the east side of town. The first spot was a ghetto spot in Richmond - basically a big hole in the ground you have to climb down on a rickety ladder. It was chockers with character alright. 'The one thing this place needs,' I said to anyone who would listen, 'is a few more shopping trolleys.'

Here's James grinding up and over the, quite frankly, terrifying rail. Tess was hanging out on the top level with me, jumping around in the long grass like a rabbit.

Everyone did great tricks, don't worry about that. But I had my eye on Riley Payne.

He was doing these bastards. I just think they looked terrific.

After that we skated Camberwell park. I hadn't been there since it was resurfaced - it's a lot better now. Everyone had a ball there, but I couldn't quite get into the swing of things. Then we went to a ridiculously tiny park nearby and did synchronised jumps off the top of a quarter pipe, which I affectionately nicknamed 'the quart'.

The office

I went for a quick rainy day skate yesterday at Dion's amazing office/warehouse/playground/skatepark. Because I fell on my hip last weekend I wasn't feeling too brave (I'm so full of excuses these days!) so I took some photographs.

Tim was standing on the ramp doing some yoga stretches, which didn't hep much. I'm only joking! He was creating a makeshift extension to the 'Mega ramp'.

Sam's expression speaks a thousand words. It was a little bit sketchy and difficult. That was eight words, I suppose.

Jason was scooting some nice switch crooks on the Mega's main wall.

And he did some frontside rocks on the extension. If you're trying to imagine the vibe, don't forget to add constant barking from Tess. She thought we were going for a walk in the park, so was quite rightfully pissed off.

Geelong noseslide madness

We went to Geelong on Sunday. First we went to Norlane, a great skatepark in a rough area. Why does it always work that way? They have a curb on top of a bank there that will melt your heart, a darling little quarter pipe and a few other things I don't use but imagine are great. Every skatepark should be made in the image of Norlane - minus the burnouts and southern cross tattoos.

Then we went to the skatepark on the waterfront. It's quite the feature of the area, complete with sculptural things you can't actually skate, basketball areas and aimless tourists wandering through. There was even a chap doing some aggressive 'parkour' street dancing. It was hilarious - Sam kept on getting in his way. He would stand there waiting to do a run through the entire park, getting frustrated with Sam, who was just standing there thinking about something. I loved it. But apart from that, the park is a bit too abrupt and collisiony for my liking, apart from that one ledge. Towards the end of the session, Tree started trying to noseslide this ridiculous stomach-high ledge.

Eventually, he got it. It was difficult to do the trick justice photo-wise (the ledge is far higher than it looks in this shot- I can't believe people skate it!), but I enjoyed playing around with angles. After he landed the trick, a young skater appeared out of the shadows with his camera to show Tree his angle. It was way better than mine. Anyway, on the way home we stopped at a pub shaped like a sphinx, then Corio bowl, before talking politics all the way home.

High five about to go down in the background.

The eyes of love

A couple of weekends ago I went skating in the city with Tom and his friends - the Low Tide Boys. It's a great gang name, isn't it? It was a fun skate. I had a new board, trucks and wheels (the infamous 'Christmas set-up') so I started filming while I got used to it. This is the footage from that day, interspersed with footage of Tess trying to get her ball out of a little pool at the beach. I heard the song 'Through the eyes of love' on the drive home from Rendelsham last weekend. We were listening to a local radio station with a hilarious German announcer who said things like 'they have a sausage special on Tuesdays, but today is Monday.' There was a long pause, then he said, 'That was an advertisement.' Anyway he played this song and I enjoyed it.

update

Last week, our friend Middsy premiered his new skate film Two Up. It took him and the two skaters (Alex Campbell and Nick Boserio) two years to make and also pretty much finished off Middsy's back in the process. Quite an accomplishment. The video is very impressive and will be online later today I believe. The premiere was held in a warehouse in Collingwood, accompanied by Raph burgers, free beer and seats with Nike cushions on them. A guy from Nike gave a weird speech about athletes which made me even more appreciative of what Middsy has done with his job there.

Part of what he does is involve talented friends in things. Riley drew the coins that feature in the film. They made beer holders with Riley's pictures on there and these funny things you could stick your head in.

Yep. Riley also has a show of his work in the city at Chapter House Lane gallery - highly recommended.

It was Penny's birthday on the weekend so she went to karaoke. You'll never see Penny so happy as when she is doing karaoke - it really is her happy place. I believe this is her and Stuart doing a rendition of Islands in the Stream.

Everyone has secret karaoke prowess. I find the whole thing terrifying! Joe showed up and was all like, 'nah, I don't really do karaoke,' then he jumped up and performed a Biggie Smalls song word for word without looking at the screen. Secret prowess.

Achievements update: the new issue of Slam magazine is out, featuring another ramble from me, this time on the subject of cruiser boards. It also features a picture of Morgan riding his cruiser board, so I'm pretty stoked on it.

Also we've been working hard on launching The Good Copy. This is a film we made which doesn't really tell you what we're doing, but at least we're doing it! More to come soon.