Bike Expedition To Gladesville Skatepark

I work rostered shifts covering various news programmes at the ABC. This week I'm on Lateline (if you live in Britain, you can understand this as Australia's Newsnight). The shift starts at 2pm and ends at 10.36pm. There are of course bad things about this, but one good thing is the big chunk of daytime to play in before work. Sometimes I indulge in lengthy peregrinations on my bicycle, like yesterday, when I rode out to the Gladesville/Henley area of northwest Sydney to visit a skateboard park there. 

The journey was around 13kms, which I extended a kilometer by taking a wrong turn, as you can see on this map:

I strapped my board to my bike and was soon on the peaceful canalside paths of Haberfield, but it wasn't long to busy Lyons Road and the grim multi-lane Victoria Road, where a ute-load of passing bogans leaned from their windows to deliver a doppler-distorted roar of abuse. I crossed the Parramatta River by the Gladesville Bridge, where I tried to follow a presumed bike/foot path on the left-hand side as I rode northwards, but had to stop and lift my bike over the barrier onto the treacherous 4-lane road when the path became too narrow to continue. What the hell, Sydney. A lovely blast of salty harbour air punched through the vehicle fumes as I reached the apex of the bridge, and it was not far from there to the skatepark. 

The small park has a 'V' formation that makes good use of the limited space, you can see that on the plans:

There's a couple of interesting obstacles: a jersey barrier:

 ...and a weird origami-style folded metal flatbank:

Then there's the usual - a transitioned quarterpipe, rails, some manny pads and ledges.

It was the first time I'd skated a jersey barrier, and I managed a few wallridey kickturns on it. The metal flatbank was clangy fun. Here I am doing a pop shove-it body varial (sex change?) on it. Yes, I'm wearing a cycling jersey and jeans. You saw it here first.

My New Skateboard Trick

I have invented a rad skateboarding maneuver, which is basically a one-footed ollie (or 'ollie north' if you were born after 1985) with a hand-clap below my extended leg. I predict it will herald a new era of joyous percussive skateboard tricks and I will be accorded the status of a maester gnarchemist (which is an alchemist of gnar). I have naming rights over this banger because I made it up, but I'm not certain what to call it. 

It ought to be a word with 'oly' at the end - "melanchollie" is the best-named trick of skateboarding. Top of my list just now is "Holy Mollie!". The exclamation mark is part of the name. Other suggestions are welcome.

***UPDATE - it is now called the Gosh Gollie!***

Here is a Gosh Gollie! filmed in super slow-motion:

Cammeray Skatepark

I rode my bike to skate at Cammeray a few days ago. I found a good route across Darling Harbour to cut through the CBD, and onto the Kent Street bicycle lanes, before traversing the Harbour Bridge.

wind blows flags on a mast by Sydney Observatory

bike lane across the harbour bridge

Once over the bridge into North Sydney the streets are far less bike-friendly, particularly on the approach to the skatepark, where a triple-carriageway road overpasses a multi-lane highway. The skatepark is bordered by the off-limits grey and green wastelands of the aforementioned roads and a gold course; there is a tennis club on another side. It's the worst kind of austere urban landscape, windswept and unsympathetic. The only people on foot are golfers scowling at the half-acre of fairway the skatepark has deprived them of.

Cammeray skatepark is a plaza-style 'street' park; it has no transition, just flat banks, ledges and rails, which is fine by me. The surface is amazing and the obstacles are fun - the 'whale' thing is a hoot. I would skate there more, but it's further than Waterloo, which is also a nice wee street plaza park.  I stuck some Cammeray footage into this shocking little video of Sydney skateparks that I have cobbled together from iPhone footage. I used Prefab Sprout's King of Rock 'n' Roll because, like my skating, it is the opposite of hardcore. Switch-epic. The music and terrible editing amplify an atmosphere of lameness. I am 34.

 

Three Sydney Skateparks

Skateboards on Bicycles

I like to ride my bike to where I'm skating. Public transport can be a toil, and when driving I tend to become zoned-out (what we would call 'glaikit' in Scotland) or frustrated; on my bike I tend to arrive warmed-up, alert and ready for some FUCKING ACTION. 

But there is the problem of carrying a board on a bike. I have a backpack that I can strap a board to, but it sucks for reasons that I can't be arsed getting into here. Bungee cords leave your board flopping around behind ye. So I got my sewing machine, some velcro and denim, and stitched up this thing to strap my skateboard to my pannier rack. It is a fabric wallet that enfolds the deck as a lover's hand encloses a hot spicy boner and has velcro straps attached, to hold the board firm across the top of my pannier rack. It works really well and I think it's rad, but I don't know what to call it. I have called it "skateboard pannier carrier" here, but other suggestions are welcome. Skateboard cock wallet?

Skateboard pannier carrier. The central panel is reinforced with a piece of heavyweight cardboard

Skateboard in pannier carrier

Skateboard strapped to bike pannier, like a sexy skateboard spoiler

I only ride short distances to go skate - 20 kms is about as much as I can take before I burn through so much energy that the skate becomes pointless. But here is a great wee film of a human-powered bicycle/skate tour of the length of New Zealand from John Rattray's excellent blog.

Matt Hensley Krooked Deck

If skateboarding starts to get tiresome, two things that can help revitalise it are a new board, and skateboarding more. I got a new deck - a Krooked Matt Hensley guest board. Krooked is Mark Gonzales' company - they make short runs of boards with Gonz graphics - it's naive art, baby! I really like this company, and I am happy to skate on a board bearing Gonz artwork. He is one of my all-time favourite dudes, let alone all-time favourite skaters. I like that this board is not a full-cover base print; the graphic screams off the sweet pink woodstain background.

This deck is a bit bigger than I normally ride (8.25") , and I've paired it with softer wheels (92A Pink P-52 wheels) for rough streets, ditches and parks. But the wheels are still only 52mm, the board isn't so big that you can't flip or ollie it, and the wheels still have a bit of slide to them. It feels different and it's fun to skate - 92A wheels induce a curiously nostalgic muscle-memory of set-ups from the late 1980s. I've been skating a lot since I got it a week or so ago, and am back in love with skating again.

Krooked ad

new wave wheels

Top Graphic - note limited edition numbering

grip it and rip it

gripped it and ripped it

Bondi Skatepark

Bondi is an eastern suburb of Sydney with an extremely popular surf beach. The area was named after the surf community was deeply affected by the death of beloved AC/DC singer Bon Scott in February of 1980. For weeks, traumatised surfers aimlessly wandered the length of their beach lamenting the loss of the talismanic singer, repeating, "Bon die, Bon die, Bon die." These words became associated with the place, and the place became associated with the mighty surfers of Australia courageously staring melanoma in the face and saying "bring it on!"

Bondi is also celebrated as one of the planet's number one places for scoping on hot babes, but as my visit coincides with a biting autumn wind, the beach is very quiet. I have lived in Sydney for over 2 years but this is the first time I have ever been here - my Scottish skin is vampirically susceptible to sunlight, and I prefer quieter beaches, like Vaucluse. I do not like the Baywatch vibe, and I find myself becoming fixated with male body hair when I go to places like this. When did chest-waxing become so prevalent and acceptable? Is it acceptable, or is it every bare-chested beach bunny's dirty little shame, carried out in secret in a locked bathroom with watering eyes and suppressed yelps of pain? I mock their hairless Bieber tits.

I ride my bike there, and it's a fine ride apart from briefly finding myself in the midst of 60km-per-hour traffic in a multi-lane road. The ride is just under 19km. The skatepark overlooks the beach, and it's a bit of a fishbowl - passersby stand and gawp as they lick ice cream and shout the names of tricks learned from playing Tony Hawk Playstation games.

The park is dominated by the bowl. It is a deep scary thing, famously the venue of the annual Bowl-A-Rama contest. I lower myself into the shallow end and do a couple of kickturns, but I will never be a bowl skater. The 'street' course is very tight; there's some ledges and stuff that I can't figure out how to get at. The section with the flat bank hips and bowled-out corners is fun.

Bondi skatepark

Bondi bowl - handrail bg gives scale

I'm dehydrated and have a sore tummy stomach ache, so I ride south to see my beloved wife and the band Dusker recording in Coogee. As I ride, I notice a pile of books at the roadside and find this lovely Faber paperback. It includes a fantastic MR James chiller, and a story by Saki, who I have never read before, but whose former home, marked by a plaque, I used to pass as I walked to a previous job in London.

a spook-takular find

Dusker are recording in Studio Zapata. I rock out to some Bart-beats as I lock my bike to a tree outside. Apparently Sleepy Jackson recorded their album Lovers in here. Have you listened to that lately? What a great record. I'm listening to it now.

Dusker in the studio

On my way home I do not get lost - Sydney, I own you now - and stop for wedding-flavoured blueberry cheesecake and coffee at Chocoreve patisserie in Stanmore, where our wedding cake was made. What the hell, here's a picture of our wedding cake. It was baked blueberry cheesecake on the bottom, alcohol and chocolate cake on the top. Birds made by tha D-double-E. The wee bird me's even got a wee skateboard.

Cake is important

Shoe Review! Emerica "The Situation", Kevin 'Spanky' Long Signature Mid-top

FASHION! Turn to the left! There's Karl Lagerfeld's intern using a shoehorn to poke his neck wrinkles into his shirt collar! And there's Alex Perry superglueing sunglasses to his bald head! Turn to the right! And there's Coco Chanel, Hugo Boss and John Galliano kicking a jew to death! And Dov Charney getting rapey with his employees! Oh, there's Jean-Paul Gaultier, he's really funny and I love that guy. But he's the exception.

Perry - permanently wears sunglasses on head

Lagerfeld - no visible neck wrinkles

Fashion, like skateboarding, is pointless and inhabited by deplorable people. Skateboarding has its trends, and I have followed many of them. During the 'big jeans' years of the early 1990s I would buy 40" jeans and belt them around my 28" waist. Loops of denim would hang from the belt hoops, and the cut-off cuffs would engulf my shoes and trail on the ground, using science's capillary action to suck up dirty, salty water from the Scottish streets. Once I made the mistake of wearing such attire on the sticky wall ride at the funfair. While I was stuck to the wall I slipped down within my voluminous clothing, so that my skinny legs protruded as far as my knees, and my waistband was around my armpits. Centrifugal forces pushed tears into my earholes as I wept with shame. But I love skateboard shoes. I always covet the next pair. Here follows a review of my most recent purchase.


Emerica 'the Situation' shoes are Kevin 'Spanky' Long's pro-model gutties. They are a suede/canvas mid-top with a vulcanised sole and very clean lines - no stitching on the suede toe-cap. And they were just $65 (on offer from an online shop).

The shoes are produced by Emerica. I used to pronounce this 'Ee-merica' but I now understand that it is 'eh-merica'. Think a New Yorker - the kind of New Yorker who pronounces 'coffee' as 'cwaffee' and bangs taxi bonnets while shouting 'I'm walking here!" Imagine that guy saying saying 'America' - that is the pronunciation you wish to achieve. The company was not established by patriotic Americans who like taking E.

the shoes after 1 week

just 3 lace holes, you casual bastards. the toe cap is a bit ripply now

It says 'KSL' down the heel.

They're very light, and run a touch small and narrow. My perfect size is a Supra 8; these 8s are a bit smaller than that, and tight around my toes. I need to wear them laced loose or they pinch at the sides. They're nice to wear without socks, probably because there's not a lot of stitching to chafe your feet. They wore in quickly while skating, and the sole is nice and grippy. The unstitched single-piece toecap makes them excellent to slip in and out of the toe-clips on my bike .

In conclusion, I like them.

Four Wheels In The Ditch

I generally like my work, but there are occasions when spending 37.5 hours a week with TV news can feel like drowning in a dark pond of depressing world affairs into which political animals dump septic bullshit. You try to get out, but a heavy foot holds your head under. Above you, a water-skiing squirrel disturbs the surface, but it is soon obscured by the murk of natural and man-made disasters, ignorance, poverty, and low-minded celebrities, pundits and sportspeople. Gah. This is why it's nice to get away, and where better to spend a weekend than Canberra, AKA Canberrrad, "home of the Australian Story."

Last weekend I went there to visit friends and attend a party. On Saturday, in an alternative universe, the optimal party-version of myself danced the funky charleston as a whooping crowd looked on, and then they all laughed at my stories. In this universe I was not so crass as to pull focus from the lovely people who were celebrating their imminent marriage.

I partied (left)

On previous visits to Canberra I had noticed some drainage ditches that looked very skateable, so on Sunday morning skipped breakfast at Tilly's (and an actual sighting of Peter Garrett devouring nourishment), borrowed Tobi's bike, strapped my board to my bag, and set out in search of the Spence Drains.

I followed a bike path beside a ditch in which a dispiriting trickle of water flowed.  I hoped the Spence ditch would be dry. Canberra is crosshatched by bike paths, and it's refreshing to ride on these after Sydney streets, but there's a feeling of desolation to the place. It's so empty and open, and the landscape is so managed. 





Further on, I found a wider section of drain with sketchy skater-built additions to existing structures . I stopped to skate, but the small stream in the ditch and some broken glass made a run-up difficult. I had no water and the heat was becoming a problem, so I didn't stay long.

sketchy concrete transition

storm drains at Lawson

I pushed on to Spence, making a lengthy diversion to the kind of liquor store normally seen through police cordon tape after an armed robbery, where I bought and consumed nature's finest Pepsi Cola before continuing through the midday heat haze. By the time I arrived at the drains I had rode about 16 kilometers. It was around 35 celsius. There was no shade. The ditch was dry, but the main skating area was covered by a layer of dirt that rendered the benches, quarterpipes and (amazing-looking) hip unskateable.

Spence quarterpipe, hip and dirt

Spence ditch, quarterpipe and dirt

 I'd never skated a drainage ditch before, but had wanted to ever since I saw the Wallows section from Animal Chin. I had visions of long fast downhill runs of multiple tricks and carving, with the possible accompaniment of a funky bongo jam. But the gradient at Spence is minimal, its surface too rough, and my wheels too small and hard to sustain speed. It had also become scorching and was without shade, and I barely had energy to hoist a boneless, which is the least this place deserved. I shot some video before I left, and I can't wait to come back with some bigger wheels and more energy:

WHEEE!

I was a wee boy (on the right) and so was my brother Adam

When I was a wee boy I liked to slide on icy puddles. I knew the best places where water would sit in shallow depressions on the pavement, and on nippy mornings I'd groom the icy puddles, tamping down and smoothing a layer of frost with the soles of my shoes to improve the slidiness of the ice. I liked to learn different tricks, which were essentially stances in which I would slide. There was a head-on slide, a backwards slide, a side-on slide, and there was "the wee mannie" - a slide performed in a crouching position. When I did a slide I would say "wheee," which expressed the way I felt about it.

A Recreation of A Wee Mannie Slide

My obsession with skidding on ice progressed to the point where I snuck out the house with buckets of water one cold winter evening, and splashed these onto the pavement at the foot of the cul-de-sac we lived in, where a downhill footpath terminated in a small flight of 3 steps. This was a precursor to the self-absorption at the expense of personal and public safety that I would later indulge with skateboarding. The following morning I returned to skid along the ice and  leap over the steps at its termination. Wheee! I knew it was hazardous, but I took the risk in favour of that wheee. I'm glad no-one was hurt.

A Skuda Skateboard

I would soon buy a plastic skateboard from a primary school jumble sale. It had the word 'SKUDA' embossed in its top, and a sticker that said 'The Shaggy D.A.' on the bottom. This soon came to replace icy puddles as the source of the wheees. I learned to ride the skateboard down the short length of our driveway, and then I learned some tricks. I also learned to internalise the wheee.

SK8 $HOPZ

There weren’t many skateboard shops in Scotland when I started skating, and they were located far from city centres so were hard to reach. I would pore over the product pages of skateboard magazines and work myself into a covetous frenzy before the rare occasions I got to visit a shop. The nearest was Clan Skates 2 in Dundee, a poky wee place with such little stock that I had to compromise on whatever deck I had formed a fixation upon in a skateboard magazine. But I had no frame of reference, it was the only skate shop that I knew, and I loved it in there. I love skateboards. I love skate shoes. I love skate videos, and there was usually one of those screening on a little portable TV in the shop. I retain this obsession with skateboard products and skateboard shops, and I still can't pass one by.

There is a new shop right next to Waterloo Skate Park, which is the main place that I skate in Sydney. But this is all I've ever seen of the place:

This isn't photoshopped. It is actually called that.

First, the name: BOYZ SK8N. It could be the title of a gay porn movie. It sounds as if it was named by a pathetic old pederast as part of a seedy plan to get his mitts on little skater kids, but whose only point of contact with skateboarding is that Avril Lavigne song. It makes no commercial sense for it implies exclusivity to males, inasmuch as it implies anything, being nonsensical pseudo-textspeak mishmash of such insulting stupidity that I hope for its speedy and catastrophic failure.

All I have ever seen of this shop is closed shutters. It hasn't been open any time I've been there, and I go to the adjacent skatepark two or three times a week. It’s common to find a lackadaisical or inept approach to business among skateboard shops; lost and bungled mail orders, badly stocked shops, shops opening late, and shops staffed either by non-skaters who don't know their product, or by skaters who are hostile to everyone but their immediate friends. 

It isn't difficult to run a skate shop - skateboarding is a thriving scene with a covetable cultural cachet for non-skaters (everyone wears skate shoes and clothing these days) - and although there will be many pressures upon a small business of this kind, I have seen dozens of skate shops fail over my years skating, and I've seen those with rudimentary competence flourish. Like most skaters, I harbour ambitions of somehow making a living from skateboarding and I have toyed with the idea of opening a skate shop, so I don’t blame skaters for giving it a go. But we’re not entitled to make a living out of skating in this way unless we have the requisite skills to make a retail business work, and for that shop put something back into skating. BOYZ SK8N does the opposite – it’s an embarrassment. 

Early Morning Dulwich Hill Shred Sled Session

I'm trying to use my iPhone to film myself skating, and here's my first attempt from a few months ago. It's at Dulwich Hill skatepark (at the Jack Shanahan Reserve), and it's the first time I'd been skating since I got hit off my bike by a car, so I was moving a touch gingerly.

I figure that filming myself helps me set targets to make tricks. Skating's also a part of my life totally distinct from work and from a lot of my friends, so I want to be able to point to something and say, "this is what I do." Until now, I didn't have any video or photographic evidence from over 24 years of skating.

The music is 'Love Came Tumbling Down' by The Monks.

The bird is a Tawny Frogmouth that sat outside my back door for a while.

Annandale Skatepark Bike Trip

A few days ago I rode out on my bike to find Annandale skatepark in Sydney's Inner West. 

I was keen to use my board because I had painted on the griptape for the first time in about 20 years. I wanted to write something antithetical to the gnar-text usually seen on skateboards, so I wrote "BBC Radio 4", which I probably listen to more than anything else these days. Incidentally, Radio 4 are reportedly seeking to reshape their image into something more 'youth-friendly', which is a terrible idea. Radio 4 is something that people will come to as they get older, and that's fine. I wasn't aware of it as a child or teenager, and I would have hated it. But now I love the high-mindedness and seriousness of programmes like In Our Time and Start The Week, I love the news, and I love the comedy, and I would be right pissed off if R4 had its tone diluted with an affectation of youth-speak. Radio 4 is rad, and this is official, cause it's written on a skateboard. I also wrote Dusker (my wife Dee's band) and drew a lightning bolt - lightning bolts are cool.

So off I bicycled with my newly-decorated board strapped to my back, and the first place I stopped is a storm drain that runs through Summer Hill to the Hawthorn Canal. It is near murderous to wish for drought in Australia, but just look at this thing. I wish that trickle of water would dry up and allow a skate.

I rode on, and arrived at Annandale skatepark. It's a piece of shit, but the viaduct is pretty. The skatepark is a modular thing with a few quarterpipes and a little driveway. It's narrow, so there's no scope to carve around. 

The flat bank has a horrid crack across the bottom that my wheels got stuck in, and it chucked my into the bank the first time I rode the park. Shitey.

So I stuck around for a few minutes, then rode off to check out somewhere I'd noticed in the Richard Murden Reserve by the Hawthorn canal in Haberfield. I guess this is intended for BMX bikes. I don't know. 

It is too rough to skate. Maybe some fun can be had with big soft wheels, but there was nothing for me here, so off I rode. 

This is my bike, by the way, it's a 1968 Claude Butler with a full contemporary Campagnolo set. I'll give the full story of losing my old bike in a car crash at a later time, I think.

I hadn't really had a proper skate after all this, and riding home I saw some basketball courts and decided to stop for a little bit of flatland. I like skating around basketball courts, it reminds me of  Rodney Mullen's part from the Plan B Questionable video. It was fun, there were sections of grass between the courts that you could blast across. Wheeee!

And then I rode home.