Trisickle Magazine - Issue Two - 2006
Skate photography: Chris Johnson.
So this is an obscure one. What do you know about the existence of Trisickle Magazine?
This is issue number two, it was a free magazine from about 2005, 2006. I couldn’t tell you if there were more than two issues.
There were three that I saw.
Oh, ok. So is that a bad thing? You know when you’ve got a photo in a magazine, and there were only three of them, did they pick the wrong people to take photos of?
I don’t think the shelf-life of the magazine was the responsibility of the people who featured in it. Or the people who helped put it together, either. CJ (Chris Johnson) shot a lot of it single-handedly, and he went on to have a long career in skateboard photography.
I knew nothing about it, and I’ve learned nothing about it since. You must know more.
Not really. Ged Wells of Insane Skateboards was involved, it based on the Isle go Wight. I only ever saw three issues; I did some Googling the other night though, and it looks like they carried on as an online only lifestyle mag for a few more issues.
I’m wondering what the model was, because there aren’t any ads in it. There’s an article for a Tony Hawk game which had just come out, Project 8; that’s the closest thing to an ad. They had merch, Kris Vile has got an interview, there’s an indoor skatepark guide. It was a free skate mag in 2006, which was pretty ahead of its time. It’s a nice little window into the past. I can’t have seen this magazine since it came out.
Didn’t you keep hold of a copy?
I don’t know. My mum has been awesome at keeping all of the mags. We had a Sidewalk stack, and she used to put the page number on the front of the mag if I had a photo in it. I can’t imagine she would have thrown this away, it’s just one those things; 17 years later, you don’t know where it is.
Your interview in Trisickle was entitled Fourteen41, which is a joint interview with yourself and Sean Goff.
Yeah, the title was a stroke of genius (laughs). I’m going to say that this was a CJ idea. CJ had just come onto the scene, wanting to shoot skate photos. He turned up at Epic in Birmingham a couple of times, so I’d met him at the ramp, and said he wanted to shoot some photos and do an interview. The whole interview was shot at Epic, apart from one photo from Bay (Sixty6). It must have been pretty cool at the time, to see photos of myself skating. I had a planner at school, and I cut up a copy of the mag and stuck one of the sequences to it, walking around with my credentials on display (laughs). At that time as well, it wasn’t really a thing to have photos of yourself. The only photos you would’ve ever had of yourself were from the family point and shoot camera. I didn’t know anything about skateboard media, so having a photo of myself doing the thing that I was really into would have been a big deal, like, “whoa, I’ve made it! Someone’s taken a photo of me!” I think it’s the norm now, isn’t it? You can shoot a photo on an iPhone; everyone’s got a camera.
Huge thanks to Loz Webb for digging out this uber-rare paper for us! Mini-Sam inverts in Trisickle and Brum. Photo: CJ.
Who would you typically find at an Epic session back then?
The sessions were regular at Birmingham. Whenever you’d turn up, there’d already be five, 10 people on the platform, and they were your heroes. Sean, Wingy (Steve Wilkinson), Dave (Allen), me and Paul-luc (Ronchetti), Mike Edwards, you might catch a Scotty (Andy Scott) every now and then, if you were really lucky. Pete King, (Pete) Dossett would be around fairly regularly, Jimmy Langram has lived in that building… he still does. Jim the Skin (Paul Atkins) as well, he had a good scene with the Coventry boys, like Frocker, Luke Hassett, then Joe (Atkins) started skating. Those guys and their commitment to keeping the sessions regular really made it.
Norfolk to Birmingham twice a week was a lot of driving for you, or more accurately, for your dad.
The classic, legendary plight of the skate parent. It was a two hour 45 minute drive for us, so five and a half hours drive in total, and we’d go Wednesdays and Sundays. I’d skate one or two other times a week, I’d got to the park at Great Yarmouth quite regularly. But at that age, at 14, you’re obsessed with it. It’s everything about you. I probably took my board to school most days, just to have it, so we could go skate somewhere afterwards, skate in town. I skated in my driveway quite a lot, skated in my conservatory. I’d skate anywhere and everywhere.
For you in 2006, as a 14 year old who was only just getting into skating, to be sharing an interview with a legendary figure like Sean must have been a big deal.
It was an honour at the time. I said in this interview, “he always turns up, he’s always stoked, he always gives it 110%”. I learned a lot from those guys, and I was pretty inspired by getting to skate with them so much. Those dudes made it, for me and Paul-luc.
It felt like skateboarding was the travelling circus; everyone would be at every event, there’d be new faces, old faces, and people would be going for it, but for what? Just because.
It’s crazy to think that 17 years has passed since this interview went to print. What comes to mind when you think about skating back then, and how it’s changed in the years since?
Skateboarding was really cool then. Not that it’s not cool now, but as skateboarding has gotten bigger, the way that people interact has changed. Look at the Blackpool Deathrace event that’s in Trisickle; I remember going to that. I went to all of the events, and I had no real business being there, padded up. It felt like skateboarding was the travelling circus; everyone would be at every event, there’d be new faces, old faces, and people would be going for it, but for what? Just because. The magazines back then, they allowed people to have sponsors and careers, they gave us a platform to get noticed. Whereas now, a lot of brands only care about what engagement you’ve had on an Instagram post. I’m not an influencer, I’m just someone who’s trying to skate. There’s less room for people who are just good at skating. Social media has democratised everything, but by relying on it so much, we’ve made it harder for people to have lasting careers.
Do you know what your next photo would have been, after these ones in Trisickle?
I’ve no idea. At this period of time, I was fresh up on a package, basically. It was the Blackpool Vert Series comp in 2006, Dave was there and he was going to give me some Oakley stuff, I’d got my first package from Globe through Wingy, I’m riding an Alex Chalmers Flip board that I’ve obviously won at a comp somewhere. I must have just got on Blind Europe, because in the interview, I list Blind under my current sponsors, but I’m riding a Flip board in the photos. After this interview, I probably had a few photos in Sidewalk, from Vert Series events. It wasn’t until I was doing stuff with CJ and Leo (Sharp) that I actually shot photos that weren’t just normal vert tricks. There’s the 360 varial and the 540, but I don’t know why you’d shoot photos of them; at that time I was only just learning those tricks, I guess. When I did my Haunts a few years later, I’d be wanting to go and shoot somewhere specific, or had ideas for tricks.
Out of all of the photos you’ve shot since Trisickle issue 2 was released, which ones stand out the most to you, and why?
I’ve been really lucky to shoot stuff with guys in the States, like (Dave) Swift, the odd photo with Rhino, I’ve been on some missions with (Michael) Burnett… it was kind of a different thing by then, because it’s all about the feeling that you get from it at the time. I mean, it’s probably more exciting to see a photo of yourself when you’re younger because it’s a whole new experience. I did enjoy our trip to the States in 2015, and I shot some good photos with CJ on that mission. There are a few that stand out to me that I’ve shot with Brian Fick, during my earlier years in the States, and around that time I was shooting a lot with Alex Irvine and going on missions to Europe with him and (Sam) Bailey. That was beyond shooting some photos on a vert ramp; we’d be going on a mission and finding some crazy spots to skate. I had the cover of Kingpin doing the backside crail on the cradle at Washington Street; that was a bit of a standout for me as well. It felt like a different thing, shooting a photo in the States, on something big like that. It felt like a level up for me, and a bit dreamlike. It’s really cool how relationships come and go in skating, and how you work with people for periods of time. I find it really sick that I’m hanging out with Leo a bit more now, having shot photos with him when I was really young and been super inspired by him. I’ve gone away to the States, shot more with other people, but to come back and see Leo around again, it feels like a full circle. Actually, I need to shout out Griff (James Griffiths), because every photo I’ve shot with him I’ve been pleased with. It’s rad to work with those kinds of people, and dip into a bit of creating something with someone else. I guess that’s the cool thing about shooting skate photos; it’s not just the person in the photo, there’s the person shooting it, the whole mission behind it, and the spot as well. Shooting photos will always be an exciting thing. You see the kids and they’ve been to comps and they’ve done all this, then they shoot a photo - like Lilly (Strachan) got to work with Rob (Whiston) and Leo - and when they look at that photo, I know that feeling. It’s such a sick feeling. You can’t get that from doing well in a comp, you don’t get that feeling from anything else.
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