Sidewalk Magazine - Issue 117 – June 2006
Your first magazine appearance was, by all accounts, June 2006. What was going on in your life 15 years ago?
Ahh, my birthday is in June; I would have been turning 16. I was still living in Coychurch at the time, with my mother, my father, and my brother. This would have been just before I was sitting my GCSEs, which is crazy.
The caption for the nollie heel photo places the bank on the deck of the Titanic. I’m fairly certain that’s not factual.
No, it wasn’t. It was shot in Liverpool, on a bridge. I was skating it with (Dave) Mackey, and it was on the first trip of mine filming with Dykie (Matthew Ryan).
So this must have been as Dykie was taking you under his proverbial wing.
He’d taken me under his wing, which is a dangerous place to be (laughs). Being under his wing meant getting in the car with him, and anybody that’s been in a car with Dykie will understand that your life is at stake the moment he turns on that ignition. Driving up to Liverpool and back for that first trip, I had a few moments where my life flashed before my eyes, so I’m glad to have made it to the age I am now. It’s making me feel quite grateful actually, thinking about these times, and how at risk I really was (laughs). To be honest, I think if that bank was on the Titanic, it would have been a safer place to be than in Dykie’s car (laughs).
How did you and Dykie first meet?
It would have been through him filming with Dylan (Hughes) and Caradog (Emanuel), and me going to Cardiff with those guys. When we went up to Liverpool, I’d known Dykie for some time, but I feel it was still quite early on in our friendship.
If that bank was on the Titanic, it would have been a safer placer to be than in Dykie's car.
Was this the first time you’d have also skated with Mackey?
Actually it wasn’t. He came through Bridgend with Korahn (Gayle) and Dykie on the East Skateboards Big Push that summer; it would have been a little bit before I went to Liverpool, but this trip was the first time we properly hung out. We stayed at Mackey’s flat when we were in Liverpool, so I got to know him during that visit. He was definitely someone who I looked up to. I had a lot of respect for him, and obviously for his skating. He was, at that time, one of the few skaters in the UK who was skating with such speed, along with Howard Cooke, obviously. Mackey was very fun to watch, fun to skate with, and he was just lovely to hang out with. The way he skated rubbed off on me, though I don’t think I ever really got up to Mackey’s speed capacity. He was too fast for me.
To be fair, you’ve definitely not been too far behind him at points.
I was inspired for some time, but I feel like I’ve slowed down a bit recently (laughs). Back then, that attitude of just going fast was a concept within my skating that I hadn’t thought about much, or even come across. I thought skating was more about landing a tech trick going really slow, rather than doing something a bit more simple but going really fast. He changed the way in which I looked at skating in that sense. We both skated similar spots as well. In Liverpool we skated the Post Office banks, and a few other spots like that. Mackey helped shape the way I chose spots to skate.
Would you say that Mackey helped you solidify your reputation as ‘The Bank Manager’?
Mackey definitely played a part in that, I’d say; he nurtured The Bank Manager in me. My First Light may predate the nickname.
I mean, this was definitely something of a declaration of intent – both your sequence and still were you skating banks.
It was a good start (laughs).
When this First Light was shot, were you sponsored by anyone? It doesn’t look like it…
I used to get stuff through a skateshop called Screw Loose in Swansea. The guy who worked in the shop, he was setting up a separate clothing company called NV-US, and I got a few t-shirts and some stickers from him. In the photo, there’s a sticker on my board for NV-US. As you can see, I had a blank board with an Enjoi sticker on it, I think the shirt I have on is from Tesco, and those shoes actually came from either Bad Habits or TK Maxx (laughs). I was very much living off second hand boards, and whatever I could get my hands on.
But then you went to Liverpool, and according to this text, everything changed.
Oh, it all changed.
To quote Dykie, “Chris impressed everyone so much that he was immediately put on the East Skateboards flow team”. So that blank board presumably went straight in the bin.
It did, and it was replaced by a new East board. Obviously I didn’t impress them enough to get put on the full team, but that happened a little later. I was a slow burner, maybe.
Was this towards the end of the East Skateboards days? 2006 was the year after (the full length East video) Vapors had been released, I’m sure.
Yeah, and I was essentially only ever on flow for East. I think right at the end I got somewhat on the team, just as it was finishing. Not long after this, I remember doing a trip with Mackey, Tony Da Silva, Dykie, Korahn and a few others, where we went to Sweden, and Dykie was very much thinking about starting his own company.
As East finished, Crayon Skateboards almost started almost immediately. You’d have been one of the first riders on Crayon, surely?
I think I was probably the first. It was on the plane back from that trip to Sweden where Dykie really started to talk about it. My Haunts, that came out in November 2007, exactly at the time when Dykie was trying to get Crayon going. My portrait for the interview was me holding a big crayon, or something silly like that. Around the time of my Haunts was when I started riding for Emerica, too.
Give us your thoughts on this final Dykie quote from your First Light – “he does not know the meaning of the word ‘hesitation’. He’ll do the gnarliest thing without giving it a second thought”.
Oh, I did know the meaning of the word ‘hesitation’ (laughs). But I think at this stage in my life, I was very much just chucking myself at anything without much care for my body or my wellbeing. But when you’re getting into the car with Dykie to go skate, I think you’ve put enough on the line as it is. Jumping into a bank is probably – as far as danger levels go - very insignificant by comparison.
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