Slam Skateboarding 235 Spring 2022

The borders are open, and a pack of Australian skateboarding's top dogs migrated away from our winter to bask in a European summer, in conjunction with the almighty Copenhagen Open. Thousands of skateboarders were strewn haphazardly around the capital of Denmark's streets to catch a glimpse of many of the world's top pros. The CPH Open is by no means a regimented comp circuit. It's all fun and games - beers and bikes. There's no pressure for points, and without being under the guise of a corporate comp committee, it's a collection of organised chaos, organised by skaters, for skaters. With so many Australians gone Nordic this year, we were fortunate to make contact with many of Europe's finest photographers to swipe some snaps from the Euro mags, and present them…

“It's a special week in general, for all the mob, all over the country,” says Josh Weribone in a conversation with Nicky Hayes. It's NAIDOC Week 2022 - the annual celebration of First Nations culture, history, and achievements - and Josh and Nicky are up on a hill in the desert overlooking the Ltyentye Apurte community. For the past three days, they've been running skateboarding and painting workshops for kids in Nicky's community, which is an hour's drive southeast of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Josh continues, “It's a week of celebration, everyone coming together, like a modern-day corroboree.” NAIDOC Week (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) occurs annually in July, and celebrates the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Josh is from Mandandanji Country (Southwest Queensland) and…

Richard Moore is wearing dark sunnies and a baggy fleece jumper, chatting to me on FaceTime while his cat Teddy purrs in the background. You might remember Richard from the article published about him in the previous issue – he's an Adelaide-based skater who has lost 95 per cent of his vision due to a condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa. Since then, Richard's been making waves in the world of adaptive skateboarding, and jet-setting off to The USA, where he recently met up with Dan Mancina and a handful of other blind and adaptive skateboarders. The idea was to come together for a blind skateboarding event in Michigan. Then Richard would dip out to NYC and skate some of the street spots he'd always dreamed of skating. But as he explained,…

Ever heard of Skatin' Life? What about Perfect Transition, 540 or Skateboard Australia? Maybe Street Noise, Crank or ASM will sound more familiar? These titles are all Australian skateboarding magazines that have come and gone over the past 35 years. James Turvey, a self-described skate archivist, collects all of them - along with Slam and plenty of other, more obscure 'zines - in the interest of preserving the print media that charts Australia's skateboarding history. James is 40 - now one of the older heads in the Newcastle scene - but he's not some bitter old man who's trying to live in the past. I'd describe him as a passionate skate nerd with an encyclopaedic brain, bursting with information about skaters, photographers and spots in his local area and beyond. We…

Liv Lovelace picks up the phone sounding cheery and carefree. She's at Curl Curl Skatepark in Sydney's Northern Beaches, “having a nice, cruisy day”. Read on as we casually chat about her recent New York trip to film for a short doco that coincides with a new pant Volcom is dropping - in which Liv will have her own colourway. How did the trip to New York come about? In October, we have a new Volcom pant coming out - it's called the “This That Them” pant, and it's a women's skate pant. So Volcom let four women around the world pick colourways, and I'm lucky enough to be one of them. We went to New York to film a little documentary video that we're doing and that will come out when…

The beginning of spring has been long associated with emerging from our inner places, ready to embrace incoming warmth and new beginnings. This can be a time to develop new perspectives and grow, both on and off the board. As spring blooms, this article provides skaters with some practical tips on how to monitor and improve mental health. Taking ownership of your mental health. Developing awareness and an introspective relationship with yourself can majorly benefit your mental health. From a modern health perspective, many medical approaches are reaction-based, so when something goes wrong, a practitioner is sought out, and they get you from “unwell” to “OK”, and then you're sent on your way again. But we can also strive to move from “OK” to “well”, so that you can boost your resilience,…