Slam Skateboarding 236 Summer 2022

Another year has come to a close, and 2022 was considerably different to the past couple of its predecessors, which were riddled with restrictions and uncertainty. Free from lockdowns, Australian skateboarders have made the most of it, hightailing off on holidays, road trips and extended jaunts OS. In our previous issue, we covered the many skaters who spent our winter abroad in Europe or The States to lap up the summer heat. Most have returned to spend summer at home, and over the past couple of months, many skaters took off on the open road. The team managers of New Balance Numeric, Converse CONS, and Santa Cruz, each respectively gathered their troops to embark on some domestic expeditions. As you’ll see in the following pages, they all came back with results. The NB#…

Summer’s here, which means that the temperature is heating up here in Australia and it’s getting closer to the end - or beginning - of another calendar year. The way that we measure and work with time to engage with the events of our lives is a relatively interesting concept, which many of us have come to regard as normal and everyday. For some people, this time between the years can bring up emotions of anxiety and worry about what’s next and what awaits, while others might be challenged with feelings of “I don’t ever want to move on from that experience” or “What, another year has rolled by? Where has my time gone?” There’s the old saying that time flies when you’re having fun. Do you ever wonder how and…

Brett Chan is a mysterious character. When I DM him about doing an interview, he replies with a friendly hello and then sends a photo of himself on a beach somewhere. He’s got long hair and a bushy black beard, wearing a red bandana and sunglasses. In the photo, he looks like he’s midway through some sort of yoga pose, stretching out over a large wooden stick of driftwood. Just behind him in the middle distance, a topless woman in a g-string with her back to the camera is midway through a cartwheel. Chan is a 46-year-old skateboarder, artist and filmmaker who has lived in Sydney for a solid chunk of the past 20 years. Originally from New Zealand, he’s had footage in videos like Forays, Handle the Jandal, Killself and…

For some time, I’d been trying to track down Aaron Brown, the iconic 1990s Sydney skate photographer. There was no trace of him on social media, no website or online presence. My only clue was that my friend Brendan Frost had met a fellow photographer named Aaron at the beach in Newcastle, who said he used to take skate photos. Then, one afternoon, a man approached the counter of the bookshop where I work, holding a book he’d published. The author’s name was Aaron Brown. Aaron and I are now friends, and he’s just released Backlight in the Grain: Angels of Skateboarding, a collection of black and white skate photos from his archives. Aaron dropped around to my studio to discuss his start in skateboarding and how the new book came…

When it comes to DIY skateparks, 13 years is an incredibly long run. The Tannery (formerly Uno DIY), in the Melbourne suburb of Preston, is perhaps the most prolific Australian DIY in recent memory. But on October 17,2022, the bulldozers rolled in without warning. Word has it that a couple of BMXers were able to convince the demolition crew to pause works for a day, allowing locals to get one final skate in, but The Tannery is no more. The Tannery was on private land and a tight knight crew of concreters say they had a good relationship with both the owners and the council, so the sudden demolition of this DIY came as a big shock. So, what happened? I got the City of Darebin’s Deputy Mayor, Trent McCarthy, on…

The concept for this trip was pretty simple: I thought it would be nice to get away with a handful of the NB Numeric team. Many of the guys have been working hard on other varying video projects this year, so everyone had been too busy to work towards a full-length NB# video. A seven-day trip to Adelaide seemed like a realistic plan that everyone could fit into their busy schedules. Adelaide has been on my radar Tor ages. I ve always been a huge fan of Adelaide. I feel like it’s probably the most overlooked city in Australia for everything - even outside of skateboarding. But for skateboarding, it’s incredible. There are spots everywhere; the general population are friendly and warm towards skaters; the city’s laid out really well on…