Slam Skateboarding 227 Spring 2020

We consider Tiago Lemos to be the best in the world. In our opinion you’d be hard pressed to find another individual with such power, technical prowess, and style on a skateboard. When Tiago joined New Balance he knew our revered history of making technical performance footwear to meet the needs of professional athletes. Numeric is proud to continue this tradition with the introduction of the 1010, the first signature shoe for Tiago Lemos. Trust Tiago. Introducing Tiago Lemos' debut signature model, the 1010. Blending New Balance heritage and technology, the 1010 is confident on and off the board. High performance skateboarding shoes. We’re back! After skipping our Winter Edition due to many of our leading advertisers freezing marketing budgets as the COVID chaos sent the world into an unhinged spin, we are proud…

At 30 years old, Shane O’Neill is undoubtedly Australian skateboarding’s biggest name. He’s a tech god and a contest killer, winning all sorts of accolades on the street comp circuit over the past decade. Nugget is also a force to be reckoned with in the streets; he famously backside nollie heelflipped Wallenberg, and he has filmed so many mind-blowing video parts. In more recent years, he scored himself a pro model shoe with Nike SB and started his own company, April Skateboards. And if everything goes to plan, he’ll be among the first Aussies to skate in the Olympics. Shane is also the first Australian to be included into the legendary line up of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game franchise. Having grown up playing the game, it was a massive…

Coronavirus has touched just about every aspect of our lives. From buying toilet paper, to having a beer with your friends, to the amount of times you’ve heard the word “unprecedented”, COVID-19 has changed it all – even skateboarding. Obviously there’s a very real human cost to the pandemic and every death is tragic, but the pandemic has also ushered in some subtler changes for skateboarders. Being cooped up at home makes you miss even the annoying sides of skating: the shinners, the ripped laces, the snapped decks, and the chalkies. Even a crusty skatepark full of entitled scooter kids seems like heaven when you can’t skate at will. This plague probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so here are some of the things we might as well get used to,…

Gareth Liddiard has cemented himself as one of Australia’s most prolific and critically acclaimed songwriters and performers. After fronting alt-rock behemoth, The Drones, for over 16 years, he is now unleashing a new wave of glorious carnage with Tropical Fuck Storm. It’s impossible to summarise Gareth’s body of work, but it’s safe to say that his music and lyrics will remain relevant and respected for many years to come. Gaz grew up skating Perth in the ’80s, which was a good enough reason to catch up for a chat over a couple of isolation ales. Finding skateboarding I was exposed to it through older friends. Our high school had a beach culture and was really friendly, so all the year levels weren’t so segregated. We’d go to the beach and everyone would…

Ben River Lawrie is sitting at Lincoln Square, drinking a coffee and talking to me on the phone. It’s an apt location for Ben to be doing this feature interview since he earned the nickname ‘Lincoln Child’ for skating the iconic plaza spot so obsessively back in its heyday. But a few things have changed since LC was a baby-faced local kid drinking Dare iced coffees and sessioning the slappy ledges at Lincoln Square. Obviously, the city’s most cherished spot got resurfaced and effectively destroyed back in 2016, but right now the entire city feels different. Melbourne is at the midway point of stage four lockdowns due to the second wave of COVID-19, which means there are curfews and skateboarding in the streets is heavily restricted. Midway through our interview, LC has…

When half of the Evisen team flew from Tokyo to Melbourne to spend a week getting clips in the streets, they set themselves the added challenge of doing it all without a rental car. That meant that there would be no trips to the outer ’burbs for hidden gems – they would have to get creative with the heavily-sessioned – and some might say blown out – spots in the gritty city. But it turned out that pushing around from their hotel at Southern Cross Station was a good formula for the Japanese crew. They were accustomed to the heavy kick-outs in Tokyo, so Melbourne seemed comparatively mellow when it came to security and cops. The spots also turned out to be quite accommodating to the Evisen style of cutty,…