Slam Skateboarding 226 Autumn 2020

Back to back covers… Never in my near 17 years of working on Slam would I have imagined that we’d ever run the same skater on consecutive page ones. However, following Rowan Davis’ heavy interview in our previous issue, and his insane wallride cover shot, we crowned him the SOTY king. While he could’ve kicked back to bask in the glory, Rowan chose to take three weeks off from his day job painting houses and went on a prolific barrage for his feature. A couple of days after his SOTY surprise, Rowan and the Australian Nike SB young guns took a look at the beastly eight-flat-nine kinker on this edition’s cover. How does someone get into the headspace to pull the trigger and ollie out over an eight stair, past the…

“I’m always psyched to be in Australia,” says Sean Malto when I catch him on the phone for an interview. He’s back in LA, sitting in traffic when he talks me through his recent trip to Melbourne with Shane O’Neill, Yuto Horigome, Lui Elliott and Casper Brooker for the release of Shane’s new shoe. Malto clearly had a lot of fun, hitting the shoe release party, extending his stay to hang with the Aussie Nike guys, joining in on Rowan’s SOTY surprise, and catching up with his old mate, Rick McCrank, to skate the bowl in Frankston. Here’s the lowdown from Malto himself. Shane’s Shoe Party I was really excited for Shane’s shoe. Obviously, I’ve known Shane for a long time; he’s a great dude, and the shoe was well deserved. They…

Sometimes tricks come first shot. Sometimes they become a grind (pun intended). When we’re pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones, trying something that scares the shit out of us, it can feel like we’re losing control. Maybe you just took a slam. Maybe you’ve stomped the last three shots but wheel-bite won’t let you roll away. Or maybe that bloody crack in the footpath is doing your head in. Andrew Reynolds called it “The Madness”, and we’ve all experienced it in one form or another – the world of skateboarding superstitions. From the deck you ride and how you set it up, to the OCD-like quirks when you’re getting ready to roll up again, there are hundreds of little rituals we do in an attempt to bring some balance back…

On the day of Rowan Davis’ SOTY surprise, he woke up late in an Airbnb in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. He was staying with some of the Nike guys and filming for a forthcoming Australian video, a trip that coincided with Shane O’Neill’s new shoe release party. Rowan and the rest of the crew had been skating in Melbourne city until late the night before so they slept in and didn’t manage to get out of the house until 5pm. “I didn’t even really know what we were doing that day,” Rowan said later. “I had no idea, I thought we were just going skating or something.” Geoff Campbell was the SOTY surprise inside man this year, leading Rowan and the rest of the visiting Nike guys to the IMAX,…

In February 2019, when Shaun Paul started the DC Supertour, he was a little bit daunted. He was offered a place in the van alongside the likes of Tiago Lemos, Wes Kremer, Evan Smith, Tristan Funkhouser, John Shanahan, Alex Lawton, Tommy Fynn and Jaakko Ojanen. They were skating packed out demos in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland. “Heaps of people showed up to each one,” said Shaun in his New Gen interview in Issue 222. “I had no idea what I was doing, but I slowly relaxed and just tried to land something.” Fortunately, he skated really well, got along with everyone, particularly John Shanahan, and had a couple of tricks in the resulting DC Australian tour video, Gotta Eat. All in all, it was a pretty sweet way to start off…

In one of the opening lines of Jack O’Grady’s Kitsch part, he crooked grinds a long ledge in Kings Cross, then whips a little cess in front of a nearby removalist. “You must have a big dick to ride that down there,” says the removalist in a thick Kiwi accent. Squish has a good laugh at this, clearly not too fazed. It turns out that Jack O’Grady, the young dude from The Shire, in Sydney’s South, has plenty to laugh about. After winning New Gen of the Year in 2018, and Slam SOTY in 2019, O’Grady is back in 2020 with Video Part of the Year for his efforts in Kitsch, Pass ~ Port’s first full-length. Kitsch was undeniably the most anticipated Australian video to come out last year and by…