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Skateboarding culture and graphics (especially graphics from the 80’s) are things that I still love and respect to this day.

My first memory of skateboarding: I was in art class and a mate of mine David Birtles was looking through a skateboard magazine (Thrasher). I remember only one page form that magazine. It was an advertisement for a skate shop and the entire page was covered in all the different boards they sold. The board graphics that stood out on the page, and burnt an impression in my memory were the Vision Psycho Stick (which I now have on my wall) and also the Gator board.

80’s Vert Demo at the Opera House. Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, they were my idols. Skating was everything and yeah I was into Poison (the band) too haha.

Skateboarding exploded when the US pro skateboarders toured Australia in the late 80’s. There were quite a lot of skaters around before they came, but after they came everyone jumped on the bandwagon.

Lance Mountain Future Primitive deck.

I had to have a board. I had no money and I begged my Dad to buy me one, which he did eventually. I got my first board from Surf Dive and Ski on George street in the city. There was a guy that worked there, Thrash was his name (he was rad). I picked out a Powell Peralta Lance Mountain future primitive board. It was a complete. I bought some rails and a tailbone, nose bone too and I totally killed the board using my Dad’s power drill getting the stuff on. I remember crying because I screwed up the board with the drill.

I got bitten by the bug pretty bad thanks to a group of skaters at school. Every single day I’d get home and skate in my backyard until the sun went down. It was all about learning how to ollie back then, then from there it was all about how high could you ollie (I ended up being able to ollie over 6 boards).

I soon realised that the board I had was way too big for me so I went out and bought a new “mini” deck.

Check the stupid board shape, which got destroyed in flip trick attempts. So cool though in retrospect.

Some other decks I’ve owned:

Note the melting Salvador Dali like clocks (I was into Dali’s work much later).

Chris Miller G&S.

Dad bought me this back from one of his many Hong Kong trips. On the phone he said it was a black board. I was so hoping it was going to be Tony Hawk’s last deck for Powell. A limited edition all black board with a Tony Hawk logo on it. When I got this ugly thing my heart sank (haha).

I continued to skate every day after school and in the city on the weekends. We watched Animal Chin, a legendary skate video which changed the way we skated. The Bones Brigade in the video were looking for Animal Chin, it’s a “journey is the destination” kinda message and we took that on big time. IE: Constantly skating through the city and the suburbs “chin searching” – looking for cool skate spots.

At some point the Australian public got sick to death of skateboarders. They tried to shut us down and riding a skateboard became illegal. Kids were having their boards confiscated by police. A lot of skate parks were built in an attempt to get kids to stop skating on the streets but street skating was way more fun than skating ramps (in my opinion). Despite the loud “skateboarding is not a crime” stickers we wore with pride police continued to confiscate boards and skaters (myself) disappeared.

I tried my hand at vert (ramp) skating. I got OK at it, but it just never felt the same as “Chin searching”. I gave up. I got back into skating a little bit during university, with a mate who also gave up for similar reasons in high school and during the early years of work I hooked up with Ash Bolland from Umeric who was into skating but I’ve never truly gotten back into it.

I’ve bought a couple of the new school paddle pop style boards. I’m not into them. Too thin and I hate the tiny wheels (I’ve always had massive T-Bone wheels on my boards).

My workhorses. The old Hosoi Hammerhead with T-bone wheels, Bones swiss bearings (first set I bought from my first skateboard purchase ever, still going strong!) and tracker trucks.

Over the years I’ve always bought boards though, as art. I’ve got them up on my lounge room wall (the stairs going up into the house).

I’ve heard that there are a few old school skaters, who are also creatives by day, and they’re starting a crew and hitting the parks. I want in on this action so I’ll be building up a couple of boards soon. Can’t wait :)

Christina and I dropped in to see Val’s work which was in an exhibition as part of the head on festival

We were outside, the door was shut. We were just about to head off, but in that instant my mate Ben came up to the car. Was a surprise to see him there (he knew another photographer displaying work in the show).

Remember those cool rulers you had as a kid, when you tilted them the image would animate? This artwork did just that, very cool. Can’t wait to do my own interactive/animating artwork!

Slammed Merc in Newtown.

We ended buying the Mothers some lovely and very detailed Turkish homewares from Farah. The details on this bowl are all raised, very nice.

Hell on Wheels was next door so I dropped in to say G’day to Tom. Check the crazy good artwork on the walls.

All stickered up. Toms’s man cave had so much rad stuff in it my eyes failed to settle on any one thing!

Spotted this sex spec VW showcar outside.

We dropped into the Maltese cafe for some food. Still as great as I remembered it back in the day (on Crown St.). The pastizzi’s were 40cents back then (they’re $2 now).

Christina and I spent the day in Newtown yesterday to do a spot of Mothers Day shopping. I figure that if we get something from the mall, the Mothers are going to know exactly where we got the goodies from, but the Mothers are very rarely (if ever) in Newtown. Newtown is still full of lovely crafty things too (IE: less commercial goods).

A while back I tried on a few suits (for the wedding). Saba, Armani, BOSS… none of them felt or looked right. I decided to do some internet research and thanks to some recommendations from the VWG forums (here’s looking at you Rob!) I booked in to see Patrick Johnson, a bespoke tailor based in Paddington.

I was immediately impressed with both the man (he’s a good looking guy!), team (Ethan’s a champ and you can view his blog here) and his eclectic studio.

My first meeting went for over an hour. In that time Patrick listened to what I was after, showed me some examples and measured me up (this process was damn amazing, so many measurements!). I’ve since been back for a few fittings and today I got to take my suit home (some pics, maybe later). They’re making me a shirt too. Everything has my initials on it and everything fits me and me only. IE: When Patrick wears my suit the button doesn’t match up to the hole as he hasn’t got a left shoulder that’s exactly 2cm lower than his right… but when I wear it, it’s perfect!

Visit: www.pjohnson.com.au

Faye Cahill’s Dulwich Hill studio.

Taste sample box.

Naughty! Christina couldn’t wait for me…

Yesterday I got up with a rude migraine headache. Yes I did drink a couple of glasses of red the night before, I was also feeling a little sick (maybe one of the sick boys at the BMU/MCC bike night passed on the flu?), in any case we had some important stuff to do today so I soldiered on.

First up was wedding cake shopping. Our wedding florist, the wonderful Susan Avery suggested that we see Faye Cahill for a wedding cake. We sussed out Faye’s web site and liked the more simple designs she had on there so we booked in a meeting (that was a month ago now). The pouring rain + my headache put me in a pretty grumpy mood, but once I saw Faye’s little studio I snapped out of it. A really cool little set-up, basically you walk right into her kitchen, the sights and smells were awesome.

We checked out a book of hers and pretty much picked out a cake design we loved straight away. We’ll need Susan Avery to do a little magic to finish the cake off, but I’m sure that won’t be a drama. Faye left us with a sample box containing samples of cake flavours as well as filling flavours, we’re both in agreement on which flavours we’d like for our cake, too easy!

Next up we headed west to pick up our new Russian Blue kitten Maxy! Pics are on the way :)

Garden bicycle outside of Susan’s shop.

There are a LOT of really interesting elements to play with.

Testing and choosing tealights for the 18 tables at reception.

A while ago Christina and I met up with Susan Avery who’s known as one of Australia’s better known florist with over 25 years experience. She’s done over 4000 weddings to date (view her work here) and despite knowing that she was perhaps going to be the most expensive option out there, we thought we’d at least see her and get a quote.

She’s got a lovely shop in Woollahra and a few minutes into our initial meeting we both fell in love with her and her work. She’s a lovely lady, very stylish, passionate and confidence inspiring.

It’s been a month, we’ve seen another florist in the meantime (who was half the price) but today we went back to see Susan and we’ve decided to lock her in. I think it’s been a little strange, and maybe refreshing for both florists to have the groom at the meetings, but hey…I felt right at home helping Christina to choose a design direction for our big day. I’m pretty sure that what we’re going for, which is definitely something different to the typical white and green wedding flower arrangements out there, will blow our guests away.

Got another GF1 (with the 20mm pancake lens of-course) today at almost half the RRP thanks to the help of a mate who works at a camera shop (thanks cuz!). It looks and feels so new (because it is?!). Thank you thank you Panasonic, Osaka Japan. I promise to try my best not to lose this baby.

Sugz.

Chop suey.

Today the sun was out, kinda…the only nice day this week so despite my hangover we hit Clovelly for a snorkel. Unfortunately the algae under there were having an orgy which totally screwed up visibility, still nice to have a swim in any case :)

The set-up, complete with marquee!

The feast.

Oz and Caroline’s guide dog school puppy!

Some random dude’s puppy.

Hehe.

Dogs everywhere!

B’day gal wearing our pressie :)

Richie and Oz.

Val and Garth.

Jam on Luke. Jam on Keith + Richie.

Dave, Dee and Auden.

Deb and her gorgeous little man.

Had a lovely day yesterday at Centennial Park to celebrate my sister’s B’day. Sun was out and Richie found a really sweet shady spot for us all to chill in. Jamie’s friends are all either preggers, or have popped out kids so the vibe was really nice, lots of dogs, kids and of-course the food and booze was amazing :)

Looks like a boy huh?!

Yeah my sister is preggers! Whoo hoo I’m gonna be an uncle! :) We’re all excited over at Fox camp. I reckon if this little being doesn’t get me over baby phobia I don’t know what will! hehe.