I scored these NOS (new old stock) pink T-Bones on eBay They’re the exact same wheels I used to skate on way back in the day. On opening the door this morning, post man greeted me with “T-Bones!”. Turns out he used to be a skater too, and still does skate occasionally. He couldn’t see the logos on the wheels as the wheels were wrapped up in bubble wrap, he could just tell from their size, impressive!
Size comparison to a newer style wheel. They’re huge, and roll over small stones and cracks effortlessly, damn fast too.
Later that day the doorbell went off again, this time Mr Postman delivered a genuine NOS Ray Barbee complete. His video segment in the Public Domain video blew me away as a kid, at the time no other skateboard had a nose kick as big as this. I always wanted it, now it’s mine. I intend to skate this one rather than leave it up on the wall.
Top side is factory gripped from the 80’s.
90a’s a little hard for my liking as I like to do big slides. They’re 57mm “mini’s” but 57mm is a huge wheel today. T-Bones might make their way onto this board, maybe.
Day 1. Previous owner Paul had already bought an exhaust, stretch kit and lower seat frame.
Stripped plastic panels, frame brace with forward pegs, new exhaust. Painted. New seat frame. Low and flat handlebars, removed blinkers and put them on the sides of the battery box. New seat, fat rear wheel and tyre, painted mid section of frame, new front-end (brakes, wheel and shocks), JDM headlights.
Christina is sick with the flu, so is her sister, and last night we were meant to get together for a family dinner to celebrate my B’day but my sister is well preggers, and it’s not the best idea for her to be hanging out with sick people so we postponed the night.
I’ve not caught the flu off Christina, neither have her parents, so the Locks asked if I’d like to go for dinner at Excellent Chinese Seafood Restaurant, their local Chinese restaurant of choice.
Tony’s picky about what he eats, and this place makes strange and wonderful dishes that aren’t featured on the menu just for him. I assume Tony wanted to order all sorts of grand dishes for me but he asked me if there was anything I’d like to eat and I jumped at the opportunity to take charge of the order for the night.
I’d had a couple of glasses of wine, and was feeling good. I didn’t want fancy food. I’ve had it before and it’s probably all the chefs out the back ever cook, so I wanted to make it fun for the chefs as well.
I asked if it was alright if I ordered:
– Crispy skin lemon chicken
– Beef with black bean sauce
– Sweet and sour pork
– Pineapple fried rice
– Salt and pepper prawns
Rosemary and Tony thought I was joking but I wasn’t (haha!). Tony was too embarrassed to order the food (he’s got to show face right?!) so I ordered it (waiter’s reaction was gold).
The food came out and it was absolutely demolished. In fact the only dish that wasn’t finished was the one vegetable dish Rosemary ordered (I sure as hell wasn’t going to eat any veggies on my B’day).
Ultimately the flavors of these dishes are uniquely Chinese in my opinion. Nothing like Thai, Vietnamese, etc. Sure Chinese people have think this is “Australian Chinese” food, and it’s kinda like ordering a meat pie at a gourmet restaurant, but it was naughty fun and it really made my day :)
This morning I dropped in to Racecourse Motors to get the guys there to swap my front tyre for me. They’ve got a really nice and neat scooter shop across the road from the Randwick Racecourse which is pretty close to where I live.
I spotted this strange Zoomer like bike. The seating position with the pegs forward actually wouldn’t be too unlike my Zoomer.
Old wheel left, new right. The guy that greeted me was a champ. He swapped the tyre over in no time and it only cost me $20.
NCY rotor installed. Kinda ugly. A plain cross drilled completely round rotor would have been nicer.
Braided line is pretty long (a LOT nicer than having the crazy long drum brake cable before though) and I’m still not sure I’ve routed it the best way.
Other side. Glossy black wheel suits the rear wheel now and this new alloy wheel with tyre weighs the same as an original steel wheel without tyre.
Super happy with it!
I’ve installed everything. Just need to buy some brake fluid. I’ve had issues with spacing the front wheel. The kit came with everything I needed, except the speedo housing and the wheel doesn’t sit flush against the stopper on the fork (to stop it rotating) as I had to use a spacer on that side to centre the wheel. It’s not rotating at all though, so it works fine, but it’s definitely not designed to work this way.
Couldn’t help myself, started ripping into the Zoomer right away. I grabbed a trusty milk crate, put a sheet over it and lifted the bike up onto it. Bit tricky to do on your own, but the Zoomer’s light enough. Taking everything off is a little annoying but I’ve done it enough times now to do it pretty quick.
Right at about this time Christina yelled out from upstairs “LUNCH TIME!”. Usually I’d be shitty as I was in the zone working on the Zoomer, hands covered in grease, but hey Christina made me a B’day pie! Pie’s are one of my fave foods of all time. I love a good pie, this one had my name on it too! Mmm mmm, it was delicious!
Tummy satisfied, head buzzing on a nice glass of red I got back to work. New front brake caliper to replace the OEM drum brakes. I hate it that it’s annodised red. Thought about stripping it down to bare metal, but I’ve decided to leave it as is for now.
I bought an axle puller for giggles. Didn’t fit on the OEM forks but with a little dremel work they fit on these new ultra-low forks perfectly.
Front brake master cylinder and throttle (grip not installed yet).
As far as I can go for now. Notice how much bigger the new brake lever is, so ugly! Waiting for a starter switch (I can kick start though) and tomorrow I’ll get the tyre fitted to the new disc brake front wheel.
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 gave me this for my B’day today. Nostalgic goodness. Timely. I’ve just spent a few hundred dollars on new old stock skateboard gear on eBay as a B’day pressie to myself.
Modern Pet flyer run. I don’t mind dropping flyers into mailboxes, not sure about handing them out dressed in a dog suit at the dog park though.
Spagbol at Cosmo.
Pretty freaky day yesterday. Started out with a Modern Pet flyer run in Bellevue Hill, then we dropped in to Cosmopolitan in Double Bay for lunch. Turns out we were there this time last year. I was wearing the same jumper too!
Reg Mombassa – what a guy. I love the man, his work and his great dry (and sharp!) sense of humour. I’d love an original, please, because after his talk, the prints I’ve got of his work just don’t cut the mustard.
This huge original Brett Whiteley was hanging just outside the conference theatre. I had a chance to admire it for a few minutes. It blows me away that an artwork of such huge value can be on display in a public venue, and no-one thinks to deface it. Gives me a little faith in this world, day and age for sure.
Ex-BWM staff drinks at The Rose. Some of the guys got pretty lose, always fun to see haha.
Semi Day 2. I snuck a snap in with long time design buddy Andrew Johnstone who founded DiK and runs the conference.
Laurence Ng and I. We’ve crossed paths many times over the years. He’s the publisher of IdN Magazine and it’s always great to see him. I’m hoping I can somehow work with him again sometime in the future.
I’ve been at Semi-Permanent the past couple of days at Darling Harbour. I’ve not been to one in a very long time, and the time before that I spoke at one. It’s still held at the same place, and there’s still 3,000 or so people (mostly design students) in attendance.
As the conference started (on Friday) I instantly realised how much hard work it is to pay full attention to someone speaking for one hour in a dark room. It reminded me of uni days. I could either A) fall asleep, or B) try to extract something out of their presentation. I chose path “B” and I managed to get something out of pretty much every speaker on day 1.
The standout speaker for me was Reg Mombassa who pretty much made a success of Dare Jenning’s “Mambo” fashion surf brand which was huge when I was growing up in high school. I wore a lot of Mambo gear back then and lots of my fave mambo gear had Reg’s work on it.
Later that night (after Semi) we hit The Rose for ex-BWM staff drinks as Christina used to work for BWM. I was the designated driver so I got kinda frustrated at the end of the night when people were starting to get pretty lose. I ended up being the designated Taxi driver too (great!).
Day 2 of the conference was today. It was harder work than yesterday but I’ve walked away with a little inspiration, which is what I was looking for. I want to get back into skateboarding, just a little. At least I want to start by designing my own deck.
Through the conference I’ve realised I’m missing ART, a lot. I used to have to make art. I think design killed this. I need to make art again, but without having to smoke weed. It’s not going to be easy, but I’m pretty hungry for it. I can only try. I’ve got nothing to lose!
PS: If you’re keen on getting a bit of a lowdown on the speakers and what they spoke about at Semi-Conference. Visit INfront where Damien has amazingly tried to document as many speakers as he could over the 2 days. Visit: www.australianinfront.com.au
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