Our “Backstory” series continues to delve into the process behind different tricks that have made an impact on us, our most recent conversation was with Toby Shuall. Find out more about two tricks he flawlessly floated down stairs over two decades ago which stand up today and are part of London folklore, Toby’s stream of consciousness expands on these two moments, the tricks themselves, and much more…
Words and interview by Jacob Sawyer. Toby Shuall and his son Ezra on home turf. PH: Clare Shilland
Toby Shuall is a dear old friend with many stories to tell from the years he spent skateboarding in London and beyond. He has deep ties to Slam, he spent years working at the shop part-time, he was on the shop team, and his clothing company Suburban Bliss was on the shelves since its inception. It was also the hub where many filming missions with Chris Massey or Dan Magee would begin. This “Backstory” interview focuses on two iconic tricks from Toby’s time in front of the lens, a frontside nollie heelflip down the London Bridge Ten which appeared in First Broadcast, and a 360 evolution of the same trick down the Southbank Seven which appeared in the Landscape Portraits video. With those two specific tricks as a framework, and frontside nollie heelflips in general as an anchor, a conversation took place which covers those moments and many more things in between.
Toby is a fascinating individual with a lot to say so it was interesting hearing him elaborate on this time period. As fans of skateboarding we have videos like First Broadcast and Portraits which well-documented an exciting, burgeoning scene, and what was going down predominantly in our capital. It’s easy to look back on that time through the lens of what technology we have on hand today so hearing Toby talk about holding back from landing tricks until he had the luxury of being able to film them illustrates the struggle of the time to make things happen. It shows how fleeting so many moments really were and paints the picture of a completely different time we’re lucky to have such comprehensive documentation of. We’re glad to be able to bring you Toby’s insights on two landmark London tricks and their place within a magical time in UK skateboarding history…
A remodelled sequence of Toby Shuall from Thrasher June 2000. Early documentation of Frontside nollie heelflip down the southbank seven by Luke Ogden
I don’t actually remember when I first learned frontside nollie heelflips but I can remember not being able to do them. I presume I learned them at Southbank but it could have been at the end of my road. Frontside nollies just always worked for me and I’m better at heelflips than kickflips, I can’t even do a kickflip. So with the way I learned to skate it just makes sense that trick was easy for me to do. Switch heelflips and frontside nollie heelflips were the tricks I could do with my eyes closed when I skated. I’m not sure who I would have seen do it well, I can think of a lot of people who did it not very nicely, hahaha. It was a kind of tramline trick I suppose, one which I used more widely than most people. The first really good one I saw was the one Keith Hufnagel did at Union Square in SF over the green bench, that happened around the time I was first going to SF when I was 16. It’s a trick that just came really naturally to me. I was always doing half cab heelflips at one time, I got good at doing the half cab version, then I got better at doing things nollie and it went that way. It quickly became the easiest flip trick for me to do.
I was better at skating nollie than I was skating regular really in certain ways. I used to be able to switch ollie higher than I could ollie almost. I would definitely rather switch frontside 180 a set of stairs than ollie them, still would if I had to. Straight ollieing didn’t come that naturally to me, doing big nollies and wiggling yourself around seemed easier. When we grew up seeing Tom Penny skate firsthand, and the time I was skating with him when he was getting lots of coverage, nearly everything he did was tweaked. Interestingly I think that came from him being a mini ramp skater first, he was really good at doing things alley oop, he was always alley ooping everything when he got into being a street skater more. He could turn everything a certain way, it was easier for him. For me it was a way of cheating, by turning something I was able to get higher in some weird way. I remember trying to learn switch shifty ollies after seeing Ricky Oyola do one in Eastern Exposure 3. Loads of skaters from my era were tweaking tricks, Tim O’Connor would do massive switch 180s where he turned really late, I became obsessed with that.
I had the cover of Document doing an overturned switch nosegrind at Victoria benches. I don’t know if people really realised that was what I was doing, it was over-rotated not just a straight grind. That came from Scott Johnston actually, he had a photo at Brown Marble in SF doing a cross between a backside tailslide and a backside 5-0, that became known as the scooter grind. He was over-rotating grinds, experimenting with the position of his skateboard in the air, everyone went their own way with that. There’s footage of me doing a frontside nollie heelflip over a beer keg in my Headcleaner part. At that point in time on a good day I could just do that over those beer kegs really easily, I used to do that a lot. I started to get more poppy at that point. Southbank is so good for that though, I’d go and get those kegs from the bar underneath the bridge. They were just a good size, quite a big thing to jump over but not huge. We were always skating over those or orange cones. That stuff came about because there were no ledges at Southbank, the beam was so shit so I just got really into trying to do tricks over things. That comes from growing up watching Trilogy and seeing all those lines at Lockwood where people were doing tricks over small picnic tables. All we ever really wanted at Southbank was an LA picnic table. We couldn’t get one of those, but we could get a beer keg.
“All we ever really wanted at Southbank was an LA picnic table. We couldn’t get one of those, but we could get a beer keg”
Then there were the brick walls at Wallenberg, I skated that spot a lot when I was in SF but it was after its time. People had stopped filming there, no-one did anything there any more and it kind of died as a spot but I was really into it. I did a few tricks there over the bigger bit of the wall, a switch heelflip, and a frontside nollie heelflip but I never filmed anything. It’s insane watching those competitions now where people skate down the four. I loved both sides of Wallenberg. It was exciting for me, we didn’t have that stuff in England, there weren’t really school playgrounds in London we could access. Wallenberg was peaceful, a bit crap in a way but it was such a cult spot when you grew up in our era. I think I could still do a frontside nollie heelflip today if I really had to but I’m a bit stiff. That was just my trick, it’s like Paul Shier doing backside kickflips. I couldn’t do a backside kickflip to save my life but I can frontside nollie heelflip and 360 flip too. I was so obsessed with learning 360 flips, and I could do them, but I’m not sure how I managed to do them. I wasn’t very strong skating regular flip-wise. My injuries which took me out didn’t stem from skating or how I skated. I found out later that I have a problem with my anatomy, I’m hyper-mobile in my upper body. I’m sure years of spinning myself round in circles didn’t help but I don’t think that’s what it was. I just got really unlucky, my ankle is shot from skating but my collar bone injuries are because I’m really lanky and have double jointed shoulders which made my collar bones disconnect.
We’re going to talk about two frontside nollie heelflips down stairs. That was the trick I would always take to stairs but I would also always try switch backside heelflips. I wasn’t so strong at doing that trick and I would always snap my board any time I tried to do it. So many times I nearly did that trick down something and got a good picture or tried to film it but I would snap my tail. The frontside nollie heelflip I could just land without falling or breaking a board. I don’t know how I had that trick on lock but it was just so easy for me. I felt at the time like I over-milked it. I did overuse it perhaps but looking back I should have milked it more. There were some big sets of stairs I almost did it down but stopped myself. It would have been quite good for me and I should have but after I did it down the London Bridge stairs I felt like that was good enough.
Toby Shuall – Frontside Nollie Heelflip (2001)
I was skating here with Nick [Jensen] this day. I think that Vaughan [Baker] nollie backside flipped them the same week or not very long afterwards. I would have just turned up this day on my own, I always liked skating with Nick and this was what he was skating, I was just in a good mood, Nick was trying to do a switch flip. I didn’t go there to try it specifically, not one little bit but I had probably been thinking about it. I never ollied those stairs, I never did any other trick down them but I tried this and did it within five goes. It’s quite a drop so it’s better to just get it done, I suppose that’s what was going through my head. It was a lucky day, I was having a good one. Nick was there to do his trick that day but it didn’t end up making one, it was super windy. I certainly didn’t wake up that morning thinking I was going to go to London Bridge to try and skate the stairs. I wanted to do something down them, that’s the one trick that was reliable for me so I may as well have done it that day over another one. It just happened really easily for once, and it wasn’t often like that for me.
I remember Cairo [Foster] being there that day, he was in town staying with Oli Barton. He was an old friend of mine so it was a good vibe having him there although he was injured and couldn’t skate. They’re not the biggest stairs in the equation of what people are doing nowadays but it’s always still quite good when anyone does something down them, it became a landmark spot. They’re kind of worn out now, the stone at the top is really weird. Those slabs are made of Portland stone and are quite pitted so they just got worse. The way the stairs are built is weird too, there’s a kicker where you take off, and you land into a slight upward slope. I tried to switch heelflip them once and really hurt myself. I think I gave that ten goes, called it a day, then never skated them again. I think I had landed on one, zoomed out, then by the time I went there again Brian Wenning had done it so there was no point.
“I certainly didn’t wake up that morning thinking I was going to go to London Bridge to try and skate the stairs”
Dan Magee said that he would have preferred to film this from another angle possibly but the priority was trying to capture Nick’s trick. He knew that Nick was intimidated by trying the switch flip so he didn’t want to distract him by moving around. As I said in that podcast about Portraits, Dan [Magee] was never there to film us when he was out. This was a bit different because he was making First Broadcast which the Organic team was set to be a part of. I come from an era where there were a large amount of good things that I did, or the people I was skating with did, which were never filmed or documented. If I ever did anything good and it ended up being filmed I was fucking stoked anyway so I didn’t care that much about camera angles. It was so rare to have the opportunity to film so I saw the footage and I was instantly happy. Also Oli [Barton] was at the bottom of the stairs and he took a picture so I was stoked. That was the first Organic ad when we were trying to establish that company. We wanted to make that company good and I walked away with a photo and some footage for a video so I was chuffed.
It always felt like such privilege to film so there was pressure. We only really had [Chris] Massey who also had a full-time job. We had the windows of time when he wasn’t working and no other real options so you took advantage of the rare occasions that arose. Before that period of time there were no filmers in London, Mike Manzoori would be about sometimes. I had a camera from Slam for a brief moment which I would use to film Clive [Daley] and everyone at Southbank but that broke so that was the end of it. We would film each other if we could when we were younger. Lots of stuff that we did would be great to have on film, we missed out on a lot but we were lucky to have stuff in this video, and to have the opportunity to make Portraits. Dan [Magee] used to complain about filming us but it was just on the principle that we should have had our own dedicated filmer. He would always film us though and it was great. If it wasn’t for him pointing the camera at us, and [Chris] Massey living with him and getting inspired to make the video, I don’t think we would have ever had any good footage. The part I had in the Headcleaner video was from when Frank [Stephens] came to stay with me. He stayed with everyone on Unabomber for a few weeks and filmed them. Frank filmed most of that part from just staying at my house.
“It’s one of the classic London Bridge tricks I’m proud to say that I filmed” – Dan Magee
Toby’s frontside nollie heelflip captured beautifully by Oliver Barton with Dan Magee filming BGP’s
You mentioned the frontside nollie heelflip over the keg at Southbank, I remember that specifically because I was wearing a yellow fitted Alien Workshop cap backwards which I was pretty stoked on at the time, hahaha. The whole time I skated I didn’t like skating in jeans, they were just too thick. So my optimum outfit would always involve beige chinos, something that was inspired by Marc Johnson, and Mike Carroll I think. My default clothing in the last few years of being a skateboarder would have been beige chinos and a plain white T-Shirt. I would still wear that now but I’d get too dirty. I remember when footage of Marc Johnson first came out, I think he skated in Dickies quite a lot but he had a monstrous amount of footage in white T-Shirts and beige trousers and was just killing it. When I grew up people were taking the graphics off their board, I remember stripping an entire board graphic with a Stanley knife blade. Footage from the World park would often be those guys skating prototype blank boards. Everyone wanted plain shit basically, Half Cabs, beige chinos, white T-Shirts, plain boards, and plain wheels.
This London Bridge trick is probably the most commercial trick I did, this and the Southbank one we’re going to talk about. I finally pulled something out the bag that no-one else had done, it was a decent set of stairs, and Oli was there so there’s a photo to back it up. Then that became the ad for something we wanted to be a really good English company, we were pushing for it. I had the first ad and then Olly [Todd] had a front blunt photo. It was just a good time for us to be able to take a proper picture and have the trick filmed. I was always prouder of doing a trick over something than down something though. 
I think one of my favourite moments would have been when I shot a Haunts for Sidewalk. There was a bar over near SOAS which I frontside nollied and it was quite high. If you ollied that at the time it would have been good, I’m sure someone could switch kickflip it now but it was quite a high bar, I switch ollied that as well. Things like that felt like more of an achievement to me. My evolution as a skateboarder just involved having the frontside nollie, and frontside nollie heelflip as staple tricks, my brain just locked them in. I could never do the backside nollie heelflip version and obviously desperately wanted to. I couldn’t really do switch frontside heelflips either. I remember Joey [Pressey] doing one into the bank at Southbank and I never saw him do that trick again, it was mental.
I’m wearing that pink Suburban Bliss T-Shirt here, I remember giving Kenny Reed one of those shirts and he’s wearing it in that New Deal video [7 Year Glitch]. I’m so much from a generation where it was frowned upon to promote yourself so I didn’t like doing it, to the point where it was to my own detriment. I wore my T-Shirts a lot but if you look at most of the footage from the era when Magee was filming us, in what’s probably my best footage I was always wearing a plain T-Shirt. Sometimes I wore them but I also thought of the company, and skateboarding as separate things as well. I don’t think that’s weird, it’s just the generation we come from where we’re not just shamelessly promoting ourselves all the time like every other twat nowadays. I tried to start a clothing brand, I wasn’t denying I was a skateboarder but that was always my idea. I wanted it to be a small, London-based clothing brand. I was really obsessed by it not being a skate company, quite a weird thing to do in a way but that’s how I saw it. It’s how I grew up in London, a clothing brand was one thing, and a skateboard company was another. Lev [Tanju] broke the back of that whole thing, he was always like “why can’t it be?” There was a company called Subliminal from New York, it was only around for about a year, it was barely a skate company, it was like another version of Stereo but it didn’t have a team. This incredible artist David Aron did graphics for them, so did Phil Frost, the T-Shirts and boards were amazing. I was inspired by their approach. I have no real memory of shooting something and being happy that one of my shirts was in the shot.
First Broadcast was a massive milestone. The thing about [Dan] Magee was that he could be so lame to us at the time but he really did sort us out. He gave us access to being able to film properly, he gave [Chris] Massey opportunities too, he filmed some of the tricks that were in First Broadcast. We were part of this community and were able to film things at the highest level possible. Dan had the best equipment, a Death Lens, generators. It was amazing, it was like we were proper sponsored skateboarders trying to do our jobs with the right facilities. It’s so good that he did that, it’s a shame it couldn’t have carried on. You have to give it to Dan, he could have easily just made another Blueprint video but he opened it up and made something that represented the UK scene and made it look really good. It was his own version of Eastern Exposure in a way, he mixed it up. Dan’s a fan isn’t he? He wanted to film some other people who were doing good shit. It was a good thing, it was his idea, no-one else suggested that.
“That First Broadcast period was the first time shiit was good, and it was ours for once. We didn’t have to run off to LA to make it”
I was with my wife the other day and we met Greg [Finch], we were talking about our friend Travis Graves who sadly passed away recently. I was saying that my life could have turned out very differently, I so nearly stayed in America when I was younger, I don’t know why I didn’t. It was so much better there, coming back to London was shit. But when I went there and came back maybe the second to last time the scene had started to get really good in Europe, and in London. I didn’t want to be in America any more, I realised what was happening here was better. First Broadcast is a real testament to that, it’s a great documentation of a period where things finally got good. That period was really great for all of us, it put to bed that whole bullshit North-South divide. Most of the footage was in London because that’s where Dan was but there was a great unity in the skate scene in London at that point. Our group of friends especially, we were all really happy to be in London, to be in England, and to be skating. We were trying to make it good here, we didn’t want to be anywhere else. That was crazy because I grew up always wanting to leave, to go where it was better to skate. Growing up at Southbank, we all wanted to go to Embarcadero, we all wanted to go to SF. That First Broadcast period was the first time shiit was good, and it was ours for once. We didn’t have to run off to LA to make it. I love it that Jacopo Carozzi and Casper [Brooker] ride for Baker now, if you’re good enough you no longer need to move to Huntington Beach to get a pay cheque. I think First Broadcast was my best time, I wasn’t completely injured, I was able to skate, things were good.
Toby Shuall – Frontside 360 Nollie Heelflip (2003)
I last watched this because my daughter Miriam got really into Mazzy Star and one of her best songs soundtracks the part. It was a good time but it’s difficult for me as well because at the tail end of the video, by the time it came out I wasn’t in a very good place. I was still skating a bit but I didn’t have much left, I’d had some problems. I’m quite a militant individual, if I want to do something I do it, I’m still like that now. When it came to filming for this whenever I got the opportunity to go out I knew what I wanted to go and do. We would film with Massey at different times. We always knew that Massey was doing us a favour. He wanted to make the video, he wanted to be a filmer and film us. But he was doing us a big favour because he worked and he was donating all of his free time to going out with us. Because it was hard for us to carve out time slots we all ended up going off with him at different times. Olly [Todd] would go and meet him in the evening and film at night loads. He has a lot of night footage. His opening line I specifically remember being just the two of them out on a solo mission, Olly was always on his own shit too. He’d go out skating with everyone but filming the things he wanted to get were often just him and Chris. Time really was stretched so if we were with Massey filming we would just try and do anything we could to come home with something.
The line I did in Barcelona that’s in my Portraits part I filmed with Magee. I was there with the Blueprint guys, they were on a trip, and I had to wait to be filmed. I was having a ridiculously good time at that spot for some reason and no-one else was, hahaha. So most of the footage is Massey’s but there are definitely clips filmed by Dan from days where I was out with the Blueprint lot. We would do day trips, I’ve got the frontside nollie heelflip over the bar in Milton Keynes in my part. We had driven there and had a shit day because that place was cursed for us so I just went there. I had a sequence of a ollie over that same bar when I first got sponsored by Slam. That spot is sick, a perfect bar with a drop. I remember doing the frontside nollie heelflip almost immediately. That’s probably the best one I ever did as far as it looking good, and being neat. We just wanted to get something, get some footage to make the trip worthwhile.
I remember I was wearing those i-Path Grasshoppers. I always liked how those shoes looked but didn’t like skating in high top shoes. I would always undo the velcro bar when I wore them and they’d feel kind of alright but I’d always have another pair of shoes as back up. Then one day I realised I just couldn’t wear those shoes. I was so stoked when Kenny [Reed]’s shoe came out. Matt Field had the low top shoe with the sun on the side, then Kenny’s Traveler was a low top that was almost like a Reebok in a way. Those shoes I could just skate in, a good, standard, low top skate shoe. I just didn’t like skating in boots but to contradict myself for the London Bridge trick I was wearing a high top shoe that was nice, they were good to skate in, Lions they were called. I got used to them but I don’t think I really liked it, I’d still rather skate in a pair of normal trainers. All of those shoes looked sick though, I wore so many pairs of those Grasshoppers. They were good because they stopped you banging your ankles but I could never do them up. So in my mind I wasn’t wearing boots, I was wearing trainers with long sides. That shit’s crazy, when I was a kid people bought Vans #38’s which had three sections above the ankle, then everyone would cut off the top two sections to leave you with a mid-height boot. No-one wanted that full high boot. Now the Sk8-Hi is like a fashion trainer but back then no skater would not cut off the top half. Skaters are so weird like that, always adjusting things to feel right.
“I got it to the point where it was starting to work then tried to do it properly a few times but I held off…I knew I’d break a board or hurt myself so I waited for there to be a camera around”
With the frontside 360 nollie heelflip I began to be able to do them quite well on flat, and I wanted to do one down some stairs. I had thrown it down the seven at Southbank a few times when there was no-one there. I got it to the point where it was starting to work then tried to do it properly a few times but I held off. I knew I didn’t want to do it there and then because I wanted to film it. I didn’t want to get into it because it could be quite risky, I knew I’d break a board or hurt myself so I waited for there to be a camera around. When that day came, and Massey was there I thought “I’m going to fucking do this” but it was an absolute mission. There’s footage out there of some of my attempts, it was tough, there were a lot. Then on the one I make there’s a little pivot at the end, and I was always pissed off about that. I remember thinking “fuck it, I did it, I didn’t touch the floor” you know what I mean? If I did something and I didn’t touch the floor or snap my board I was happy. I don’t even want to speculate on this one but maybe it took about 100 tries, it was an ordeal. This was before digital cameras and Sam Ashley was there trying to shoot it as well, he burned through all of his film. There were rolls and rolls of film on the floor, it was so annoying, I tried so hard. I think I could have maybe done it again. I actually started to get much better at the trick after that. I used to do it on flat, and I could do it over hips all day long, but I don’t think I ever did it down anything ever again.
I thought about trying it down the London Bridge stairs but they were just too big and the trick was too tech. The Southbank seven aren’t big stairs but they’re big enough, I thought I’d leave it at that. I grew up at Southbank so I remember being a tiny child watching people jump down the seven, and thinking that was possible. They’re not the biggest stairs but if you do a trick down them you’re pretty stoked. I saw some footage of a kid doing a trick down them the other day and he looked stoked so they’re still delivering. I stuck a frontside nollie heelflip down Macba once but I slid out and there was no-one there, I remember thinking why am I going to kill myself trying to do this? Macba four are slightly bigger than London Bridge, they’re fucking high. I remember questioning myself, why was I trying this same trick down another set of big stairs? I don’t need to do it. Now that I’m older, in retrospect I should have probably just done it everywhere. I was the first person to cuss people who just did their same trick at different spots around the world, then I just started doing the same thing. It’s good to have a good trick like that but it’s also a curse.
Still from the intro sequence to Toby’s part in the Landscape Portraits video filmed by Chris Massey
When I did the 360 one at Southbank I knew I had done something that no-one else had done so it was a good feeling, I grew up watching Plan B videos. I learned a good trick and wanted to do it down some stairs definitely. One day when we were young I remember Ben Jobe skating the seven. This was before his crazy hippy footage. I’m pretty sure he was wearing a black and white pair of adidas Shelltoes and he had a fucked up setup, completely worn out with a short nose and tail. His skateboard was making noises when he was moving it was so fucked up. So he was skating quite slow to do both of these tricks but he frontside nollie kickflipped the stairs, and switch backside flipped them. It was probably 7-10 goes to do both tricks. I couldn’t believe it, they’re both hard tricks to do down stairs now. He did that for kicks, chose those two tricks and just did them there and then. He was so absurdly talented when we were young it was insane. In that Baker sense he could do tricks down stairs that he probably couldn’t even do on flat. He’d regularly come to Southbank to try a random flip trick down the seven and just do it. I actually remember Greg Finch once doing a frontside shuvit heelflip down the seven and I don’t think he could do that trick on flat. There’s Joey’s switch frontside heelflip I mentioned earlier too. There’s definitely some magic at Southbank. If you skate there all the time there are things you could do there, you maybe couldn’t do anywhere else.
“When I did the 360 one at Southbank I knew I had done something that no-one else had done so it was a good feeling”
I think I did every trick I wanted to do down the seven, I’m quite limited. I snapped my tail off as always trying to switch backside heelflip them which is something I probably should have made myself do. This was my best trick though, the best one I filmed with Massey, it makes sense it was the last trick in that part. There was a good day with you in America where I nearly switch backside heelflipped a double set. I would have fucking done that as well but everything got weird and everyone wanted to leave. It was such a little double set, I think [Eric] Koston did something down it. I was getting so close, feeling it, then this kid flew in from out of nowhere, tried to nollie flip them, and snapped his ankle. We had to climb out of there, I remember Oli Barton shooting it and realising how close I was to doing it. So frustrating! What a weird day. It was me, you, Jason Dill, Gino [Iannucci], Bartok, and then this unfortunate kid. On that whole trip I had those Organic boards with painted edges. I think everyone thought I was some dickhead kid from England who copied Karl Watson’s skate company. I was friends with Karl Watson though, and he knew that we had already made that company, I don’t think we ever even spoke about it properly but we didn’t have an International patent. It was such a bad name though, I was too young to fight my corner on that and didn’t have a better suggestion. I wanted to call it Myth which is a pretty fucking shit name for a skate company too.
My nursery is now called Zophian Plants which is a name I’m happy with. It’s a horticultural business so I meet quite a lot of posh people who all want to pronounce it Zo-fie-an, I have heard a lot of different pronunciations but it’s correctly pronounced Zoh-fee-an. There was this skater we grew up with in Harrow who was fucking amazing, I had to speak to Nick Zorlac to make sure I got his name right. He had a picture in Thrasher smith grinding over the crack in the Harrow halfpipe. When Jake Phelps and that lot came to England I met them when I was younger at Radlands and they all knew him, they were all asking about “Zof”, he knew [John] Cardiel and shit. He was a proper NorCal legend but not official in the world of sponsored skateboarding. He was called Zophian though and I always thought it was a fucking good name, so it’s a homage to “Zof”. It’s so funny, he was a legend, and it’s a great name, so we should have named the skate company after him. I thought about calling my nursery Supernaut at one point too, it’s a Black Sabbath song, no-one would know about the company name but I’m glad I settled on Zophian.
Toby’s skateboarding mindset prevails even with his Zophian Plants endeavours. Homage to “Zof”
I don’t skate any more, you know that, but my mindset is still exactly the same as a skateboarder. I’m on my own in a field today with these dudes explaining that I want to do something, and I need them to do what I need them to do. To me that’s the same as jumping down some stairs, I taught myself horticulture because it’s just what I want to do. My mindset is very much like skateboarding still which is really weird. I think when I meet normal people in the world I’m working in they think I’m quite mad. I haven’t worked for another nursery, I don’t know anyone but they think I’m really motivated. I’m just stubborn though, I’m going to jump down these stairs, I’m going to make this thing. Skateboarding is persistence, stubbornness, bloody-mindedness. You train on your own, fail alone, trying again, and again, to do something. I don’t skate any more and I have no bitterness about that but I get annoyed sometimes when people ask me why I don’t skate any more. You would never say that to me. I would if I could but I can’t. It took me a long time to appreciate what I learned as a skateboarder, and to realise that it is still really embedded in my mentality. It’s never gone away, I just do my own shit.
It doesn’t matter how commercial skateboarding comes, I’ll still see some new kid on Instagram. Don’t know who he is, where he came from but he is just killing it, a recent example for me is that kid Willow [Voges Fernandes]. I’m just watching footage of him out there with his mates, he’s doing what he wants to do on a skateboard, no-one is intervening in that. It’s a certain type of person who becomes a skateboarder, I’ve realised all these years later that I may not skate any more but my mentality will always be the same.
“It’s a certain type of person who becomes a skateboarder, I’ve realised all these years later that I may not skate any more but my mentality will always be the same”
Going back to Portraits, it was just great to be able to do that with the people I did it with. To make something that was of a standard, something I didn’t think was shit. I always felt that if I had more of a chance I would have filmed a better part, that’s how I looked at it. I think it was good enough, I was stoked. It was the best part I ever had, the way it was edited, the music, the tricks but I know that if I had more opportunity to film I could have done more. When I quit skating I was injured but I was having a hard time expanding as a skateboarder I think as well. The only blessing from being taken out of skateboarding so young was that I didn’t have to go through that period of wondering if I was good enough to still be doing it, to be sponsored. You can skate as long as you like but I was sponsored and I think I took that quite seriously. I was hyper-critical, if someone was shit I would cuss them, hahaha. I was the first person to cuss someone for being shit, I still am. That was the one blessing of being taken out so young, I didn’t have to deal with that.
Portraits was a good video but I feel like it was the warm up to what could have been for a lot of us. I’m just happy it happened, it’s hard to think about now as an adult because obviously our friend who made it is now dead. The memory of the video is quite tragic in some sense. It always makes me think about him. He spent loads of his own money on a camera, and he never really got much for making that video as far as I know. He put lots into it and nothing really happened but he learned how to edit while making it. Then from there he went on to do all of the things he went on to do as a career. That’s the perfect example of a skateboarder’s bloody-mindedness. I’m going to make this video because I want to make a video. He did it, and he did it all for free basically but got really good at editing, and at understanding the process of making and directing something. If he hadn’t have made that video I’m not sure he would have gone on to do what he ended up doing. It all comes from that same stubborn mindset we all have.
As far as people today who are doing that trick well, our friend Chris Lippi sent me footage of Tyshawn Jones doing one over a full size trash can in New York. Whenever I check that dude out, it’s obvious that he is one of the best skateboarders in the world basically. His skill level for being a proper street skater but having this Danny Way element is just mental. The nollie kickflip-crooked grind he did down the rail at the Brooklyn Banks is insane. I remember Jason Dill telling me about having a kid on the team who is ridiculous the last time I saw him. That nollie frontside heelflip over the trash can is amazing. I couldn’t have done that in my era, it’s way bigger than a beer keg, some serious [Andrew] Brophy pop. I feel like his whole thing is that he can do things that no-one else can do, it has to be something impossible every time he puts something out there. He’s so gnarly and I’m sure he’s a funny chap, I’ve heard so. His skill level is insane.
We want to thank Toby for this trip down memory lane and for painting such a vivid picture of some halcyon days. Massive thank you to Neil Macdonald [Science Vs Life] as always for the mag scans from his archives. Thanks to Dan Magee for providing some background about what went down at London Bridge that day on the other side of the camera. Thanks also to Chris Massey for creating something all those years ago which we still revisit, you are missed.
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