Crayon Skateboards have announced that Welsh Tommy is now pro for the team. Philip Morgan designed his guitar graphic deck that will be in your local skate shop ready for you to play this week, so look out for it.
Crayon have also released a brand new ‘Five Year’ DVD which is also out now with 20 minutes of fresh footage of Chris Jones, Welsh Tommy, James Coyle, Andy ‘EVZ’ Evans and Paul ‘Barber’ Cooper. This flick also comes with 45 minutes of extra footage and is a bargain for one of those blue five pound notes you would have seen before. Click here to buy one.
Crayon Skateboards return with a new Autumn deck series featuring their new Big C collection. These bad boys manufactured by the Generator wood shop in the USA will be heading to your local skate shop as you read this today, so order one now before they sell out. New team rider Andy “Evz” Evans from Liverpool has an edit here you may want to watch too.
UK skate shops are stacked with new decks, wheels, clothing, shoes, hats and more right now so here’s our monthly gathering of what we think are the best options throughout July. Explore below for a selection of products available from Skate Mental, Girl, Superdead, Heroin, Drawing Boards, Volcom, Foundation, Unabomber, Chocolate, Crayon, Toy Machine, Fourstar, Altamont, DVS, Lakai, Kr3w, éS and Emerica.
If you would like your product considered for inclusion in this zine, get in touch here.
To coincide with the ‘Place‘ trade show that is happening this week, the good lads at The Harmony have organised a jam at the Pump Cage for January 30th.
Pump Action Cage Fight will feature a best trick comp, prizes and of course all the hype and good times that come with skating with the likes Joe Gavin, Jak Pietryga, Tony Da Silva, Jamie Errington, Pablo Aresu and Taylor Oakley.
Witchcraft and Crayon heads will be in attendance too, so there’s no excuse to miss this!
Click here to read an interview with The Harmony’s Joe Gavin, fresh off the (word)press!
Across the UK, skater owned shops are currently getting fresh packages from distributors dishing out the new products for the Holiday Season. Understandably, there’s lots of quality goods included in these packages and condensing our favourites into one Line Check didn’t seem as appealing to us as running two of them. So before you head out with the intention of blowing your Xmas savings, have a look at our selection of some top shelf products that are arriving in your local skate shop now.
Antiz have never been afraid to tell it like it is, so with the help of Ben The and Ludovic Gabriel they have produced the ‘Ass‘ Series. Just like everyone has an opinion, everyone has an ass; and the Antiz pro team are no exception to that rule.
Skate Mental have a huge range of decks available right now but those are our chosen six above, including O’Neill’s of-the-moment ‘Call Of Duty‘ deck and Matt Beach’s super rad Tre Flip model that provides Ewoks with the publicity they have always deserved.
Kill City are keeping things street in South Wales with their ‘Spray Paint‘ and ‘Marker‘ models. Note how good those sizes are; for those of you out there with pixie feet who haven’t made the jump up from 7.5″ here’s a good excuse to man up.
Tyler Bledsoe’s debut pro model for Alien Workshop is in shops now with a suitably trippy graphic to cause your own Mindfield to relapse. Crayon hooked up with the CSC mascot, ‘Boxman‘ and his model designed by the wonderful Philip Morgan is now available fresh from the press. Hype! are making a name for themselves with some superb web edits and quality decks to match and Karma hooks up with the insomniac Alex Maw who knocked up a couple of rad designs for their latest decks. We’re stoked on these.
Ace Trucks are starting to become a common name in UK stores so if you’re looking for something new to get your grind on with then try these out. They are selling fast having already made an impact on a competitive truck market in the US and are set to do the same here.
OJ Wheels have made a welcome comeback into the urethane spotlight this year and are our selected wheels alongside Andrew Pommier’s Tin Toy series for Momentum.
The winter warmers are in stock! Now, unless your skin is made of thinsulate material then you’ve probably noticed it’s absolutely bloody freezing outside; have a look at cozy jackets and shirts from Matix, Fourstar, Addict, Independent and Etnies right there above.
Ok, so we were so stoked on Beach’s 360 flipping Ewok that we had no choice but to include the matching tee in our t-shirt round up alongside other graphic gems from Girl and Hype! Uzi does it now…
Soletech may be reknowed for their innovative progress in shoe technology, but you shouldn’t think that less effort is put into their threads. éS and Emerica make some of the best clothes going and the cords and chinos you see above are nice, simple and ridiculously comfortable.
But if it is shoes you’re after because the ones your wearing are soaked through with melted snow then be sure to check out Habitat’s Footwear range. Like Soletech, they’ve got the talent and experience to dabble in more than just one area. We have a Habitat package to give away this month that includes a pair of their awesome shoes; click here to enter. And as per, DVS bring the goods with simple and effective designs in dope colourways. Port should be really considered more often.
Check back for more recommended products in the following weeks.
Here’s something a little different. A couple of months ago, Nye Vaughan teamed up with the most underground skater in Wales, Steven King, to produce the Time Stretched promo.
Steven King footage is notoriously hard to come by, but when it does then the champagne comes straight out. His style, approach and obscure trick selection have turned him into something of a reluctant legend in Wales. Have a look below to see why.
Big props to Nye for spending four grueling months meticulously editing this, it’s a compelling watch…
The story of Cardiff getting its first proper outdoor skatepark is a long, tiresome one that has its roots in the first days people would get kicked out of the Welsh Offices. The idea would be knocked around and years would pass and there would still be essentially no where for skateboarders living in capital city to skate. Of course, the skateboarders of Cardiff were lucky to exist in a growing city that blossomed into a notorious street skaters haven. In a way, this in fact brought the skateboarding community of Wales even closer together, eventually spawning the hugely tight and unsurprisingly seminal Cardiff Skateboard Club that’s gained unofficial ‘members’ from across the UK. But with more street spots come more security guards, more angry pedestrians and a plethora of students getting in everyone’s way. Sessions would too frequently be cut short and it wasn’t until 2009 that the unanimous decision was to go to the council with years worth of evidence and support and demand a skatepark be built in this city.
In July of 2009, Nick Richards (of Nick The Bastard fame) organised a protest outside county hall that attracted local and regional newspapers and more importantly, the attention of Cardiff Council. In a well-planned protest, the skateboarders of Cardiff demonstrated the need for a skatepark in the way that anyone in a skate scene living in a currently neglected town can do. Patience (Cardiff had enough of that…) and genuine desire goes a long way. The Cardiff Barrage Plaza was swiftly becoming a realistic idea and the typical poorly designed council parks will likely be skated for the last time in the months that followed.
Just six months later and the skatepark was confirmed, with £140,000 in the pot for the beginning round of development. The CSC then liased with various skatepark designers so that the plans for the park followed something that the skaters of Cardiff actually wanted. Marc Churchill’s Gravity team got the contract with a design that not only made everyone wet their pants a little (and launch the CSC blog into the stratosphere of comment section tomfoolery) but made full use of the budget and space available. From having to rely on an increasingly cracked area of flatland with a flatbank that only five people in Wales can actually skate properly, the CSC and extended CSC fam would have one of the UK’s most innovative parks in one of the sexiest locations imaginable. Apparently we do like to be beside the seaside.
Below: Caradog Emanuel – F/S Bigspin Heel
After 8-10 weeks of solid graft from Gravity, the park was made and fences were to be hopped! Ahead of schedule, when the Ipath crew turned up expecting somewhere to skate, the fences came down and everyone could officially skate the park. Needless to say – you’ve seen the plans, the pictures and by now some videos too – from this point on, the collective CSC facebook wall-to-wall read nothing more than “plaza?”, “skating the plaza?”, “when are you getting to the plaza?” and “plaza today?” I can’t imagine this will change any time soon. Well… not until it rains at least. And it will rain. It’s Wales.
But for when its dry, the Cardiff Barrage Plaza is genuinely the most fun thing I’ve skated since I can remember. The design is lightyears ahead of its competitors in regards to both how well it flows and the sheer amount of people you can shove into the place without it turning into a game of human pinball. Even on the opening jam, where at least 200 attended in another one of UK skateboarding’s most infamous sausage fests, I didn’t collide with anyone. Not even a kid. It’s almost magic. Though, judging by how universally friendly Porno Paul’s lexical choices were when MCing the event, there must have been something in the atmosphere to make everything so…nice?
Rather than read superfluous descriptions on how rad the park is – see for yourself. Nick Richards has worked his arse off putting the building of the park in motion, but filming an absolutely banging edit, exclusively for Crossfire, of all the sessions that went down in the first month. LSP local Harry Deane also jumped in with his VX and shot another edit for us focussing on the locals and younger crew, you can see his edit here. Let this story be part of the motivation for you to get something similar done in your town. It CAN be done. And just look at the results…
Big up to Gravity, CSC, Crayon Skateboards and City Surf for working hard to make this happen for the capital of Wales. Dai iawn! If you’re stoked on this park and the edit then share it on Facebook and get your mates and plan a trip to Wales because great parks should be skated and not just talked about.
The plaza is located next to The Cardiff Bay Visitor Centre, Harbour Drive, Cardiff, CF10 4PA – or you can check the map.
Christian ‘Pirate Man’ Hart has been slaving away the past few months for Cardiff Skateboard Club’s first ‘proper proper’ video ‘Join Us‘.
The video follows the groundbreaking (in the vandalism sense) path of the infamous lo-fi masterpiece ‘First Blood‘ and will be certainly filled with bangers from the CSC massive and other Cardiff locals.
So Welsh heads, make sure you have no other plans for Friday July 30th as Dempsey’s Bar is the place to be for the premiere – featuring appearances from a REAL pirate! See you there!
Cardiff-based Crayon Skateboards have been going from strength to strength over the last year picking up some of the UK’s most revered skateboarders. Korahn Gayle’s arrival made Crayon’s increasingly good rep outside of Cardiff soar above the clouds and what way to celebrate with a couple of gorgeous collaboration decks with Cardiff born-and-bred psychedelic design warlock, Pete Fowler.
You’ve almost certainly come across his work before in the form of all the visual pieces that accompany the already tripped out electro-fuzz rockers Super Furry Animals. His trippy characters and flowing colour translate perfectly into Crayon’s graphic identity; slick, perfectly-crafted colourful characters that ooze idiosyncracy and a couple interesting quirks. I couldn’t think of a better way to compliment the bunch of oddballs that ride the waxy kid’s art toy influenced plank. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve used actual crayons to wax up ledges as a substitute for wax every so often… ‘who’s wax is this crayon now boyo?’
Crayon use everyone’s favourite Deluxe wood (okay, a sweeping statement but I’ve never heard anything but instant gushing from any skater’s mouth at the mention of Deluxe) so you’re guaranteed a solid piece of wood beneath you feet. The deck itself is a joy to ride and it’s not at all difficult to comprehend why when you see someone skate through Cardiff, that 90% of the time, they’ll be riding a Crayon deck. If they keep producing decks like this, and throwing launch parties where the artist in question breaks their ankle in the club’s lav (fully legit! ‘ave it Fowler!) then I wouldn’t be surprised if those odds aren’t just exclusive to Cardiff, but spread across the UK. Keep it homegrown, keep it fresh. Fowler helps Crayon keep things both real and unreal, and I encourage everyone to get on board.
Head over to the Crayon website for an exclusive interview with Pete Fowler himself.
Here’s something a little different. A couple of months ago, Nye Vaughan teamed up with the most underground skater in Wales, Steven King, to produce the Time Stretched promo.
Below: Caradog Emanuel – F/S Bigspin Heel
After 8-10 weeks of solid graft from Gravity, the park was made and fences were to be hopped! Ahead of schedule, when the Ipath crew turned up expecting somewhere to skate, the fences came down and everyone could officially skate the park. Needless to say – you’ve seen the plans, the pictures and by now some videos too – from this point on, the collective CSC facebook wall-to-wall read nothing more than “plaza?”, “skating the plaza?”, “when are you getting to the plaza?” and “plaza today?” I can’t imagine this will change any time soon. Well… not until it rains at least. And it will rain. It’s Wales.
Cardiff-based 