Jimmy Carlin

Ph: Oliver Barton

This one is my all-time favourites, but I wasn’t there. This was about ten years ago when I was in high school. My friends went out to LA to skate the butter bench spots that Paul Rodriguez skates; Moose skates them a lot in The Deathwish Video, plastic ledges everywhere. The school is really hard to get into. The fence kind of matches up with the roof of the building so you have to get up on the fence, then the roof and then jump down. So they were all skating there for the day or whatever and an hour or so goes by. Then out of nowhere this kid that was there with another group of skaters says, “The cops are here”. They didn’t know what to do because they couldn’t hop over the fence and run off because there were two cop cars and stuff. So they said, “Let’s get up on top of the roof”. My friend Zach who was filming said there were thirty kids up there. Everyone had the same idea. One of my friends jumped over the fence and kind of ran off. He was like, “Damn it, what are we going to do? We’re going to be stuck in LA. What are the cops going to do? They’re not going to leave until everyone is back”. So the cops are yelling at everyone to get off the roof and everyone kind of gave up. There was a woman who was training to be a cop who was kind of on a ride along. The cop was getting all tough, trying to show off; “This is how you get over the fence”. So he starts climbing it, gets to the top, slips and sacked it [laughs]. He was proper, “ughhh”. He just slowly retreated and went back down. Everyone wanted to laugh but they were so nervous. Zack told me that my other friend just went, “Daaaaamn. You sacked it!” The image of the cop just trying to show off in front of the new girl and sacking it [laughs]. I wish I had of been there!

Nick Boserio

Ph: Jason Morey

Seckypresh is short for security pressure. It can be a good thing or a bad thing; bad getting kicked out obviously but once we started saying it a lot, I’ve seen so many people land tricks in Melbourne under seckypresh. It’s also the name of an awesome skate video made by Geoff Campbell. You can see in Dane’s gnarly boardslide on the double set kinked hubba there’s a secky standing right there. In Melbourne, Australia security guards have less power or something – and no guns – so we just roll deep and keep skating when they show up. We just tell them to call the cops and fuck off. It helps for sure, all your crew yelling, “seckypresh!” when they’re rolling up. You know the celebrations are going to be that much better if you take what you’re trying like that. I’ve had all types of seckys; angry, cool confused, every kind. A friend of ours has done the full, “Get out of the way or I’m going through you” routine and just barged the shit out of the secky who thought that was big boy hot shit.  The funniest shit about seckypresh is when you do come through when they show up and you’re all so happy to leave anyway because the trick is done; yelling and hyped, not caring at all that they’ve even showed up. It’s so awesome.

Evan Smith

Ph: Oliver Barton

Are you getting kicked out of skate spots too? That makes all of us. Sometime soon this has got to change! One time I was arrested in Hong Kong. Wes [Kremer] was trying to darkslide a carbon fibre handrail outside The Bank of China. The guards struggled to kick us out, but we left in a hurry only to find out that as soon as we loaded up our passenger van with humanoids, camera equipment, and one Chinese driver that they don’t play in Asia. Guards surrounded our large vehicle with cones, we had no idea what to do. I was in on this decision. We ditched the driver and the van and skated away as fast as possible. Our day went on as planned, hitting skate spots around Hong Kong. We met back up with the driver, he takes us to this large open area plaza.  We’re skating around, lurking. Wes heads to the store to get some beers, I’m checking out this rail, and little did we know we were being followed. Twenty to thirty cops surrounded us. No lie. The boys in blue won’t leave without taking four of us with them. We are getting searched and put up along a wall. At this point I look up and Wes gets back with a case of beer and takes a seat off in the distance observing the crimson from afar. A couple of hours go by, me and three others were taken into custody of the Chinese government. Luckily DC saved our lives and bails us out of jail and good thing Wes missed the jail wagon because he eventually went on darksliding his way onto the cover of Transworld.  I wasn’t mad that I went to jail that day. Sometimes you gotta pay to play. Right Wes?

Walker Ryan

Ph: Oliver Barton

One of my favorites was down here in San Diego. It was this spot that was a sidewalk entrance to a weed dispensary that was a gap to a street. It was a weed dispensary on a Saturday so we figured it should be chill. I’m skating the gap and the owner screeched up in his Porsche, got out and starts on me. The thing was, he wasn’t mad about me skating on his property, he was mad that I wasn’t wearing a helmet [laughs]. So we’re like, “….Oh. Well if that’s your only concern I can assure you the helmet isn’t an issue. If it’s the noise or whatever we’ll be happy to leave but if it’s really just the helmet you’re worried about then don’t worry, we do this for a living”. He just wasn’t budging. He was just so passionate about me wearing a helmet. So we left and came back the next weekend – with a helmet. He pulled up once again and started losing it especially because he recognized us. So I said, “Hey, hey, hey. Look, I’ve got the helmet”. Then I started skating around in front of him with the helmet on and dude, he was so stoked. He just felt like he’d won and proved his point. It was a weird one because then while I was skating I was worried he would come back out again and see me without the helmet on. He would have just thought I was doing it out of spite [laughs]. Every so often he would come back out and I’d put the helmet on quickly. He would stand and watch for a while smiling. Eventually I got the trick without the helmet [laughs] but it was the gnarliest switch backside flip I’ve ever done and I sometimes wish I’d done it with the helmet on, just for kicks.