The Nine Club with Johnny Layton
This week’s episode of The Nine Club with Chris Roberts sees former Toy Machine and Vans rider Johnny Layton taking to the chair. Johnny’s ability to straddle the tech/gnar dichotomy and switch tre flip anything in his path always made footage of his a pleasure to watch and his near-disappearance from the skate media’s radar due to being dropped from various sponsors around the same time was definitely skateboarding’s loss (you can read more about this via his 2016 interview with Jenkem Mag).
Moving to a behind the scenes role at Vans, however, meant that he stayed in the skateboarding loop and has no problem in maintaining the viewer’s interest in this near-two hour interview which covers his BMX racing as a kid, getting into skating during peak Muska-hype, getting on Toy Machine, street grabs, viral genitals (thankfully in the modern sense of that word) and plenty more…
“This week we’ve got Johnny Layton on the show discussing growing up in Murrieta CA, winning the BMX grand nationals at 10 years old, started skating at 11, going on tour with Role Model, giving his sponsor me tape to Ed Templeton, turning pro for Toy Machine, getting on Vans, the shower picture that went viral, the switch tre-flip that got away, losing both his sponsors within days apart, getting hired at Vans and much more!”
For those younger readers who haven’t come across it in the Indiana Jones warehouse that online skate media often resembles, luckily we have top men on the case to direct your attention to Johnny Layton’s part in Toy Machine’s 2004 full length video Good and Evil.
Following on from that, you can check out the footage that would have made up his section in Propeller courtesy of The Berrics;