To kick off EAST week we will be releasing individual parts from their 2006 video beast ‘Vapors’ daily as well as their big push entries and extras to Vapors!
There is also going to be a photo gallery to the EAST x Lost Art x Kev Grey collaborative exhibition that happened at the end of April 2014 at Bold Street Coffee in Liverpool.
Today’s section release is the intro and Josh Perret, who absolutely kills South Welsh, Parisian and Liverpool spots with the utmost of style! Legend.
The man behind the lens of it all; Dykie, has some words to say about EAST and the era it existed:
“My time associated with East started in 2002 if I remember, probably on my first trip to Barcelona with the Welsh crew. We were lucky enough to meet up with Mackey who was staying there at the time and he took us round to all the spots that he knew of. By the end of the week he said he was in the process of starting a company and wanted to sponsor Josh Perrett and Owain John and he asked me to be involved in the video production. There wasn’t the mass amount of skate companies that there are today so it felt more of a big deal, the three of us knew nothing about this company other than it was Mackey’s thing and that was good enough for us and we were all really excited.
Nothing happened for a good while then but we received some t’s and decks through the post about 6 months later then and it all looked rad! I then went on another trip to Barca with the Welsh crew again with the company still not properly launched but wearing the promo gear and in the Minola bar there was someone else wearing an East hoody (as I was) across the bar, it wasn’t for sale yet so he had to be connected and that person was Tony and that’s how I met him. Shortly after we went on the first tour which was up North, the initial team was Mackey, Josh, Owain, Tommy, Ferg and Tony. Kingy produced a good article out of it for Document and I got the footage; that seemed the real start of East to me.
A short while later we were on a little filming mission in Cardiff with most of the team and everyone was staying at my house. We happened to have a copy of the new Bristol scene video with the new kids ‘Bristol in Bloom’ and we were all really shocked on how good the vid was! Mackey was soon to put Korahn and Ashley on the team. That’s when making Vapors really got going, we went on trips for the next 2 years mainly in the UK and a couple of trips in Europe. We had some really fun times going up to Scotland to stay with Ferg and what sticks in my mind a lot is a trip to Cornwall with the 5050 crew, not so productive haha (don’t think any clips made it into Vapors) but was the best laugh. We kept loosing Syd following his van and everything else I think went wrong! I have come to the conclusion that a bad travel experience is a good experience, as long as you’re still standing haha.
We did struggle a bit, like making any video and there might have been a little stress, Mackey at one point was struggling to reach half a part and it didn’t help me falling on my face filming a downhill line of him, breaking my finger and needing stitches in my face! I then took a risk and thought a bit of pressure might work, I managed to talk Paddy (Mackey’s East partner) into booking the premier for about a month’s time with Mackey not being too happy about that but thankfully the risk paid off. Mackey filmed the second half of his part that month before and I was so stoked because that was the most thing I wanted to get right; working on Mackey’s part.
The time I spent with East (3 – 4 years) I can honestly say is the best time I have had with skateboarding and I will treasure the memories deeply. It was great skating with the team, getting results when we needed them and most of all having a great time and I hope that came across in the video. Big thank you to Mackey and Paddy for giving me the opportunity to be involved.”
Mathew ‘Dykie’ Ryan
