June Store and Lik Down Productions present a full length Southend scene video by Jay Tate, ‘Lik Shots/The Moon’, featuring a wide variety of rippers who are possibly unfamiliar to those residing outside of the South East.

Southend may not loom large in the public consciousness, known mostly as a 19th and 20th century seaside resort and for having the world’s longest pleasure pier (as well as being the end of the road in Paul Theroux’s classic literary traversal of the British Isles during the Falklands Conflict ‘The Kingdom By The Sea’ and also the lyrical end of the road in Billy Bragg’s ode to Essex ‘A13’, where “Southend is the end of you”). It’s positioning on the Eastern tip of the Three Swords county has left it a little underexposed when it comes to skateboard coverage since the demise of the neighbouring, legendary Leigh-On-Sea skatepark but, rest assured, the skate scene has been bubbling away nicely down there in the meantime.

‘Lik Shots/The Moon – the third video from Jay – is a perfect representation of that, with over 40 minutes of a number of lesser seen spots getting a downright seeing too, interspersed with clips from missions to London, Copenhagen, Barcelona and elsewhere. The video kicks off with footage from Jay himself, with a cameo from fellow Essex scene chronicler Russ Cowling adding a pleasing element of keeping things local (without wanting to sound too League of Gentlemen) to proceedings. Shredding from then on comes from the like of Darby Gough, Dayle Rawlinson, Dave Crone, Wil Thomson, Chilli Hey, Ed Marriott, Matt McDowell, Jamie Walker, George Gough, Joe Hawkes, Warren Greatrex, Josh Buck and many more.

With many people prematurely calling the time of death of the full length video and arguing that no-ones attention spans can last past the twenty minute mark anymore (normally called by people whom you remember having no attention spans back in the day anyway), it’s rad to see people still going out and putting in intense amounts of time and effort into creating a declaration of love for their local skate scene. Cancel an hour of your evening’s plans, crack a can and sit back to enjoy this one…