Jim has been a part of the UK Vert Scene for a while now. We thought we'd catch up with him for a chat about the UK Vert Series, the Olympics and plenty more for Issue 1...
Photo: Stu Bennett. Kickflip Fs Air
Hey Jim, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you first got into skateboarding?
I started skating when I was about 12 it was never particularly serious when I first got into it. I used to skate with my friends at the skatepark in Birmingham and then I saw some people skating vert which was like Sean Goff, Jim the Skin and that group and was fascinated by that. All my friends at school stopped skating and I carried on skating on my own and that’s been my life pretty much the last 20 years. How do you balance your time between your teaching career and skateboarding? I don’t think I’ll be able to do if I did anything else but pretty much all I do is I teach then I go skating. So I will leave school about 5:00 PM, I’m normally home by about 6:00 PM and then I’ll go skating by 7:00 PM and then I wake up and do it again. So yeah, I think that I’m always really impressed by people who balance family life and skating at the same time because I don’t know how I could do that.
OK what do you think about the UK Vert Series and how does it help your skateboarding?
I think the UK vert series has evolved a lot over probably the last 40 years now. So, it would have been the ESA to begin with which were the comps that people like Jim, Sean and Wingy would have been skating when they were younger. I first entered Blockless Combat when Blockless started again so that would have been like 2004 ish. I think I just dropped in vert then and I didn’t really know what entering a comp was, but I was more excited to watch people skate. And then a few other comps started opening up so that was on the first time that I really started travelling through skating. So going to Mount Hawke or going to Blackpool or Brighton. So that was kind of how I learned to go travelling and how I learnt to go out independently, and now I find it’s more like it’s a monthly incentive to try something new and it’s a good excuse to have at least one weekend a month when you’re not just doing the same sessions, when you are going out and seeing different ramps and doing something different. So yeah, I find it’s good to keep me motivated when there’s nothing else going on.
I don’t know much about the ESA?
The ESA was the English Skateboarding Association and they used to run like an A Group and B group back in the 80s. Obviously I wasn’t alive then, but I think they had quite a lot of events and were quite popular. There wasn’t like a vert series to begin with, it was just Blockless combat, Trawlers Ramp Jam and Seaside Sessions in Blackpool. And then, after a couple years of that, I think they thought it would be cool to kind of rebuild the A group and B group and then when everyone started getting old they started masters as well.
Photo: Stu Bennett. Fs 1-foot grind
How would you describe your approach to vert skateboarding and what sets you apart from other skaters in the scene?
I think that this may be through not having many friends my own age who were skaters. I’ve always been very singular about vert, like it’s all I really do in skateboarding. So, I think because I’ve over overfocused on it so much and because I really struggled when I was a teenager in that I struggled doing 540s and I couldn’t do flip tricks, but then I remember learning a backside disaster and really enjoying the process and getting obsessed with lip tricks and I guess it’s like that feedback loop isn’t it? Where you learn a trick and you get a good feeling of achievement and then just going down rabbit holes. So yeah, basically through spending way too much time doing it and finding 540s and flip tricks really difficult.
What are your thoughts on creativity within Vert skateboarding then?
I think that it’s limited because out of all the kind of different disciplines except for maybe flatland, it’s quite a limited canvas. It’s not like you are skating a bowl. Just before speaking to you I watched a clip of Pedro (Barros) doing a fakie flip indy in his bowl. But him doing a fakie flip indy in his bowl is so much more interesting than a fakie flip indy on vert because of the line he takes into it. So, I think that if you’re not careful, things can get a bit stagnant because you’re just going back and forth and it’s that kind of swing set thing. I think the counterbalance to that is that it’s also like a blank canvas where if you want to you can take it wherever you want to go. I think that things are really positive at the moment in the way that competitive vert skating is going. I listened to this really interesting conversation a few months ago where they were talking about how, because they’re moving away in the big international comps from 45 second runs to 30 second run and best trick, you are incentivising the high-end skaters to learn more progressive tricks and do shorter more intense runs. I think that if you look at a lot of skating over the 2000’s and the early 2010’s it is lots of quite similar runs that are good but more long and low level comparatively to today. But it’s because you know you had all these amazing vert skaters who are basically told that if they want to make money, they need to be able to do 45 second runs and I think that’s killed some of the progress but hopefully that’s changing now.
Wow, that’s interesting. What would you say are some of your proudest Vertical moments and biggest accomplishments in skateboarding?
As I have gotten older, I really love teaching and coaching, and I guess facilitating people to enjoy skating the way I have, so I do about 5-6 hours of coaching a week. Also, anytime that you’ve got somebody who’s getting into skating, and you help them, you facilitate them to do something that their proud of doing, that’s always a really good moment. In terms of my personal skating winning the Vert Series was something I didn’t expect I’d be able to do. I remember the first year I did that it felt a bit surreal and that was really proud moment. And then doing it again, I think that second year a few people were absent, but yeah that first year was really special. There’s been a couple of tricks that I think I can say that I’m the first person to do and that’s been pretty special as well.
Rad. So what’s your thoughts on the state of worldwide vert skateboarding today?
I think a lot is going to depend on what happens with the Olympics in 2028. The reality is that there’s loads and loads of really talented younger skaters and skaters in general for whom the big thing is skating Park because it is in the Olympics. But I think that we’ll see things change a lot when vert gets announced as going into the Olympics and I think that we’ll see a lot more big competitions coming up. Obviously big competitions aren’t the be all and end all but at the end of the day when big competitions are coming up people build ramps and people put smaller events on. There is a massive breadth of skaters out there and we are seeing a lot more diversity in terms of countries and gender and I think we’ll see far more equality between male and female vert skating within ten years. I think that it is easy to look at the mid-nineties or maybe 2002 as a pinnacle of competitive vert skating but I do like that when you look at a pro vert contest now, I feel that there is a much wider variety in the sort of run that can win a contest now than there was 20 years ago. So, I would say that is my big thing: that competitive vert skating now is far more diverse than it used to be.
That’s good. Do you have any specific goals or tricks you are working on?
I remember being a teenager and being convinced that I would get to 20 and I’d have done a 540 and a few other dream tricks and then I’d just do Fs grinds. It’s really interesting that as you get older that never goes away. If I was being really honest, I would genuinely kill to do a good Bs 540 on vert. So that is the big one, and then loads of weird lip tricks that I’ve got in my head.
Photo: Stu Bennett. Fs boardslide
OK, so there is a very strong sense of community in the vert scene. How do you think this benefits it?
I think it is kind of inherent in the modality of it because you need a ramp for you to be able to ride on, you need that ramp to be well maintained and for that to happen you need a group of people to be like-minded and acting in a communal way. For example, we went for a session last night at Skaterham and for that session to happen everyone needed to coordinate when they are going, everyone needs to behave around each other on the ramp and the ramp needs to be nice and clean (Thanks Raf Makda!) and everyone needs to support each other when they are there whether it be people getting injured or people filming each other. So, I think that is kind of inherent in vert as opposed to street where you and a friend could just go and skate a rail. Not saying there isn’t that sense in street but with vert that is kind of part of it, especially where it is smaller which gives it that sort of Punk ethos. That is why I got into it when I was younger because people like Sean or Wingy were taking care of me going to vert attack or wherever and much like last night you can go to a ramp and see the little kids there and there is still people like Greg (Nowik) there supporting those kids coming up so it’s good to see that that sense of community and support has persevered over generations now.
That is great thank you Jim. Any thank you’s or shout outs?
I don’t like doing this because I feel like I always forget people, but yeah. It’s everyone who is involved in everything isn’t it? So I won’t bother because I will feel bad afterwards if I forgot someone.
Photo: Stu Bennett. Alley Oop body varial lipslide