Sidewalk Magazine - Issue 213 - June 2014
Skate photography: Andrew Horsley
Portrait: Ollie Staples
So Jordan, your first photo was printed in June 2014. What was going on in your life nine years ago?
That’s a good question. 2014 was probably the first abroad action I’d had, so I think that was kind of the beginning of everything, really. You can almost trace everything that’s happening today back to the things that happened that year. The photo of me doing the invert at Spring Classic, that was the first time I ever met (Alex) Hallford. It was the first time I met a lot of other people that became key figures in my life over the last 10 or so years, almost, and I’ve seen them nearly every single year, repeatedly, in different places, different countries. I think that’s kind of crazy, that we’re linked by this one event in Naples where we all first came together. Martino (Cattaneo), Bjørn Lillesø, Daan Van Der Linden, I’m pretty sure Alex Sorgente was there, Jonas Skrøder, Guillaume Mocquin, Doobie (Victor Pellegrin), Robin Bolian, Aurélien Giraud, Daniel Cardone, and Little V, Gabriel Viking. It’s crazy thinking about being stood on a ramp, skating with them all when I was a kid, and then now we still travel around, skating together.
The issue of Sidewalk with this photo in it came out in June, but I’m sure the Vans Spring Classic event took place at the start of May. How old would you have been then?
15 or 16; I think I was in my first year of sixth form. I told the teachers that I wasn’t going to be in for the week because I had this competition coming up in Italy, and I remember my parents and teachers being like, “you can’t just miss a whole week of sixth form”, and I was like, “well, I’m going to”. There was no way that I was not going to Italy. It was the first time I’d been to Italy as well, and it was to Naples.
What were your first impressions of Naples? It seemed almost lawless, from what I remember. It definitely struck me as being a troubled city.
It was wild as fuck; it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting, Naples. When you think of Italy, you think of Rome, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and things like that. Going through the streets in a taxi there was one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever had in my life. It was so unforgiving and hesh, the way they were driving. People would walk out in front of cars, and the cars would just swerve around them; that was the first time I’d ever seen that. The taxi driver we had ended up taking shortcuts through car parks that had no cars in them, but he was doing 60, 70mph just through these car parks. I was thinking, “we could actually die here”. It was pretty sketchy, but we made it (laughs).
So this invert photo was shot by Horse (Andy Horsley); what do you remember of your first time meeting him? How did the chance to shoot the invert come about?
I didn’t really know who he was (laughs), but I knew he was a nice, friendly, cheerful chap, on the deck with his camera. I remember really liking the look of his little camera, it might have been a film camera, and he looked like he was on holiday, having a nice time, but he was real fun to shoot a photo with. This was a phase in my life when I was doing inverts left, right and centre, because (Mark) Munson and Potter (Carl Wilson) had taught me how to invert on the coping a year or two before, and I was doing them everywhere. I think I did one, and Horse came up to me and said, “let’s shoot one of those”.
So you’re on the right and page doing your invert, and over on the left hand page you have your now fellow Lovenskate pro Alex Hallford, doing a crail air to fakie.
I remember watching him doing the crail fakie. I’d never seen anyone do a crail fakie; I was like, “what the hell?” I was fully blown away by that. I tried to learn them straight away afterwards but never really perfected them. I got to the hostel in Naples, I was sharing a room with Denis (Lynn), and he was like, “this is your bed”. He pointed to it, and Hallford was in my bed, asleep under the covers. That’s how we first met each other.
And not much has changed since then.
No (laughs). Although I do find myself staying at his house a lot, or in his van.
Did you hear about the mafia supposedly interfering with Spring Classic that year?
I heard they made Vans pay them some severe amount of money for protection, basically.
I think the initial payment was for ‘music licensing’. I can’t remember the exact figure but it was in the thousands.
That sounds about right. I remember driving down the street and there’d be tanks parked up on the traffic islands; it was a bizarre place.
Apparently the mafia’s demands got so bad that the people from Vans ended up having to do a runner, and had to leave the ramp and the seating just set up on the beach.
Really? Fuck… I wish I’d have known that; I’d have stuck about for a bit longer to try and skate it. That ramp was good but it was pretty unforgiving. I’d just learnt how to do 5-0 danger dips; I tried to do one in my run, I dipped it and just hung up, but actually hung up, flew to flat, hit my head and concussed myself a little bit, then Guillaume ollied off the extension and ran over my foot straight afterwards (laughs). It was hectic. It was a good time in life. I really enjoyed being able to go back to Empire - or it might have even been RampRage at that point - and share stories with my friends, and come back with ideas for new tricks to try.
In the same issue of Sidewalk, you appear in the Milk Skateboards Lisbon article as well. Did that trip happen before the Spring Classic trip to Italy?
The Milk trip was in March; it was definitely more like summer in Naples. The Milk trip was awesome, we had such a good crew. There were 12 of us, plus Jamie Harold shooting. I do miss those Milk trips; they were so fun. Dan (Shervington) really got a lot of good people together, and we became quite close over the years, like family.
You were the last man standing.
Yeah. (Nick) Remon left, then it was just me. With it being my first sponsor, and it being like a family, I thought I may as well go down with the ship. Milk dropped off, then Stu (Smith) sent me a package with a couple of boards and a nice letter, and I’d also been hanging out with him in London as well, and skating with Alex on a regular basis in different scenarios… none of them in England (laughs). It wasn’t for a year or so that I even saw Alex in England. I got to know him quite well, but I never got to hang out with him in the U.K., until we went to War of the Thistles, and even then, that was in Scotland (laughs). I went back to his house in Nottingham after that, and stayed with him for a week. I met Nelly (Neil Turner), and skated with everyone there, and it was so fun.
The taxi driver we had ended up taking shortcuts through car parks that had no cars in them, but he was doing 60, 70mph just through these car parks. I was thinking, “we could actually die here”. It was pretty sketchy, but we made it.
Do you remember when this issue of Sidewalk came out?
I do remember getting to flick through it for the first time. I think I was in the shop, in Triple Sword, and I was amazed to see a picture of myself in a magazine; it was such a good feeling. I would have taken a picture of it to show my parents, and from what I remember, they were pretty stoked. I set the photo as my Facebook profile picture for a while, actually. That was what we were doing, back then. You’d make a Facebook profile pic or a cover photo, and that was the extent of the social media coverage that you’d give yourself (laughs).
Did you keep a copy of this mag anywhere?
I don’t think I could afford it back then. Either that, or I reckon I lost it. I was not very good at keeping on top of anything. I didn’t have a phone because I’d either break it or lose it within a month of getting it. I wasn’t the best at looking after stuff at that age, that’s for sure. I didn’t even smoke weed either (laughs), I just couldn’t handle it.
I guess you’ve never been one for keeping hold of stuff then? Have you hoarded much skate paraphernalia over the years?
I do like sentimental things, and I’ve kept a few random bits and bobs over the years, though I am trying to procure more now that I’m a bit older. I’ve got this rock from the first skatepark we had in Colchester, the one we used to call Colchester Rumbles; it’s a rock off of one of the hips. It was the only concrete ramp in the whole place, the rest of the park was metal. I’ve got this smoking tin that I got from Dean Greensmith fucking ages ago, at Boardmasters; he’ll be livid that I’ve got that, because he wanted it back. I’ve got a few lighters and trinkets. I started collecting boards more recently, mainly to collect my mates’ ones, but I’ve got all of the pro boards that I’ve had; Stu always writes on one of them, to make sure I have to keep at least one. With Milk, I didn’t get to keep any of the boards, I skated them all. But I was skating pretty hard then, and I couldn’t afford to keep a board, basically; if I had a board, I had to skate it. Other than that, I’ve got some magazines and books, and I’ve got some of Lizzie Heath’s manga prints as well; I bought those off her last year. I’m fucking well stoked on those, she’s such a good artist. I do love my Manga. It’s so nice to see a Sidewalk in the flesh again, after so long. That’s something that I didn’t keep anything of. At that point in time, anything I tried to keep would just get destroyed, because I was living with my family and things were a bit hectic.
Have you got anything else you’d like to add, or any final thoughts on 2014?
It was definitely a good time to be alive. Skating was really good as well, there was a lot of magic in the air, a lot of the videos that came out were really strong. We were all going turbo, skating most days, meeting new people, and it was all just a big, massive adventure. I was coming back home quite a lot, spending a lot of time in Colchester and Essex… I wasn’t as rogue then as I became over the years (laughs).
Follow Jordan - @jthaxx_hys