Face grazes, Haters and I read it in Rolling Stone Magazine

Now in previous stories if you’re following me, I’ve said that face grazes are usually for chicken hearts who jump ship from their board at high speeds. Time to eat those words and my hat, my toupee the whole wig and glue tube. Tasty shit no doubt and I’m hungry. As the nek minnit guy I have generated a certain amount of haters and I think I may have encountered one in the way that I feared most, behind the wheel of a car rolling up on me on a big hill. So here’s me pushing full tit into London street (A mean double dip hill in Dunedin) me on the Hosoi just loving it, tail wind throwing a few slides to test the feel and take control to really attack the hill, take the bull by the horns, speaking of horns, some crazy fat fuck who looks like he sits on youtube all day dissing and hating people he’s never met, probably dissing their looks and stuff!? Rolls up behind me tooting and swerving like he’s out to kill. With no respect for a true road warrior out there. With nothing between the road and myself but some urethane wheels, attempting a high speed haka you can’t watch at the world cup of thugby. Check the mana bitches!

Anyway so this cat rolled up in a skyline, obviously keen to get pulled over and searched, total drug dealers car, every cop knows that. Comes right up my ass and beeps that horn I’ve been trying to get around to mentioning, and tries to ram me off the road. Now I got balls but I aint messing with some psycho with low self esteem and a crack habit in a turbo. Time to swerve and take myself out of the equation. Turned frontside and dropped into a slide, exit stage left like snagglepuss on some slick ricky tip. Slid no hitches till I hit a grate and got thrown ass over titties, going so fast my arms got pinned under my torso and went face first into the curb and slappied my nose and teeth sweet, real pretty, came to rest in a pile of adrenaline and anger as the hit and run pussy drove off satisfied with killing my buzz. Only thing he didn’t realise that I been dealing with idiots like him all my life and he just made me even stronger. Better kill me next time fool<----said like Mr T.

Honour your local skateboarder for decorating your mundane life with some flare, style and guts. Moving artwork. And skaters, try skate with style and make it look easy, we love the eye candy. Face grazes are the new tattoo’s, a shallow piercing if you’re feeling emo. Hope it scars up good, add it to my collection. This face numbness reminds me of London racket life haha…..Nekticle Minstruation.

Create ANd sKate Footage and story.

http://manualmagazine.com/2011/09/20/from-the-mag-create-and-skate-dunedin-video/

Grey Is The New Street Art!

Text by Levi Hawken

I wanted to write a few words to explain what Create and Skate is all about. With so much going on at the time of the event we didn’t have time to get a proper press release and artist statement out.

Super nice guy, and ruler at running events in Dunedin, Seth Gorrie came to me with the concept of creating an event with obstacles made to be skateable art installation, inspired by Transworld’s Skate and Create events, which are amazing, and are produced and directed by some of the biggest skate brands around with massive budgets, special effects and film teams. I watched some of the clips on the internet and got really excited about going around and collecting junk and making a crazy as streetscape. All decorated with art and hand painted signage. Wow! The visions I had. Then Seth told me we had three weeks to do it. (Laughs.) And like so many of New Zealand’s great skate events, it was all last minute and everything was up in the air, down to the wire.

The minimal council funding came through two weeks out from the event, we got the permission for the warehouse the day before the event. It was a highly stressful time but it all came through on the day. At the time I was painting 50 meters of a concrete river tunnel in hieroglyphic style graffiti that was painted almost solely with grey graffiti removal paint. I was making a statement about the mass removal of graffiti in New Zealand building up to the Rugby World Cup, including the massacre of legal walls done by some of the best graffiti artists in the country. So, it seemed natural to paint the obstacles at Create and Skate grey to imply that beneath the blanket of paint they were covered with intricate artwork, only that the council (AKA Task Force Grey) had come and painted them all grey. Which was why they were stencilled officially with the words “Grey Is The New Street Art!”

Despite the madness the event came together just in time. We had not been able to go inside the brand new warehouse until the day prior to the event. Due to this fact, we had no idea that the ground was covered in a blanket of grey concrete dust. As everyone started skating the dust stirred into a cloud and when the traffic got really heavy, it looked like a massive steam room. After skating for a short amount of time everyone was covered in the stuff. Caked around the nostrils, it looked like kids had found some new magic grey powder and had been snorting it like there was no tomorrow. In fact, it was like they were on some sort of magic skate powder because they were all shredding so hard regardless. Tricks appeared like monsters from the grey lagoon and pounded the obstacles. I swear we could have just put the picnic table with tiny blaster and the wall ramp to wedge and everyone would have been happy as they were with the whole set up.

It was such a rarity for the kids of Dunedin to skate an indoor set up. It reminded of what it was like to be kid skating in the late 80s early 90s when there were no skate parks and events were a frenzy of excitement.

The article in Manual Magazine #43 summed up the skating and crending perfectly so I need not repeat, you know who the stand-outs were. It was an amazing day and we still have the obstacles and are looking forward to adding to them for further events this summer. Maybe for next years ‘Create and Skate’ we can really live out our dreams of Junk obstacle grandeur.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the event run, especially Seth Gorrie! Mike Laufiso at the council, MC Beau and DJ Mars, Mike the carpenter, Willy van, Craig at Quest, all the skaters on the Manual tour and the kids that shredded like angry gorillas in the mist. Peep Jake Mein and Stunts’s footage!

NEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nek Minnit clip!

Nek Minnit Dubstep Remix

Nek Minute Drum N bass remix

I really wanna hear this shit in the club haha!

Origins Of Ligga's Lemonaids August 2008

A story of the humble conception of the next big drink to hit the shops!

August 2008

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention, well that must make me some kinda motherfucker at times. I don’t mean to be crass but let me elaborate.
I have been skating at victoria park skate park in AK city and it’s cool, minimal but cool. It’s a central place where all the skaters hang out and try to learn new tricks. Laugh and clown around, Sort of like Aotea square was in the 90’s.
Just that cool energy when you have people making the most of what is on offer. I have written this little piece of writing twice already and deleted it, too much complaining about how we are hard done by, how other skate parks are way better –oops! I’ve started again!
But anyway, there used to be a water tap at the skate park and a functioning toilet. I’m guessing that someone must have done something bad to the toilets and tap so now there is no tap and the toilets are locked permanently. It’s often the few that spoil it for the masses, but it didn’t spoil it for me! I just can’t let anything bring me down these days, I mothered up my latest invention! I figured I can make some money off this unfortunate circumstance.
So I have started my own line of fizzy drinks. Ligga’s Lemonaids!
They are available in 6 flavours for you to enjoy, Ebola Cola, Itslime, Lemonaids, Rascalberry, Pin-e-aporo and Fantapants.
The Lemonade stand is the cliché first shot at capitalism, goes to show that there’s more than one way to make money off skaters still.
I will post up on here about where they will be sold next, just working out my next run of them
Bottle it urrrrppppp!
~L

Mong Boarders paradise

Silent on the approach, hurtful to the eye, behold the Neanderthal plank with wheels, Fred Flintstone, bare foot pushing mongo down the street as if progression and evolution had never taken place. Devoid of lush aesthetic flowings, rushing to his mates house to tell him how he had just rubbed two sticks together and made fire.

This story begins down south. Student town Dunedin, I would say this town has the highest number of fish and longboard riders in the country. With smooth tarseal foot paths and roads, flowing hills and some real steep buggers. Dunedin is ideal and due to the smoothness of most surfaces it’s understandable that people can get away with bare feet or jandals. Unlike the NEW! exposed aggregate footpaths of Auckland (nice one Auckland Council! Good to see you’re supporting eco friendly transport.)

Now like most short boarders I take it as my god given right to shit on LongBoarders, but at the end of the day, is Mongboarding really that bad? My main reason being, that they make us real skaters look so damn cool. For example: If a longboarder is stopped at the crossing and you come screaming through and ollie straight over their board and scare the shit out of them while impressing anyone else who is looking on. Often you see them struggling down the street with a sasquatch front leg (mongo) push, stopping at each curb while we just pop straight up and roll on through with a cheeky laugh, a toss of style and a fast easy back foot kick.

So we know we’re good, so why do we hate so hard out on Longboarding? Does our hatred stem from always being grouped together with them? I mean most times you mention that you skate to a civilian there’s a strong chance they will mention something about those guys that longboarded down the Bombay hills!?

These philistines don’t understand the wonder of physics, style and technicality shown in even the smallest tricks these days. We want to be recognised! The unsung heroes of shredding hahahaha….

So us shortboarders (Normalboarders) agree that riding a ‘proper’ board is stylistically the illest shit ever. But…… in saying this, have we made longboarders the new outsiders? Are longboarders the real purists? The essence of how skateboarding began? Are they the new raw dog “I don’t give a damn whats cool” skaters? And the ones that push mongo, are they the new punk rockers? Lets face it, there is nothing that says “I don’t give a F**K” like pushing Mongo. Barefoot is so anti establishment, so anti sweatshop, slave labour, hey Nike!! stick it up your ass.

In this respect, have us “real” skateboarders become the new jocks? Picking on the geeks who are just riding around trying to have a good time and get from A to B?

Longboarders may be the link between skating and your everyday person, maybe these additions to the skateboard community are just what we need to make everyone think it’s all ok. I used to think we didn’t want to be absorbed into society but it’s already happened, while you were sleeping. I hate to be the barer of bad news but the real street skater is all but dead, our city streets are being converted to unfriendly surfaces of super grit sandpaper, giant cracks, blind people bumps and skate stoppers. In order to skate across Auckland these days you need big soft wheels just to keep any sort of speed up. So long boarders may become the new street skaters!! While us short boarders become known as “Park Skaters”. The next evolution of skateboarding awaits us, try and embrace whatever comes next with an open mind.

Broke my jandal.

Liggy Smalls

Photos by Jessie "Chase" Robertson