Conor Charleson 🔴 Interview
Switch frontside pivot, Basildon. Photo: Sam Ashley.
It’s cold, it’s wet and I can’t shake the feeling of impending doom that tends to hang over humans on Sunday evenings. We take photos of two “spots” we both know we’ll never look at again. I can’t even count how many times I’ve done this same exact pointless lap of these estates. It’s dark now. Fucking love February. I kick a puddle. I question my Iife choices. It was meant to just be a reconnaissance mission so I didn’t bother taking my board, but Conor of course has his, because well, “you never know.” As I stare at it all wrapped up and clearly not coming out of its cocoon any time soon he says something to the effect of “leaving the house is always the right choice.” I know he means it. My mind starts to U-turn. Five minutes later we’re planning our next equally desperate mission, on the off chance that it dries next week.
Now most would agree that I’m a relatively passionate person when it comes to skateboarding (i.e., an absolute neek), but sometimes – say when you’re trying a line for the third weekend in a row and can feel yourself slowly unlearning each trick – I lose faith in what we do. My mind goes to the delicious roast I could be enjoying in a cosy pub with my friends instead of rolling around in piss for a three-second clip that probably won’t get used.
Conor’s superpower is that he somehow always makes it make sense, for himself and for others. I don’t know what he feeds his inner grom but there’s no holding it back. That little fucker is steering the ship at all times and taking prisoners.
This interview is an attempt at understanding how we’ve arrived at these levels of keen, what form they take outside of skating and why exactly they can’t be contained.
– Arthur Derrien
Alley-oop half cab over the channel, London. Photo: Sam Ashley.
Interview by Arthur Derrien
Can you guess the first thing I’m going to ask you about?
Uh I dunno… I reckon it’s either going to be teaching, turtles or Sci-Fi.
Nope, you’re going to start by telling us about getting attacked by the world’s sketchiest rollerbladers.
Fuck haha, of course. Okay so in 2015 I visited Malaysia for the first time on my way back from a university field trip in Borneo and extended my flight home by like, five days so I could try to skate there or whatever. I got put in contact with a local skater who took me to this skatepark in Kuala Lumpur called Mont Kiara. And at this skatepark, it’s all skateboarders apart from two jacked rollerbladers with their shirts off… Like jacked, jacked. And anyway, they’re flying around, and all the skaters were at the bottom skating the ledges but I was kind of skating the ramps, and eventually one of the bladers just shouts at me: “Hey you, watch yourself!” And I’m kind of like, “Uh me? What?”, and he repeats it, “Watch yourself!” so I’m like okay… He is on about me… And he just goes “I don’t like you.” I remember going, “You don’t know me.” To which he replies that he knows that I’m an “Australian prick!”
So nice.
I mean I get that a lot anyway haha. But yeah I try to explain that I’m not Australian, that I’m Welsh. And one of them is like “Haaa we just bought your football team! Malaysia just bought your football team!” Because Cardiff City FC had just been bought by one of the big businessmen in Malaysia. And as this conversation is going on they’re starting to get closer and closer. Like slowly creeping forward on their blades until they’re fully in my face. At which point I kind of put my hands up to be like, “What the fuck are you doing?!”
And as soon as I do that both of them just start laying into me. One of them’s punching me in the stomach, one of them has got me in a headlock, I’m getting punched in the jaw… And at one point I can feel one of them’s got their thumb in my eye socket and he’s digging under my eye. And I’m like, holy fuck, I’m gonna lose an eye!
Oh and all this is going on at the top of an eight-foot ramp. And at that point some kind of fight or flight thing kicks in, and I throw all my weight into the ramp, and all three of us, because they’ve got hold of me, bounce down the ramp like, dush dush dush. They get up and one of them starts squaring up to me again, whilst the other one is just furious, trying to focus my board in blades… Which is really nice.
Yeah I love that image.
Then a bunch of the skaters come over and start begging them like, “Please stop, please stop, we’re just trying to skate and have a nice time… Sorry please, please stop, we don’t want that here.” Then they start to calm down but not like, apologetically, they’re kind of sulking and kicking and eventually my board gets flung. At this point I’m sat down, my jaw is swelling up and shit… They kind of spit at me a bit and then go. They get in these nice ass cars and just drive off.
And all the skaters there are like, “Oh, sorry, they were probably on steroids, you know, like, roid rage, sorry about that.” And I remember thinking “okay…” Oh and the guy that was showing me around – I mean he barely knew me to be fair so why would he step in – but yeah he was pretty much nowhere to be seen.
And when did you find out who they were?
Well a few days later when I was at a ledge spot I met some guys who asked me where I’d skated so far and I explained that I’d been to Mont Kiara but got into trouble with these two guys… And straight away they’re like: “Oh my god you’re the guy that fought the royals at the skatepark!” I was so confused that they had to repeat it a few times but then the penny dropped: that’s why no one was touching them! That’s why they were pleading! Because it was so strange, at the time something felt so off… And it makes sense now because it turns out those guys were well above the fucking police. Then these skaters started showing me all these articles where it’s like one of them fucked up a rapper at his own gig, one of them fucked up a cop, one of them went away to an island with a girl, and she didn’t come back… So yeah it could have been way fucking gnarlier…
It’s such a shame because – I mean it’s a good story but it’s not at all representative of Malaysia and my experiences there. It was just a freak accident… I love it there!
Frontside bluntslide gap- out, London. Photo: Sam Ashley.
I know you’ve been a bunch of times now, right? How did that trip spark your love for that part of the world then?
Yeah… I mean the zoology aspect of the trip for one. As I said earlier I was mainly out there for a university field trip, which was shared between two zones and research centres where people go to gather data around the jungle in Borneo: one was by a lake that was absolutely full of ginormous saltwater crocodiles and the other was really deep in the jungle.
A lot of it was gathering data on dragonflies or like the interactions between ant and plant species… There are these really cool plants called macaranga trees, and there’s a few different species that grow hollow stems, so they have like a pre-made home for ant species. So the ants will kind of move in… Some species even provide nectar for the ants to feed on, and the ants defend the tree from predation.
One night one of our lecturers was like, “Who wants to go out on the lake?” So a few of us got into canoes and you could see all the eyes of the crocodiles, and as you got closer the eyes would drop, so you’d know you were directly above them… And there was one we felt we grazed and it thrashed right as we went over!
Fuck that!
We were told not to worry though, since they don’t really have any large prey…
I dunno I’d say you’re quite a large prey.
Haha, yeah well when I’m not around they don’t have any large prey to eat so now they primarily just eat fish. They were sort of saying that these crocodiles would be more likely to try to shag your canoe than eat you.
But yeah the whole thing was just super interesting. It’s such a rapidly moving ecosystem with so much life crammed into it that it just blew my fucking mind. Especially compared to when you take a step in a forest here, or take thousands of steps, and nothing happens… There you’re walking through the jungle and stuff just fucking pops up everywhere, flying out, skittering away. It’s just so cool.
Part of me wanting to go back has been to try to recapture that, but I keep trying to do it alongside skating, which never quite works out…
Switch wallie, London. Photo: Sam Ashley.
What is it about the skate scene there that keeps you coming back for more then?
I don’t know, everyone is just so sound. It feels like it’s a purer form of skating where everybody’s just having a nice time. There’s no bitchiness, there’s no… I mean people are opinionated and stuff but it’s more that everyone just wants to share experiences, whether that’s going skating or swimming in a waterfall. So yeah I guess it’s the people I’ve met that have made me want to go back. Plus Kuala Lumpur is super sick for skating. I think a lot of people have this preconception of skating in Asia as always being all these crazy marble ledge plazas, but skating central Kuala Lumpur feels very East Coast. It’s full of weird crusty spots… I love the way it looks, the way it feels. And I’ve probably eaten some of the best meals of my life there and things like the fact that the culture is much more geared towards being able to eat out for everybody. People aren’t getting fleeced, good food is everywhere and affordable… And the structure of the day with that factored in is really nice. You know there’s a point in the evening when you’ll also sit together and eat and chat, and maybe go skating again after…
Do you feel like maybe growing in Wales, a place full of talented skaters that don’t always get the shine they deserve, is in part what attracts you to more underground skate scenes?
Maybe… Obviously, I like going to Paris or New York but I really enjoy the element of mystery that comes with going to discover those kinds of scenes; I get a kick out of not knowing what you’re going to find and learning about them. Skating is everywhere, it’s just not as obvious sometimes…
Switch wallride ollie out, London. Photo: Sam Ashley.
And that kind of trip is probably the ideal reset for when you need a break from London, like after finishing that part Dan Magee edited for instance… How was the come down from that project?
Haha yeah I mean I left the country for three months. It was a fucking relief when it was done I can tell you that. At the end I was stuck on the last few things I needed to do and just couldn’t finish it…
Yeah it really felt like it was going to break you towards the end there.
The main one was that Magee was adamant that the front rock needed to be the ender and I kept going back… There’s this really shallow drain at the bottom of the bank that I’d catch every single time. And it would rain or I’d run out of time… I had to go back seven times for it, and Magee would keep on me like, “When you going back? Can you not go twice this week?”
When Will Boardman filmed it Magee was fully like, “You guys have to go back now and put it on the computer,” and I was a bit like, “What? But we still have the whole day?” Because I’d weirdly done it in “just” an hour and a half in the end but he was adamant: “No, no, no, it’ll get deleted, you’re going home and uploading it now!” haha, in full crazy mode.
Classic.
But I love Dan; I do love him. Even though he does make it hard for me to love him, haha. And he’s helped me out a lot.
Like A LOT, a lot, you know? He basically did that part for the sake of it, which is amazing. I’m super grateful for that. And he loves to claim he’s over it…
… but he always gets pulled back in…
Yeah. He’s started working on something with Liisa Chisholm, so there’s definitely more people in line to get the Magee treatment… Occasionally he sends me a photo of Lisa on the floor after slamming or something, and he’s like, ‘’See mate, no excuses, no exceptions.’’
Haha for fuck’s sake.
The thing is even if he does cross the line sometimes he apologises and ultimately [Conor starts pretending to read from a script]: “He is a good person that has my best interest at heart.”
Seriously though, even with the whole getting boards from Sci-Fi and stuff… Magee was the one that was like, “I’ll try to help you if you want to aim for that,” etc. It was Seth Curtis who reached out to them when he was working at Keen but Magee is always there gathering my clips and helping however he can. And he’s come out and filmed a couple of bits since…
Frontside nosegrind, Romford. Photo: Rafal Wojnowski.
He’s like your manager.
Yeah I mean he ran a skateboarding company for years so he’s good with that stuff. After I started getting stuff direct from the US he was the one that was like, “Well now you have to go out there!”
And you did!
Yeah. At the time I was speaking to Matt Militano who I knew from him coming to London and who was also getting Sci-Fi stuff, and we loosely made this plan to go to LA, skate, catch up with everyone we know over there and try to meet them at some point. So Matt messaged Jerry (Hsu) saying we were coming and when we got there a lot of the team was in town and we basically ended up being like on a trip, getting picked up every day to go and film with everyone. And everyone was fucking sound, filmed some stuff… It was great.
Slappy tailslide, London. Photo: Sam Ashley.
How do you navigate the fact that you like to skate quite specific spots in a situation like this?
In London we’re obviously all used to the fact that at least one spot when we’re out will probably be a Conor spot that most likely nobody else will skate, but imposing that on a whole new crew must be kind of tricky…
Going into it I was very aware that before me and Matt had even said we were gonna go to LA they had already planned for Arin (Lester) and Ryan (Lay) to be there getting shit. So initially I was too scared to even suggest spots – for me it was their chance to film. But what would happen is we’d go to their spots and I’d do a little lap block and I’d find something I could potentially get a clip on. And eventually, it all relaxed a bit more, until I could suggest the kinds of things I wanted to skate. For example, say I mentioned I’d been looking for a flatgap wallride in London to do a switch wallride, and then when we’d be in the van someone would be like, “Wait there’s actually a flatgap wallride right here!”, that kind of thing. So yeah they did cater to me. Like Matt (King), who’s been filming at lot of the Sci-Fi video with Luke (Murphy), took us to this really cool bank to curb he’d made. It was a setup where there was no way of getting to the bank, so he’d concreted two strips through the dirt, one to roll in and one to roll out, which was amazing.
Sounds banging. Do you draw a line somewhere in terms of what’s allowed to be done to a spot to get a clip? Or even in terms of changes to your setup with soft wheels or whatever…
I used to be so anti-bondo/anti-help, which feels really dumb now, especially after that trip. Luke has this fucking armoury in the back of the car with all these different tools, pastes, lacquers and everything imaginable to make something out of nothing. I watched him turn this wall that was just nothing into a perfect kicker to rail/ ledge spot in half an hour. It was crazy how quickly it worked. He made it look old and everything, like fully smoke and mirrors. And so back in London I then bondoed my first spot with Sam… For London to stay feeling fresh I feel like I’m going to have to do more of this…
But limit-wise if something has been skated without bondo: leave it alone. If it’s not a spot, or like not actually skatable until you fix it: then go to town.
The soft wheels thing I’m a bit funny about. I like the sound that hard wheels make on rough spots, so if I can do it on hard wheels then I will. If I can’t then I’ll do it on 97s or something, but I don’t want to sacrifice the noise. I know that sounds really arsey but I want it to sound as crusty as it feels.
Switch frontside slappy crooks, London. Photo: Sam Ashley.
Nah I love how much you think about this stuff. Do you think having carved out this niche for yourself, with all the wallride and slappy stuff has influenced how much you think about these small things, or even just how much you think about skateboarding in general?
I don’t know, I was definitely doing a lot of the wallie stuff before coming to London, just from skating certain obstacles at Cardiff Plaza that others weren’t skating.
Like, “Fuck it’s so busy today, but at least I can have this corner to myself.”?
Yeah exactly. So from being selfish basically haha. But when I came to London the people I was like skating with like Kyron (Davis), Manny (Lopez) and Daryl (Dominguez) were just so fucking good at skating conventionally, so many leagues away from anything I could do, that I guess it made me lean harder into the shit that I could do. The problem is that now when I want to put something out, I look at what I’ve done before and it has to be better. So I’m trapped.
And end up going deeper and deeper into this niche.
Yeah…
Well that’s what I mean. I feel like this thing of it being you against yourself has essentially made you extra obsessive and driven.
A lot of the time now I’ll have a trick in mind, but the spot doesn’t exist here for me to do it on. For example I fucking love bank to ledges but there’s barely any in London and I’ve definitely skated Crystal Palace enough. Or I need ledges to be of a certain height for certain slappies and there isn’t a ledge like that in London that doesn’t have an overhang… So I find myself waiting to go abroad or to another city that has the spots I need for the ideas I have. I’m fully waiting for the spots to fit the ideas as opposed to: skate and see what happens…
Switch nosegrind, London. Photo: Sam Ashley.
Makes sense that you’d constantly be thinking about it.
Yeah… But I’ve been trying to change a bit. I’ve been trying to nollie into things…
I mean I know you can do tons of other stuff. I’ve seen you Pupecki grind. It’s more that I’m trying to get to the root of this extreme level of passion. Like when I was asking your friends for question ideas someone just said, “He’s like a crackhead for skateboarding, just ask him about that.”, which you are, but in a very specific way. When we play SKATE you don’t even know if I’m goofy or regular half the time. Your battle to one-up yourself just takes up so much space.
Yeah… It’s hard for me to get out of my head. But, I don’t know, it’s just always been like that. And I love to go to Stockwell or skate a park or whatever, but as soon as I sit still for too long I start to go crazy. Or itchy. And I start to make lists. Loads of lists. I’ll be trying to go to sleep and can’t because I’ll think of something that I haven’t tried or thought of before, but my phone will be on the other side of the room, so I’ll have to get up and go to my phone to add it to the list. But then sometimes I’ll be like, ah I’ll just remember it in the morning, but then that stops me from sleeping because I’m scared I won’t, haha. But everyone gets that, right?
