This is when James ‘Schoolboy’ Ewens got involved. He had started working for Wisdom, and opened their Manchester store in the Northern Quarter. He pitched the idea of a Wisdom video to Lecky. He talked Toby Batchelor into producing it. As I remember it, it was a done deal when he told me ha ha. 

We started editing at Toby’s place in Barnsley in November ‘99, but it was clear we needed much more footage. Paul Watmough provided a couple of tapes which included Roz’s opening line. Paul ‘Man’ Silvester came through with some really good stuff of himself and other Leeds skaters, although he had to hold back his best stuff for Unabomber’s Headcleaner video. Toby also had some footage of Arthur Tubb and various others to contribute. When we weren’t editing we’d be travelling to the House in Sheffield or Rampworx in Liverpool. 

Around the same time Ben Powell from Sidewalk arranged to visit a couple times with Leo Sharp for a feature on the lesser-known Yorkshire places and faces. That definitely stoked the crew.  

Around March 2000 the video really picked up. We received contributions from Tom Henshaw, Darren ‘Mott’ Mottershead, Frosty and Phil Proctor. I think Bingo was going to send something through, but it arrived too late.  

I would drive from Bradford to Barnsley a few times a week and we’d edit clips into parts. It was a slow process. Toby had an iMac and early copy of Adobe Premiere. The rendering took hours, an overnight job. Toby would call me the next day and tell me whether it had completed or crashed. It was finally done by July 2000.

And how was the music for the video chosen? There's some classic hardcore punk in there, and watching Vince wreck himself down those stairs to the sounds of 'Message in a Bottle' is strangely hypnotic. Wasn't H meant to skate to Negative Approach in Is What It Is, but Birdo or whoever edited that video mixed things up and edited Casey Lindstrom's part to 'Can't Tell No One' instead? 

It started out with the idea that we should feature British punk/post-punk bands, stuff like Buzzcocks, Gang of Four, Joy Division, but that didn’t last long. We ideally wanted each skater to choose their own music, and we didn’t want to use tracks that had been used on other skate videos. It was quite hard work as there were no websites to reference, and we couldn’t wait weeks for people to make a decision. There were a few differences of opinions, but generally they fell all into place.  

With ‘Message in a Bottle’ it was because we needed a five minute track for the Tom Brown/Leeds friends part. It was on a post-punk mixtape I had and was Schooly’s idea to use it, initially as a joke I think. It was one of the first parts we completed, it was ripped onto VHS and widely viewed. Everybody seemed to like it, so we just left it in there. 

I think that point about H’s part in the Consolidated video could well be right, and directly led to using Negative Approach for his part in Pulling Teeth. Both this and Poison Idea were Lecky’s suggestions. We immediately knew that track (‘Punish Me’) would work really well for Doug’s part. Doug was stoked on anything Portland. 

For Roz, his initial choice was a Devo B-side but we couldn’t find it on CD. I’m not really sure where Sabbath came from, but we were all listening to classic heavy rock in the late 90s. ‘Children of the Grave’ was a bit more obscure, pretty dark but not as sludgy as some of the other Sabbath stuff. It just worked for Roz’s part, especially that rad first line. 

Spot-wise, I feel like Pulling Teeth and the videos you mentioned being premiered before The End definitely captured a certain gritty aesthetic peculiar to Yorkshire skate spots - maybe it's something to do with the cobblestones, but I've always loved seeing ex-industrial Northern towns as the backdrop of skate videos. Was the post-industrial decline a chance to properly take advantage of these urban playgrounds in a way not possible in more affluent areas? What is it that you think makes these spots (T&A, the Man Bank, Beeston Banks etc) so instantly recognisable, and do you think such harsh terrain was important to shape the kind of skating that was going down at the time?

Definitely. Leeds became gentrified in the 90s, but everywhere else was pretty rundown. Industries had been ravaged by the long recessions of the early 80s and early 90s. Many places we’d skate would be sketchy and derelict. Social deprivation was, and still is, a massive issue. We rarely had any trouble, but we probably skated a bit faster and with more aggression to scare some of the crazies off. We were outlaws in the 90s though, the general public hated us. 

Richard Armitage, Cross Road, 1992. Photo by Percy Dean

It’s just an ollie, but it’s 100% style. Vans, Indys, cut off chinos.... just timeless. I see this, and it makes me want to go skating.

I guess there's a lot of rose tinted nostalgia for that era, a kind of 'innocence lost' yearning for a time when skateboarding was a lot more underground and there was much less outside interest from big business...but it's also been a few years since anyone's thrown a brick at my head down the skatepark, which I'm pretty stoked on. I guess everything has pros and cons, but how do you feel about skateboarding's rise to probably the furthest it’s ever been into the limelight, with Olympic inclusion around the corner? I know that's a huge question…

Ha, yes there’s a lot of nostalgia going on, sorry I’m only helping to fuel it. I think it’s because more people from that generation are still following it, still skating or connected to the industry in their 40s. It’s rose-tinted in revelling in how underground it was, and it glosses over the negative trends of the time. Skating hasn’t changed that much, most of the same brands are still around, the boards are pretty much the same, Daewon is still doing mind-blowing stuff! In the mid-90s there wasn’t much nostalgia for the mid-70s, the Z-Boy era seemed impossibly ancient history and the 80s era was widely lamented for its lame fashions and vert dominance. Now there’s nostalgia for all of the various eras and it’s through Instagram and YouTube that this is celebrated. It couldn’t really happen back then as there simply wasn’t a mechanism for it to happen. The Olympics, which probably won’t happen this year now, is a big step. The wider public will see the athleticism and competitive elements, but they won’t see anything of the culture. The good thing is that it will undoubtedly inspire a new generation, and many of them will push it in positive directions. It could be a ‘Back to the Future’ moment. 

Definitely; social media, for all its faults, has done us a favour by bringing the role of curator to the forefront of skateboard media in a way that couldn't happen as much in a magazine format with a focus on publishing what is seen as 'up to date' - nowadays, any kid starting out can find out about what came before, right from the beginning, without relying on their being an older crew in their town or stumbling across the right old videos and magazines. With (and you've already mentioned @sciencevslife here), what are some of your favourite historical skate accounts to browse through?

Absolutely. The barriers to entry are much lower for anyone wanting to document themselves and their friends now.  Instagram video has really been a game changer in the past few years, but it’s been good to see some great long form videos recently. I wonder how long that will continue for though. In some ways it’s much harder for the brands to constantly produce new content to stay relevant. The demand now is insatiable. In the 90s it would be the odd 411 profile and maybe a team video every year. Alien Workshop took six years after Memory Screen to deliver Time Code, and then another three years to create Photosynthesis. Flip waited over ten years before they unleashed Sorry. As for nostalgia, there seems to be a new, old account every other day. My favourite has to be @all_hail_skateboarding which has lots of Julian Stranger, Cardiel and other powerful greats. I love new stuff though, there are too many to mention.  It’s important not to just dwell on the past.

Paul Silvester, Man Bank, Leeds University, 1996. Photo by Wig Worland

Even by Yorkshire standards that bank had a horrible, uneven surface...and the car park next to it was rough as. I remember seeing the sequence and just thinking it was madness to ollie into it, suicidal. Some unbelievable stuff was later done into it, but Man was the first to even think about it.

Speaking of Cardiel, watching those old clips of Bingley Miniramp in Bradford gives off a very Jim's Ramp Jam vibe - how much of an influence was that San Francisco based Deluxe scene on Bradford skateboarding at the time? I remember an old Rozee interview in Sidewalk talking about 'Roy's Army' and the local appreciation for a certain spiderweb headed Big Brother interviewee…

There were some crazy sessions at Bingley, it was always a lot of fun. It was often like Jim’s, everyone dropping in at the same time, survival of the gnarliest, ha ha. Yeah, the Deluxe thing... well I guess that built up through the 90s, we all loved Real and Stereo. G opened Wisdom in ‘95, I think AntiHero had just started and he was immediately into the aesthetic. It really was an alternative to the likes of Girl, Chocolate, and all the World brands which were so popular at that time. It was a bit of a reaction to slow ledge tricks on skinny boards wearing oversized jeans, ha ha. Wisdom definitely championed that ’hesh’ vibe, and G (and Roz) almost certainly introduced it to a young Doug. Hardly anyone was wearing old school Vans at that point. Most kids didn’t have a clue who Andy Roy or Cards were. It probably came across as some kind of inverted snobbery, there was that whole fresh vs hesh thing, ha ha. Has much really changed in 20+ years though? That hardcore authenticity has long been the brand value to strive for. 

Scott Palmer, Pig and Whistle Banks, 1998. Photo by Leo Sharp

Classic Leeds spot and a seriously boned kickflip over the awkward rail and into the tight bank, although he may well have cleared the bank. Palmer was an amazing skater, and a really cool guy as well.

I imagine there are some pretty hectic stories from those early Wisdom days, I remember Roz telling us about Dave Wynne booting shoplifters in the bollocks? What was the funniest thing you ever saw go down there?

Too many Dave stories to mention, and they all involve public nudity, ha ha. He would definitely  get arrested these days. Look out for a gram post requesting stories to be shared. Dave could barely skate, but he knew all the Bradford skaters from a pub/club called Tumblers that we would frequent. He and G were unemployed, and the only way they could continue to claim dole was if they signed up to a Prince of Wales entrepreneurship scheme. They basically came up with the idea of the ‘Wisdom’ brand and that evolved into the skate shop. They were totally winging it. G bowed out  in ‘97 as he’d become a father and needed more security. Lecky had a punk record sub-let, so he picked up the Wisdom partnership with Dave. They were just subsisting until they moved to Leeds. It was the right thing to do, and they were able to support some great skaters across the whole of the north. 

I was going to finish up with a 'top three things witnessed at T&A banks' question here, but realised we haven’t mentioned Snoz yet - I feel like his contribution to the scene can't be underestimated and, looking at The Ripped and the pool that used to be in The Works, his creations are still way ahead of the curve in terms of wooden skatepark construction. I can imagine a fair bit of excitement trying to figure out what mental obstacles he was going to build next?

Snoz was almost like the Yorkshire ‘Animal Chin’ for much of the 90s, an enigma. You’d hear about him but not see him for months, years even. The stories seemed outlandish, like cycling all the way to Germany for the Munster comp on his mum’s bike and then cycling from Germany to Portugal. He built most of Rehab Skatepark in Wakefield of course, which was so important for the UK scene - second only to Radlands. He did quite a few parks across the north and you knew they would be rad. There was a great mini in Heysham, Lancashire which was so creative. According to Phil Proctor he just ripped up their plans and did his own thing. The owner of the park and hired joiners were livid, they didn’t realise who they were working with. A mad genius, Mad Snoz!

Snoz, T&A Banks, 1996. Photo by Wig Worland

A frontside rock n roll on the T&A Banks should always belong to Roz in my mind, ha ha. For whatever reason none of the Bradford skaters were there that day, must have been a covert shoot. Just added to the Snoz enigma!

As for my top three things on the T&A banks? That is a tough one... 

3. Roz, generally ripping with style slash grinds on those bricks!

2. Neil 'Nezza' Godding doing full length boardslides, so rad.

1. A guy called Craig Oates trying McTwists (!) around 1990. It was seriously crazy that he managed to get close.

If there’s space for shout-outs, big ups to everyone following the account and commenting on the posts. Thanks to everyone who’s contributing pics. 

Also, big thanks to everyone who contributed and helped edit footage for the video back in the day, James Ewens, Paul Silvester, Tom Henshaw, Roz...and especially Toby Batchelor, it wouldn’t have happened without him. And of course to Dave, Lecky and G (RIP) for making Wisdom a big part of the community back then. It’s rad to see Welcome continue the legacy. Skater Owned Shops need our support more than ever.

Carl Shipman, Rehab, 1996. Photo by Wig Worland

I think Carl was from Worksop, Derbyshire, so doesn’t quite count if we’re being strict. Wakey was his second home and he was seriously good here. This tweaked indy out of the BMX quarter was just mind blowing, it would still stand up today.