Seth Curtis relocated to London from Sheffield many moons ago to work at Slam and the rest is history. He will tell you more of this story within the body of this feature. Seth still skates more than all of us due to the shredule he drew up which is a term he also coined. We could all do with more dates pencilled in on this specific calendar. Seth installed the self destruct button in 16 Neal’s Yard then pressed the ejector seat himself some years back. He has worked many skateboarding related jobs since. Most recently he was our West End neighbour while working for Supreme. With our store moving next week it seemed fitting to give good friend and Slam lifer Seth the reigns of this weeks 5000 Words…
Here’s me in the first year or so I was in London when I moved from Sheffield 19 years ago. Skinny as fuck, living in Stockwell with my friend Jess in my tiny room and working at slam, eating pizza, drinking beer and skating a lot. The best times. I wanted to use more pics from this time period, but most are in storage and this is one of the only ones I could find in a box of random stuff. I think Will Bankhead shot it on my camera. I owe so much to having the opportunity to work at slam, my friends, I met my wife there, my son walked for the first time there! 16 Neal’s Yard will always be special to me.
New York x Yashica T5 x black and white film = easy! These are ghetto scans of prints.
This is one of the best spots I have ever skated in my life, a pool called “Pala pool” in San Diego. Cardiel skates it in an old Antihero video I think. Me and Fos got directions there when I was at Blackbox. Out the back of this old house in the middle of nowhere in the desert was this perfect bowl, so fun and the first real pool I ever skated.
Our house got set on fire by this crazy lady who lived next door to us one night. Petrol through the letter box at 3 in the morning. Jumping from the 1st story window to the street with Bev and Smiggy. It was the worst! One thing about that period I remember was that Pin had built this crazy park for the Side Effects of Urethane exhibition and any day I wasn’t working or sorting stuff from the aftermath of the fire, I was down there carving around the white waves of this crazy space and wall riding round that corner pocket. This is Bob Puleo catching a perfect storm type wave.
Working at Zero was great, I used to go and visit California twice a year for work and always stayed with my friends John and David in Encinitas. one night we left their place to go to the local bar with a group of people, on the way there we found this old chest of drawers or work table and in it we found loads of photos. We scooped them up and took them to the bar. What we found was amazing – loads of pics from the 80s of white trash suburban nutter metal heads, we shared out the prints but I think I got the best ones. The one of the guy with foil round his head is one of my most prized possessions. I love the guys with mullets on prom day with full wallets, Suicidal hat camera guy and weird fat guy with the meat cleaver too.
On a Fallen trip to Alicante Spain visiting Roberto Aleman we went to his parents place. An amazing set up in the country, real bull ring on the property as his brother is a bull fighter. Orange groves with amazing fruit everywhere. His dad made us traditional paella outside, and his brother turned up to share it with us. Percy wanted to adopt this puppy they had there too. Afterwards Roberto took us to these out houses on the property which were an old shoe factory that his parents ran in the 80s now left derelict as the factory went out of business. All the walls were covered in posters and pin ups from the time that the staff had put up – Tom Cruise, Hall and Oates, Magnum PI, Nick Kershaw, Jason Preistly, bull fighters, hair metal bands and pin up girls everywhere. It was amazing, I wish I had more photos. Roberto has a mini ramp in there now I think.
My stag do in Paris 10 years ago. The premise was to get together a bunch of my best mates and skate the sun dial spot and drink champagne while doing so. We succeeded and it was one of the best weekends of my life and the most I have ever laughed.
Barbados Polaroid / Hockney vibes.