summer 96 (1996)

In 1995-96 my best friend Marcus Andrews and I were both studying full time at University, away from home, and had not had much time for skating, and certainly not in Southend. Ironically the Southend skate scene had been enjoying one of its greatest periods, the Eastwood days. For those that don’t know there used to be a toy factory at the top of Progress Road in Eastwood which burned down in 1995 leaving a perfectly flat waste land, basically made for skateboarding. It was like a gladiator style arena where modern day urban warriors could do battle amongst the upturned concrete pillars and rough blocks that remained. The Eastwood scene was ruled by Ben, Steve, Paul and Tony aka the ‘Empire Crew’. It was pretty much their spot and everyone knew it! Check out the Empire Video 'Mobsters' on YouTube if you need further clarification. To be honest it kind of added to the atmosphere of the place to have Tony’s tags and artwork adorn the walls of the arena, marking their territory.

Marcus Andrews at Eastwood 1996  (Empire Crew art in the background) 

In the summer of 1996 Marcus and I graduated from University and moved back home to Southend. We decided to celebrate our new found academic status by making a skate video almost exclusively shot in one location, Eastwood. I think this was partly due to the fact that we needed somewhere we could skate during the day and Eastwood was never a bust. We decided to set a routine for filming in order to maximise our chances of getting decent footage. I would pick Marcus up at 10am every day and we would start skating by 10.30am. As soon as one of us felt ready to film we would film, simple as that. The goal was to get footage down before other people arrived in the early afternoon. We usually left by about 2pm.  Eastwood was all about 'the block', so there was lots of footage gathered on it.  It was the main thing to skate, and it seemed a pretty high block at the time.  A lot of tricks went down on that block for sure, but for some reason fakie nosegrinds seem to feature pretty heavily in the video!



Gav Martin fakie nosegrind 'the block', with Fiat Panda (future manual pad) in the background! 



Marcus Andrews fakie nosegrind 'the block', the trick of 96!


There is actually something quite rewarding about filming with just one other person, it creates a sort of symmetry. You skate until you have had 10 or so attempts at a trick then swap. It is very efficient. We filmed like this for about six weeks and got loads of good footage. Watching it back now I am amazed how many runs we filmed. I probably did my best ever runs in that video but there must have been a lot of wasted tape. It is also amazing how much you can learn if you skate every day at same spot. 



Gav Martin mid run kickflip, Eastwood




Marcus Andrews blue sky crate ollie, Eastwood




Gav Martin switch frontside flip, Eastwood 1996

The other thing to note is that the code of the streets in 96 was strictly adidas (that's the pre 'adidas skateboarding' variety of course!).  The skateboarders at Eastwood single handily kept adidas in business!



Gav Martin frontside tailslide in shelltoes



Marcus Andrews 5-0 grind, strictly adidas


That was great summer but when it came time to edit the video I had issues. Ant Morgan had cut my first video a couple of years before (based on my edit decision list) and as grateful as I was for that I wanted to be involved in the actual process of editing. A solution presented itself when my then, 16 year old brother Alex Martin, took a media course at SeeVic College in Hadleigh. He said that they had an edit suite and we could get access! I don’t fully remember the details but Al definitely snuck me into that college at least 10 times so we could cut the video. As basic as the facilities were, they allowed me for the first time to think about how the beats of the music interacted with the skating. It was so exciting to actually be able to think about the editing process and then actually make it happen. We used the theme song to ‘Live and Let Die’ for the intro, as it was upbeat and hard hitting and we had great fun choosing the best tricks. I really love that intro, especially my handrail slide at the cliffs, I was so stoked on that at the time.



Gav Martin handrail slide on borrowed board, at the secret temple


The video is structured into five sections over 20mins; Intro, Marcus, Leeds, Gav, Outro. The sections for Marcus and I are basically our footage from Eastwood. The other main section is the Leeds section. This comprised footage that we had accumulated over a couple of trips to Leeds that summer, where Marcus went to Uni. The section features my main man Rich Higgins, the legendary Keith Spence (both of whom would feature heavily in the 'waste of time' some 11 years later) and most notably Joel Baldwinson who had some rad tricks for the time. Those summer trips to Leeds on National Express will always be great memories for me.


Marcus Andrews fakie nosegrind (what else?) Leeds, the best concrete benches ever!



Rich Higgins, flip to fakie at the Leeds Uni bank


The final section is the Outro which is basically just me and Al messing about with the really high tech (!) graphics of the edit suite. Pretty funny at the time but it looks awful today!



Marcus Andrews boardslide at Prittlewell 'inverse'


By the time the video was complete it was mid winter and not a lot of skating was happening in Southend. I wanted to show people the video but so few people were out skating so I had no easy distribution channel. I took a trip to Soho and bought a pack of 20 x 30min blank VHS tapes from a ‘proper’ media store. Once again I called on my main man Ant Morgan who came to the party and supplied me with 20 copies of the video. Ant you are the man!!!!! When I got those tapes back I was so excited. I actually checked every single one to make sure the quality was good. Insane but you never knew with VHS.

The video was done and I had the copies but I still had the distribution problem. As it was nearly Xmas I decided to play Santa. On one cold winter evening in December 1996, I drove round Southend, Rayleigh etc and dropped the VHS into a few friends’ post boxes. I guess I just liked the idea of my friends opening their postbox to find a skate video. The labels just said 'Summer 96' so they had to play it to know what is was. I guess I just liked the drama.

Overall this video is one I am very proud of as Marcus and I made it alone, which was a fair reflection of how segregated the Southend skate scene was at the time. It also set the foundation for what would become a trilogy of videos for Marcus and I…

Hope you enjoy it.

Gav Martin, 2010