Artefact | Nick Richards Interview

Check out our interview with Cardiff's very own Nick Richards as we dive deep into his recent London-based full-length, 'Artefact'.

After slapping us round the head with one of the best full-lengths we've seen in years, obviously we had to sit down with Cardiff's very own Nick 'The Bastard' Richards to find out more about what went into 'Artefact'. From Nick's origin story to all the nerdy details of the video, including the age-old name titles debate, niche film references and song selection, you don't want to miss this one. Have a read below!

Yes Nick! Could you just start off by telling us a bit about yourself and where you're from?

I'm from between Newport and Cardiff, a place called Michaelston-y-Fedw. It's not that remote, but it's in the sticks between Newport and Cardiff and I grew up on a farm. It was pretty mad getting exposed to skateboarding at the age of 12. Before that, I was just trying to play football and all that other shit but I was really bad at it haha. But then skateboarding came along and I was just like, ‘that’s sound,’ no one's telling you how shit you are.

A tale as old as time haha. 

Yeah, I guess it's probably the same story for everyone, but it's fucking mad how it happened. There was this lad in the year below me who I was best mates with because he was like the person that lived closest to me and we used to get the bus to school every morning. He had a lad come into his year, this German kid who'd just moved over who was actually sponsored at the age of like 12 or 13. He skated for Titus, the board shop in Germany, and he was so fucking good at that age. He nollie heeled the Welsh office banks when we were kids, I’ve got it on VHS somewhere. It was insane how good he was. And, you know, it's a different thing when you see somebody skating who's actually good at it and you're like, ‘ah, that's what you're meant to do.’ Not just half the time when someone sees a skateboarder not land something, they're like ‘yeah, skateboarding is shit’ haha. So that was my exposure to skateboarding, luckily. I think if it happened any other way I don't know if I would have been as into it.

We got kind of exposed to cameras and stuff pretty early on as well, we’d all go down to Marshfield, which is like the nearest suburb. It's also where Ed Carter's from and a few of the other boys. One day we just took one of the lads’ dad's home camcorder out, I'd never seen one before, and we were just jamming around for about an hour or something, just filming each other, doing whatever. Then we all took the camera back to our mate's house, bunged it on the telly and watched it all back and I was just like ‘yeah, this is fucking sick.’ This is before any of us had seen a skate video either, or had any reference for all that shit, but we just kind of naturally gravitated to that thing anyway.

So was that the start of your interest in filming then, or did that come a bit later? 

Yeah, I think that was what I initially found filming to be. But I didn't have a camera, so that was kind of short lived. I just remember thinking at the time that it was the coolest thing ever. We didn't know what we were doing, but then we recorded the process anyway, and we got to see it, watch it all back and kind of relive the fun that we just had.

My filming mainly just came from going down to CSP (Cardiff Skate Park) when I was early into skating and making all these friends in Cardiff. When it first opened, it was BMX night, and I got in the way of a BMXer. I ollied up onto this manual pad, fell off it because I couldn't ollie at the time and then just slipped back and ended up breaking my arm. After that, I was like, ‘fuck, I'm from this remote rural place and I've got all these new mates and I can't see any of them now because I can't skate.’ So I was just like, ‘fuck it’, I begged my parents to get me this little shitty digicam thing which didn't even record audio and I took that thing and linked up with them all and just filmed. That was kind of my intro into filming and then I’ve literally never put the camera down since.

So, skipping forwards a bit, you’ve just released your new full length video, ‘Artefact’. Could you tell us a bit about the story behind the video and how you chose the name? 

I think I was going to call it ‘Palaver’ but I thought maybe that's not the most positive name haha. So I was like, ‘what else?’ I don't know, there could be any number of reasons why I called it ‘Artefact’ really, nothing too exciting. We're all pretty old in the video as well so that's probably a good reason haha.

I’d kind of got a taste for not chasing around sponsored skateboarders, but just, you know, hanging out with your mates. We were doing this thing for Red Bull, called ‘Greetings From’, and I had been trying to get anyone who wanted to be in front of the camera to film a trick. It was meant to be a cross section of the London scene, I wouldn't say it's an impossible task, but London's pretty broad, you know? Even if you had all the budget in the world and you were working for a company that everyone was really hyped on, I think you’d still find it hard to cover London as a scene. But yeah, we kind of just made our own thing of it and a crew developed off the back of doing the project for Red Bull. This was about two or three years ago, and that crew then became the 'Artefact' crew, which is pretty sick. It's just all our pals now. It's not a team, it's just a crew, you know what I mean? It's just a pretty broad group of mates who go out and film fairly regularly when they've got time off work and whatnot.

Yeah I get you. The video features a pretty eclectic list of people, from some of the London up and comers to visiting legends. Did you have any particular people in mind that you wanted to include or did it just come from whoever was knocking about and keen to film?

Yeah, it's kind of that, the whole thing was pretty organic. I think one of the only people I hit up out of the blue to film for it that I'd never met before was Nathan Clancy. I honestly haven't really seen him for like a year or two now, which is mad, but he's obviously busy with the Polar stuff. He's a bit of an enigma. I remember I saw one clip of him on Instagram and he did like an alley-oop back 270 into fakie 50 and then 90 degree frontside flip back into the bank on the little banks at Southbank and I was just like, ‘that is fucking sick.’ Like it's a weird trick to do and clearly he’s got a lot of talent so I was just compelled to hit him up and be like, ‘yo, if you want to come skate, come skate’ and he was actually down. It was pretty sick. He filmed all those tricks in like two months or less too.

Everyone else, it was kind of just friends of friends. I've been knocking around London for about nine years now so I had like six years of experience in London skating when I started filming for this. I knew a good chunk of the people there and all the people that I'd want to maybe go out and film with. 

Actually, another person that I did hit up that I'd never met before, and that kind of spiralled into a lot of other people that ended up in the video, is Glen Fox. He put on his stories that he was coming through to London and he wanted to link up with a filmer, I was just like, ‘fuck it, I'll reach out to him.’ I didn't know any of his people or anything like that, anyone from Jersey, but I love Glen’s skating and I've watched him for years and his shit to me, personally, it's just magic. The way that dude moves around on a skateboard is nuts.

He was keen so we linked up, and then through him I met all the other guys who made up the Jersey section in the video like Glen, Luka Pinto, Eddie De Rocha and Ryan, who I met the same day as Glen. Ryan’s just mad, nobody really knows who he is in British skateboarding, but he can just do every trick down stuff within about two or three tries. Like tre flip a double or triple stair in three tries. He just loves hucking down stuff. He's about 31 now and he's still skating like a 15 or 16 year old, you know, just jumping constantly. He fucking loves it. It's really sick.

Is that Ryan Cunningham? I noticed you played the Giff Gaff voicemail recording at the start of the section. I know trying to organise skaters can be a bit like herding cats so I was going to ask if you had any horror stories of trying to organise a mission, or if there was anyone in particular where the battle was more about getting them out than getting the clip? Was the voicemail thing a little reference to him being hard to get hold of?

Yeah, he's definitely one of those sort of people who’ll phone you and then you try and phone him back and you're just like, ‘bloody hell, I'm not getting through to this guy.’ I think I've just got that sound etched into my brain from calling him so that ended up in the video haha.

But yeah, he wasn't so bad. I kind of can't be arsed with all that stuff, like chasing anyone. That's kind of why I made this video as well because the group chat that we’ve got for the video is probably about 40 people strong and if you decide to go out any day of the week, there'll pretty much always be at least one or two people that would be down to come out. I didn't feel like the possibility of filming something was just all on one person, which is what it's like when you're trying to film a part with people.

I don't know, being a filmer's a weird one, especially in London. There are so many other filmers so there's always 10 or 15 other people that can get the job done, so sometimes you feel a bit replaceable. That's why I'm like, fuck, I don't have the effort to go chasing around people that do this shit for a living. Unless a brand would come to me and be like, we want you to film this thing, then it'd be like, ‘yeah, okay, that's a done deal.’ But I've kind of had my time with filming parts for individuals, I guess.

For me it was way more fun just going out and hanging out with your mates, like having that aspect of it rather than just being like, ‘oh, we've got this project to do.’ When you look at it like that it kind of stops being fun, almost, because you're both there, and you've both got this sole purpose of filming tricks and nothing else really factors in or matters.

Yeah, it makes it feel like a bit more of a job. 

Exactly. And, you know, no one's paying me to do that shit, so why am I making a job out of it?

You’ve worked with a fair few different brands over the years. What made you want to do this video independently? Was it just having that freedom and being able to keep it fun? 

Yeah, that was it. I just got the taste of it from doing that Red Bull thing. We had the crew and, you know, I'm always going to be wanting to go filming no matter what. There was never a part of me that was going to be like, ‘yeah, I just go out and skate.’ I feel weird if I go out and skate and I don't take my camcorder, you know. I like to just skate, don't get me wrong, but if we're actually going to go to a spot or something like that and I don't have my camera, I'm like, ‘what the fuck?’ I feel like I’m missing a limb or something.

You feel naked haha.

I used to feel like that when I would walk down the high street as a kid and didn't have my board haha, like it was such a part of your identity, I guess. But I don't even look at the camera like that because the camera stays in the bag more than it comes out. But I just really like filmmaking. It's really fun. I'm one of those lucky people who actually enjoys their job haha.

I really enjoyed the night-time section that you had in the video. It definitely felt like a callback to the ‘Nocturnup’ series you did. What made you want to separate the night footage out like that? 

Yeah, what you just said, kind of the callback, that was definitely always in my mind. I wanted to do ‘Nocturnup’ in London for ages but the logistics for doing it in London were pretty hard. Spending all night going out skating, you've got to plan for it the day before, you know, wake up accordingly and stuff like that, and then you've kind of ruined the following day trying to sleep it off. So I never really asked anyone to do that. Maybe I should have, but I think it would have been pretty difficult.

If you go to a different country or a different city then everyone's there and no one can really back out the project, you know? Well, they can, but they just have to go and do something else, I guess. But doing it in London was always going to be a bit of a challenge.

Yeah, it sounds like a refreshing way to make a video. We also noticed that you chose to include titles for everyone's names, which has been a bit of a contentious topic in recent years. What are your thoughts on the whole ‘to name or not to name’ debate? Because Trix reckons that people are just too lazy to learn how to use Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator and all that.

Yeah, my money is on that for sure. I actually fucked it. I don't know how, I need to go look at the timeline and see how I did this, but I left someone's name out on there. I probably left more than one haha. I definitely left some contributing filmers out, or at least I left one out, and I left a skater's name out. His name is Niall and he had this stuff at the end of the jersey section, he had the ender for that part, and I feel pretty fucking bad about it. But obviously I didn't do my quality control well enough on the video. But yeah, that was funny, man.

I had to develop a technique for the way of doing the titles. I projected people’s names using this cruddy old projector and then recorded them in Hi8 so it kind of gives this weird flow to it and then I just stuck it over the footage. But yeah, that was a pretty long-winded process, putting everyone's names in. 

But I love old videos, and old videos always had people's names on them. ‘The DC Video’ had some really good titles, it was pretty simple, but they were really cool looking. I've always liked graphics in videos and you don't see it that much these days. But we grew up watching ‘Lost and Found’ and they've got some really good graphics in that, and then Adio was my favourite when I was a kid, that's kind of what got me into doing computer-y stuff. Even though that video is like completely OTT it’s fucking sick, or at least it’s sick when you're a kid. It's actually pretty well put together.

There's loads of them, all the classic videos had titles and had a little bit more to them, you know. Even Strobeck’s stuff, which kind of changed the game on all that shit, that still has titles and stuff, or at least some of them do to some extent. There's more than just a timeline and a song slapped over the top. I want to say that my shit is as considered as all that, but it's definitely not. I could have spent way longer on the edit and thought about it a lot more. I gave myself a month towards the end of filming to get the thing done and even that didn't seem like long enough especially when the video is 50 minutes long. It takes a long time to put that shit together.

We were doing a lot of filming at night anyway, working on this, because people had nine-to-fives and stuff. Most of the time after five in this country, throughout the year, it's going to be dark. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but by the time people get out it's like six or seven, they can skate for the next two or three hours, then it's probably going to be dark, so we ended up getting a lot of footage at night.

It's kind of in the same way that this video wasn't a full-length to begin with. It was kind of just a montage but then people's footage started to accumulate, and then it started to take shape. Like, you think about it, and then, you know, you start to section off footage. Then you realise that there’s more in some areas than others, for certain people and certain ideas. It was definitely like that with the night stuff. And for people's parts it was like ‘oh, there's enough here to make a part with this person,’ and that's how the video developed. It was pretty organic, which was nice.

Yeah, I can imagine haha. Obviously, it's a London video at its heart, but you managed to sneak in a fair few Cardiff clips as well. How did that come about and, more importantly, how did you actually manage to get people to leave London? 

I didn't haha. The Cardiff clips I think were all filmed in one day. It was all the day after Shop Riot and we were all hungover but we got like seven or eight really high end clips that day - and Jago also filmed a fucking banger that's not in the video that will be in his part when it comes out. I would have loved to have done more in Cardiff, but I've been fairly detached from the Cardiff scene for a few years now. I don't know who's skating or what's going on. 

Dylan would come up to London and he'd hit me up to try and go skate, sometimes he’d show up, sometimes he wouldn't haha, but we'd already be out anyway, so it's not really a bother. He managed to get a good bit of footage for the video as well. 

I would love to have done a bigger section to do with Cardiff, but I think that will come because the guys in the video still want to do some stuff. They don't want to just say, ‘all right, that's it.’ I'm down in Cardiff now, so hopefully they’ll come through and we'll get to do some of that stuff too. There's not as much Cardiff representation in there as I would have liked, for sure.

I mean, it's better than nothing and anyone who's been to Red Banks knows how insane that roof drop is, I think Dylan’s and Conor's reactions in the video capture that pretty well. Could you tell us a bit more about how that all went down?

We were knocking around on the back banks and Ranga had just filmed this pretty big front shove on the banks. It's in his part and it's actually really fucking sick. Then I guess, while that was going on, Cam had been eyeing it up. I was totally oblivious to that and then when we’d packed down from Ranga's thing after he did it, we just looked up and Cam was there on the roof, having a look over. I kind of wanted to tell him not to do it, you know, like, ‘that’s cooked, man, don't kill yourself.’ 

It was funny, actually, because on the other side, before we got the barrage built, there was this rollerblader threatening to roll in from the same height, but doing it to flat. This was when we did this protest, just to get a skate park built in Cardiff. We got maybe like 100, 200 people down to Red Banks for a demonstration, like an actual demonstration, not just a demo. And yeah, this fucking kid was threatening to roll in off the roof on blades. Even then, everyone had to talk him down because we thought he was going to get fucking smoked. And then there's Cam on the other side of the building, fucking doing that haha. I think that was most of the attempts in the video, to be fair. Maybe I left one or two out where he didn't go for it, but yeah it was insane.

I don't know if you know anything about Cam but he's a farm boy like me. And he, I guess, did the same shit that I did growing up, which was just make your own ramps and set up janky obstacles in your barns, because you've got nothing to skate, there's no smooth ground around or anything. You've just got to try and make mad shit to roll in on and grind or whatever. I've heard that he makes mad shit to roll in on in his barns so he already knows what he's doing when it comes to that stuff.

It was funny, man, because we all got completely mash-up the day before as well, at the Shop Riot and we were all feeling it the next day, then all that stuff happened. We went to Ikea banks afterwards and Dylan did the biggie back tail, Keen Will did the nollie 360, and then something else that I can't disclose went down. It was just fucking insane.

I also noticed you used a tune from the band Silica, which features another Cardiff-affiliated legend: Mr Reid Allen. Where did that idea come from? 

I actually didn't really know Reid that well back when he was living in Cardiff. I think he was there maybe for the few months that I was in Cardiff before I ended up moving back to London after I'd been living in Asia. I was there for like two years and I came back briefly to Cardiff and then moved on to London. But yeah, my relationship with Reid has only come to be since he moved back to London, really. 

Obviously, I know Reid and Reid's a good bloke and I like his music as well. It's a pretty easy one to string together. I think as well the lyrics and the song really spoke to me because it's all about Palestine. I heard that song and it was always a problem for me trying to find a song for Ranga because he kept on trying to get me to put Smashing Pumpkins on his part and shit like that haha. I was not vibing with it at all, all the stuff that he was sending me. 

Reid's music's sick and that song really stood out to me. I had it on Ranga's part since day one. I always think that's a testament to a song. As soon as I decided there were going to be parts, there was always a timeline for that person. I'd always just interchange music for their parts and see if it worked or see how I was feeling on that day. Over the two years of making the video, my music taste has changed quite dramatically as well. There’s stuff I would listen to a few years ago that I wouldn't listen to now, for example, but I feel like that's obviously a good thing. 

You imagine two years of listening to the same track, you think that you'd get sick of it, right? That's how I look at it. If I've got to edit the song to a part and by the time I'm done editing it I can still listen to that song, then I know the song's alright. Definitely with Reid's song, there was never a doubt in my mind that it was the best song I could have used for it.

It's a pretty good substitute for Smashing Pumpkins, to be fair. It's a fairly similar vibe. 

Yeah, I don't know. It's just Ranga’s fucking taste in music, man, it wasn’t helping things haha.

Like you mentioned, the song's all about Palestine. There's also a lot of other little nods and references to Palestine throughout, including banners and flags and stuff like that. Politics isn't something that usually features much in skate videos so it definitely felt like a welcome addition, but what made you decide to include all that? Have you had any kind of backlash from it, given how much censorship there is towards pro-Palestinian groups and movements at the minute? 

No, definitely no backlash. I've had some very supportive comments from people about it, especially at the premiere, there were quite a few people coming up to me about that.

There was all this stuff that happened in Gaza about two years before the October 7th thing kicked off, so four years ago. That's when it got put on my radar. I started to understand how fucked the situation was over there. Also, with Baglady, Tom Delion, he's really on it with that stuff. Him and Daryl (Dominguez) have both been over there, not to Gaza, but to the West Bank. They've seen how shit it is, and they've got a feel for it.

Tom had included some of that stuff in his videos previously, and I guess that kind of put the seed in my head to feel like, you know, it's alright. You don't have to shut your mouth. Everyone else in the creative world seems to just shut the fuck up about it, because either they don't feel like it's their place to say anything, or they don't want to tread on toes, or they don't want their careers taken away from them, whatever it is. I've literally got no fear of that whatsoever. It’s pretty fucked if somebody wants to go after you for something like that, because I think anyone in their right mind can see what's going on and knows that it shouldn't be happening.

Yeah, for sure. I thought it was a really good addition. It kind of makes it something a little bit more than just a collection of tricks, you know?

Yeah, well, I was kind of trying to go for that with the video anyway. There's a lot of stuff that's pretty personal. The video is like a love letter to London. I was trying to encapsulate a lot of feelings that I had for the city growing up as a kid, because I've been going there since I was like 12 with the Cardiff boys. I'd never lost my love for the city.

Going skating in London always felt the same to me. You know, just that excitement. You can skate down the street in London, you can come across a new building or piece of architecture you've never seen before, even when you live there. There's not many cities you'd get that feeling from, I imagine.

There's all these different feelings that I have about the place that I kind of wanted to try and translate into the video as best I could. Also, you know, the friendship vibe as well. I kind of wanted to make that a real thing in the video. I don't know if it all comes across, but that's kind of what I was going for with it.

No, I think it definitely does come across, you can see how much time, effort and love you've invested in it. I also heard that you're a big fan of the overthinkingskatevideos account and it seemed like you snuck in a fair few little nods and references throughout the video. Trix was wondering if the first track was a ‘Human Traffic’ or ‘Kevin and Perry Go Large’ reference?

Yeah, that was, for sure.

And if the ‘Live Free and Wear Sunscreen’ bit in the end credits was a Baz Luhrmann reference?

Yeah it is. I'm glad Trix picked up on that, because I don't know if anyone else would get that haha. But yeah, I literally wrote up that blurb in like two minutes. I wish I'd thought a bit more about that blurb at the end. But yeah, that's what came to mind, and I just wrote it down and then recorded it two minutes later. That Sunscreen song, if you just type it in on YouTube, it's a pretty life-affirming video and I kind of wanted ‘Artefact’ to feel like that as well, if that makes sense.

Definitely the Kevin and Perry thing too. We all grew up watching that shit and it was actually Ranga that suggested that song, which was really sick. I think I had it on my playlist for the video and then Ranga came to me with it and I was just like, ‘yes, okay.’ I was still trying to figure out what direction I wanted to go with the intro of the video, like whether I wanted to make it kind of highbrow and artsy, which was originally what I was going for. It kind of starts out that way, but then it quickly transitions into just bellend carnage haha. That just kind of fits the crew a bit better than trying to do something that's highbrow.

Yeah, I think it's a nice mix of the two, to be fair. Going even more niche: the ‘Commit No Nuisance’ bit is clearly a nod to ‘City of Rats’, but in the outro you ask ‘who are you and where'd you come from?’ Is this a reference to a super old ‘Hologram’ edit of Gaz skating Caerphilly where you ask him the same thing? 

Did I? Jesus Christ. Well, I'm not that big on overthinkingskatevideos, like I do follow the account and I’ve got a lot of time for it, but I'm not the one trying to think of this stuff too much. Fucking fair play though if Trix came up with that, that's amazing haha. I definitely wasn't thinking that when I said it, I think that's just something I say. I think it's a Cilla Black thing. I think she used to say it on the game show, what was it called? ‘Blind Date’? I just thought Darryl's response to that, like ‘I'm Darryl and I'm illegal,’ was really funny. I literally just made this video for myself, just to keep myself amused haha. It's sick that it’s actually worked for other people too.

Sometimes that kind of thing ends up working the best because the passion really comes through. 

I think so. I can't picture doing it any other way. I think if you try to think for the audience too much, or think for the brand, then it can be a little bit detrimental. I think I've learned that lesson in the past from working with brands and trying to do what I think they would like, which hasn't worked out in my experience. So I'm just going to try and keep it to whatever feels authentic.

So you've recently moved back to Cardiff. What are you most excited for now that you’re back on home turf? 

Actually going out and skating but I picked the wrong time of year to do that haha, but then again, I can just go down to Spit. I'm not too worried about that though. I haven't been able to skate properly in ages because my Achilles is busted, if I can get to a point where I can skate again, I'd be so happy.

What else am I looking forward to from being back in Wales? Actually going into the countryside. Like I didn't even do that when I lived here that much but I've got a dog, so I feel more compelled to do it these days and actually go exploring a little bit more. 

Keeping up with the people I haven't been keeping up with for the past 10 years, which is pretty fucked. I'm going to be going up to London a lot for work and seeing those guys up there as well. But yeah, seeing my family. London's a long way away, when you only see your family like two or three times a year it's pretty bleak. Getting to do that more now is really good because my parents are getting on and there's a lot of guilt from living in London and not getting to see them as often as I should. I don't know all of it, man. I'm from here, you know, so getting to feel like I'm from here again, it's going to be sick.

Get your Welsh accent back haha. 

Yeah. I don't know. Do I sound Welsh? Everyone tells me I don't, but I don't know. My old man definitely sounds way more Welsh than me, but my mum definitely sounds super English and she's not even English.

So what's next for you then? Have you got anything lined up?

I've just been working flat-out for this agency, so my forward planning is fucking terrible. When you're a freelancer, you can't really plan too much because you're always at the mercy of somebody else's decision. But I guess that's just life, isn't it? Unless you work for yourself completely.

I would love to do another ‘Nocturnup’ at some point. I've been thinking about that since COVID because COVID fucked me over big time on that. We were doing stuff with Thrasher for that at one point, they bankrolled like two episodes of it. I got one done and then we were meant to do a second but then COVID hit and that was it, it kind of put that one to bed. Regardless of all that, I would love to do another one because those trips are fun as fuck. There's something pretty mad about staying up all night, going out skating, and then when the sun comes up, you're like, ‘alright, now I'm going to bed.’ Some people don't like night footage but I really like it, especially if you light it properly, I think it can look really cool.

I've been doing some bits with Alan Glass, alongside Harry Deane, for Shiner. Getting to go on trips with those guys is actually really sick because they can afford to go to places and do cool shit. I feel like a lot of skate brands don't really have the budget to go anywhere these days. The Shiner guys, with the NHS brands, they can actually go to some cool places and you're not living on a shoestring budget, you can actually go eat at a restaurant, have a beer and you don't have to pull out your wallet, which is really sick haha.

I've been so consumed with this move right now and trying to get this house sorted and stuff that I haven’t really given any thought for the future after that. I'm pretty excited either way.

I'd definitely like to see another ‘Nocturnup’ edit. Is there anyone you want to give a shout out to or anything?

Um, oh God. Everyone. Everyone I've ever met haha. I don't know. Fuck man.

My missus, she puts up with a lot of shit. And the dog, the dog's a legend, but you know, I have to put up with his shit. There's a pecking order with the shit-putting-up-with haha. 

Shout out to CSC. You guys are holding it down. Shoutout to Spit. To all the dudes in Cardiff who've been making the place so rad over the years. It's been such a pleasure to watch Cardiff grow since I left, to really become a proper skate city. I speak to people about Cardiff with so much pride because I don't feel like a lot of cities have what Cardiff has. There's a lot of key dudes in Cardiff investing a lot of their own time and money into it. Jim O, Trix, Christian, everyone just wants to make Cardiff the sickest skate city they can and they're doing a really good job of it. London's got everyone doing their own shit, which is cool, but it doesn't feel as unified. And I'm sure I haven't really spent enough time in the other cities to get that feel as much as I should maybe, but I know Cardiff's got a good thing going on for sure.

Shout out to the ‘Artefact’ crew for fucking putting up with my bullshit for two and a half years. Cracking the whip.

Shout out to Reid for letting me use the song. That was legendary. His story the other day, you know, I was so gassed to see that.

Shout out to Dykie for being a living legend. There's just too many, man. Cardiff's full of legends. London's full of legends.

I don't know. Shout out skateboarding. Anyone who loves it. If I ever got to meet you, you know who you are.

Thanks Nick, it’s been an absolute pleasure!

That's enough chit-chat though. Head to the shop to browse the full range of CSC clothing. Or, check out more skate interviews on the CSC Blog. Safe.