The Terrible Company is celebrating 20 years of Coventry and Warwickshire skateboarding content this year. Most of the stuff I have made since 2003 is videos, and on this rare occasion, I was roped in to film and edit something for local skater owned shop Ride. For the first time ever, this 2006 tour video is now available to watch online! Read on for a bit more info about how it came about and my memories from the video.
In 2006, whilst filming the 5th Terribleco video Corrosive Materials, I stumbled onto an opportunity. My previous video Rushed Goods had been on sale at Ride, and at the time Jim The Skin had a DVD player that he would use to stick on skate videos. At some point he must have watched the video, because the next time I went into the shop to buy something we got into a chat about Ride and their video output.
Their first video Ghost Town had come out roughly when the shop had opened in 1999, consisting of a lot of very old, fascinating footage of the Coventry scene. Following this, their second video Humble Jumble dropped in 2008, edited by good mate Mark “Frocker” Hewitt. I still have the DVD for this, and the intro skit with Jim and Mark talking about “artsy editing” cracks me up every time.
In 2006 Jim was keen to try and get another video done of some kind prior to Humble Jumble dropping. His idea was a quick and dirty tour video – all filmed in a single day, racing around to local(-ish) skateparks to gather as much footage as possible. After seeing Rushed Goods he thought I was the local film-maker he had been waiting for to put this thing together, so he agreed a date, said he would pick me up from the Memorial Park, and we’d gather the team and head out to some parks.
On a sunny Summer Sunday morning, I bombed off down the road to go meet Jim. He rolled up in his pitch black Chysler PT Cruiser (which he has since given a rusty hot rod makeover) and I hopped in. We were soon up at his house in Coundon, and I felt so out of place. The Ride team were all the most punk as fuck dudes, with shaved heads and mohawks, rocking up in banger cars covered in skateboard stickers. I was a skinny kid with a weird afro who tried very badly to dress like Ragdoll. I went into the house and followed Jim, and walked into the living room where a bunch more punk rock dudes were watching skate videos and eyeing me up.
The only saving grace was seeing Daryl Nobbs and Tez Alderley – two dudes I knew really well from the scene down at the Memorial Park. I had filmed stuff with Tez and Daryl before, so we got on already. When these two guys started chatting to me about filming the day, documenting it and making the tour video, the older guys relaxed a bit and stopped staring me out.
These guys were all actually really nice chaps: Russ Perry always just went mega hard at shit and would grind rough as fuck coping with authority, Luke Hassett was a vert monster who had the best handplants, and although Craig Cooper was incredibly stand offish toward me for a few years after we first met, as I got to know him and we began to chat about modern art and skateboarding I realised he was the coolest dude on the planet. Craig was a street machine and I would liken him to a Jason Lee or Carl Shipman type.
The Ride team at the time was incredible – in my eyes these guys were literally pro skaters. I knew nothing about them and seeing them all skate for the first time a few years prior I thought they were badasses. Being charged with documenting their skateboarding for the day was the biggest honour, I really wanted to make something rad for them.
There were some other dudes from the team in attendance as well – Joe Atkins (Jim’s son) was a pint sized shredder who showed promise of being able to skate as well as his Dad (spoiler alert: he grew up to be just as good), and Gaz Taylor was another local legend from the OG era of street skaters. Gaz Taylor is bloody phenomenal on a skateboard, and his skateboarding definitely left a lasting impression on me from early on in my skateboarding life. The rest of the team were BMX riders, who I was friendly enough with from my days riding BMX myself.
Early on, we hit Holbrooks bowl, for a big warm up session. Straight away the good tricks were coming out, seeing as this park was the local for most of the team. We were clocking up a ton of footage skating just this one park, and after about an hour we were packing ourselves into the car with enough footage to fill a full video just from Holbrooks.
Next up was Bedworth. I spent a lot of time filming Daryl and Tez here, as they were hungry for all sorts of tricks, especially hitting the smaller obstacles and doing some rad moves. Jim was filming some stuff with his camera too, getting double angles or capturing the stuff I couldn’t get to. By this point everyone was just going off and we needed two of us to capture everything.
Next up we went over to neighbouring Nuneaton to skate their park. Nuneaton skatepark was a set of mini ramps – one was a 4ft mini, which had a spine section to one side. The other was a giant 8 ft, almost vert, monster ramp. These guys were all in their element on a mini ramp, and there were a ton of very long lines from everyone on the team on the 4 ft. Daryl got brave and started to hit up tricks on the 8 ft, and Jim showed his vert skills on it too.
Around the corner from this skatepark, was a BMX jump track. Jim thought it would be rad to get some footage of the BMXers on it, but it was dry enough that some of the skaters fancied their luck on it too. Following on from this, we hit up some shops for snacks and drinks, and then we hunted down a full pipe in Nuneaton. This thing was tight and hard to skate, a few people had some interesting tricks to throw out on it (including Tez doing a kickflip Fakie in it) but it was nothing more than a fun distraction. Most of the day was gone, and we had so much footage, but there was still opportunity for more.
Jim quizzed the group and gauged interest in going further afield. We hopped on the motorway and made our way down to Perdiswell skatepark in Worcester. Perdi is an outdoor concrete park with bowls and long flowing quarters all over the place. It’s a bit of a concrete relic, with a weird design, but by 2007 standards it was amazing.
Whilst we were there people were flying all over the place. There are transfer opportunities aplenty at Perdi, and BMX riders were flying from quarter to quarter, onto banks, everywhere. The skaters were bringing out their most dextrous moves, hitting the bowl, hitting rails, ledges and funboxes and banks. The selection of parks and footage was varied and really showed off some fun places to skate, but Jim had one last park in mind.
Epic skatepark, now known as Creation, has been a regular hangout for Jim and other vert skaters since the minute it opened. At the time Epic had an amazing and diverse setup of obstacles on offer, and served as a great cap to our day trip. We managed to get some great vert footage of the team, as well as the bowl. The whole team were still shredding, clearly with plenty of juice left in the tank, and by the end of the day, everyone was super stoked on a good day.
This video was really the start of a long lasting friendship with Jim The Skin – Jim is the best dude and he has always supported anything the younger lot are doing with skateboarding. When he took a chance on me and asked me to film some stuff for him it boosted my confidence and definitely helped me build The Terrible Company into something that felt very much part of the Coventry scene. I’d love to film something else for the shop again, but in case that never happens, at least we have the Ride “Day Trip” Video as an official Terribleco collab video with the shop.
To commemorate all the rad stuff Ride has done for Coventry Skateboarding, and for The Terrible Company, over all these years. I’ve put together this rad graphic for the shop. Keep your eyes peeled for this thing cropping up on stickers and tees at Ride during this year…
The Terrible Company 
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