Ade The Terrible’s Top 5 Herbert Art Gallery Tricks

During this year I’ve re-visited a few Coventry spots and ran down my Top 5 favourite tricks from my videos. The time has finally come to stop avoiding the inevitable and take on the daunting task of running down my Top 5 favourite tricks filmed at the place that is arguably the hub of Coventry Skateboarding. Here’s my Top 5 favourite tricks from Terribleco history filmed at the Herbert Art Gallery.

Before we dive into the Top 5, here’s a bit of a primer on The Herbert Art Gallery spot, for anyone who (somehow) doesn’t know about it. Every city has a wide open “plaza” area that attracts skateboarders, and for Coventry, that is The Herbert. The spot has a couple of decent ledges, a bank, smooth ground, and for anyone ballsy enough to try, a Macba style gap from the top of the spot to the bottom. Just looking at the picture above, it’s appeal as a street spot is obvious – and it has had visits from professional skateboarders, not to mention it’s been a regular haunt of Coventry exports like Lucas Healey and Ben Keegan in the past.

Against every possible attempt by Coventry University (and the council) to remove skateboarders from the spot: we keep coming back, we keep skating it, and we keep dodging any and all attempts to skate stop it. It is a “black hole” of Coventry skateboarding, sucking in any skateboarder who happens to be within a half a mile radius. Street sessions either begin or end there, people can spend whole entire weekends there, and considering how laughably bad Coventry City Council’s attempts at building skateparks has been, The Herbert is arguably the best place to skateboard in the entire city.

So, this Top 5 is dedicated to The Herbert – the place where we’ve all met lifelong mates, landed some of our favourite tricks, and witnessed some of the raddest moves in Cov… Including the following 5 bangers.

5. Liam Harkin – Noseslide Shuv It into bank

from Sorcerers Of Shred (2016)

This first trick is from the start of a rad line. In general the ledge into the bank at the Herbert can provide some cheeky technical tricks, but this is my favourite one I’ve seen from one of my videos. Master carpenter and street technician Liam Harkin threw this one out for Lucas Healey’s lense in a short but sweet part containing a rad selection of footage from Coventry City Centre, including some choice moves at the Herbert.

4. Jack Taylor – Noseblunt Barrier off ledge

from Ghostface (2022)

Another trick from a line, but this time taken from the end rather than the beginning. The ledge at the Herbert has seen a lot of tricks go down, but this trick came from a short lived plastic barrier being stuck onto the end. This line (and particularly this trick) is what made me wanna film a part with Jack for Ghostface – it’s the kind of thing that might have been hard to handle for a single trick, but throwing it into a line is awesome.

3. Pip Sangster – 5050 to sign post bash

from Pip Sangster’s Hangup Online Megamix (2020)

Pip always has a knack of thinking outside of the box, and this mad trick is just a proper example of that. Taking a 5050 off the end of the ledge at the Herbert, he ollies out and smacks a sign post mid air with his board on the way out. Originally the sign post was put in as a sort of skate stopper/deterrent, so I’ve always found it funny that Pip managed to work around it and even include it in a trick.

2. Ben Keegan – Nollie BS Flip Into the Bank

from Franchi$e (2018)

These days it’s obvious that Ben Keegan is amazing on a skateboard, but back during the filming of Franchi$e he was just starting to show off just how good he was. This Nollie BS Flip was done in a surprisingly small number of goes, and Ben did it like it was second nature. It’s a textbook example of this trick, and you can see flashes of his London-based cruising flowy style coming out as he does a stylish little fakie manual over the path into the road after.

1. Tony Lui – Ollie The First Two Steps, 180 off the Third

from Now That’s What I Call The Terrible Company (2021)

People always hit the Macba style gap across all 3 ledges as one big leap, but the size of them definitely offers up some more alternatives over your average gap or stair set. Back in a 2021 whilst putting together the first run of archival mega mixes for the blog, Tony sent me a bunch of footage he had been sitting on to include in his “greatest hits”. This included some proper NBD’s from Cov City Centre, including this bonkers quick-footed ollie onto the bottom ledge with a lightning fast FS 180 off to the flat. Tony’s always been light on his feet, but this trick was a proper surprise the first time I saw it.