Chris ‘Bambi’ Price interview

Following our Scotty interview, Chris Lawton gives another Nottingham OG, Chris 'Bambi' Price, some questions about his last couple of decades skateboarding around Notts and beyond...

You grew up in Long Eaton, between Nottingham and Derby, right? What were your first experiences of the Notts skate scene?

[Bambi] Yeah, I’m Long Eaton born and raised, until I moved to the city centre in my early twenties. My first memories of the Nottingham skate scene are the Chilwell ramps, that’s where I discovered there was an actual scene of skateboarders - before that, I just knew a few mates from my school that skated. After Chilwell, we moved onto Beeston hip. It was rad, and my first experience of having a skate spot. Just having friends from different towns, and when it was the weekend we would always go Beeston to skate the hip, or if it rained then it was the undercover wooden bench at Sainsbury's. It was my first experience of skating to different spots, skating things that didn’t have skateboarding already in mind.

What first drew you to skate in Nottingham city centre? Were you aware that some of the spots, like Old Market Square and Broadmarsh Banks, were famous nationally (and internationally) when you started venturing into the city?

When I was old enough to be allowed to go to the city all weekend, I just started skating market square religiously every Saturday and Sunday. I’d turn up around 10am and the usual people would be there. We would skate down to Broady Banks or skate the marble step on Maid Marian Way. If it was wet we would skate the underpass at Broadmarsh, those were the main spots to skate, and if no-one was at the square you knew they would be at one of those spots. We would hang out at Non-stop too, until Robin told us to stop loitering in the shop all day and go skate! Sunday evening we always went to the marble ledge outside Broadmarsh because it would be quiet enough to skate.

Nosebonk on the Market Square's right lion - photo: Matt Clarke.

Can you remember the first Nottingham skate photo or footage that you saw?

The first Nottingham photo I remember is Brad doing a 5-0 on the wooden bench at the Market Square in a Rollersnakes catalogue, because I was in the background and I was so stoked - I think I still have a copy!

At the end of the 90s the scene around the Old Market Square was still super strong, with the bylaw that banned skating in the city centre not coming into force until 2000. What are your strongest memories of skating there back in the day?

My fondest memories of the Market Square was just skating with all these different people all the time, all different ages and everyone was ripping. We had a place that was ours and coming from Long Eaton being a mosher, meeting all these different skateboarders, it felt like you could just fit right in. Before the ban was amazing, you could just skate anywhere all day on Sunday and there weren’t any fast food places open, the only place really was Moulin Rouge Chippy on Trinity Square. The best place we used to skate when it was wet was the car park next to Walkabout bar, it was warm and dry, and we just made kickers and manny pads - it was like our own little skatepark in the city centre because it already had ledges in it.

Portrait: Simon Bernacki.

It was pretty funny when the bylaw came in because we used to get chased by the cops. It made skating the city kind of exciting. One time, we hid in West Side bar and when the cops came in I sat at the random table with strangers, and they just went straight into the toilets after Ali Couch. I went to court twice for skateboarding, the first time they couldn’t believe it was even in court in the first place, and the second time I just got cautioned that there’d be a fine next time. My mate ‘Hardflip Lee’ got fined £60 and he was on the dole at the time. Most of the time when you were chased you could give a fake name and address but after a while the cops started to know who you were. The bylaws are just designed to keep the undesirables out the city - you could see it when at first they banned alcohol in the city centre. The council doesn’t want people in the centre unless they are spending money, that’s why they didn’t like the homeless or the skaters in the square all the time. Nottingham still has a bylaw now, so if they wanted to and they get skint, they could just start dishing fines out again. The bylaw never fixed any problems, it just moved what everyone was doing elsewhere: out of sight, out of mind.

When you left the skate creche of Long Eaton, Chilwell and Beeston and started skating the city all the time, I remember you stepping straight up to the bigger steps in the Market Square - the 4 and the 5 (or 4 1/2) - quite early on, which kind of surpassed what our little Beeston crew were messing with at the time. Who did you gravitate towards for a session when you wanted to push yourself a bit more?

When I started skating the Market Square, my circle of ‘skate mates’ increased dramatically. I started skating with little Steve, Danny Wilson and Tim Smith. I suppose there weren’t any stair sets in Long Eaton, and when I went to the Market Square it was mainly just stairs, and Danny was always jumping…so we would just kinda end up jumping down the stairs all day. I think this was the time when I met actual sponsored skaters, but the first sponsored skater I met was ‘Bullsh*t Gav’ [laughs]; it turned out he wasn’t sponsored and just had Duffs stickers on his board. I remember Rees was one of the first people I met who was ripping and gave the younger kids the time of day. Then there was Eamon and Smedley etc.

Best trick(s) you ever saw landed in the original Market Square?

Best trick I saw anyone do in the Market Square was Gaz Jenkins ollie the white wall next to the 4 stair, the photo was amazing too.

For the few years when the ban was being enforced, and also after Derby Storm (indoor skatepark) closed, you were travelling around the UK more than pretty much anyone else I knew. Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester, London. What drove you to clock up all those road miles during that time?

One of the advantages of not having many skateparks around back then was having to travel all the time so you could skate a decent park. I started hanging with Daz Pearcy a lot, and that was it - we were travelling around everywhere meeting so many people, entering all the skate jams. We just wanted to skate cool parks, so we got off our arses and travelled everywhere. It was a good eye-opener seeing all these new cities and towns, even just knowing you have friends all over you can call up to hang out and skate with.

180 nosegrind in Stockport - photo: Simon Bernacki.

You left Nottingham a couple of times in the decade plus after the ban - living in Manchester for quite a few years and also a couple of months-long visits to Barcelona. What made you leave the city you'd grown up skating in, and how did those other places compare to Nottingham when you were living there?

I think Nottingham gets pretty small and it does you good to leave and experience different scenes. I met a girl from Manchester so went to live with her, and one of my best friends Lewis Threadgold lived there, so it made sense to move at the time. Manchester had a good park (OG Pump Cage) and a strong skate scene - it was very welcoming and I’m still friends with them all now. It was seeing all those spots in the big UK videos at the time and realising how good the standard is in the bigger cities. I think mainly just because of the higher concentration of skateboarders. Look at Manchester now: massive city/scene, yet they have no skateparks - such a shame. But at the same time, like many of us, it’s pushed us to develop new skills and make DIY spots. Manchester’s new DIY is amazing, they smash it!

You've shot photos with some legendary British skate photographers - Andy Horsley, Matt Clarke and CJ to name just a few - any photo or story around it particularly stick in your memory?

Yeah, they’re rad photographers and I love all those dudes. I think one of my best photo memories was the back nosegrind I did at the Broadmarsh underpass rail. Horse said Grove was in town, so I took the day off work to go meet them but it ended up raining and we went to that rail so Grove could front noseslide it. I was hyped to be skating with Grove then, he was killing it. I started ollieing the stairs and Grove was jumping, but then he wasn’t feeling the rail. So I started getting into noseslides on the rail but sacked that off and just started trying to krook it. Horsley set up his flashes, then for me I krooked it pretty quick, but as usual with Horsley he wanted another photo [laughs] because it wasn’t right. So I krooked it again, but smashed one of his flashes, so we had to make adjustments and then I back nosegrinded it in massive Adio trainers [laughs]. It happened pretty quick to be fair, especially for me! Then we went to the Olde Trip for a pint.

Noseslide in Montpellier - photo: Chris Johnson.

How much of an impact did Sneinton Market have on the city scene and, from the perspective of someone just old enough to remember the glory days of Old Market Square, how close is the vibe to the original scene around the Square and Broady Banks?

When Sneinton Market was being redeveloped there was definitely a buzz, thinking we were gonna have a spot like Old Market Square again. In some ways it’s better - we are tucked away now, so don’t have to deal with all the shoppers and drunk people on nights out. Plus there is more of a community feel at Sneinton, we have the coffee shops which are rad (and where some of our mates work), plus Montana is there and it was really cool having the graffiti wall. The writers have a similar scene to us - we find these undesirable spots and utilise them. There’s also the next generations coming through and they're all rad humans, and enjoyable to hang out with - even though most are twenty years younger [laughs].

Prior to your involvement with Forty Two, you were strongly connected to the OG Nottingham skate shop Non-Stop - what are your best memories of Non-Stop and why do you think bricks-and-mortar independents like these are so important to skate scenes?

I worked at Non-Stop for 7 years, that was the place to be every Sunday morning to meet up and annoy Ant Orton until we decided on a place to skate. One of my fondest memories working there is when Ant was sunbathing on the roof one shift and I was working the shop floor. I hadn’t seen him for an hour, so went upstairs and looked out the window to the roof to see he was sunbathing - so I shut the skylight and left him up there for about 4 hours. At the end of the day, when I let him back in, he had sunstroke and was dehydrated because there was no shade up there - he never did it again [laughs]. Nowadays thankfully we have Forty Two, and these shops do more than just sell hardwear, they’re a place where new skaters can ask questions that most skaters think are irrelevant. But for someone starting skateboarding, it means a lot, to be able to ask things like "Why are the boards made from wood?" or stuff that seems basic to most skaters - you can’t get these answers online!

Nollie front shove - photo: Tom Quigley

We've been to Copenhagen and Malmö together a couple of times. Can you explain to skaters who've never visited those sorts of Scandinavian cities why they're so good for skateboarding? What is it about somewhere with similar bad weather to the UK that attracts skaters from all over the world - to live long-term, as well as visit?

I think in Scandinavian countries the cities are so good for skating, not just because of the architecture, but the mindset of the countries. They seem more inclusive - public spaces are for the community to share, unlike this country where the councils only care about how they can capitalise on the public spaces instead, everything here is more money-oriented. You can’t buy a beer from a shop and enjoy it with your friends in the square, because of the bylaw, but you can drink in the square if the beer is bought from a popup bar - it makes no sense. I think people like coming to the UK to visit more because of the scene the UK has created - the output in our videos and magazines. The spots are quite harsh compared to the rest of Europe and it breeds a different kind of skater. A lot of UK skaters are very versatile and can adapt pretty quickly to different terrains.

Wallride nollie in Brighton - photo: Chris Johnson.

Even before Pontus popularised both DIY and a kind of skateboarding that focused on theoretically simple tricks (compared to flip-in, flip-out business) done with speed on awkward stuff - you've been doing wallrides, slappies, wallies into grinds, seeking out awkward handrails and other grimy, post-industrial spots. What drew you to that kind of skateboarding?

Like I said, I think the spots dictate the skater a lot, so seeing as we have quite a mixed bag of spots you just want to hit them all!

Skate Nottingham have been working hard for some time to push Notts forward as a progressive ‘skate-friendly’ city with skate-designated spaces in the city – why is this significant and what positives does skateboarding and skateboarders offer to a city like Notts?

I think after years of demonisation towards the youth, Skate Nottingham is showing it’s better to work with people rather than cut them off. There are so many skills people can learn from each other, and if we all work together and create opportunities this could change people's lives. We just need to show each other we all have incredible skill sets.

Over the last decade, skateboarding as a global culture has seen huge amounts of diversification – is this something evident in the Notts scene too, in terms of the people you’re seeing at spots?

I think there has always been a very diversified skate scene in Nottingham in regards to age, because at the end of the day we have this common goal of seeking out spots and having fun on our skateboards. Even when I was starting there were female skateboarders, although I think a lot of the time it was a girlfriend of a skateboarder - but now there are more inclusive opportunities, and you see different crews, ladies' nights at Flo Skatepark, and it’s only going to grow as we raise awareness to different people.

You've got an interesting perspective or insight on skateboarding and inclusion from being with Danni [Gallacher - Girl Skate UK founder and Bambi's partner] - given how much she's achieved, and the battles she's fought to make skateboarding more welcoming to - and representative of - women, girls, queer people and marginalised genders or 'non-normative' skaters more widely. What do you think still needs to happen and how can the UK and Nottingham skate scenes better support Danni's work?

Yeah, she puts so much work in all off her own back, it’s admirable. I think companies still need to reach out to marginalised groups, not just so they can tick boxes when they have an event. They need to be reachable, when I know a lot of the times they aren’t because they aren’t going to get publicity from it. There’s so much work behind the scenes and they need to be supporting this even though they might not get a magazine article out of it.

Wallie wallride - photo: Neil Turner.

OK, wrapping things up and connecting inclusion and diversity to the design of skateable spaces and 'skate friendly cities'. You're one of the few people I know who's good at skateboarding but you also have a deep, critical understanding of what makes a spot work well - not just for a specific trick or line, but in creating a focal point for the community and a place that will draw different sorts of people from all over. Often good skaters can have quite an individualised view of why this or that spot is good, based on what they want to film there. At our design workshop with Stu from Betong and LLSB, you were highlighting all sorts of other, important considerations. What do you think are the 2 or 3 things that are most important for us to get right - not just for Tram Line Spot to be good to skate for you or I, but to be good for people other than us buncha' able-bodied white dudes?

I think as creatives we need to have a spot that shows our creativity, so it has to be skateable obviously, but without the intent of skateboarding on the spot - so we have these sculptures and we have to adapt our skateboarding skills onto them. Because if they’ve been built with skateboarding/tricks already in mind, they are just another skatepark, and we already have loads of manny pads and quarter pipes in Nottingham. We have to make something unique that will look good in videos, and people will want to travel to and skate. I think the spot needs to be welcoming to the non-skateboarding public because I don’t think the public want to sit at a skatepark, and I think the spot needs to have a lot of space so people don’t feel intimidated and can have a space where they can find their feet.

Krook transfer - photo Simon Bernacki.

OK, end it on the obvious:

Top 5 all-time Nottingham skate photos?
1. Smedley switch frontside flip amphitheatre 3
2. Scotty noseslide bus station (Wig Worland)
3. Rushbrook back tail Beeston bench
4. Gaz Jenkins late back foot flip amphitheatre
5. Theo 5-0 bike railing (Tom Quigley)

Top 5 all-time Nottingham tricks?
1. Alex Hallford full pipe loop
2. Joe Hinson 5050 county hall rail
3. Gaz Jenkins back 180 late flip amphitheatre
4. Bushy switch hardflip Sneinton 3
5. Rees drop in quarter wall Magistrates Court

Top 5 all-time Nottingham spots?
1. OG Old Market Square
2. Broady Banks
3. Sneinton Market
4. Our old DIY
5. Amphitheatre

Top 5 all-time Nottingham skaters
1. Gaz Jenkins
2. Craig Smedley
3. Scott Underdown
4. Alex Hallford
5. Chris Dior Dior
6. Mathers (R.I.P.)

Thanks, Bambi!

First published on our Tram Line Spot Crowdfunder page, September 3rd 2022.