My friend Joel is an Aussie model who is a skate film enthusiast.
First time meeting Joel was last September, I believe.
My Japanese friend introduced him to me. While he stayed in TOKYO for a couple of months, we hung out often and skated quite often. After he back to Sydney, we kept in touch and last week (May,2017) I got a message from him and saying, "I finally finished my full length skate video!". I thought that was really good timing to interview him about skate scene in Sydney and how it compares to Tokyo. These photos are taken by me.
All shot in 35mm.
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Tamachi skate park, Tokyo, Japan
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| Tokyo, Japan |
Tell me a little bit about yourself and also your hometown.
Joel:
Well my full name is Joel Lumbroso, people
recently have started calling me Joeleo which i have reservations about, but
yeah, whatever floats your boat. I grew up in Darlinghurst, right next to
Oxford Street when I was young but moved to Bondi when I was about 6 or 7 I
think. Bondi's a nice area with crusty spots that nobody hits but I’m always
trying to find more. It also can get a bit hectic with tourists during summer
so I try avoid it when the time of year comes.
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| Shibuya, Tokyo. |
Joel:
The skate scene has been changing a lot these past few years. The new generation has really pushed what is expected of their age in terms of progression and it’s been crazy to see it first hand. It also seems that the actual city scene has recovered a lot.
When I got into filming (around 2013), it seemed like most people were over skating most of the city spots and most of the new spots seemed to be skate stopped straight away or became skate stopped pretty quickly after people started skating them.
However recently, a lot of spots like Chifley plaza and Taylor Square, which have been skate stopped for years have be de-knobbed which is super exciting to see and has created new opportunities to film.
Side note, if you are the person who has been doing all the de-knobbing around Sydney and are reading this, you're an absolute ledge.
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| Sydney(taken by Joel's friend) |
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| Sydeny(by Joel's friend) |
(Laughs)
Perhaps! this blog’s traffics from Australia is pretty good!
Last
year (2016), you stayed in Tokyo for a couple of months, what did you think of
skate scene there?
Joel:
Tokyo is crazy man, I feel like most of the skate culture feeds off what’s popular in America at the time and the people in Tokyo, whether they skate or not, really embrace the culture of it which is cool to see but the double standard of people frowning upon skaters actually skating street spots is a bit trivial in my opinion.
Tokyo is crazy man, I feel like most of the skate culture feeds off what’s popular in America at the time and the people in Tokyo, whether they skate or not, really embrace the culture of it which is cool to see but the double standard of people frowning upon skaters actually skating street spots is a bit trivial in my opinion.
On top of that street skating in terms of
the law I feel like is a bit backwards in the sense where I, a tourist, can go
skate pretty much any spot I want even though it’s completely illegal and all I
will be told by police is that I shouldn’t do it. However if a local like
yourself gets caught skating a street spot you can incur a massive fine.
But
hey I’m not complaining, the spots as well are pretty untapped from what I
could see so it feels like a massive playground of possibility and would love
to come back just to film another project.
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| Shibuya, Tokyo |
Now,
you recently just released your local skate video Suburban {Locality},
where
did idea come from?
Joel:
I don’t know exactly when I came up
with the idea of the whole video. I started filming for the project mid to late
last year and at the time I was only filming a small group of older people
closer to my age.
The process of getting content for it
though was pretty slow up until a young kid from my area (Xavier Kelly) hit me
up to film a clip at a local university (UNSW) that people skate on a regular
basis. I really didn’t expect much due to his age but decided to see what would
go down. He ended up getting two clips within a space of 20 minutes and from
then on I decided that I wanted to put all my focus on him and his group of
friends like Noah Nayef, Luuk Zilitch and Ruben Orourke.
After a little while of filming his crew,
their usually filmer (Orion Stefanidis) came back from overseas, I ask him if
he would be interested in helping continue making my project together and he
was down. He also brought a lot of new people with him from different areas
like Kai Borton and Noah Moon who live pretty far from Sydney City (around 2
hours transport each way) and they ended up helping make be what it was.
But overall I don’t really think we had an
idea of what the video would turn out to be. We just wanted the video to be as
much about the process of going out to spots and showing what its really like
to try get footage in comparison to just making a montage a tricks and slapping
some music over it which is pretty much the standard of any skate video you
see.
So what’s next for you?
Joel:
Now that this videos done.
I’m might be working on a video for 335 skate shop and maybe another full length, but I’m not too sure at this point.
Now that this videos done.
I’m might be working on a video for 335 skate shop and maybe another full length, but I’m not too sure at this point.
All photos are taken by Joel below.
