At the end of last week issue 4 of Staple Magazine hit the shops on the Western seaboard. Today and tomorrow the mag will be hitting the Eastern seaboard. This spring issue contains: a joint interview with young skate bucks Quayde Baker and Phil Marshall, a studio visit (and skate photo-remix) with Barbara Bolt, a Graham Miller photo essay (with an intro by internationally acclaimed poet Phil Salom!), an abandoned fun park article, Captn K music piece, backyard mini ramp inspiration article, top ten with Clinton Walton and dynamic imagery galore.

Here is an article I swiped from the new mag, which is meant to be a kind of mini-ramp inspiration piece:

Copping the Coping
To build a backyard mini ramp is a serious all-time, epic project. Cutting costs and finding bits and bobs strewn around the metro area is so challenging not to mention adventure-inducing. You will never forget the first time you ride something that you have been engaged with on this level. The first ramp I was involved with making was a couple of (cough) decades ago in the suburb of Attadale, out the back of my friend Waseem’s family house. We had no government parks at the time, and the only indoor one had just closed down. It was pretty much the only way we were going to get to skate any transition. I’d seen a dumped and disowned street sign a few months prior in a sump out the back of a business in Myaree. As a result, when talk of the ramp came up, I claimed that I could supply coping. The old street signs were tubular and were pretty much the perfect garnish for the fresh transitions. Waseem and Dave (Shaw) did most of the work on the ramp, and on one weekend everything was almost done. It was time to get the sign. From my house in Willagee, Van Peacock and I bombed the Leach Hwy downhill to enter the bleak modern industrial realm of Myaree. Much to our delight the sign was still in the sump where I’d originally spied it. After a bit of struggling we got it through the fence and skated the five kilometres with it in our hands. Sometimes Van would carry it, sometimes I did, other times we would share the weight. One particularly memorable moment occurred when we were skating down from Wireless Hill Park. I learnt a lesson that day: Do not attempt to do a four-wheel slide whilst bombing a hill with a street sign in your hands. Yes: roller hockey might be a tangible sport, but there is a reason why skateboarding and weightlifting have not been combined.

For those of you who haven’t seen a print issue of Staple, you can peep issues one and two online at staple’s website, and while your there you can also grab a viewing of the first episode of staple tv. Staple is a free skate, photography, art and music mag that we (Jack Pam, Luke Thompson and I) started almost a year ago to represent the creativity spawning from out west.