An Interview with Cookie

Whilst Cookie might be known to some as one of Britain’s foremost grind-smiths, his adept mastery of the steel stunt-nubbin is just one of the many strings to his bow.

He’s grasped the fine art of egg-poaching, he possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Parisian metro system and he has a wide vocabulary of North East slang seldom heard outside the darkest corners of Sunderland.

As an attempt to lift the lid on this modern-day genius, here’s a very extensive chat with the man himself, covering pretty much every subject we could think of…

Interview by Sam and Clarky, photos by Sam.

Sam: Starting things off, you work as a chef. How did you get ‘into food’? I know most people eat food every day, but not everyone is a fully-fledged cook. 

Cookie: I was shown a few kitchen basics by my parents as a kid, but I’d be the first to admit I had an appalling diet, without any particular care or consideration to my cooking or ingredients ’til my early to mid-twenties.

In a bid to leave bar work behind around mid-2014 and put the skills I’d been honing at home to use, I got a job with a Middle Eastern street food trader, along with a stint at a wood fired seafood restaurant on a North Sea beach, followed by a couple of eye-opening jobs at some shambolically-run establishments — before spending the last year and a half in my first ‘professional kitchen’ above a pub in Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley serving a 100% plant-based vegan menu.

Sam: Have you got any general ‘kitchen tips’? The low water poached egg method you taught us in Paris really helped me out.

Cookie: Glad to be of service. I used to take great pride in a perfect poachy, particularly seeing the chaos/controversy caused by the array of wacky methods being championed to keep the egg together.

As far as general tips go, it helps if you love the dish you’re creating. Pick ingredients you love and build the dish around them. If you’re favourite food is something humble or basic, look at how you could improve upon it, or pick a particular element or texture and see how you might accentuate it.

An easy thing to change for a quick improvement is slightly undercooking things like rice, pasta or veg, and letting the time it’s sat before plating up be the remaining cooking time — or if you’re going to be adding elements into a sauce or broth, take them off the heat and stop them cooking with cold water (blanching) before adding to the other part of the dish. Once you start rocking the al dente texture you can’t revert back to soggy slop.

Sam: I’ll keep that in mind. What’s it like working in a hectic kitchen?

Cookie: It’s pretty full on and can be as equally exhilarating as it is nightmarish and exhausting. It can be worrying the deteriorated mental states it gets some people in.  It may be my inexperience but I adopt the approach that you are serving food to people wanting to eat your food. It should be a pleasurable experience for those involved.

No matter how mental it gets I don’t tend to get too flustered as no one’s life is on the line. Staying calm, focussed and working systematically should keep you from losing your shit.

Sam: Moving things on a bit, how did you get into riding?

Cookie: I spent most of my youth racing round our cul-de-sac on bikes, then a lad on my street got a bronze Mongoose AKA in 99 and another lad followed with a Mongoose Hooligan in chrome. Shortly after I somehow managed to convince my mam and dad that this wouldn’t be a short lived fad at their expense, and I completed the goosey trio with a chrome Sniper.

Sam: What was it like in Sunderland back then? What was an average day like for a young Cookie?

Cookie: I can’t complain with my upbringing, and besides Sunderland had their finest starting 11 of my generation and finished as high in the league as they ever have since.

There were pockets of roughness here and there — a few kickings and plenty of chases, as you were regularly singled out for abuse as a ‘sweaty’ or ‘goth’ for riding BMX with baggy jeans and a mop of hair — but I imagine it was nothing in comparison to those growing up in larger cities.

I can thankfully say I wasn’t present for a notorious incident that took place at one of our old spots in town that saw people take it to the face with golf clubs and chains, but for the most part it was just cruising about care free between football training and matches, fuelled by ketchup sarnies. Maybe tell your mam you’re riding into town but a sneak on a train to Newcastle for a sesh or go the Jetti trails, eat shit and bend another set of cheap forks.

Sam: Who were the older riders you looked up to back then? 

Cookie: Initially it was the two older lads in my street but they faded away pretty quickly. The Doxford Park Morrison’s scene was kicking off by that point and so many people were riding — but Brogan Carthy was standing out at the time with a proper rugged style, slinging hop-one-and-a-half-barspins and a copy of Wu Tang 36 Chambers.

Not long after, I first came across the next older crew of lads up which included the likes of Jim Newrick, Paul Buckley and Chris Souter. It’s safe to say they were on another level and I thought they were basically the shit.

Sam: What’s Brogan Carthy up to now? I always wonder about these mysterious characters who are probably completely unaware of the impact they had.

Cookie: I haven’t seen him in a good while, maybe not since I was having some post-match celebratory beers after Sunderland beat Newcastle 1-0 at home thanks to a Jermaine Defoe wonder-strike as the half-time whistle blew leading to a surreal 15 minute goal celebration. That was maybe three or so years ago though.

As far as I’m aware he hasn’t picked up his bike since his sick clips in the final NSF2 mix section and NSF1’s ‘The Boyz’, although he may have had a brief round two some years ago.

Thanks to the wonders of social media I know he’s been doing a lot of crazy Iron Man type endurance races involving long distance cycle, icy swim and marathon running which he seems to be beasting. Not surprising as he had a very Vic Ayala-esque beast-mode style on a BMX.

Sam: Do you remember the first rail you did?

Cookie: I’d ice chinked a fair amount of the ends of handrails (go fast and pencil) by the time the now long defunct Vert X indoor park in Sunderland installed a fairly legitimate height handrail down stairs. The ice chink wasn’t considered doing a rail and I remember sweating it for a long while, often wasting entire sessions running up to it and bottling it.

Whenever I eventually double pegged that I must’ve had a buzz on as I think I did three or four handrails straight after, so I can’t pinpoint exactly which one was my first proper. Either Silky Library (short and shit), a high mellow one round the corner going into someone’s garden, a one with zero run out in Mowbray Park that the Roops had tried backwards, or one of the St. James rails in Newcastle.

Sam: What was your technique for rails back then? You were doing some pretty mad ones when you were fairly young.

Cookie: Lack of understanding on the concept of morality due to my age probably helped somewhat. I obviously had way less fear then, as I did very little checking and would prefer just to send it on the first run up seeing the bottom as you hop. I think I quite enjoyed a good crash and trying to do rails with silly run ups or run outs.

Sam: What was going on with that X-up duster/crank-arm thing you did at the end of your NSF3 section? Can you give us a detailed run-down of the full day please?

Cookie: It’s in a place called Marton, a village suburb of Middlesbrough and is the birthplace of Captain Cook. As my name is Martin Cook it would seem it’s as good a place as any to get in a weird position on a rail.

It’s as good as a handrail gets in the North East for doing tricks down and was kindly pointed out to me by Ant Moss and Campo who’d already done a variety of bonks down the lefty and righty. They were there that evening and Ratty was filming with Jim lighting it up.

A good sesh ensued with some standard T2S synchronized action — Mossy and Campo bringing the over-pegs and oppy-crook heat as well as providing the hilarity — taking mad falls and dropping classic quotes in the process.

I guess it was one of those rare days when the buzz is strong and I one-timed most of my repertoire (apart from hitting the deck on a crank-arm as per). I don’t really remember much else leading up to or after it to be honest with you and most of my memory is served by the footage. I must’ve broken my belt that day because I recall having to fashion a makeshift one out of red electrical tape that was being used to hold some extra bits of grip on my bars or possibly stopping my seat from falling apart.

Sam: What other exciting memories do you have of the NSF3 era? And did you ever pull that barspin to crooked?

Cookie: Apart from the one on that makeshift rail at Lambrini Jam 04, it has remained elusive. Some of the attempts at the Liverpool Battle Royale were probably the closest with a few I caught in the right position but with my front peg just overshooting as the sesh was on the shorter Law Courts rail.

I guess the NSF roadtrip in 05 was pretty special. It was the first proper trip I’d been on besides a couple of us going to Barca for the first time earlier in the year and we had a convoy of vans and stolen diesel to go down to Eastbourne and back up via Brighton, London, Milton Keynes, Sheff and Leeds. I took a backpack full of Morrison’s own baked beans and ate the lot cold from the can in the passenger seat of Micky Kendal’s pickup.

There was never a dull moment at The Buff House at that point either with its communist living vibes reaching new heights one evening when the Roops had yet again failed to top up the electricity meter which was his board for the luxury of living in the top floor cupboard. With no lights or electricity for entertainment we continued to drink warm cans of Viborg in the dark whilst someone took it upon themselves to start an indoor fire on top of a recently acquired bird-table. Insanity.

Sam: The North East has always fostered quite an intriguing, stall-heavy style – why do you think this is?

Cookie: I think it could be partly down to the environment and the rest can probably be blamed on Big Chrissy Souter.

The main spot of almost all North East crews of that time was Queens Banks in Newcastle and its main feature was a brick sub-box. It’s still there albeit mostly fenced off but you can still pass by and admire the outrageous amount of peg damage on the sub-box edge.

Souter’s rapid peg stall techery was on another level and had a far-reaching influence with some incredibly difficult combinations only to be pulled/thought of by him. His ramps at his yard featured a sub and most of the transitions were super steep, particularly the ‘indoor arena’ mini ramp that was so vert it was a lot more like stalling a wall than a quarter pipe.

Sam: What’s he up to these days? Do you see him around much? 

Cookie: I haven’t seen much of him in the last decade to be honest. I had a good catch up with him not so long ago when Jim had an exhibition opening near my work. He’s been back on his bike and I have seen a few videos floating about on the internet of him hitting some indoor parks. He may not be the ripped terminator machine of old but it’s still great to see that unmistakable Souter style on some Northern lips.

Sam: It might be said you’ve got a pretty unique style, and you may be the only person I’ve seen do a sit-down nothing, mid-handrail. Where did you get the idea for stuff like this from?

Cookie: I don’t really have an explanation. As unreal as the things the likes of Garret Reynolds et al are doing, their sections are never going to be held in as high regard as Jason Levy’s in mine and most of my friends’ eyes. I was lucky to be part of the back-end of a generation where there seemed to be a lot of distinctly different characters and styles in BMX. Although not universally true it has been for some time that across the board the styles and identities have become slightly blurred and merged into one kind of beige bm-ixup, who for all I know could all be the same bloke.

My first VHS I bought was Hoffman Until Monkeys Fly which is as much dodgy b-movie action and dicking about as it is riding, showcasing everything from flat and vert to street and dirt with a whole spectrum of different styles and characters. Ells Bells On the Down Low was also being passed around like VHS gold-dust at that time and its mysticism, general weirdness and the likes of Gonz and Ratboy must have had some effect on me.

Clarky: You have a distinct 80’s Style Wars/Subway Art/Wildstyle-era flava going on, does this influence your video making and/or life? 

Cookie: It was definitely a direct influence on the T2S Street Boyz vid and the advert I made for NSF 3 shown before the Voices prem at Sheffield Battle Royale.

As far as my life goes I’d already acquired an active interest in graffiti before I was introduced to the Style Wars documentary and got a hold of a copy of Subway Art from the college library — but that was due to graffiti being spread around the world from New York before I was born with the original set of North East writers being inspired to start after the film was screened on UK TV in the mid-80s, and it has probably helped that some of the main protagonists were also BMX riders.

Much like riding I never aspire to be or claim to be anything more than just doing my thing. I’ve definitely taken the films influence of the importance of having your own style more to the heart than the need to do the most and make your name famous.

Sam: That Wearside video you put on the internet on the few years ago is perhaps one of my most watched internet-based riding videos. What was going on ‘behind the magic’ with that one? How many fruitless voyages were involved?

Cookie: Cheers. No real master plan just that I was back staying at my mam’s in Sunderland for the first time since I moved out to Newcastle when I was 17. My wife and I had quit our jobs and gave up our flat in Newcastle to go travel around India so we came back homeless and unemployed.  It was just an excuse to keep motivated to go out over winter as well as cover new ground or revisit places I used to frequent in my youth.

As far as I remember Dchum captured something every time we went out but I could be wrong. Plus I imagine most people would consider riding miles in icy, damp conditions to do zero tricks and maybe bunny hop into a bank to be a fruitless voyage.

Sam: What are your thoughts on riding in 2018?

Cookie: I’m not sure that I’m the most well equipped to answer that. Despite ticking on towards my 20th year on the bike I’m probably just as detached from the whole global BMX affair as I always have been. I’m not going to lie — I’ve seen some heinous shit floating around on the web and I can see why people are thinking that the current state of ‘BMX’ is awful compared to previous eras but I don’t necessarily consign myself to this thought pattern.

Much like anything, it’s what you make of it. For me personally the way riding looks and feels hasn’t changed a whole lot since I first started, except perhaps some of my favourite people to ride with aren’t into it anymore and my bike setup has got better as my skills have got worse. If you go for a pedal with your mates and just watch vids from the sources you’re into I can’t see how whatever some dodgepot vloggy boy bullshit is having any effect on your goings on.

You don’t have to subscribe to any of that and life still goes on, plus the wack makes its self known loudly and proudly. If you’re watching something new, it’s as easy as a click or skip button when the suspect clothing/bike setup and shan music fades in. You used to have the ball-ache of the ‘fast forward section’ in the ‘golden era’.

Clarky: Green being my favourite colour, I’ve always noticed you have had a green bike or some sort of green colour on your person or on the bicycle. What prompts this love of the earthy hue?

Cookie: As far as I can remember it has always been my favourite colour. The 1994/95 season is the first I regularly attended Sunderland home games with my Dad at Roker Park. He got me a full strip for Christmas opting for the fetching teal/turquoise away kit as opposed to the standard red and white striped home colours. There’s something quite special about walking out onto the terraces for an evening game under floodlights — the green of the pitch seems to zing above the turf and has always looked electrifying to my green eyes.

My first BMX frame after snapping the Mongoose Sniper around the seat tube was a Dragonfly DFX that came in an emerald/paris green that had me on a serious buzz. Also the first frame I got when I started getting flowed some Kink bits was a Larry Bird, which was essentially a Kink Freebird in a lush limited edition shamrock green colourway due to Ryan Sher’s love of the NBA player Larry Bird and his Boston Celtics home colours. Those both provided rare opportunities to avoid pulling out the tins of paint.

I love the outdoors as well — the street I grew up in was flanked by some woods and was always a fascinating place to explore and that’s continued into my adult life as I love going on mooches amongst nature which translates into a love of outdoor clothing with hiking gear coming in a range of natural green/brown/khaki tones.

Clarky: You and your wife went on a mad trip a few years ago to Everest where you got into quite a hairy situation. What happened? 

Cookie: We had trekked from Lukla (a not-for-the-faint-hearted airstrip in the Himalayas where you fly to from Kathmandu) for around a week to the Everest Base Camp on the Nepal side and we were on our way back down when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit (now known as the April 2015 Nepal Earthquake or Gorkah Earthquake).

We were just back below the tree line on a steep descent from Tengboche Monastery, and as it happened I was at the back of our group which was split by the trail zig-zagging down the Mountainside. As the earth began to tremble I saw Ben, this big Australian fella, take down my wife and his into a huddle against the ledge as I was slammed into the side away from the drop by our main guide Ashok with another Nepalese bloke behind us.

It was a surreal moment of adrenaline fuelled hyper-awareness in which my thoughts dashed from ‘this can’t be really happening,’ to ‘shit the bed, this might be it,’ as I crouched against the ledge looking back up, rapidly from left to right in case of any movement from falling rocks or landslide.

The records state that the initial earthquake lasted about 50 seconds but at the time it felt like an eternity. I can only describe the feeling as like being on a rocky boat with a slower moving soupy motion of the entire mountain you’re stood on moving you left and right a quite frightening distance, coupled with a quick shaking vibration.

There was a huge amount of noise, with loud rumbling and sounds of avalanches and landslides echoing off all the surrounding peaks, along with the shouting in Nepalese down to the other levels of the trail making for a pretty crazy atmosphere.

Once it subsided we regrouped at the bottom of the trail unawares of the horror unfolding back up at base camp, in Kathmandu and around the whole of Nepal. We kept on trundling back towards Namche Bazaar where we were staying that night and started to slowly see some of the damage, a huge boulder had dropped from a ledge onto the trail, various levels of building collapse and a scary amount of cracking open of the earth as well huge dints that peppered the floor from falling rocks.

One particular hairy moment was passing a thin section of trail that had been severely damaged by rock fall and was now very loose soil, there was some aftershock movement and I just started running, swearing at the top of my lungs trying to get out of the section before anything else came down.

We thankfully reached Namche unscathed and spent the next few days holed up either on the floor in the packed out dining room or one night scoring a space on a shared bed in the basement. You weren’t allowed on any of the higher floors due to constant aftershocks and risk of collapse. There was a lot of bad vibe naysaying coming from some vocal British trekkers in a different group that was creating a pretty morale sapping environment so we were on a right buzz when the opportunity arose to run up the hill and jump in a chopper that had finished its rescue duties on Everest and catch a ride down to Lukla away from those pricks, avoid more sketchy trekking back through the valley below and one step closer to a flight out of the mountains.

It wasn’t that straight forward with plenty more incidents and stories to tell but I feel like I’ve rambled on long enough. The time stuck up in the mountains luckily equated to the time we had planned in Kathmandu after the trek so when we made it to the airport we boarded our scheduled flight home that evening. That coupled with a lot of the what ifs relating to the time and position we found ourselves in made us feel like the luckiest people on earth when we touched down on English soil.

Clarky: What’s your favourite film and why?

Cookie: If it came down to the sheer volume of watches, Total Recall (1990 Arnie version obviously) would be way out front thanks to always getting sucked in if it’s on TV, despite my wife and I both having copies (the theme music was the first track on our wedding day playlist).

On another day it could be a Wes Anderson (Life Aquatic, Darjeeling Limited or Grand Budapest Hotel) a Coen brothers (No Country For Old Men or Big Lebowski) or Kubrick (The Shining or Clockwork Orange) although if I was forced I’d maybe go for Repo Man with Emilio Estevez just for it’s quotable lines, soundtrack, general sass and attitude, eccentric characters and general weirdness with sci-fi conspiracy element… or I could just admit it’s Total Recall for the exact same reasons.

Honourable mention must go to my favourite docu-film Big River Man focusing on real life aqua-hero Martin Strel.

Clarky: I’m always intrigued about how people go about filming and editing a video and how they generally go about the whole process including the arduous task of capturing DV tapes. What’s a typical Cookie edit sesh like?

Cookie: I haven’t had a working video camera since my Canon one chip Mini-DV shat the bed around 2010. Before that I was fairly well drilled on just capturing clips from the tapes as I went and usually had rough timelines/edits for whatever I was working on floating about.

Around 2003/04 I had a feature length Sunderland video ready to go with full sections from myself and all the SBR lot (some of which are now putting stuff out through Dchum as Unknown Parasites) but my computer had a whitey during the Napster/Kazaa download hay day and lost it all bar whatever hadn’t been recorded over.

Without a camera I’ve had to source my footage from the leftovers of whatever video we are working on with Jim at the time, a mystical black bin bag full of tapes from Ratty as well as DV/Hi-8/VHS tapes from my loft and donations from the BMX brotherhood. The latest vid was also made possible thanks to a mains-powered hard drive from Mossy that required to be precariously balanced on a combination of hi-fi speaker and stack of books so it was sufficiently higher than my laptop in order to function, a never ending slog through roughly 20 to 30 old DV tapes, clip donations from Marv, Mainy, Clarky, Dchum and getting a working VCR from my Mam’s loft.

The capture/edit sessions are usually a mixed media headache involving flipping between the archaic PC tower still running XP, my laptop that’s been on its last legs for some time and my wife’s Macbook to try and pull it all together . The variety of footage sources require conversions which lead to crashes and incompatibility that have led me to giving up and recording the clip off the screen. More often than not this takes place deep into the night, free from distractions, where an arcane mindset can develop and allow me to get on some kind of a roll.

With this latest release it’s safe to say I’ve eeked out the final episode of the Team 2 Street saga from these dwindling relics and I look forward to perhaps making a video in a more regular format when Jim can’t arsed anymore.

Clarky: Were you a member of the Text Offenders? Can you shed some light on the only Geordie hip hop I’ve ever heard?

Ha! I wish, I was just a fully certified fan boy but my own MC career never got further than drunken rap battles outside of the now long defunct Cooperage nightclub in Newcastle.

It started with a love of the ‘NEA’ or North East Alliance which was a collective of Mackem and Geordie MCs and DJs who had a self-titled debut album and another called Meet the Locals in the very early 00’s which had a track used on the final mix section of the NSF2 VHS which also featured my first ever ‘real’ clip. I rinsed those CDs hard, ripping tracks for our early edits so much so that they now sit in a box looking worse for wear, virtually unplayable.

Some of the protagonists were well entwined in the Sunderland BMX/NSF/Graffiti/Jetti Trails scene and as a youngster the intimidating characters and general shadiness only added to the allure and mystique along with famed performances at the Mcewans Centre and Ashbrooke Cricket Club.

Text Offenders was essentially a spin-off super-group who released an album of the same name from in my opinion the most skilled NEA performers in MC S.U.B/Subliminal, Iron Elephant and DJ Delete who provide the beats, cuts and scratching. (Also on vocals later under the alias Mr. Burnz) I used the track ‘Thundersound’ on an SBR edit and had Iron Elephant’s solo track ‘All Amazing Mic Man’ penned in as my section song on the SBR vid that fell into my computer’s black hole.

Clarky: Why do you like Paris so much? 

Cookie: I first went on a school camping trip in 2000 and since then through various riding trips as well as on the mooch I’ve developed a genuine love of the city. It just has that certain ‘je ne sais qoui’ perhaps from the delightful mix of class and beauty with a definite rough edge and the ever present ‘aggy 90s behaviour’. It’s definitely been romanticised for me through its checkered history, the anti-establishment writings of Voltaire and in films such as La Haine, Amelie, Doberman, Irreversible and Lovers on the Bridge.

The first graff video I came across was Dirty Handz 2 by INXS of the SDK crew focusing on Parisian Metro/RER train writing and street bombing that had about the same amount of overplay as my copy of NSF2. The Paris sections in Dirty Handz 3 and Reasonable People  further perked my interest its train network.

Obviously the spots help, ranging from the aesthetically dope setups around seedy back alleys and elevated train lines to the mind blowing golden eggs dotted about the arrondissements and suburbs. I can’t remember if I first saw glimpses on Road Fools 6/Euro Fools or one of the French videos like Imprudence featuring Thomas Calliard but they were certainly eye opening.

Then through the plethora of riding/skate vids since then I don’t think anywhere else on earth has had spots making me as eager to visit. I also like how it can be a bit of a mission to find/hit a lot of the best spots with the sketchyness and distance needed to be covered probably putting people off looking for somewhere like Barca where it’s a bit more of a handed on a plate affair.

The Paris fever probably culminated in me taking a bus Newcastle to London and then a bus with the help of the Eurostar/ferry from London to Paris and back again, totalling over 36 hours of travel not including the transfer/sitting about to kip on your Airbnb floor and get three days pedal in.

I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone but I was broke and unemployed at the time, just coming back from a big trip around India and needed to be back for some weekend work so it was the only way it was physically possible for me. Looking back at the spots we caught, coupled with the excellent group of geezers on the sesh and I would say it was fully worth it.

Sam: On the subject of ‘the sesh’ – What ingredients make a good sesh? And what was your all-time ‘best sesh’?

Cookie: The sesh comes in many forms and it would depend on a whole manner of different variables as to what would equate to being the correct type of sesh for that given moment.

It almost always involves being with other like-minded folk although I’ve had my fair share of the enjoyable ‘solo sesh’. Plenty of the ‘good energy’ would be flowing and a definitive under current of humour would be present. Location, the amount your power bar is up and an element of surprise can all increase the likelihood of a good sesh.

As for all time ‘best sesh’ it would be hard to whittle it down from some of the golden era days where you might say I was on some sort of personal top form and therefore it would be easier to draw from the video catalogue rather than memory. Strong contenders would be the ‘Arl Day Peg Sesh’ or the ‘R.I.P Barry Smith Sesh’ and even though I wasn’t present, I feel a deep spiritual connection to the ‘Odeon Sesh’ and the plight of the Roops and a 3-set in Sheffield.

Sam: I think I’m unfamiliar with that particular sesh, can you enlighten us?

Cookie: This has unfortunately disappeared into the internet ether. I was hoping to simply post the link but it seems it’s done one from the Team2street Youtube account along with the Eski Boy and Murkage adverts leaving only The Boyz Part 3. I think the account belonged to Mossy so maybe he has some explaining to do or maybe Youtube removed them for being a little too street.

It was basically an early evening sesh shot on a long lens in front of the Sheffield Odeon 3-set (of Voices/Battle Royale/TWW fame). It had a delightful twilight tone to the footage and was set to Jeff Wayne’s 1978 musical adaptation of War of the Worlds. It featured many of the Sheffield likely lads of that Voices era although I can’t remember the entire cast. Standouts were Tom Blyth’s look back 3s and popped fast b’s, Nezza’s 3s and some slammed whoppers by Cannon Dan all done mid train.

Meanwhile Roops brought the real heat with some comedy slams trying stuff like footplant seat-grab barspins and switch foot oppy 180s until he locked horns with a bunch of 360 hop attempts set to the ever building crescendo of the soundtrack. The eventual pull and ending of the sesh is a combination of relief and joy. A truly excellent sesh.

Sam: It sounds it. I suppose this has interview has probably gone on longer than it should have. To wind this up, have you got any wise words or final thoughts?

Cookie: I think I’ve probably said more than anyone would care to listen so I’ll try and keep this to the bare minimum.

Cheers for asking me to ramble on for yours and Clarky’s wonderful operation. I guess my only advice on riding is just do what you feel like, people come and go with the trends and whichever style your meant to be biting, it’s far easier just to do your thing and roll with that.

Other than that I’d urge people to spend more energy cherishing the moments and experience with their family and friends over the striving for material gain and possession. I’d say something profound but someone has always said it better so I’ll finish with a pleasant Zhuangzi quote…

“The wise man knows it is better to sit at the banks of a remote mountain stream than it is to be emperor of the whole world.”

Hasta luego, chicos.