Want to tell me what got you into freestyle?
Skateboarding for me started with one of the COVID lockdowns. I followed female skateboarders on social media—people like Sarah Park-Matott (IG: @sparkmatott) and Jane Falconer-White (IG: @skatejanefw). Both had accessible skate content. Sometimes they would showcase freestyle. I remember watching Jane trying to figure out monster walks and thinking, ‘That looks like a fun way to get better at 180-kickturns.’
Those first few months, I mostly focused on park skates. However, I did pick up a Waltz Bixby Mini along the way and dabbled with basic freestyle tricks: backside switchblades, monster walks, and rail walks.
I fractured my foot maybe 6 months into skateboarding? Speed wobbles at Northcote Skatepark. :’(
It took 4 months before I was allowed to skate again (not really, but I did it anyway). Bailing on transition was too hard on the injured side, so I just worked on my flatground. When things were 99% recovered, freestyle felt good; everything else kind of sucked.
A 4-month period of no skating would have been difficult. It’s a short time frame in the grand scheme of things but it does make a huge difference when you’re physically active. When you came back to skating after your injury, what got you to go for learning freestyle tricks? Was it experimenting with what tricks felt better to do?
Freestyle was done out of necessity. I lost a lot of muscle mass and ankle mobility that year. When I stepped back on board, I’d fall within half an hour due to fatigue/poor balance*. Putting skateboarding on an indefinite hiatus while I worked on strength, mobility and endurance was not an option so I picked tricks that could be done stationary or at a slow roll or done with an assist: toeside rail entries, rail-to-rail hippie varial, thrusters, walk-the-dogs. Lots of rail and footwork.
*You lose your sense of balance and proprioception when you stop using your leg(s). Something else to relearn while rehabbing.
With all the footwork and rail you’ve done, the effort you’ve made has without a doubt paid off. You noticed the lack of freestylers here in Melbourne as well while you were learning freestyle tricks, didn’t you? Is that what inspired you to create Flatlandia?
Not just Melbourne. There’s a lack of Australian freestylers. Though maybe freestyle skateboarding in Australia is like an iceberg: only a fraction of it is visible.
Because it is so hidden, skate shops and skate brands don’t think that there’s a local market for freestyle decks. Freestyle-curious skaters don’t stick with the discipline because there’s a perceived lack of peers.
For a while, I was hoping for someone with better skate cred (more skilled/experienced at skateboarding or already in the industry) would pick up the slack. You know, raise freestyle skateboarding’s profile here? Start something similar to what they have in Europe, the States, Japan, or Malaysia?
No one did though, so I decided to be that person for a while. I don’t think I’ll ever be Paderborn Freestyle Skate contestant material, but I have writing and editing experience. Hence Flatlandia came into being. It’s my off-board project: online articles highlighting Australian freestyle skateboarding.
The lack of a market definitely is felt, both of us have seen local freestylers use popsicle decks. With the perceived lack of people, is it that got you to do your ‘5 minutes with’ articles on local freestylers?
Yes, I’m hoping the ‘5 minutes with’ will raise awareness. More importantly, it will hopefully help connect the interviewees with their locals. And if there are no locals to skate with, at least they all know a little bit more about each other and it’s easier to get an online conversation going.
Plus I get to ask people stupid questions like ‘Saran Wrap or Glad Wrap?’
That sort of thing is great! Being able to ask questions like that doesn’t happen to often. How else do you go about promoting freestyle and Flatlandia? By going to skateparks to show off freestyle and talk about what you do?
Yes, sometimes it’s something as simple as taking up space at the local park. Someone invariably comes up to you to ask what you are doing or why your setup looks different. Those who already freestyle get hyped because sometimes this is the first time they’ve seen someone else (and another freestyle setup) ‘in the wild’.
I’ve written an article which discusses the importance of being visible in order to find other freestylers. Hopefully it encourages freestylers to start skating at skateparks as well as the usual somewhere-out-of-the-way flatground.
Lastly, got any tips for those interested in taking up freestyle?
Skate journeys are better with people. Find like-minded friends online or in person so that you’ve got someone to talk freestyle with. The freestyle community is really supportive; even contests feel like a big reunion amongst friends instead of rivals (or so I’ve heard).
Also, find some offset wheels. That’s your first piece of hardware you should get if a complete is too challenging a purchase (financially or logistically). Most skate shops stock Powell Peralta’s Nano Cubics but if you can, try to get Waltz, Sk8kings, Decomposed or Momentum wheels as these are from dedicated freestyle brands that fund freestyle skaters/events. You can buy them from Aikenheads Skate Shop or from the Flatlandia shop. 😉
Connect: Carolyn regularly skates with the Melbourne freestyle crew (IG: @melbournefreestyleskaters) at Marvel Stadium, Docklands. She also keeps a skate diary on Instagram (@skaternoon), which mostly focuses on freestyle with the occasional tuxedo cat photo.