Gazette is the latest offering from Australia’s NB Numeric team and it has finally found its way onto the Internet.
Like many skate videos before it, Gazette was delayed by pandemic restrictions and music rights, but after premiering in Sydney on June 16 it has finally arrived, in all its glory. Gazette was the brainchild of Cameron Sparkes, the Australian brand manager, filmer and self-appointed father figure of the Aussie NB team. Filmed almost exclusively in Sydney, the video is centred around Sparkes’ “five sons” – Jack Paterson, Sean Ryan, Cody Riley, Tyrone Sutherland and Jett Stanton. As Sparkes explains, the project began as an outlet to showcase the footage J-Pat and Sean Ryan were diligently stacking, but eventually evolved into something bigger, along with appearances from Karl Dorman, Riwaz Kazi and Aidan Ouma.
The following article was published in Slam Issue 227, back in Spring 2020, and although some things have changed since then, we’ve left the interview unedited.
Words by Cameron Sparkes, as told to Nat Kassel. Photos by Sam Coady.
Sean studies biomedical engineering here at Sydney University. No one’s ever skated this thing before. It’s ginormous! This is probably the only trick that I’ve heard Sean say that he was scared to try. It’s a long way up, over and down – a lot of airtime to reflect on whether the advice given to you by a 35-year-old loser is something you should take on board.
My NB Kids
Being able to build the brand and team from scratch here in Australia has been an awesome experience. Putting together this small group of trailblazers, who continue to surpass my highest expectations, has been extremely rewarding, and as corny as it sounds, it has left me feeling like some kind of proud father. Jack, Sean, Tyrone and Jett are a fair cry younger than me, which makes for a funny dynamic. It’s like having a bunch of sons who, for the most part, are probably much more mature than me, but still need some fatherly advice from time to time, especially when it comes to anything relating to skateboarding.
Cody Riley is obviously a bit more senior, and is actually going to be a real father in a few months – congrats again, Cody! So I usually spare him my embarrassing rants, lectures, and lists of tricks I consider illegal in “dem streets”. Other pseudo-skate fathers have told me that once skaters hit their mid-20s, you can’t really change them, so I only have a few years left to ensure the younger lads stay on the right track, and don’t get involved with any of that ridiculous late flip, under flip stuff, or fall in with the dreaded Street League crowd! Anyway, it’s been fun going out, skating, filming, and having fun with these guys. I’ll reward the boys for getting tricks, but they have to land three bangers a day in order to be fed. No tricks, no food – that’s the rules. And they walk home, too [laughs]. Nah, I’m only joking. If anything, I’ve always felt slightly mellower with all that stuff compared to other TMs. My theory is that you can only pressure someone so much to skate or do a certain trick. As the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink.” There’s nothing worse than forcing a person to skate when they clearly lack the motivation to be out there getting things done. I’ve been very lucky that all of these guys are super motivated and extremely driven. I don’t think I’ve had to light a fire under them at any stage. They’re lighting the fires themselves. They’re all organised and switched on, so it makes my job a hell of a lot easier, that’s for sure.
Starting It Up
This [video] started off as two individual parts: one for Sean Ryan and one for Jack Paterson. Initially, Jack’s was going to come out first, followed by Sean’s, but as time has passed, the other guys got involved too. My NB kids, Tyrone Sutherland and Jett Stanton, they’re the young up-and-comers. Jett’s originally from Brisbane but relocated to Sydney about six months ago, and Tyrone’s from Cronulla. Having them both at arm’s reach helps to move things along. Both lads have been absolutely killing it, so I thought, Why don’t we combine all of these things and make it into one video?
Stackin’ The Clips
One of the things I’ve been really hyped on with our team is that everyone’s got their own individual style and skates really differently to one another. Having a well-rounded team has always been important to me, especially when working on a project like this. It allows for a bit more diversity in terrain and spots, but also gives everyone a bit more opportunity to shine in their own individual way. I filmed a large majority of the video and I’m editing it. I pretty much filmed the entirety of Sean’s part, but there are contributions from Sydney legends, Murray Maclean, Tim Cobden, and Orion Stefanidis. And then Brendan Gardoll filmed most of Jack Paterson’s part and has done an amazing job. I’ve still been working with Jack, to fill in some of the blanks and get an ender, but Brendan and Jack got most of his part sorted in the first few months of filming. Jack Diaz-Pethan has also been amazing and filmed most of Tyrone’s section. It’s all filmed in HD because VX is just too sketchy. I learned that the hard way with previous projects. At Pass~Port we went through so many VXs filming for the Transworld Cinematographer Project section. I couldn’t bring myself to go out with somebody who’s going to work their arse off for some trick for three hours, then go home with the trick in the bag, finally, and try to capture the footage and find out that the tape glitched. Then the trick that they’ve worked so hard for is gone, and you’ve got to make that phone call and blame it on the VX. I couldn’t deal with that anymore. The security of filming HD is a welcome change for me. Sean and Jack love VX because it’s the cool thing, and they were like, “We should film VX,” and I was like, “Mate, unless you want me to be completely bald by the end of this, I could not do that again.” So it’s HD and proud [laughs].
This spot has always looked cool, but then when you take people there, no one ever seems to really want to skate it or hang out with you ever again. The spot looks great, but it’s actually quite shit. The bump’s pretty much non-existent, so it doesn’t give you much of a boost. There’s also an aged care facility right there, so you only get a few cracks at it before someone comes out and has a go at you. Needless to say, we were all quite surprised when Jett back lipped it four or five times with ease. He even managed to de-escalate a situation with a disgruntled elderly gentleman without using any profanities. Mind-blowing stuff.
Jack Paterson
J-Pat’s approach is a little bit quirky, and he probably has the most diverse bag of tricks I’ve ever seen. He can literally do anything and everything. It’s been really good to watch J-Pat develop as a skater, even throughout filming all of this. He’s come such a long way, and it will show in his part. I don’t mean this in a detrimental sense, but he’s got much better taste in trick selection as he’s matured. Previously, when you saw footage of him, some of his greatest stunts were overshadowed by the 15 flatground tricks he would include after landing something [laughs]. He’s got a lot more power, a lot more style, and he’s refining the classics, which is awesome. I don’t want to tell someone how to skate, but I clearly remember Andrew Currie pulling me up when I was a teenager because I pushed funny. And as offended as I was at the time, I took his advice on board, and that resulted in me landing the trick – thanks, Cuzza!
J-Pat’s part in particular really speaks to how diverse he is and how many tricks he can actually do. When it’s all put together, it’s very impressive. Now that I think of it, I don’t think he’s ever lost a game of SKATE, ever in his life. Seriously!
Here’s a legendary spot in North Sydney that’s been around for decades – for my entire skateboarding life. I think it was the first bank I ever did a kickflip to fakie on. Pete Daly was the first person to properly skate it – he ollied over the rail into the bank. In more recent years, people have begun thinking outside the box when trying to skate it. J-Pat’s ollie up to 50-50 and down to fakie will surely impress all the creative types and cynical older folks like myself who thought this spot was “done” years ago.
Sean Ryan
It’s really cool watching Sean and Jack, who are two polar opposites in terms of their personalities and what they’re into. It’s great watching them hang out and get along so well and feed off each other. Jack is the naughty boy, a bit of a punkish kid. And Sean’s the clean-cut, university-attending, biomedical-engineering-studying, kid with glasses. Rubik’s cubes beware, he’s coming for you!
But it’s so rad hanging out with Sean and having a conversation with him. Sometimes I feel that the topics of conversation that are coming from me must bore the living daylights out of him, because I’ll overhear him having a conversation with my other intellectual friend, Dean Palmer, and I’m just sitting there with hot air slowly escaping my mouth and ears while they’re solving the world’s problems.
Sean’s obviously studying biomedical engineering and it’s interesting talking to him about all that sort of stuff, because obviously skateboarders are very injury prone and he’s got a very detailed knowledge of the human anatomy. So it’s good having him around if someone gets injured and even when he injures himself, he usually self-diagnoses before going to a doctor. We’re just waiting for the day he can go away and make us a new limb or hip or knee or whatever we need… Or an eyeball.
So Sean’s actually only got one eye [he lost one of his eyes in a horrific surfing accident]. On the weekend, he was telling me he felt disabled for the first time. He was in the lab and he had to pour something from a beaker into a test tube but he actually couldn’t do it. His teacher wasn’t aware that he’s missing an eye and she was going, “What’s going on? Why can’t you pour it in there?” He told her that he only had one eye and he couldn’t line it up. But he said that’s the only time in his life he’s actually felt disabled. That’s quite interesting considering what he can do on a skateboard – he can barely see. For someone who has quite a clean cut appearance, he’s one of the toughest people I think I’ve ever met in my life. He takes some of the most brutal slams. When he skates switch, he can’t even really see what’s going on, he has to guess. He has to look right around the other way to be able to see what’s going on and he still skates faster than anyone else. It’s pretty crazy.
Sean pops a grate and frontside flips a garden gap only moments before disturbing a Mobike orgy as it takes place right behind him.
Cody Riley
Cody’s going to be a dad soon, which is awesome. He’s been pretty preoccupied with the lead up to being a dad, but he’s filmed some amazing stuff, which pays homage to the Sydney skateboarding dignitary he has become. Cody is like a fine wine and only gets better with age. He’s also a secret golfing master and regularly wins competitions, proudly proclaiming, “It’s all in the hips,” each time he publicly accepts an award. OK ... so that last little part might not be true, but feel free to give Cody a solid, “Talk about a hole in one,” next time you see him.
The glass bank at this spot is the roof of an entrance to Town Hall Station. It’s super sketchy because beneath the glass there are stairs and escalators leading down into the station. When you’re up there, people are underneath you, looking up, going, “What the fuck’s going on?” They don’t take too kindly to people skating on the glass, so you only get a couple of goes. Despite the danger factor, it’s a very cool looking spot. Cody knows his days of irresponsible behaviour will be through when he soon becomes a dad, so he dropped in on the glass and back five-oed the ledge while the clock to parenthood was ticking.
This spot’s pretty funny. It’s in the middle of Kings Cross, and it’s right in front of an apartment building, so you get lots of junkies and people with aggressive pit bulls that are desperate to bite you on the leg. People sometimes throw water on you from the apartments above, so there’s never a dull moment. Then there’s the gap out from this ledge, which is very daunting because so much can go wrong. On J-Pat’s backside tailslide, he was going in blind. If he didn’t clear the ledge, he was going to eat shit or trip up. But Jack miraculously managed to step out of every frightening-looking slam calmly. It was like watching a cat walk along a skinny fence or something. He somehow had the agility to avoid the slam and the hepatitis that would have undoubtedly followed.
Tyrone Sutherland
Tyrone has been around for a little while, but he’s relatively unknown even as a Sydney skater. He’s been working super hard this year to get as much footage as he can for this video. At 19, he recently went through the naughty teenage party phase, and so much so, that we lost contact with him for a few months there [laughs]. Thankfully, this year he really came back and has been super motivated, crushing it even harder than he did before. I’m very proud of him for really turning it around in such a short period. He’s filmed nearly all of his section with Jack Diaz-Pethan, who’s been putting in the hard yards on this. They make an awesome little duo and it seems nothing can stop them.
No one’s ever skated this part of St. Mary’s Cathedral before. I don’t want to say that Tyrone has opened the gate, but, oh well, there, I said it. It’s obviously a church, and it’s usually pretty hard to get close to that building without getting kicked out by the priest. We just kept telling Tyrone that there was a Catholic priest asking after him and this was the only way he could escape.
Jett Stanton
Jett has only been filming for this since he moved from Brisbane to Sydney about six months ago. He’s moved down here to give skating a bit more of a serious crack and put a bit more time into filming and shooting photos. Obviously, coming from another city, he brings a different perspective and a different approach to some of the classic Sydney spots. Jett’s already come a long way since he relocated here, and despite temptation, is still yet to crack his lifelong sobriety. I had never seen a 19-year-old drink a 1.25 litre of Sprite at a party surrounded by people drinking beers so comfortably. I’m still extremely impressed by his high level of discipline and focus, which he clearly channels into his skateboarding.
I’d never seen a photo or footage of this spot during the day because the stairs lead up to a high-end pearl store. It’s got a really wealthy clientele. They open at 11am every day, but the guy who runs it arrives at nine – I know his routine now. We’d get down there at 7am and the general public, rather than being bitterly disappointed and disgusted by what was happening, were actually quite impressed that a crew of “drug-taking, unemployed skateboarders” were up so early and engaging in some physical recreation. A lot of people would stop and watch for a while and cheer the boys on. It was always a depressing sight if we didn’t get it that day because the guy would come out and clean the wax off the stairs and we’d know that we would have to come back again. But the morning eventually came that Jett got a front blunt, popped out forward, and stole some pearls to celebrate.
Sydney City
Most of the video is filmed in Sydney, if not all of it. We’ve been blessed with a bunch of new spots and a lot of construction recently. It’s kind of crazy watching everything back. There are only a few double-ups in spots. There are some classic Sydney spots that have had some real intense moves done on them. Bars have been set pretty high on some existing spots, and there’s a bunch of new stuff as well. The guys have given it their all for this vid.
Filming Through The Pandemic
We’ve obviously had to work around the pandemic, but that’s only been a problem over the past couple of months. We thought it was going to work in our favour at first. Everyone’s had that fantasy of skating in their favourite city when it’s abandoned. When I was a kid, the dream was to skate Sydney city freely after surviving a nuclear holocaust. But when that opportunity was unfortunately given to us in the form of COVID, it wasn’t quite how we’d pictured it. We were like, “Shit, we’re going to be able to get so much done. There’ll be no one around. It’s going to be amazing.”
When we did get into the city and started to film stuff, the sight of all of the people getting escorted off the buses and into hotel quarantine by the military and the police was pretty daunting. It killed the vibe and it was so off-putting that we decided we’d give it a rest until the restrictions eased a little bit. It was an interesting feeling. Even being in the middle of Sydney city on a Wednesday at 11am when there are usually people everywhere – we’d be the only two people out and about in the city. You got that eerie feeling that something’s not right. It just felt wrong. We got a few things during that time, but it was a weird feeling being outside. Literally every hotel or apartment building was being used, so you’d see cops and military personnel everywhere – they were the only other people that were out and about
Here’s another OG spot that hasn’t gotten a lot of love over the past few years, so it’s dope to see Jack give it a walloping. It’s a classic Sydney photo, almost like a postcard with a frontside feeble pop over. All it needs is some older, entitled Eastern Suburbs residents with angry, disapproving expressions in the background.
The Slog
New Balance has generally played a bit of an underdog role in the scene up until recently. Sometimes it feels hard to compete with other footwear brands who have been in the market much longer and have massive teams, budgets and staff. By no means am I trying to blow my own trumpet here, but I’ve been doing this for three-and-a-half years now, and I run the entire Australian skate program top to bottom as a one-person show. I do sales, marketing, team managing, and I’m also out there filming the guys. It has been a hard slog and a bit of a balancing act to get out there with these dudes as much as I can and be able to film. But then at the same time, I have to devote as much time as I can to the business side of it, and keep broadening the horizons for them and the brand. I hope that for all these guys, it’s going to further their ability for whatever they want to do in skateboarding.
This is our first major project that we’re going to put in front of everybody. Showing the world what we’re doing down here in Sydney is a pretty amazing opportunity. Normally, I’d be really nervous, but I’m actually not nervous at all. I’m excited to see what people say and see what people think. All the guys have lunged at the opportunity and worked so hard to make sure this is something special and unique. I’m so proud of all of them, and I couldn’t speak more highly of the fine young gentlemen and skateboarders they have become.
Watch Gazette HERE.
