Still the coolest gig in town

SO there he was, The Offsider, headbanging himself into a virtual standstill before an AC/DC covers band at a local pub on Saturday night.

The Age sportsbuster and champion of bad music admittedly let himself get a bit worked up to be sure, but he certainly had plenty to celebrate even as the winter sports season reared upon him like some monstrous sand-sucking tsunami.

Part of his bonhomie came from being at Taipa earlier in the day to witness history in the making: two men's football teams from Kaitaia playing each other in a pre-season friendly. It was a heartwarming experience to play against and alongside a number talented youngsters, who had once seemed no more than knee-high-to-a-grasshopper only the other summer, those old colleagues behind the round ball game's massive development as well as welcoming more new faces into the fold.

So, what better way to celebrate the bright future of local football than partying hard? While you have to wonder what kinda person would dedicate their life to playing AC/DC covers, Riff Raff did a fair decent job, swinging with a real abandon and laying the dry ice on thick... In some ways, The Offsider found the band's schtick more entertaining than when he'd seen the real thing live in Auckland back in the 90s. By then, with their music regularly being played at major sporting events, it felt like Australia's biggest act behind the Wiggles had seriously sold out.

Far more fun in the late 70s when the band - led by the leering Bon Scott - was considered quite rightly offensive by decent folk, and even radio stations like The Rock refused to play their songs. Which only made the band more attractive to a 14-year-old boy desperately trying to be a skateboarder before several broken bones left his enthusiasm crushed, scraped and bleeding on asphalt surfaces across Wellington.

Good skaters back then were drop-outs and could generally be found idling their time away at the neighbourhood bowl on any given afternoon. They were like the coolest guys in town and the first to play the best and freshest underground sounds, e.g. AC/DC at the time which led through a process of natural progression on to truly hardcore acts like Black Flag, Minor Threat, Fugazi etc.

So, to test a theory, The Offsider tracked down and asked Phillip Andresen - a talented skater from Kaitaia now living in Auckland - whether the outlaw element was still a healthy aspect of skateboarding today. Now, well-travelled and currently studying for business degree, Andresen is still skating up to three times a week including the 6' bowl at Grey Lynn and the massive 11' launching pad in Onehunga which had "Quite a bit of vert!"

Aware of the hysteria surrounding the town bowl (he'd recently had a letter published in the Age about the situation), Andresen believed the survival of Jaycee Park faced more threat from the town burghers who believed the situation could be resolved by simply bulldozing the place into rubble, than from any legion of miscreants gathering there.

"Skating's been alright to me. I grew up at Jaycee Park," Andresen said, remembering friends with JC Park tattoos, like the guy who had the legend 'Skate All Day Every Damn Day' etched across both calves.

Noting the local scene had fallen by the wayside to some extent which in turn had allowed the hoods to thrive, he indicated he could maybe reanimate the sport upon his eventual return; maybe by starting a skate school and/or getting the annual Christmas Parade comp up and running again. Andresen said skating had a "real positive side", citing the commercially successful Street League series on ESPN as evidence of the sport's mainstream appeal in comparison with it's other perception: of anti-social punks "skating in the drain" before going downtown to knock some hapless senior citizen on to the pavement only to finish the day off by sliding down SH1 on the south side of the Mangamukas.

Anyway, upon finding out an acquaintance knew the Kaitaia skater through the Auckland scene, The Offside attempted to tee-up a shot of Andresen in action at the Grey Lynn Park bowl. Old Mate didn't see Andresen the next time he hit the park, but did catch another good rider who turned up covered all in black, e.g. black sneakers, black jeans, and black hooded sweat and long blond hair. This "Unknown Grim Reaper" promptly started to go big, pulling off huge airs over a 20 minute session without even bothering to pull his hood down or stop for a rest in the sweltering summer conditions. Anybody who has ever been able to stretch together the smallest sequence of turns on a skate park's walls will be aware how much pure athleticism this would have taken.

Skateboarding still demands respect. If the scene is still strong in Auckland, it can be good again in Kaitaia too.

The Offsider is Francis Malley. Respond at

sports@northlandage.co.nz.