Josh Arnott interview

Photography: Griffiths
Interview: Genualdo Kingsford

Tell us about where you grew up.
It’s a little place called Hanham on the outskirts of Bristol. We lived on this long cul-de-sac and at the end of the road it was just fields, woods and rivers. It was nice growing up in an area like that, with great nature.

Bristol is well situated in terms of proximity to nature. 
I think that’s one reason why I’ve never left. If you travel for two hours, you’re in pretty nice areas – Cornwall to the south and Wales to the east – and on a smaller scale, you can be in nature 20 minutes out of the city on your bike. It’s well set up for my lifestyle. I’m quite into long dog walks and going in the woods – basically recreating what I did as a kid.

How did you start skating?
There were loads of kids on the cul-de-sac where I grew up, so I had a nice crew to hang around with. The older brothers of the kids I hung around with skated. We would play football on the little pitch we had and they would be skating in the car park just down the road. I think it just piqued my interest. I had a few goes, and then instantly started hanging around with the skaters instead of the kids my age. They gave me a hand-me-down board and I fully got the bug. I used to play a lot of sports – football, cricket and basketball – but as I got more into skating, that took over. 

When did you start skating in the city?
I’ve got vague memories of being at Lloyds on my starter board, a Hudson from JJB (Sports). That was probably within the first year, when I was 13 or 14, but I started to venture in more often after I made friends in Keynsham, the next town over. Again, those dudes were older, so they had cars and they would take me to loads of skateparks and into town. Then I got a moped when I was 15 or 16 and I would ride into Bristol, stay at my mate’s house, then go home for a few days and repeat the process.

Were you skating Lloyds at this point?
No. Lloyds is notoriously hard to skate, and if you come from a really basic skatepark where everything’s square, that place feels like you’re trying to climb a mountain. So we skated Dean Lane, IBM – those big red brick banks – and random street spots in the city and in little towns around Bristol. Lloyds didn’t come into the picture until a little while later. Once I got to know a few people and spent a lot of time there, I started to get used to the place and work it out.

More on Lloyds a little later. Other than a short stint living in Barcelona, you’ve lived in Bristol your whole life, right?
Yeah. I’m not far from my mum’s place, where I grew up.

Aside from the proximity to nature, which you already spoke about, what keeps you there?
My family. My sister’s got two kids now, Rosa and Halle. They’re eight and five, so I’ll pick them up from school or take them to their swimming lessons on a Wednesday. I’m uncle Josh, you know? They’re getting into what I’m into, which is cool. They wanted skateboards for Christmas, so I got them each a set-up with those (Skateboard) Cafe boards with my dog on, and they’re into football – they follow the England women’s team. Also, I think I’m quite a homebody. Coming back from London yesterday, I was like: “Oh my god, I can’t wait to be in my bed.”

I found those few days quite exhausting. Obviously, I live in London, but I’m not in the centre all that often. 
It feels like I have the same experience of London every time: skate really busy spots, get kicked out and end up at St Paul’s. I joke with Rich (Smith) about that all the time, like: “Rich, can we not go to St Paul’s?” and lo and behold, we ended up back there on Sunday.

Classic. How do you feel about Rich moving to London? I guess that represented a shift for your board sponsor, Skateboard Cafe, especially when so many of your teammates live there now too.
He comes back to Bristol to stay with his girlfriend every two weeks. We have this little routine where we film on Mondays and Tuesdays, so it almost doesn’t feel like he’s moved away. But in terms of a shift for Cafe, it did feel a bit weird for a while because there are only four of us who don’t live in London now. Also, we haven’t realised a video as a team in three years and that’s because Rich had to be in the shop (Slam City Skates) five days a week at first, so I think the move did slow things down a bit.  

Three years isn’t too crazy for a bigger video project. 
Yeah, we always try to do what would be considered a full-length these days. 

I get the impression that working towards projects like that is more important to you than filming clips for Instagram or working on a solo part, for example.
Yeah, I think that quick hit of dopamine that you get from however many people liking your video warps your brain. Imagine you post a video and you’re bummed because it only got 120 likes. If you transfer that into real life and you put on a nice outfit, walked out the door and 120 people said: “Damn, I love your outfit mate,” you’d feel a million bucks. I like to sit on footage and drip feed – less is more. I think it’s quite unhealthy to put it out all the time and also, it doesn’t leave any allure. Mike (Arnold) plays it perfectly. You don’t see a lot of him, but when you do, you’re very impressed.

Is it fair to say that you think quite carefully about putting together your video parts? 
Yeah, definitely. Because Lloyds is the same both ways, I’ve got into this mirror effect. Say I’d filmed a nosegrind revert there, I’d be like: “Let’s get one frontside too,” but as I’ve got older and maybe a bit better at skating, I’ll be like: “Maybe I’ll film a switch one.” I’m definitely putting a lot more thought into it. 

Rich mentioned that you’d been watching older footage for inspiration too.
Because Lloyds is so hard to skate, trying to film something new there is like trying to find a needle in a haystack sometimes, so I’ve been looking at the past and thinking: “How can I do that, but in my way?” That DC (x Skateboard Cafe) ad with the rail down Lloyds was in homage to (Paul) Carter’s first trick in Jus Foolin. I like paying respect to the people who have paved the way, so I look back to old footage and photos of my favourite skaters and pick the nicest bits. That switch nosegrind revert that Griff (James Griffiths) shot, I was like: “Can we shoot it almost the same as how Leo (Sharp) shot Stalker’s switch back smith?” I think we shot it twice and used a different angle, but I just wanted to tick that off in my head. And then the backside flip is a little nod to Ashley Skidmore, who kickflipped over a barrier down the three.

We haven’t talked about the concept for the interview. I guess it’s self-evident, but this interview came about because Rich told me you were working on a second Lloyds part for the upcoming Cafe video. The DC x Skateboard Cafe video was you and Layth (Sami), right?
Yeah. Layth got a few bits, but he was injured pretty much the whole time. This part kind of happened organically. I had a few tricks there already and my list of ideas was 10ft long, so I said to Rich: “I don’t want to come to London because all my footage is at Lloyds,” and we both liked that idea. It was only this weekend that I filmed a few bits in London.

Mike Arnold had a Lloyds part too, also filmed by Rich.
Mike basically blew the doors off that place. He brought a whole different level that no one else had fathomed. Before, you’d skate it in quite a robotic way – grind, grind then flip trick off the end, or a trick down the three – whereas Mike went the route less travelled, which blew everybody’s mind. You got an extra 10 per cent in your brain after, like: “Oh, that’s possible.”

Some of the younger skaters have been finding new ways to skate Lloyds too, like Bear (Myles)…
Yeah, watching Bear there is almost like watching the ballet – it’s poetry. You can see him taking tricks he learned at Deaner to Lloyds. The way he skates there is completely different to everybody else. It’s all about your tastes and how you put those into these weird granite… well, they’re not granite – Phil Parker knows what the ledges are made of and where they came from. 

Phil just finished a video (Cavea) filmed exclusively at Lloyds.
That’s all the kids who go under the radar and don’t get the shine outside Bristol that maybe some of the others do. I rate that. Some people don’t give a shit, like: “I’m incredible and I’m chilling here.” It’s so refreshing to see. Lloyds is a breeding ground for a lot of good skateboarders.

A lot of skaters in Bristol have a really strong connection to the place, even though, as you said, it’s notoriously hard to skate. What do you think explains that connection?
You can spend all day there and there’s no security, so no kick-out pressure. If you want to skate flat, you can just chill, if you want to film a line, you can do that, and if you want to jump down the three, you can huck. It’s all there and the location is important too. It’s right by the water and the last of the sun comes in there. It doesn’t feel like you’re in the middle of a city, if that makes sense. 

Yeah. 
A few of us even have Lloyds tattoos. It’s that ingrained in us.

Moving on, Rich told me that you took a break from filming for a year or so, and only came back to that recently.
I think it was two years, actually. It was a mixture of life shit more than skating. You know how they say bad luck comes in threes? I had a lot of shit go down in quite a short space of time. I lost a couple of jobs, got injured and went through a breakup, which put me into… I won’t say a depression, but when you’re in love with someone and it comes to an end, it’s quite heartbreaking. It was just an accumulation of shit and I was like: “I don’t want to think about it (filming skateboarding).” That’s when football came back into my life.

I didn’t realise you hadn’t been playing football the whole time.  
I stopped when I was 16 and started again two or three years ago. A close friend of mine, George (Scott), pulled me back in. He could see I was being a bit of a hermit and said: “Just come training.” I’d like to thank George for getting me out of a hole. As we all know, we need to do exercise to fight our demons and I got the love back for that (football). I think maybe that kickstarted me getting back into skating, well, not skating, because I was always skating, but filming. Rediscovering something that I used to love helped me get back to a normal state of mind. All that stuff happens for a reason and I’m glad I had to go through some bullshit to come out the other side. You’re better for it, aren’t you?

Yeah.
We all have friends who didn’t make it. We all knew Ben (Raemers) and quite a few people I knew and worked with have gone because they didn’t speak to someone. Luckily, I had friends I could talk to. Everyone goes through some horrible shit and it takes the fun out of life. It’s hard to dig yourself out of that hole. I had this job and I was comfortable and suddenly, it was gone. I had to find more work and we all know there’s not much of that in the skate world. 

Tell me about it. 
Then I fell into teaching (skateboarding).

I’ll go on to that shortly, but I want to talk more about football. You play quite a lot, right?
Yeah. The season’s finished now, but I train on Wednesday for an hour, and then I play Saturday and Sunday, at two different levels. Saturday’s a better level – we’re nine leagues away from being paid £40 a game or something – and then on Sunday, it’s like a pub team – all walks of life, all shapes and sizes. It’s so foreign to skating and I like that. You turn up two hours before, get warmed up and have a team talk. I like all the stuff that comes with it, like choosing which boots to wear after checking the pitch. I like all the preparation.

What’s your team called?
It’s called Henbury & Rockleaze Rangers. It’s a proper club with a sick clubhouse and we have food after games, chilli or curry. We’ve done quite well this season. We won the league and lost the cup final on penalties.

What’s your position?
I’m a striker. Obviously I’m really tall, but I don’t head the ball. My grandad died from Alzheimer’s and it’s likely that heading the ball too much as a footballer contributed to that. That was his job, alongside running a brewery and setting up logistics companies.

I’m sorry to hear that. 
He was playing in the ’70s and ’80s and back then, the balls were made from leather and got a lot heavier when they got wet. All day at training, you’d just head the ball, five days a week.

Tell us more about your grandad’s football career. 
I wish I’d asked him more about it, but luckily there’s a book about him and his team. It’s called Roman Glass St George FC: The 125 Year History of Bristol’s Oldest Football Club 1882-2007. I saw a copy once, at my grandad’s funeral. My uncle had all my grandad’s letters and trophies and stuff at the wake. I took pictures of all the letters and in one of them, he got asked to sign for Everton.

Oh, wow.
He signed to the Juniors, but he never went pro there. He also played for Bristol Rovers, Bristol Rovers Reserves and he had trials for Birmingham and West Brom, so he got about. He still holds the record for the fastest ever goal at Bristol Rovers’ old stadium, which was where Ikea is now. These days, their stadium is up where Leo shot my portrait for my Companion interview. That was another little nod, because my grandad was quite a big influence on me. But the weird thing about this book… I found one on eBay and when it arrived, I noticed that it was signed by the author. Inside, it says: “To John Smallcombe, best wishes, Dean Dursley.” I asked my mum who John Smallcombe was, and it turns out he was my grandad’s centre back partner, so after searching for years, the copy I found was signed to the guy my grandad used to play next to. 

That’s amazing. Does playing football help your skating and vice versa? 
I don’t do anything crazy for my body. I’ve been trying to sort out my diet, I use a Theragun after playing and I have a cold dip in my garden, but I don’t go to the gym. I think I get away with it because I skate. I play with a few skateboarders and we’re the ones who are never injured. Our games are filmed now – we have this little Veo camera – and you can see that the skateboarders are cat-like in a challenge. They can almost predict the next step and manipulate their bodies so they don’t get clattered.

Interesting.
I don’t think I’d still be playing at this level if I didn’t skate, but they both help each other, which is handy. My cardio’s pretty good from running for 90 minutes, so I can skate for a long time.

Tell us about your team manager roll at DC.
It was quite short-lived, maybe two years. I’d been on a DC trip with the global team – Tiago (Lemos), (John) Shanahan, T Funk (Tristan Funkhouser) and Madars Apse – so they got to know me, and then I think riding for Cafe – a quite well-respected board brand in the UK – helped. They offered me the job and it wasn’t that stressful, really. I had to do a couple of sales meetings at weird times and just sort the team out with shoes.

You also put a new team together.
Yeah. The team before was quite fragmented, so it was a cool opportunity to mould it into who I wanted to see skateboarding, while ticking the boxes they (DC) wanted. I put Layth on straight away because he was buying the shoes and he looks amazing in them. The next person was Isaac Gale, who was already big in London, and then I put on Reuben Horvath from Manchester because he just suits DC. Another thing was doing a trip abroad, because before I got the job, we’d only been to places in the UK like Ipswich, Norwich and Essex. So I got a trip to Mallorca in Vague, then we did the Free article centred around Sergio (Cadare) and Andrea (Dupre) filmed the accompanying video. It felt like we were on the right path. We had a good thing going. They wanted to do a project about me similar to Sergio’s, which we started in London, but then the company got sold. Obviously, if you’re last in, you’re first out, so I was the first to go. But that job definitely helped my life. At first, I freaked out, like: “I can’t even manage myself, how am I going to manage 10 people?” You have this self doubt and these hang-ups, but the more you do the job, the more life skills you learn, like how to talk in a presentation or how to hold out for the right thing. I never thought I could be a teacher speaking in front of groups of 10-20 people and I kind of owe that to the DC job because it made me more confident and well-rounded.

How did you get into teaching skating? That’s your main income now, right?
Yeah, I do that most of the time, and then I’ll help my friend George with his plastering business every now and again. I fell into teaching quite organically, through Jake Collins. He had to go away on a trip and knew I was out of work, so he asked if I could cover him. I went to Spit & Sawdust the day before he needed me and watched what he did. Then, it just so happened that another teacher there – a guy called Stu – was leaving and Christian (Hart) at Spit asked if I wanted a job. I said: “Yes,”and jumped right into it. I won’t say I got obsessed with it, but in a similar way to how the DC job helped me to be an adult, the skate coaching has helped my skateboarding. 

Rich told me to ask you about this.  
One kid I teach – this 12 year old called Sonny who’s getting really good – wants his lessons filmed and after every try, he’ll come over and I’ll slow down the footage, like: “Look where your foot comes off here.” I’ve delved quite deeply into that with my own skating and it’s definitely helping me. With that full cab I was trying yesterday, if I didn’t watch any of the attempts, I wouldn’t have known that I was under-rotating. I would have just kept trying until I got stressed and left, whereas now I can deal with it and work it out. There are all these little nuances that you can only see if you watch yourself in an out-of-body sense.

So you’re breaking tricks down.
Yeah. If you’ve skated for 20-odd years and you try to teach someone how to do a shove-it by doing one in front of them, you make it look too easy, so you’ve got to break it down into baby steps. I try to teach in a way that I would have liked if skate lessons were available when I was a kid.

It sounds like you find it quite fulfilling.
It is. You see the look on someone’s face when they’ve learned something and it’s like: “We’re all good here.” It’s nice to just pass on stuff that you’ve found really hard and who knows, one of these kids might end up being sponsored or coaching.

What age range do you teach?
I’ve got toddlers and six year olds, and then I’ve got people in their 50s, so the age range is very varied, and it’s not just men. At our skatepark (Spit & Sawdust), it’s girls-only after 8pm on Thursdays and as I leave, the car park fills up with all ages of skateboarders, rollerbladers and surf skaters. It’s really nice to see it all open up. It’s a nice community feel and it’s not just the classic teenage-boy skateboarders. There are mums who want to have a go because they spend all day at the skatepark watching their kids do it. They’re all doing it for different reasons, which is really nice.

Have you noticed kids and parents with a sporting career in skateboarding in their sights, perhaps inspired by the Olympics?
It’s so varied, but you can definitely see a shift in terms of the influence of the Olympics. Soon, at schools in Wales, you will be able to do skateboarding as your hour of PE, so I’m hoping that sticking with this skate coaching thing might lead to me travelling to schools and doing that hour with them. Years ago, this (job) wouldn’t even have been a thing. Now coaches and nutritionists are common in skateboarding all over. It’s gone quite sporty, but you can still just go to Lloyds if that’s the side of skateboarding you love. 

I usually wrap up by asking about future plans, but it sounds like you’re pretty invested in coaching and growing that as a career.
Yeah, it’s either that or get a regular job. Who knows? I could go to China, like Danny Wainwright and Dan Wileman have, get a job with Team GB or teach the Dutch team. You never know where you’re going to be. I never thought I’d end up in this position, teaching. I never even thought I’d be a sponsored skateboarder, let alone working in skateboarding or doing interviews with people like yourself. It’s a blessing. You have to humble yourself every now and again, like: “Life’s not that bad.” But on the subject of work, I actually turned some teaching down on Friday to come up to London to see everyone and shoot photos. Going back to my mental health and taking that time away from filming, three close family members died in a row, and after that, my family – especially me and my mum – decided to work part-time, like: “You can always earn more money, but you can’t earn more time.” My dad passed at 50 years old – he didn’t even make his pension – and I’m 34, so I’m 16 years off that age, you know? So if I can turn down that work and go and have a good time with my mates, that will fill me with more positivity than getting another £30 from teaching a one-to-one lesson.