Take your time and defrost your mind: Hiking to Yorkshire's Oldest DIY Spot
Originally appearing in Hangup Zine 13, Jono Coote takes us on a hike from Leeds to Bradford, to skate a venerable DIY spot.
Originally appearing in Hangup Zine 13, Jono Coote takes us on a hike from Leeds to Bradford, to skate a venerable DIY spot.
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Our next door neighbour keeps asking us if we’ve accepted Jesus into our lives. We had to call the police on her the other day. A dual voiced chant built to a crescendo, invoking a nameless entity to “get out in the name of the lord,” before a piercing women’s scream and then complete silence. I get home as they explain things to the constabulary and we discover, listening intently at the door, that this was all part of the religious process; worried that she might have Coronavirus, she had enlisted the help of a professional exorcist. The shriek we had heard was the physical manifestation of the microbes being flung from her body.
This period of enforced isolation, an extended confrontation with our own psyche, has a lot of us thinking about madness; as I am on the first leg of a hike over to Bradford to check up on the north of England’s oldest DIY spot. Bypassing green meadows and huge country houses, I am struck by the sheer space available so close to the city and my brain drifts back to Oregon, where we camped by backyard bowls and skated huge private concrete parks on improbable seeming properties. If a few skaters with disposable income to burn bought up a few of these, we could create a network of concrete snaking all the way from Leeds to Bradford, connected by a tangled web of rural hillbombs and green fields. It’d take a wad in the way of start-up money, but thankfully I’ve picked a stable career path and writing rambling articles about skateboarding is probably going to make me my first million soon. One of the cows approaches me as I stop to appreciate the view, maybe out of curiosity, maybe out of the expectation of some kind of bovine treat. I christen her Mooey Lewis before continuing on my way, through the kind of villages where every house has a name instead of a number. Hilltop Farm? If it’s accurate then thank fuck, I think this climb is getting to me - when you start naming cows and mentally annexing large swathes of land in preparation for a group of skateboarders to enter the ranks of the noveau rich, it’s time to wonder if the lactic acid has travelled from your calves to your head and started percolating your grey matter. No, I decide; I’ve yet to start calling in the exorcists, I’ve probably got a few steps left before I reach full blown shit-thrower territory.
Mooey Lewis
This is golf course country, as unlikely to play host to skateparks as it is to dive bars, but as I pass my second closed facility I muse on the irony of this most establishment of pursuits being totally shut down by the pandemic whilst skateboarding is happily pushed onto the streets where it belongs. You can’t very well go for a round of golf in an undercover car park, or build a DIY eighteen hole in an abandoned warehouse.
My legs are already struggling and I’m only halfway to my destination, but I’m no stranger to these skate hikes; divide the journey up into suburbs, don’t think about the trip as a whole and everything will be fine. I’ve made it through Calverley, for now that is enough. Besides, it’s all smooth hills and fresh cycle paths right through to Forster Square now. Bradford city centre isn’t thriving at the best of times, and with lockdown rules in place its aesthetic tips towards post-apocalyptic. The only signs of life centre around the Tesco Megastore and Retail Park/Altar of Commerce, while around it concentric circles of industrial decay crumble into the dust and pigeon shit. Two uniformed police in an undercover car take a slow drive past me as I pass between boarded up warehouses, clearly weighing up whether it’s worth the hassle of stopping me. In these circumstances it’s important not to try and shrink into the background; this will only arouse suspicion or contempt, which in these times is plenty reason to start down the road to a fine and a free ride home before I’ve even reached the spot. I’ve been checking directions on my phone, but now that goes back in my pocket and I jump onto my board. Rattling bearings echo back and forth between empty buildings, but it has the desired effect - I’m loud, but I’m no longer an object of suspicion.
Lee Rozzee Front Blunts, taken from Document 72, November 2007, shot by Kingy.
With detailed directions down to which part of the fence has been jimmied open courtesy of a Bradford local I’m soon at the spot and away from prying eyes. Rubble litters a scorched wasteland that once presumably housed one of the huge stone and brick monoliths which, boarded up and blackened by pollution, still make up a large portion of the city centre’s buildings. It takes me a minute to remember where the quarterpipe is, the space is so vast, but I soon get my bearings and make a beeline for a small grey curve highlighted against a backdrop of rigid angles and industrial detritus. Quietly put up in 2007 by Lee Rozee and Robbie Chilton, with assistance from others living in Bradford at the time, it has somehow survived thirteen years of harsh winters, on and off heavy sessions, urban regeneration, changes of land ownership and more. It is starting to crumble slightly on one side, right where the concrete meets the flat bottom, but it looks more or less the same as when a Rozee front blunt shot by Kingy found its way onto the pages of Document around the time of its construction.
At first the regular flash of cars passing on the other side of the fence has me ducking my head, trying to blend into the scenery, but I relax as my legs warm up and I realise that, tucked away in the back corner of the plot of land, I’m pretty invisible to the outside world. A few warm up rock and rolls and my brain drifts away to memories of past sessions here, of other DIY spots skated, of John Dwyer’s words drifting from my laptop’s speakers this morning;
Take your time and defrost your mind…
And I have. All traces of paranoia - of getting the boot, of being caught out travelling further spatially and temporally than government guidelines allow, of microscopic airborne bacteria, of the whole worldwide mess and the impending decline of western civilisation - have vanished. I am living in the moment, but that moment is enmeshed in hundreds of past adventures with my friends. It is projected large on future adventures as well, once the hand of plague has passed over us. At this most physically isolated point of the journey, I find isolation furthest from my thoughts. The connections are still there, they just need looking for.
Check out progress on Jono’s upcoming book, No Beer on a Dead Planet here.