05 • THE INTERVIEW
MAGNUS WALKER URBAN OUTLAW
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agnus Walker is not trying to sell anything unless you count information, and even that’s not charged for. He’s not about ‘brand building’, but all about stories. Stories of cars. Some stories about his cars, and some about OPP, (that’s other people’s Porsches). This editorial isn’t about his life history. If you want that, it’s everywhere on the Internet, and some of it is definitely worth reading, but much of it has been written a hundred times. Mine is just a personal review of the guy I emailed and asked to visit for b500 -and just like the man from Del Monte, ‘he said yes’.
He still has a bit of a Yorkshire accent but it’s been softened round the edges into what I would describe as a Southern California drawl. Instantly likeable and welcoming he quickly offered me the “10 cent tour”. His place, (or ‘gaff’), is a pretty big old warehouse in the Arts district of downtown LA, (DTLA), and is a mix of home, garage, workshop, atelier, shop, film studios, office and is most petrolheads’ dream of what we would all like to own or at least have access to. Although these days he tells me he lives just around the corner and hasn’t lived in the building for a few years now, it’s still
very much a home from home and the living spaces are used regularly. To begin I took a few shots of him up on his roof which has great views over LA, and on an unfamiliar grey day I had plenty of colour around from the reds and purples of various free growing plants and flowers, both up on the roof, as well as in his fabulous, colourful courtyard below. As fantastic as his roof, courtyard and several levels of shop, accommodation, chill-out rooms etc are, it’s inside at ground level I had really flown 6,000 miles to see. Magnus has crammed a
LA for me is a bit like going home as I lived on the West Coast for many years, and half my family still live in different spots between San Diego and well across the Canadian border but alas this was no family social call and I was in and out of LA from London in 72 hours! From the moment I met him to the moment I left we started chatting and didn’t stop. Magnus Walker is a very likeable man. Is he a geezer? Not sure, but from where I grew up, which was south of the river, (that’s the Thames in London for all you non Anglophiles) we would just say, he’s a nice bloke. Originally from Sheffield in England, Magnus has been living the slightly more exotic Porsche fuelled lifestyle of LA for over 30 years.
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