We ride the park for a while and, like the seasoned veteran he is – without a wheel hung or a foot down – Ash takes to the unfamiliar terrain like a duck to water. Unlike his overt friendliness, his instant adaptation to new concrete comes as no surprise at all: Ashley was raised by Slades Farm. An old concrete skatepark from the seventies made up of a sprawling shallow irregular bowl with a snake run and a tight steep pocket, Slade’s Farm is not much to look at and a timeless work of art at the same time.
"We ate shitty food for three months, had Jack In the Box for christmas dinner, rode a bit and got smashed"
After we’re done shooting a photo of a casual table over a steppeddown hip I ask Ash how his riding has ended up so versatile “Yeah, that’s Slades for sure. Every foot of every transition is different, it rolls or it dips, or it bulges or it kinks... If you grew up riding there you could go to any ramp and you were used to it, because you weren’t used to anything.”
It makes perfect sense. We chat and joke around with the locals some more and tell them of our vague plans for Yosemite. They tell us about Fresno’s meth and Juggalo problem. One particularly stoned rider relays a whole issue of ‘Wilfred’ to me – a show about a man and his talking dog friend – it was really funny and now I don’t need to see it. They tell us of this place they know called The Sanctuary, set on an Indian Reserve just outside the national park. They give us vague directions and we pack up and head off.
[b] Turndown, The Sanctuary, Oakhurst, Ca [next] [c] Sign tap, Oakhurst, Ca
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As we drive further north and the hot arid air of Southern California cools and the landscape turns from barren yellow desert to green tree lined foothills. We talk more about Slades and more about the beginnings of his BMX journey. “I started when I was 11 and after that I literally didn’t stop riding,” he begins, “at first we’d go down Slades when it was raining, just so there was no one else there. It was scary back then, the scene was huge, there’d be 20 plus riders all day. It was really intimidating.” We talk about how he’s grown up in magazines and how that all came about. “We’d just be doing jumping tricks all day. We’d ride the bowl doing flyouts. Then Mark Noble and Mark Cornick from Ride Magazine showed up randomly. BMX was so small back then and we had a bit of a bigger scene, they turned up and we had shit going on. Phil Bray, Darren Longman, my brother, me... and they were quite surprised. I was the smallest of the bunch, and it was rare for a small young dude to be doing jumping tricks. Mark realised there were a bunch of kids who were pretty good so he’d just bring down bikes and we’d test them, and we were loving it too as all our bikes were so haggard.”
We talk about first bikes and reminisce about names from the past and all the legends of the SFL [Slades Farm Locals], Kev Looker, Kenny, Paul Muir, Mark Tate, Darren Longman, Phil Bray, Leroy, his brother Darryl... the list went on and on. Back then I always remember Ash as having a particularly dialled bike, shiny Haro Shredders with die-straight wheels. I ask him how he ended up riding for Haro. “We went to Southsea Easter comp in I think ‘96, we all went up there on the train. Even back then we were still just jumping out the bowl all the time, I would snap frames every other week. I easily went through eight or nine frames in a year, more than that. An Ammaco, a CW, a Hooligan... man, I can’t remember the rest. So we all go to this Easter Jam, I remember I had a Tim March frame at the time. I loved that bike. On the train I was proper excited, we were all pretty scared, I remember thinking, ‘Shit, these guys are going to be amazing, we don’t stand a chance.’ But we got there and they sucked! They all had amazing bikes but they couldn’t do anything. We all had ratty bikes and we showed up there and fucking smashed it. Everyone just won everything, it was awesome. It was right after that Pete Hawkins phoned up my Mum, he was like, ‘come up to the skatepark one day’ – he used to run the park. I was 13 or 14, he had a sports promotion company and worked for Shiner who distributed Haro. He asked if I wanted to ride for Haro, I couldn’t believe it. It just went from there.” The gradient is changing now, you could hear the change of pitch of Big Blue’s lumbered groan. In front the horizon rises up into the sky as we start our assent of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The conversation drifts about between Pete Hawkins and some of the gigs Ash got involved in through his promotion company. “One memorable one,” Ash recalls, “was a TV advert I did for Raleigh, for a bike called a Dirt Cross. It was with the football player Stuart Pearce... he used to play for England... he was a fucking wanker. Honestly, he was not a nice man. Pete Hawkins would send out résumé to people who might want riders for filming or adverts. I got to go to Nottingham for two days and it was funny because the day before we filmed it I crashed on my face and had a big graze on my cheek. A make up artist had to cover my scab up. I got 400 quid. The bike was horrendous. When I showed up I remember seeing the bike in the corner of the room and thought, ‘you must be joking’ – it was like a mountain bike, a kid’s mountain bike with big motocross suspension forks and gripshift gears. They decked me out in a Kappa tracksuit, elbow and knee-pads, and a stupid helmet. The shoot was in a tennis court at a sports club, they soaked the place with water and they literally had no idea what they wanted. I was 14 years old and they were like, ‘the footballer is gonna run around dribbling and doing kick-ups and we want you to ride around and make it look like you’re trying to tackle him, on the bike.’ I was like, ‘What? Tackle Stuart Pearce on a bike?’ I got £400, I didn’t give a fuck, it’s okay to sell out when you’re 14. Get it out the way early right?”
A Life Less Ordinary