Ben Hennessey Skates Sydney’s Crust
Photos by Thomas Robinson and Riely Walker
Ben Hennessey seemed to have come out of nowhere when he appeared in Tim Cobden and Orion Stefanidis’ video PISSTAKE a few years back, skating some of the crustiest back-alley spots Sydney has to offer.
It turns out he had just been a bowl kid up until that point. Since PISSTAKE, he’s gotten on Vans and Croons Theatre. Put out parts in both the Croons Theatre video and the recent Personal video, PLEASURE AVALANCHE, in which he has the last part. The curtains. Still skating crust and showing off that he probably has rub bricked more ledge than anyone else in the country.
To commemorate his amazing part in PLEASURE AVALANCHE, I had a chat with Ben about filming for the video, skating, rub bricking, crust hunting, music and more.
What’s been happening?
I just started skating again on the weekend. I broke my foot about 3 months ago. I was just skating down the stairs into the metal grate at Kings Cross. My other ankle was already fucked, and I hadn’t skated in a few weeks before that. I had my ankle all taped up and then I landed in manual and my foot just slammed right into the bottom of the ground. I thought I was fine and then by the time I got up to the top of the stairs I couldn’t walk. I feel pretty good now though.
Oh shit, that sucks so much. I’m glad you’re back. I loved your part, in the Personal video. How was filming for the video?
Thanks, lad. It was fun, it felt really natural, every time we would go skating it would be Tim [Cobden], Astro [Marty], Felix [Zinenko-Donelley], Gary [Almeida], [Sam] Sutton, Nog [Noah Smith] and a few others. I think the original plan was for the video to be a lot shorter, but Tim realised everyone had quite a bit of footage and we kept it going.
How long were you guys working on it for?
It was about a year or slightly less, I think some clips were a bit older but most of it was within a year.
You guys got so much.
Yeah, it was pretty mind-blowing, Nog was just filming shit so quickly. In the last two months, he filmed so much. Every day I would just see some new clip of his it was crazy. Everything he was doing at that time was so gnarly.
You’re skating so much untouched crust. How are you finding the spots you skate?
I’m always looking for spots, I think everyone is. A lot of spots I’ve found by going skating and someone will have a spot somewhere in some random suburb and I will just walk or skate around random streets. Sometimes I go on bike rides and just go through streets I haven’t been through before to look around. Exploring. It depends on where you live too. I live pretty close to Marrickville and there are so many little back streets and lanes with concrete everywhere. There’s an industrial zone too, so there are so many spots within walking distance. It’s like a Skate 3 map.
[Jack] Diaz and I had a phase a while ago where we would meet up on Mondays and drive around. We’d pick an area, and we would drive through every street. We found some pretty crazy stuff, things that haven’t been skated and some things that aren’t even spots, like almost spots. Also, a bunch of weird old concrete stuff, you know what I mean, I don’t even know what people were thinking when they built it, but a lot of it ends up being a sick spot.
Oh man, I know what you mean, that old stuff is so weird and it’s like there’s no way anyone would build this now.
I wish it was still like that. Everything now is so flat and gridded. I swear Sydney is just becoming Zetland, everything looks the same. You could walk for a kilometre, and it all looks like you haven’t gone anywhere. It would be so fucked if one day the city just becomes a massive Zetland. It’s like a virus that’s spreading.
Are you a google maps guy?
I’ve tried but I’m too impatient.
So heaps of those spots look like they need so much work to make them skateable. How much time are you spending fixing spots?
I need to start bringing a rub brick with me everywhere, because the amount of time, Tim and I find a spot and are like this would be so sick, but we need a rub brick, is fucked. We then go back and will spend ages rub bricking it and be too tired to skate it after. I’ve rub-bricked so many spots. When Diaz and I would go on those spot hunts we would have the full toolbox in the back of his car. We would spend so much time fixing all these spots that I don’t even think we’ve even gone back to many of them. We’ve fixed spots that were delusional, there was no way we were going to skate them. It would be funny if people stumble across it one day and be like ‘I wonder what someone did on this’ [laughs].
I’ve done the delusional rub brick too, so funny when you go back and are like ‘why did I do this’. How many boards did you break trying that boardslide at the start?
I don’t even know; more than 10. I remember the first time I went there I was sliding it and then broke my board. I was with Gary, Lobster [Thomas Robinson], Tim and Orion [Stefanidis]. I broke everyone’s board on the session. It was pretty fucked [laughs]. For some reason, it seemed promising, and I wanted to do it. We would go to the Pass~Port store and just get all the old boards and lay them out. I don’t even know why I kept trying it. It was kind of a gimmick. When there was nothing to do, we would just be like fuck it let's go grab some boards and try it. Then one day Tim got me some rails and was like you have to do it today. On the second try, I broke the board with the rails on. I thought if I was breaking the board with rails on it wasn’t going to work and that was the end of that. To be honest it was probably never going to work but it was fun.
The song you skated to in the video seemed like such a deep cut. What is that song and how did you find that song?
It’s called ‘i hate you’ by h4rtbrkr. Tim found that song. We’re always sending each other music. We played around with heaps of different songs for the part and that’s the one we ended up using.
How important is it for the music that you skate to?
It’s important to me. It’s good that Tim has such good taste in music, I like a lot of the music he likes. A lot of the songs he was sending me when he was editing the video were so good. I would be so off it if I had to skate to a song that I didn’t like for sure. That’s like my worst nightmare.
Did you choose the music in the Croons Theatre video?
I think Orion chose all the music, but we all spoke about it a lot, Lobster, Gary and me. With the first two songs Orion and I are both super into that music anyways, so it made sense that he ended up going with those.
Do you think that’s the only video to ever use Bladee?
Man, I don’t know. I feel like it could’ve been at the time. I’m sure people have probably used him. I know Logan Lara has used some Drain Gang stuff. Gifted Hater watched the video on a live stream once and he basically didn’t say anything and then as soon as the Bladee song came on he was like ‘damn, you’re just going to use Bladee like no one’s going to notice’ [laughs].
I think one of my favourite things to watch is that middle section where it is like Gabbers [Gabriel Summers], George [Bidgood], Shaun Paul, Squish [Jack O’Grady], [Riley] Pavey, to that song. It’s just a bunch of my mates skating to a Bladee song. Orion did such a good job with that video; I honestly couldn’t have been happier. I look back at that video fondly it was such a nice time in my life hanging out with all my friends. It is what you want with a video really, to be like a time capsule of a certain period. That video too was over two years, through Covid and the lockdowns, it was nice because we got to have a prem too after all that. Just all the videos that are with my friends every time I watch the clips, I remember the days and what we did. Tim and Orion are really good at capturing that.
Is there anything coming up with Croons Theatre?
We’re about to put out two new boards and a T-shirt. In Tim’s new video everyone was skating the boards. It’s perfect timing. We might start filming a new video. I really want to start filming a new part, I think Gary and George are keen to do the same.
I heard that in Sydney Personal is becoming some hype thing on Depop with people reselling Personal stuff calling it ‘deadstock personal’. What is going on there?
Tim is fucking killing it. It’s grown so much here. All the shit he’s been putting out lately has been so good. It’s getting to the point where people who don’t even skate wear it. He has a crazy work ethic too he’s working on it all the time. Tim has just done such a good job making all the clothes and building the brand, so it has grown so much. He prints all the stuff himself too.
There are kids making Tik Tok’s flexing it. In 2021 Tim had a pop-up and all these kids came and then a kid made a Tik Tok with music and him flexing all the clothes. There’s this one of this kid in class and he’s wearing his school uniform and TNs, but he’s got the Personal boxers on and he’s like ‘they don’t know I’m wearing the Personal with the TNs’ [laughs].
That’s so crazy it’s blown up like that. I found these old videos of you on YouTube from like 8 years ago, you were so little in full pads and a helmet. How old were you?
I would’ve been like 12 or 13. My friend Joel I went to school with made those videos. They were so cooked; we would just fuck around. In one of the videos, I’m skating the old Waterloo mini ramp with full pads on and for two minutes of me just doing rock to fakies and stuff and then it just starts reversing and playing the whole video in reverse [laughs].
You were still a bowl kid until a few years ago, right? When did you start filming and start skating street?
I had a phase when I was 15, where I was going to Waterloo heaps, but I was still skating bowls. Around 15-16, I was like I don’t even know why I’m doing this I don’t even like comps. I was already friends with Orion, Noah [Nayef] and Noah Pap, and they were all skating street. I went to school in Bondi so I would still skate Bondi after school.
You see bowl and vert skaters who can do the craziest stuff on a ramp but hardly 50 a ledge. Did you find it hard learning how to skate street?
I think it was the same. I always skated a bit of street. It definitely has stunted me in some areas for sure. I’m so bad at flatground. I’m starting to learn now; everyone was rinsing me for not being able to skate flatground and they were right [laughs]. I was talking to my friend Will yesterday and I said, ‘I hope I reset my ankles back to factory settings so I can flip my board’. You know those crazy stories of people going into a coma and wake up and can speak a different language. I injure my ankle and then can skate switch [laughs].
I wanted to ask, because you can skate bowls and stuff does it make things less scary, because a 9ft bowl is way bigger than an 8 stair?
I definitely think it has a big influence on the way I skate for sure. It makes me more of a meathead [laughs]. It’s the same feeling where it’s like you have to kind of psych yourself up. I think that’s what got me into skating into banks. When I first started trying to film with Orion, I would be like where’s the stupidest bank we can find, and it’s just developed from there.
What’s next for you now Uni’s done and the Personal video is out?
Working on the new Croons video we’ve been talking about. I really want to work on a part until it’s fully done and make it as good as I can. I just really want to work on something super hard. I went straight into uni from school, so this is the only time in my life that I’ve had nothing else to do and I kinda want to take advantage of that before I’m an oldhead [laughs]. Just skate as much as I can, to be honest. I’m pretty sure Tim wants to work on another Personal video too eventually. I’m also going on a trip to The States and Europe next month, that’ll be really fun.