Boardslides, Covers, Cats and Google Maps with Sam Fairweather
Photos by Riely Walker
Sam Fairweather is the best.
Almost anytime he is brought up in conversation he is referred to as the nicest guy. That isn’t an exaggeration either. Every time we’ve spent time together it’s been great. I’ve seen him do legitimate tricks for his Instagram story and watched him film tricks way more chill than they should’ve been.
I gave him a call while on his lunch break to see what has been happening with the first Australian to ever grace the cover of Europe’s Free Skate Mag. Getting the magazine’s most recent cover boardsliding the rail at London’s Waterloo Station. I got the backstory on the boardslide, found out about his mum’s influencer cat that he found in a box, got the inside word on his new unnamed power violence band, which you will probably be hearing from soon, and obviously, being not-chill, despite what his former Instagram name had suggested.
Well, first things first. What’s up with your Mum’s cat's Instagram?
[Laughs] Pretty much we found some cats years ago and my mum became really attached to them. One day she was like, ‘Look I made an Instagram for Angel’. I was just like oh cool and didn’t think much of it. Angel looks kind of funny, she has a goofy-looking head, so I guess that caused her to pop off on the internet. Now she gets paid to do ads and stuff [laughs]. She’s a sponsored cat Instagramer.
No way! That is so sick. What’s Angel’s Instagram?
Oh my god. She has over ten thousand followers.
Yeah, it’s crazy. I go over and visit and mum will be like I have this if you want it and it’ll be these crazy cat things that are worth heaps of money, and the company had sent her three of them.
How did you find the cats? Were they rescues?
Yeah, I was out one day and found a box with the cats in them. There were three of them in there. We kept two of them and gave one of them to a friend. They’re all pretty hectic. Angel and Dexter are the ones that we kept. Dexter is huge for some reason, he’s like the size of a medium-sized dog and he’s so aggressive.
On Instagram accounts, for the longest time your username was @how_2_be_chill and every time you posted there were about five comments that said this is not being chill. How annoying did that get?
That’s the reason I stopped it. I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I don’t know how you handled it for two years [laughs].
I honestly don’t know. I just thought it was a cool username, it’s based on the tattoo of a mouse reading a book and it says ‘How to be chill’ on the front. The comments started getting to me, and I was like I can’t do this anymore [laughs]. Then I got about ten messages being like ‘Why’d you get rid of the username huh’. I can’t win [laughs].
I was one of them and I am sorry. I’m going to use this time as a time to publicly say sorry.
It’s okay. I am going to accept your apology.
You got the cover of the latest issue of Free. Congratulations! How did that boardslide end up going down?
Thank you! I did a Europe stint with my girlfriend a couple of months back and while I was in London I’d walked by that rail and figured I should give it a try. I got heaps sick like two days into being in London, so I didn’t really have a chance to try it. We ended up flying back from Portugal the day before we flew home so I could try it.
We got into London at around nine that night and I was not going to do it, I was so tired. I told Conor [Charleson] that I was going to do it and I was like I guess I should try it. When we got in, I just dropped my stuff off at our Airbnb and set up a board. We skated at Southbank for an hour to warm up and I could hardly even 50-50 the ledge I was so exhausted. Then went there and thankfully did it. We flew home the next day; it was a really cool way to end the trip.
I’m so glad you did it. I remember you talking about it when you first got there.
It was so worth it. I’m so glad.
Did you know that it was going to be the cover?
Nope no idea, Rafski [Rafal Wojnowski] shot the photo and he said it’ll be going somewhere special, but I had no idea.
How did you find out that you got the cover?
I got a random message from Riely [Walker], that just said ‘YESSSSSSS’ and I was so confused. He told me to check Instagram and I lost my shit [laughs]. I still can’t believe it.
You also did another crazy boardslide on the trip that I want to ask you about. What’s the story behind that?
One day I was sitting at the shop [Boardworld] mindlessly scrolling through Instagram reels and I stumbled upon this clip of Danny Hamaguchi. He fifties a wall rail at that spot and in the corner of the footage you can see the top of the rail, but just the top, I was like I wonder if he goes the whole way down. It had Valencia tagged so, I sat on Google Maps, trying to look for the rail. I spent around six hours on maps trying to find it. I deadset walked down every single street in Valencia on Google Maps, and I couldn’t find it. I ended up caving and messaged him asking where it was. He replied and was super nice. He was pretty much just like it is at a Metro stop, but I don’t know which one. I thought it would be heaps easy to find, but nope there are like 10,000 Metro stations in Valencia, and then that was another hour of looking. Then I found the huge crater of the stair set [laughs].
I really wanted to try it. So, we kind of went to Valencia because of that. It was sick, it’s a really nice place. We went for four days and on the second last day, we went to go try it. And yeah, I got my girlfriend, Lyric to film it. It was funny I slid down the whole thing without ollieing on first. I don’t know why, but I guess it was just to try.
You skate a lot of spots that are above ground level. Are you looking up when you’re looking for spots?
Somewhat. I think it’s more exciting for me. I don’t really get a kick out of skating a set of stairs or something. It’s not that fun for me. I think the thought of someone in thirty years being like ‘Woah so and so skated this and he was the only one to skate it’ is super cool. That’s probably the main reason I do it, I think. The photos look way crazier too, but it’s only dangerous if you fall off.
That smith grind that you did on the side of the building was almost dangerous [laughs].
Yeah, that is something that we walked past, and I was like this is really dumb, I don’t think it’s ever been skated. Then we found out that Bjorn Johnson front tailed it, and I realised it was actually skateable. I think I grinded it like twenty times, I would try to pop out and it wouldn’t come with me.
Was that because you were leaning so heavily on the inside?
Yeah, I had to land on top of it to be able to properly do it which was terrifying. That’s why I ended up getting into lipslide and sitting on the rail. I was like if I don’t do this next try, I don’t know if I will be able to do this. I went all numb, it was like a realisation of holy shit I nearly died. I did it the next go after that which was nice, and I didn’t die, thankfully.
That is so scary. Fuck that. Something else I’ve always noticed with your skating is that you seem just as comfortable skating switch as you are regular. Like especially rolling down things switch and being able to do switch impossibles. Where did that come from?
I don’t really know where that kind of came from. I think I would go to the skatepark and get confused. I didn’t realise that you had a certain stance when I was younger.
Woah, how old were you?
I was like thirteen or fourteen. I would just jump on my board and be like this is fun. I skated with my dad, and he’s goofy, so I would try and copy him. Then when he wasn’t there, I would just skate regular. Going fast switch feels a lot more comfortable.
Does your dad still skate?
Yeah, he skates all the time. He’s in his late fifties now and he goes to the skatepark and shreds. He’s really good at skating bowls and skates ramps with no pads. It’s so gnarly.
That’s awesome, is he stoked watching you skate?
Yeah, he loves to see it. He will always give me a call whenever I bring out a new part or anything he’s always really stoked. It's really nice.
Would he show you skating when you were younger?
Not really, but he would always take me to the skatepark whenever I wanted and was really supportive.
Damn, that is really cool. You’ve recently started messing around doing vocals in a hardcore band. Has it been something you’ve always wanted to do?
Yeah. I am just terrible at learning things; it takes a lot of time and patience. We’re going to try to get something out soonish, not too sure when but yeah, super keen to get it out.
Who is in the band?
It’s me my housemate Matt and Brendon Gardoll. We’re just fucking around and having a bit of fun with it. It is more like power violence than hardcore.
Do you guys have a name yet?
Not yet. We are in the works of working out a name because it has to be really cool.
And it has to look good with the hesh font.
Yeah, you can’t have some toy name or toy style. A lot of people go for the graffiti thing, but they don’t get people who know how to do graffiti to do it.
Yeah, are you going to go hardcore font or graffiti font?
Maybe graffiti if it’s done well.
Being such a hardcore guy, can you read every hardcore band logo?
Umm… enough of them. Grindcore shit is crazy, they are just taking the piss I swear. They need to have the band names written under it in comic sans or something [laughs].
[Laughs] They actually do. Jake [Dempsey] was telling me that you took him to a hardcore show, and he got smoked.
Yeah, I just geared him up to mosh and he moshed, no questions asked.
Have you had any gnarly pit incidents?
Maybe at like the second show I ever went to. I had no idea what I was doing, and I got kicked in the face by this dude who was wearing like size thirty Air Maxes. My eye went blurry for an hour. I was just like ‘fuck, this is it I’m done. I’m going blind’. But besides that, nothing too intense.
You’ve recently been skating $lave boards. How did that happen?
They followed me after my Indy part came out. Then I just hit them up. Ben Horton who runs it is really lovely, he was keen and that’s how it happened. They’re working on a video at the moment and that’s what I’ve been filming for. Hopefully, I can have a nice chunk of footage for that.
Damn that’s awesome. Have you just been filming with Brendon?
Yeah, pretty much it’s been great. He has the dumbest spots in the world which can normally work out in your favour. He will take you to some stupid rail, and then next to it is something actually skateable. It’s great.
I can’t wait to see it. Do you have much else that you’re working on?
Just that and there will probably be another Boardworld clip coming out sometime soon.
