Five Stories: Johnny Tang
Photos by Chris Middlebrook.
For the last twenty years, Johnny Tang has lived in China, skateboarding, finding spots, working in the industry, and tour guiding companies and crews around the country.
Born and raised in Toronto, he moved to Beijing, and a few years later to Shanghai, which he has called home ever since, eventually skating and working for Nike. When Instagram began, he started posting spots with the hashtag #shanghaiskatespot, accumulating over a thousand spots in the marble wonderland that became the most desired destination for almost every skateboarder. When I hit him up to do this interview, Instagram said that I had been following him since 2013, meaning I’ve been keeping up to date with the spots that he has been finding for the last two decades. Over the years, he’s taken around the Girl and Chocolate team while they were filming for Pretty Sweet, numerous Nike trips, Zero missions, and countless trips with Shane O’Neill exploring all throughout China, all while skating just as well as most of the pros. After a brief stint moving back to Toronto during the pandemic, he’s back in Shanghai with his new job as the Adidas Skateboarding China team manager.
Recently, a discussion came up about why there aren’t as many companies doing trips to China anymore, what for the past decade and a half, seemed like the perfect skate trip, seems to be no longer. I wanted to ask Johnny why he thought that could be, he thinks that it is mostly to do with budgets, as companies don’t have the budgets they once did in a pre-pandemic economy. Knowing that there has to be some wild stories, good, bad, shocking and all in between from taking around some of the world's best skateboarders, I wanted to hear some of those stories straight from Johnny and here they are.
Kevin Booker
The first group of people I tour guided was a 411 crew who was Danny Garcia, Chico Brenes, Robert Lopez Mont (RIP), Kevin Brooker, and Jerry Hsu, I think that was it. Chinese people, we are all pretty passive, there is rarely ever a time if you suggest a place to eat and someone is like ‘No I don’t wanna eat there.’ It’s more like if we’re together, we’re together and I’ll eat anything as long as that’s the case. On that trip everyone had their own unique one-off things, but all in all they were stoked to be in China, skating these crazy spots.
This one dude Kevin Booker who rode for Ice Cream, Billionaire Boys Club and was on Alien Workshop flow, wouldn’t eat anything other than hotel food, McDonalds or steak and lobster. I was like ‘Damn dude, you’re in another country.’ When I first came to China, I didn’t like to eat a lot of things because you’ve grown up in that culture [in America or Canada], but when you come to China, there is all this amazing food from all over the country. I took them to this one dope spot where you get this pita bread, these barbecue skewers, and this tomatoey pasta-type dish, it’s Xingquan food. This dude didn’t touch nothing, I was like ‘Yo, what’s good dude, why aren’t you eating,’ and he was like ‘I only eat steak and lobster.’ I was like ‘Motherfucker, you are stupid, you are going to go hungry in China. Just because you skate for BBC and Ice Cream you gotta eat steak and lobster?’ He must be a rap star now, but at the time I was like you are just a skater. I guess it didn’t go too well for him because I didn’t see or hear much from him after that trip.
Brian Anderson
A person who left a good impression, was very memorable and I learnt from – there aren’t many skateboarders I learn from – was Brian Anderson. He is a really nice and polite human being. He showed me another side of a skateboarder that I hadn’t seen before and really respected. He was always on time, he would always compliment people on their shoes, what they were wearing or anything, he was always the first one to put a smile on your face. Everywhere we would go these guys would throw garbage everywhere and Brian would always be the last person at the spot, picking everything up and putting it in the trash can. He is a dope human being.
Guy Mariano
The most determined and dedicated skateboarder I’ve ever seen in my life was Guy Mariano, getting to see him skate in real life was inspirational. I’ve always looked up to him, growing up watching Mouse, not being able to tell which way he skated, but still loving it. He was here with Eric Koston filming for Pretty Sweet. We were at this spot, that is a rounded orange ledge sort of thing, and he does a line where he does a backside bluntslide kickflip to fakie on it. He landed it a bunch of times and in my mind, I was like ‘Why is he doing it again, he just did it perfectly’, but he wanted to keep going until he did it exactly how he wanted to. While he was trying it, he just started throwing up; it was hot, we were in the sun, and he had been trying it for a while at this point. He threw up, cleaned himself up, drank some water, kept on trying, threw up again, and kept going until he landed it the way he wanted it to.
I was just watching his Dickies Loose Ends part and was like, ‘Damn, that’s Guy’, he didn’t have to do that curved ledge smith again, but he had a little squeak in one of the pushes so was like ‘I got to redo it’. That was exactly how it was when I got to see him in person. After seeing that I was like every time I try a trick, I’m going to give it a few more tries, not as much as Guy but just a few more [laughs].
Justin Brock
Nike SB were in China filming for Chronicles, I am now working for Nike, so I get to be on the trip and am the tour guide. On that trip was Grant Taylor, Youness Amrani, Lewis Marnell, Stefan Janoski, Justin Brock and maybe some other heads, I forget. Andy Henry was the team manager, and he was the new guy at the time. At this point in the trip Justin Brock hasn’t done anything and we pull up to this eighteen-stair rail, it is shitty, extremely high, very rusty and has a really narrow run up. At this time Tommy Sandoval was really gnarly, and in a Fallen or Zero video he front boards down it. We pull up in the van, we are all looking at the rail and no one is into it, Justin sitting in the back of the van says ‘I’ll 5-0 that shit for breakfast.’ I look back and I think he’s just talking shit to look good for the TM, I hadn’t seen him skate at all, I had seen his parts and know that he has a wicked tre flip but hadn’t seen him skate a rail that big. I had never seen a person skate a rail this big in real life. Him claiming 5-0 I was like, ‘What are you going to do, gap all the way to the bottom and ding it?’ He starts changing his shoes and getting ready. We needed a sign to put at the bottom of the landing and he’s warming up skating flat ground. Once we found the sign, he jumped on a 50-50 and I was scared for my life but he did it first try. Then the 5-0, took about three or four tries and he did it perfectly, I was like what the fuck, that’s insane. Justin Brock skating rails is real, he’s real.
On the last night of the trip, we were like let’s go to the spa, let’s go get massages, pedicures, let's all hang out and have a good time. We go to the massage parlour, we are all in our own rooms, we are having food brought to us, Justin is getting a foot massage and the lady says, ‘Your time is up’ he is like ‘Okay, shoulders’, she starts doing his shoulders, they’re done and he’s like ‘my legs are pretty sore let’s do those again’, he gets his legs done and she’s like ‘Okay, we’re finished.’ He’s already been massaged head to toe at this point, and he’s like ‘This feels good, do it again.’ I look over and I’m like ‘Damn, dude, are you guys allowed to do this?’ It’s not cheap, they’re probably going to tip really well, and it’s not only Justin doing this, once he does it everyone starts doing it. I asked, ‘Doesn’t Nike get mad at you guys for doing all this?’ and he’s like ‘Man fuck that, you think I give a shit? These basketball players get this treatment every game. We are out here busting our ass falling, trying this and that, don’t you think we deserve this?’ I was like ‘Oh my god, that makes total sense, you guys do deserve this, because every other athlete is doing this right now.’
Shane O’Neill and the Nike SB Australia Team
We are in the middle of China, in Changsha. I had been there, but I hadn’t been there on a skate trip. I have a homie there who always sends me spots and is like ‘Tell Shane to come.’ I’ll always forward the spots to Shane, and he does his homework too, he watches Chinese skate videos, to see the spots. When he came to Changsha, he had an idea of what spots he wanted to skate and the tricks he wanted to do because he was practicing heavy at Paul’s Park at the time. At the same time, the Nike SB Australia team was here so it was Christian Low, Nathan Jackson, Alex Campbell, Jason Morey, James James, and Chris Middlebrook. Shane arrived first, and we were just looking at all the spots, not even skating them. He had a mental idea of what he wants to do at each spot and he’s telling me, and I was just like ‘Motherfucker, you’re crazy, there’s no way!’ Some of the tricks are believable but they’re hard as fuck too. Then the Australian team comes the next day, we start driving around and are skating, but Shane doesn’t really skate yet, he is just watching, supporting the other dudes and people are getting tricks.
On the second or last day of the trip, Shane was like ‘Okay, I’m ready’, I guess he was mentally preparing to skate. We went to all the spots he wanted to do tricks at. There was this super high, long, thick mellow wheelchair ramp rail he wanted to frontside 50-50. He doesn’t like skating when there are a lot of people around because it distracts him, so we all waited. I was on the look out for security. After a few minutes he came back down, and I asked if they got kicked out, but he had already landed it. It was insane.
After that we went to the switch flip back noseblunt rail and Shane said he wanted to do the trick because he had been practicing it at Paul’s Park. I had been to Paul’s Park and knew that rail is quite different, it is this perfect skatepark rail, but this rail in a sense was perfect, big enough to film on, but not super big. He starts warming up, doing his 50-50, 5-0, lipslide, front board, nosegrind. Then he starts going through all his switch tricks, he switch back tails it first try, then switch back lip, and then he starts trying switch flip back tail, lands it. Then he switch flip back lips it, for the Sluggy [James James] edit [Ratsesh] then does it again, and again, over, and over. I start paying attention to it and he is trying to get the switch flip back lip to land more and more towards the front truck each try to get ready to go into noseblunt. Then he was like, ‘Okay, guys I’m ready, are you guys ready?’ He went up, tried switch flip back noseblunt, missed it and did switch flip back lip again, then tried switch flip back noseblunt, in between each attempt for so long he was doing a switch flip back lip, he must’ve landed fifty switch flip back lips that day. Once it started taking a while, he just started trying the switch flip back noseblunt only because by that time I think he was mentally and physically warmed up. The switch flip back lip for him was nothing, he would do that on command every try pretty much. Watching him control the lipslide to get closer to the nose was a shock, he is on a whole other level.
On one of the days on this trip, we are going from one spot to another, driving on the highway and in the middle there was a break where you could do a U-Turn, our driver the whole time was so dangerous, he wouldn’t signal, he wouldn’t look at the mirrors, we would tell him to stop and he would stop way further down, his reaction time was so slow. He did it again, not looking at the oncoming traffic, he just does a U-Turn, there is this four-door Honda blazing, I knew mentally that it’s not possible for the car not to hit us. By the time I realised it was still far enough to where I could shout out ‘Woah, woah, woah’ to alert the whole van that we were about to get hit. I saw that it was going to hit my door, I lifted up and tucked my knees into my chest and the car came smashing into my door and it shook the bus and thankfully no one was injured. I called the company who gave us the driver and was like ‘We need a new driver, this guy is an idiot, pick us up right now and we got picked up and taken to the next spot.’
