Ups&Downs

Predictably Perfect Prague

2007-07-31T17:36:00.000Z

Due to exams and laziness I haven't written anything on here for ages, however this is not to say we haven't been skating. Me and Luc got home on Wednesday the 24th from a week in Prague. We are currently in the process of making a montage and an article type thing which will end up on here eventually. In the mean time here are some non-skating photos from the trip:

Stalin square after the regular but brief downpours

Luc's typical items each day inc. pepper spray and DIY belt + baseplate whip/mace

The view from Stalin Square at night

SOUVENIRS from the trip. hashish? free lube?

Warehouse!

2007-05-01T21:39:00.000Z

We went on a spot finding a mission and came up trumps! We found 2 warehouses which both need a lot of work but are amazing. Here is a photo from the worse of the 2:

More footage and photos to come hopefully.

Sunny Saturday Special

2007-04-29T01:42:00.000Z

86 tries, level 8 sunburn and level 6 exhaustion yielded this lovely photo of a naff trick:

This, on the other hand took a cack handed amateur 1 try and little effort or physical pain. Although it involved being reprimanded by the city police 3 times. And told that taking photos.. other than point and shoot are illegal in the city without prior permission. So it turns out all terrorists like to use some off camera flashes and get a nice framed, composed shot... yeah right; you fucknut idiot.

Moroccan Setbacks

2007-04-23T22:30:00.000Z

I carelessly went to Morocco over Easter and Luc went to Canada to slide down hills on extended feet. So Andy was left in England to ponce around in women's clothes. In other words there hasn't been much skateboarding for a while. Until last Saturday in the distinctly summery weather Luc drove us to a few different 'spots' in St. Albans. Here's a sequence:

It is legit so suck my balls. Photo by Luc Lacey, click to enlarge

Long time. No blog....What?

2007-03-24T19:29:00.000Z

I've been really busy trying not to get expelled from school so I haven't put much up for a while. Today we went to a cool bank spot and did some stuff but didn't get any hard evidence. *Checks ebay for cameras* Last night Luc ollied over a fence while i lay on the floor breaking my neck against a bin attempting to take a photo. I'll put that on later. For the moment here is a picture from 2 weeks ago of me doing a Backside Nollie on a 'bank' at Tower Hill. Click it to make it look good.

Radiowaves

2007-03-04T00:37:00.000Z

A huge skinny dog belonging to a peculiarly tall man contributed to making today one of the best skates this year. Although Andy wasn't there and it rained it was fun(ny) and Luc took some sick photos. Click them to see the proper quality ones:

Luc's Flickr for more photos from today

Money Shots:

2007-02-19T00:09:00.000Z

As usual click images to enlarge.

Ups & Downs: Final Promo

2007-02-13T02:25:00.000Z

Here is the final promo. Ups & Downs will be finished by Spring and ready to buy by Summer. Bye bye. (9.1mb)

Click or right click-'save target as' here for the lower quality (3.2mb) promo

"Daaaah"

2007-02-04T16:25:00.000Z

Having excessively celebrated my 18th birthday on Friday the 2nd, Luc and I went to London the day after in a dazed and confused state. I'm buying a new camera soon. So you can expect super amazing montages soon. As well as Ups & Downs. Here are a few of the photos from Saturday. The rest and others can be found on www.flickr.com/luc_lacey

King of The fucking Road

2007-01-14T20:02:00.000Z

All of you die-hard Ups & Downs fans will remember about 6 months ago a post about a Thrasherstyle King of the Road for Skateperception The content of the post was that I couldn't enter it because of techincal (idiocy) difficulties. I have now fixed it through a stroke of genius (common sense) and it is now availabe for all to see. ENJOY. WE DID!

Jeneral January Japery

2007-01-13T19:54:00.000Z

Andy works at Zenith Staybrite so he couldn't come to London today. Which is good because Luc's car is covered in pineapple juice. Today had it's pros and cons including learning new tricks and snapping decks. Luc took some snazzy photographs under my expert supervision:

Helmets, Seekers and Tricktips

2007-01-06T21:19:00.000Z

It absolutely pissed it down all day. But it was great anyway. We heavily supported the local scene by going to the Pioneer, paying £4 to get in. And leaving almost immediately. Hmmm it was busy to say the least. Also, it turns out the best little skater lives in St. Albans or thereabouts. He must have been about 6 and was doing all this stuff out of the quarterpipe into the bank. e.g fingerflip. It was amazing. Anyway, we then went to the carpark which was slowly filling with water. We invented a hardcore new team sport involving cones. (Please ask for details although it has been copyrighted) We got some sweet pineapple juice and then filmed some tricktips which was funny. I'll post some videos, photos up later/tomorrow/the next day.

Sequence Face

2006-12-29T20:50:00.001Z

Also... some great Morris Dancing footage from the summer...

Iceland.

2006-12-02T20:12:00.000Z

The amount of money that any of us have left is pretty similar to the temperature at the moment. We stayed in St. Albans today. We did some wallrides and then Luc broke our new polejam. Also: Andy re-did something he did ages ago. Here is the sequence:

Clumsy Bootsies.

2006-11-29T17:18:00.000Z

15 seconds of us falling over like a bunch of dwads.

Global Warming

2006-11-27T20:43:00.000Z

It's nearly Christmas and look at this Autumny picture from Saturday. It rained so we didn't go to London but we went to this new polejam which eye-spied from the bus. St. Albans now has 3 polejams. Lucky us. Shame we don't have any normal spots. Click on it to see it in proper quality quality.

London

2006-11-18T21:00:00.000Z

Much like every other Saturday for a year or so Luc and I went to London. But this time there was a twist as Andy, the alien came too. He has featured in films such as E.T and Alien Vs. predator. I can assure you he is much scrawnier in real life and not as dangerous as he first appears. A greebo threw a doughnut at him.

Winter has reduced me to this:

2006-11-12T22:04:00.000Z

Good spot though. Also We've started editing Ups&Downs.

The Latest Rollerskate Shots:

2006-10-22T19:31:00.000Z

Adverts and Aardvarks

2006-10-11T21:34:00.000Z

Luc's stolen DSLR has been replaced and he's been happy snapping like a monkey with a costco sized box of toothpicks and an assortment of spanners (stainless steel) So he took some radicoolo photos and made some adverts/photography/graphics coursework. Anyway, click on them.

KOTR

2006-09-14T13:22:00.000Z

PROBLEM: I finished the video and I was really pleased with it. And then I ran into many difficulties and I can't put it on the internet. Which is a spaztramp because I've alaready paid my entrance fee which I can't get back. Oh well, i can watch it...

King of The Road

2006-09-02T23:04:00.000Z

Since we got back from Malaga we've been completing challenges for the Skateperception King of the Road competition. The deadline is the 10th of September and there is about 100 challenges + time needed to edit so it's quite tight. We did a load of them in St. Albans yesterday including skating a fridge a couch and eating a burger in 3 bites. Then today me and Luc went to London to try and do some more, we did two and then i injured myself trying a 3rd. I'll post the final product up here once it's been entered.

Major Malaga Mess

2006-08-26T20:55:00.000Z

Friday 25th:
This was the first full day of skating in Malaga.I say full but we accidentally got up at 4 in the afternoon... We then went to the Plaza Marina and had a good fun skate and took a few photos. Unfortunately I can't put them up on here as will be explained later. After asking some local skaters for directions we found are way to PLN:

It was pretty busy but really fun and Luc and I both have runs we want to film there. We played skate a bit and then i tried switch tre's for about 2 hours until my legs gave up and we went to McDonalds followed by Ubercramp and an incident involving a balcony and all kinds of other shenanigans.

Saturday 26th:
Ok, well, today was pretty eventful. We got up a bit earlier and had some cold showers. I managed to completely balls up supergluing my shoes and somehow squirted it in my eye fortunately and comically i washed it out and it was just felt a bit wierd. We then found are way, with difficulty to the supermarket where we, with limited success, bought some food. Little did we know we would be coming back later to get to the police station. Anyway we skated for a few minutes in the razorblazer heat at some spot right outside a busy cafe without getting kicked out. Why can't English people be that laid back. Again we ended up at the Plaza Marina. I think this i probably because it's so amazing it has so many different spots all rolled into one meaning you can't get bored. However it turns out you can get robbed... After a brief cockup with sun cream a load of the better Malaga locals turned up at the Marina and had a big session on the benches and wallrides. After about an hour Luc ran over to me and it was obvious something was wrong and he said: "Where the fuck is my camera bag?" and it was gone. Fortunately there happened to be about 100 policeman nearby as there was some cycling race, unfortunately they were pretty much all complete useless conches. The rest of the day was spent sitting in the police station. After finally getting out of the police station (after achieving virtually nothing, except taking the piss out of the complete nonce at the front desk)we both got family sized pizza and ridiculed a mole boy. All that was left was to bomb it through the alleyways carving around and going "Woo!" like a couple of teenage skate tourists from England.

Sunday 27th:
On the 4th day in Malaga we moved to a new hostel called: 'Picasso's Corner'.

After wandering around uselessly for half an hour following directions from the screwloose brain bork of a tourist information woman we asked a very useful waiter who actually knew what he was talking about. After finding the place smelling vaguely of incense and hippies it initially looked like we didn't have a room reserved as it was booked under 'Luc' rather than 'Lacey' It turned out that we were actually staying in an apartment around the corner at the Plaza Merced. We were lead there and were presented with a double bed... So that was a little shocking and luckily there were a few bunkbeds spare in the same apartment. So we shared the place with an awkward but nice enough English guy and some American from Texas. n.b. both of them were irresponsibly lanky. After dropping our bags down and trying desperately not to collapse from crippling cramp we skated outside the police station before the slightly downhill smooth concrete all the way to the Plaza Marina. It was too hot to skate for more than 5 minutes at a time but Luc and I managed to redo our tricks that we had photos of for the video camera. Obvviously we therefore deserved 'dos calipos fresa y agua grande por favor'. We then headed over to PLN where a skater from Madrid borrowed our fisheye because he had broken his mates one. Luc did his run uberclean 3rd go or something. Session Over! We had quite a long chat with a guy called Mike who was semi-sponsored by Zero. Then Back to telepizza for a family sized barbecue pizza and breaking the airconditioning controls.

Monday 28th:
The last full day began at 10.30 with mosquito bites and a trip to the supermarket for breakfast, passing pigs heads and dead fish. It turned out we didn't actually bring any money with us which was a bit strange. Anyway we sat on a step and stared at people and then skated in the general direction of the plaza marina a way that we hadn't been before stopping off at a clothes shop as I had run out of clean clothes (predictable) We went straight to PLN which was more or less empty as it was a work/school day + It was unnecesarily burnymaxcore making it hard to skate due to copious amounts of salty water pouring into our eyes and general heat exhaustion. Somehow we didn't get burnt and I did my run without tooo much difficulty. More people turned up as it got later and we went and bought some sangria in a bottle. Surprisingly this didn't, affect my filming too much for Luc's one trick wonder. We talked to Mike again for a long while and he taught us ollie south/one foot things and told us a lot about skating in Malaga/Spain. Including the phrase "the fat guy is the 2nd best in Malaga" Slightly drunk I caned it around doing fullspeed tricks and managed to not die when we tired enough we went for a night skate with Mike and other Malagaleons to the Marina and just bombed it around do wallies and wallrides. (Wish you were there Andy!!!)We left fairly soon though when hunger set in and went to telepizza. Fully revitalised we decided sensibly it would be a good idea to go out drinking on the last night. Turns out that Monday really isn't the greatest night even so we got adequately intoxicated. Happily enjoying ourselves and on the way home everything suddenly went pear-shaped/hilariously awesome. A car pulled up on the other side of the road and a guy jumped out with a massive knife (similar to the one below) First he came ran over to me. I can't remember if he took the case off or not but he took a full swing at me and slashed me in my left arm but managed to drop the knife in the road at the same time (according to Luc who saw this from about 2 metres in front of me) Thinking my arm must have a huge gash out of it I ran off down the nearest alleyway checking my arm which turned out to have just a small 'bruisy cut' but absolutely fine. Meanwhile back on the main road Luc had attempted to run away but being pissed he had fallen so hard and was on the floor saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" and trying to get up while some Spanish people on the other side of the road were shouting something. Luc scrambled up and was about to run away when the guy smashed him in the back of the head with the handle of the knife, which was bigger and more circular than the one in the picture. Apparently it didn't hurt that much or not as much as stacking it anyway and Luc ran after me down the alleyway and the psychofuck with the knife didn't follow us, or if he did we were inside the safety of the gates of the apartment building pretty soon. We explained all this to the camera then put it in the fridge then went to sleep. What a fucking dramatic end to an amazing trip.

Verdict: Malaga is fucking funny.

Spanish Confusion

2006-08-24T21:58:00.000Z

Today was our first day in Malaga. At about 1 this morning I realised that we had booked a hostel in the wrong city. Luc thought it was pretty funny and we just came to Malaga anyway. Strangely enough as I type this I am sitting in a hostel "just round the corner from the Plaza Marina" but when i wrote that the first time it was wrong by about 150 kilometres. We skated a bit today but didn't film or take many photos but we got a feel for the area, which is so mixed. Within 200 metres of eachother are expensive clothes shops and needles and tramp shit. Guess which bit we went to first...

Potters Bars and DSLRs

2006-08-15T19:20:00.000Z

Luc got his Nikon D70s and radio slave this morning and it was Andy's birthday. For some reason Luc thought it would be a good idea to invite this kid to Potters Bar Skatepark with us:

There is a problem with Luc's camera but he took some photos anyway and they turned out like this:

Unfortunately we didn't get any footage but we did have a pretty good skate despite the revolting number of BMX'ers.

London

2006-08-11T12:03:00.000Z

Sameer and I emerged from the platform to see Andy waiting on the floor wearing a very fetching cardigan. We skated about 5 different bank spots and got some footage. (Which will be appearing here this Sunday probably) For lunch we decided on Euston 'Meatball' Subway which was mediocre to poor. We then headed for docklands and skated a new spot and got more footage. The train journey home included quotes such as "What's an oaf? Have you ever seen an oaf Andy?" quite closely followed by "You ruined my day Sameer" There were a few funny incidents including a tiny asian and a 35 year old skinhead a gay a stingy twat and a policeman.

Felix (the human) came with us to London on Saturday and he ollied the southbank 7 with his only difficulty coming from his blisters from his nike SB's. Nike have a plot to destroy skateboarding slowly but surely through niggling injuries. Maybe? Anyway Luc got a run and a trick. Whereas i smashed my knee in and kicked gravel around. Montage later.
Click the image below for the London Montage:

Milton Keynes

2006-08-09T22:05:00.000Z

You'd think getting to Milton Keynes would be pretty simple after the first 5 times. At least this time i didn't turn up at the train station and realise I'd forgotten my skateboard. However I did miss the train despite nearly killing myself bombing a huge busy hill with roadworks on the way to the station. Oh, well we made it in the end and had a great skate at the MK Theater as well as the bus station. Unfortunately we didn't get any footage but here is a picture of the skateplaza to make up for it?

Malaga Trip

2006-08-06T14:59:00.000Z

On August 24th Luc and I are flying to the Costa del Sol to skateboard around like a pair of right lemons in Malaga for 5 days.
Our Hostel is just round the corner from this place.

Potters Bar Skatepark

2006-07-27T17:23:00.000Z

Luc passed his driving test, so we went on our first little outing to Potters Bar Skatepark on Tuesday. It's a nice smooth concrete skatepark which is well designed for the size. There is a good balance between transition and street type obstacly things. Shame about the balance between skateboarders and little chav BMX'ers. That could be improved as they go round in a circle which makes it basically impossible to skate at times. Anyway we had a good time and got enough footage to make a montage, so I did and strangley enough it's right here:

Sleeping In

2006-07-21T12:00:00.000Z

Whenever I capture a tape, all the footage is just sitting there and to me that says: "edit me" So, this is tape 7, which can now be more affectionately named: 'Sleeping in'
Click the picture to view the video.

Ups&Downs Promo

2006-07-03T18:35:00.000Z

I made a promo for Ups&Downs. I'm not really sure about it so I'll make a new one soon.
Click the picture to the view the promo.

Cotch à la Frog, Radicoolo and Ups&Downs in London

2006-07-03T18:25:00.000Z

You would be forgiven for being confused at the title of this post. All is explained below:
These are two montages from two different gaps that two different people sessioned on two different days.

Click the image below to view 'Radicoolo'

Click the image below to view 'Cotch a la Frog'

Here is an old montage of London footage:

Ups&Downs Media

2006-06-07T12:23:00.000Z

Welcome to the new site dedicated to all things relating to the Ups&Downs skateboarding video. As this is in Blog Format it will be updated regularly with Short Videos and Photos. Promos and News Ok, enjoy!