{"id":315798,"date":"2021-03-09T11:30:27","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T11:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/?page_id=315798"},"modified":"2023-12-02T20:40:38","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T20:40:38","slug":"ted-barrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/ted-barrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Barrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

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@organicphruits<\/a><\/p>\n

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Ted Barrow is a skater, art historian, lecturer and social media personality most well known for his former satirical skate account Feedback TS. His acerbic, assertive and always on point satirical skate commentary made him a household name in skateboarding. Thousands upon thousands of his viewers became incredibly fond of his humour and wit, 90’s skate stories, his stalwart street skateboarding stance and opinions on the daily submissions of skate clips that he would post and critique.<\/b><\/p>\n

The Feedback TS account gave Ted a channel to showcase his larger than life personality, straight shooting delivery and insightful creative perspectives on everything from rare pieces of fine art to your friends front blunts at your local skatepark.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

But it wasn’t just that. Alongside the clips of his own skating and tales about his skate history, as a kid in the 80s as a young man in the 90s and an adult in the early 2000s, his clear well expressed and stylish, yet always self effacing demeanour in his online videos, fully captured the attention of skaters of all ages, generations, interests and tastes to follow him and listen. <\/b><\/p>\n

His no holds barred comic art and skate criticism created a mystique around his account and constantly fulled speculation about how he came up with the things he said and whether he actually meant them in jest or in truth. But one thing was for sure, he never tired of talking about skating and art, never shied away from talking about his real life and the struggles and success and personal challenges he experienced every day with a palpable sense of honesty.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

It was his integrity to his comic format alongside his consistent ability to suprise, entertain and educate viewers whilst never letting them forget that satire was the focus of his platform that made his work brilliant. <\/b><\/p>\n

He constantly made meta jokes about how he was just playing a character – a curmudgeonly old skater hating on skate clips and that his account was just that – an ongoing in-joke that week after week fuelled online fire, only to be reignited by his next blazing critique about a skate clip submission he would receive, post and rip.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b>Whatever you made of his criticism, he was always down to offer his insight and experience in a new and fun, interesting way. He encouraged skaters to think about what we skated and how we skate in a often light-hearted manner sometimes with the odd unexpectedly harsh and heavy comic response. But you knew it was just a joke from a skater who wholeheartedly cares about the act of skateboarding and its culture.<\/b><\/p>\n

So after joining The No Comply Network and rising even more rapidly in online popularity with each passing post at some point over Lockdown, all of a sudden he and his followers awoke one day to discover Ted’s Feedback account was for reasons unknown, removed. <\/strong><\/p>\n

So we hit up Ted to find out what had happened and what we discovered was radder than we first expected.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0We found out that Ted has spread his creativity way beyond skateboarding clip submission critique and has moved further afield into podcasts, lectures and creating art itself. <\/b><\/p>\n

Despite the removal of his Feedback page he still has an active online presence across three accounts where he continues to critique art and talk about skateboarding and his experience in intriguing, innovative ways.<\/b><\/p>\n

So after the sudden disappearance of his Feedback account and finding out he\u2019s made a series of life changes and gained a whole new handle on his life, we called him up to have a conversation about how his Feedback TS account got shutdown, how he felt about losing his page, filming a part at one spot in New York’s Upper West Side for Thrasher, Switch Back T’s, Switch Back Smiths and flatground tricks, Atlantic Drift, meeting Jerry Hsu, rocking Sci Fi Fantasy, the reason he’s moved from the New York to California, how he lost his job at the museum in New York, his new career, his online lectures at Olio Lectures, Vent City podcasts, his art project – Berate The Birds, how he originally discovered skateboarding, rolling over Lockdown, reading John Berger and Mark Fisher, book and music recommendations, most and least favourite things about 90s skating, modern skate trends and a serious deep dive into his favourite, skaters, artists photos and videos of all-time and more.<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Read the Ted Barrow interview below to find out for yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Ted, Frontside Noseslide, Oakland, Californnia: Shot by @seancho<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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What\u2019s your full name?<\/h1>\n

I believe my last name means \u201cpile of dirt, like borough, berg, or barrow.<\/p>\n

You can call me Ted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Where did you grow up and where do you live now?<\/h1>\n

I grew up in Austin, Texas, and I currently live in Oakland, California.<\/p>\n

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When and where did you first discover skateboarding?<\/h1>\n

I remember the feeling of sidewalk cracks under red urethane wheels underneath a yellow plastic banana board in South America, 1982, but I don\u2019t remember seeing it. There is a picture to affirm this memory.<\/p>\n

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@tedbarrow<\/a><\/p>\n

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When’d you first get a board and what was it?<\/h1>\n

My first \u201creal\u201d skateboard was a Seaflex deck that I bought at the Flea Market in Mill Valley, California, after a summer of bumming boards from older surfers around Bolinas.<\/p>\n

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Where did you learn to skate and who was in your crew?<\/h1>\n

I learned to skate the following Fall back in Austin.<\/p>\n

My first crew was Dylan Howard, Wiley Wiggins, Justin Jacobsen, Chris Micklethwaite, and Peyton Denman. Soon we merged with downtown Austin kids\u2014too many, too insignificant to name\u2014and formed Team Trix.<\/p>\n

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@tedbarrow<\/a>: Handplant<\/strong><\/p>\n

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What kinds of art did you make growing up?<\/h1>\n

A lot of figures falling into spiky pits.<\/p>\n

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Souunds gnarly. What was your job at the museum?<\/h1>\n

I worked as an assistant curator, where I worked on interpretation, public engagement through gallery talks, tours, and lectures, coming up with programming, and long-term planning for shows.<\/p>\n

It was wonderful\u2014museum professionals are committed to their work in a way that I have not seen in other fields\u2014but it wore me pretty thin by the end.<\/p>\n

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How did you lose your role at the museum?<\/h1>\n

I had a lot of other things going on between completing my dissertation, for my PhD. in art history, and my Feedback_TS instagram, which I hate to admit was a hugely exciting and rewarding distraction, so we parted amicably. It was a great place and I learned a lot.<\/p>\n

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@tedbarrow<\/a>: Switch Backside Tailslide<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Right, so where are you working at the moment?<\/h1>\n

I currently work retail, and I love it. It seems like a strange u-turn in an otherwise straightforward course of increasing responsibility within a professional field of art academia and museum work, but I have to say: it\u2019s great! I work with really cool people, I believe in the company, and it pays me enough to live comfortably, for the moment.<\/p>\n

Skateboarding has taught me to be fiercely independent and disciplined about my passions. That means, despite whatever job I may have to pay the bills, continuing with my work in the time that I have. Just as most of us who weren\u2019t sponsored or particularly good found a way to fit skateboarding into our lives after school and on the weekends, so goes my approach to my work versus my job.<\/p>\n

I am nearly done with my dissertation, which I work on every morning before work and before skating, and I hope to return to the field when it is all done. I am grateful for the work I have, the time that I have to explore my ideas, and that is due in large part to the cool job that I was lucky enough to get to pay the bills.<\/p>\n

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Sick. So how did Feedback_TS get shut down?<\/h1>\n

I really do not know.<\/p>\n

Instagram recently changed their community guidelines and I noticed that posts and stories that I had already posted months and years before were getting flagged for inappropriate sexual content.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking about posts where I made allusions and comparisons to 19th<\/sup> century academic (nude, sometimes) PAINTINGS.<\/p>\n

The only time my content was flagged was from that.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I reached a lot of people through that account, and I am sure that not everyone was on the page about my intent.<\/p>\n

The more popular it got, the more new people there were to misunderstand what to me (and maybe 150 other followers) seemed like a pretty meaningless and straightforward bit of satire.<\/p>\n

So, I\u2019ll allow for the possibility that I was flagged for abuse by someone who either didn\u2019t get it or loathed what it was they thought that I did on that account.<\/p>\n

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How did you feel about Feedback TS being<\/h1>\n

taken down?<\/h1>\n

Intense relief.<\/p>\n

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Do you plan on doing more skate clip reviews in future?<\/h1>\n

No. I made over 5,000. One<\/a> was enough.<\/p>\n

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